Best Tips for Making Busier Times Feel Less Crowded

[SDSorority]

Hi everybody! What are your best tips for making "busier" times of the year feel less crowded?

 

[Disneylover99]

Go early in the morning or go in the evening.
Eat lunch at counter service locations as soon as they open and eat dinner early or late to avoid the rush.

 

[vinotinto]

When things get crowded, I head to feel good attractions that have a large capacity such as Monsters Inc and Philharmagic. (Or a show - Beauty and the Beast or FOTLK or Nemo).

 

[snowybelle]

Get to the park EARLY (like, 30 minutes before rope drop) and ride the headliners first thing (or by FastPass reservation).

If I'm not planning on taking a mid-day break, during busy times I like to make table service reservations for lunch (rather than dinner). It's nice to sit down and get out of the crowds mid-day.

Schedule your FastPasses earlier in the day, so you can modify and/or add more FastPasses on MDE while you are in the parks. A lot of people don't seem to take advantage of this, but it is definitely your friend!

 

[Lorelei18]

Get to the parks 30 minutes before rope drop, knowing that sometimes AK, EP and HS are known for opening 15-30 minutes early depending on how busy they anticipate the parks will be.

I've been reading about the mobile ordering at many counter service places and am looking forward to trying that at Christmas.

If we have a lunch reservation for BOG ordering food online in advance.

We typically eat lunch at table service as well to get out of the crowds, then ride one or two more rides before taking a mid-day break outside of the park.

Using Fastpass obviously!

When it's getting packed we often go over to Tom Sawyers island to run around, or do the Frontierland Shooting gallery. Play the video games at the exit to test track. Run around in the Boneyard at AK. We used to do the Honey I Shrunk the Kids playground at HS before it closed. All those little diversions, my kids love them.

 

[kathy884]

Subscribe to touringplans.com and follow their touring plans. They have special holiday ones. Following their plans will save you hours in lines at busy times. Getting to the parks early is key. Resort days are great if you are burned out by theme park crowds because even when resorts are full they aren't crowded because everyone is in the parks. If offsite and you don't want to wait for dinner Christmas week, go to a place that specializes in breakfast for dinner, a place like Perkins. Order pizza in, so you don't have to go out. Book a condo and get some groceries, so you don't have to go out if you feel like staying in and not dealing with the crowds.

Expect it to be crazy busy and bring a lot of patience.

I'm a five time Christmas week visitor -- Christmas week is the busiest week of the year at WDW.

 

[MAYNARDS99]

Late lunch at any resort, then back to the "quiet" pool. Return to a park for late dinner.

 

[Gehrig1B]

Rope Drop E ticket rides, FP+ during busiest time of the day, have hoppers for flexibility, late night for more E ticket rides... ADR for dinner and eat lunch at a non traditional lunch time.

 

[Delirium]

Leave the kids at home.

 

[Klayfish]

I will put a different spin on it. We're veterans of "busy times", as our schedule dictates that's when we can go...4th of July, Thanksgiving, Xmas, etc... We also aren't rope drop people...no thanks, we prefer to get a little extra sleep.

First, have the right mindset. People seem to get so worked up about "It's busy". Our feeling is...yeah, so what? It kind of is what it is. So if you get anxious about it, you're likely to not have as good of a time. You can't change it, or make the crowd smaller, so just roll with it.

I'm also not a believer in leaving when it's peak crowd time, or trying to go find someplace to avoid it. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of being there. To us, we're on vacation, we want to be in WDW...having other people in the park is not going to cause us to alter doing what we want to do and when.

Use FP+ to your advantage...a lot. We never wait in lines more than 20-30 minutes tops. In fact, I'd say that we use the standby queue at all only roughly 30% of all attractions we go to, no matter how busy or not busy it is. We use FP+ for most things, most times. With very limited exceptions, FP+ is available same day for pretty much any attraction in the parks, even on busy days. Therefore, even during 4th of July week, we never stand in a long line. That helps a ton. This 4th of July, we rode FEA via same day FP+ around 8:15 or 8:30pm. We got off that, did the boat ride in Mexico standby (10 minute wait), walked out at 8:50pm and found a spot for 9pm Illuminations (awesome 4th of July show, BTW).

Busy times are just that, busy. But if you don't let it bother you mentally, roll with the flow, and use the system WDW created, it's not a big deal at all.

 

[Alice Sr.]

Go early in the morning or go in the evening.
Eat lunch at counter service locations as soon as they open and eat dinner early or late to avoid the rush.

That's we do also. We are there at rope drop and usually leave when we start noticing the crowd (before noon). We eat an early counter service or eat back at the villa. Resv TS depending on the park hours, if they close early (AK or Studios) we will try to get the last resv at park closing and tour before dining. If the park is open late (like MK) we will eat 1st and tour after dinner. This plan works well for us most of the time except for Epcot during F&W they are often super busy up to closing.

 

[JennyGilbert]

I really appreciate this perspective! Thanks for sharing!

 

[loves to dive]

I will put a different spin on it. We're veterans of "busy times", as our schedule dictates that's when we can go...4th of July, Thanksgiving, Xmas, etc... We also aren't rope drop people...no thanks, we prefer to get a little extra sleep.

First, have the right mindset. People seem to get so worked up about "It's busy". Our feeling is...yeah, so what? It kind of is what it is. So if you get anxious about it, you're likely to not have as good of a time. You can't change it, or make the crowd smaller, so just roll with it.

I'm also not a believer in leaving when it's peak crowd time, or trying to go find someplace to avoid it. Kind of defeats the whole purpose of being there. To us, we're on vacation, we want to be in WDW...having other people in the park is not going to cause us to alter doing what we want to do and when.

Use FP+ to your advantage...a lot. We never wait in lines more than 20-30 minutes tops. In fact, I'd say that we use the standby queue at all only roughly 30% of all attractions we go to, no matter how busy or not busy it is. We use FP+ for most things, most times. With very limited exceptions, FP+ is available same day for pretty much any attraction in the parks, even on busy days. Therefore, even during 4th of July week, we never stand in a long line. That helps a ton. This 4th of July, we rode FEA via same day FP+ around 8:15 or 8:30pm. We got off that, did the boat ride in Mexico standby (10 minute wait), walked out at 8:50pm and found a spot for 9pm Illuminations (awesome 4th of July show, BTW).

Busy times are just that, busy. But if you don't let it bother you mentally, roll with the flow, and use the system WDW created, it's not a big deal at all.

This is what we do as well, we just really don't let it get to us. If someone bumps into us we just smile and say excuse me even though they did the bumping. My son even has PTSD and hates crowds but seems to do o.k. with just the attitude of we are vacation, if you will pardon the pun "let it go". The only exception to the above is we don't really do that many FPs, we go often and have been going for so long that waiting in line is just no big deal for us. We won't wait 2 hours but have been known to look at a wait time of 50 min. look at each other shrug our shoulders and say why not. We aren't very ride centric so if we don't ride a lot of rides it's o.k. I will say we always have park hoppers, right now we both have APs but when we don't we have park hoppers.

 

[Klayfish]

We aren't very ride centric so if we don't ride a lot of rides it's o.k. I will say we always have park hoppers, right now we both have APs but when we don't we have park hoppers.

It's funny you say that. We also have APs now. This past summer trip, which was very long, something that both DW and I said was that we became too "ride centric". We used those same exact words. It wasn't intentional, we just sort of allowed ourselves to get swept up in grabbing FP+ after FP+. It wasn't like we were literally running through the parks or anything, because we weren't. But we just really focused on rides a ton. We don't regret it per se, but agree that for Thanksgiving and Christmas we're going to be a bit less ride centric. Still get on things we want to get on, but spend more time just watching a street show, or looking through shops.

 

[DisneyWishes14]

Schedule a tour (we did Wild Africa Trek during Christmas week 2015 and it was the perfect way to get out of the AK crowds). Avoid parks or areas of parks with special events going on (for example, don't tour WS during CP performances unless you plan on going to CP). Do things off the beaten path - a monorail tour, HDDR and a visit to Ft. W (if it's open during your trip), etc.

 

[Yensid67]

Go to any of the bars on property. The alcohol prices are so ridiculously high that you'll probably be the only person there drinking.

 

[CuteAsMinnie]

ARRIVE EARLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[TommyJK]

I have yet to have any luck with getting additional E ticket Attraction FP+s after the first ones are used up on super crowded days. Once I try for my next one you're lucky to get Dumbo available let alone anything close to Space Mountain, BTMRR, Splash Mountain etc. So I never plan this way.

For super crowded MK days we typically do the following:

• Book FP+s for the afternoon period between 1-5 when attraction wait times are the craziest for the most popular Fantasy Land and/Or Tomorrow Land
• Rope Drop - then head to Adventure Land followed by Frontier land. These two lands are the absolute deadest from Rope Drop until about 10:30ish - 11:00. In that span of time we'd typically get to do Jungle Cruise, Pirates, Splash, BTMRR, Haunted Mansion and finally Small World (with doing a few of those twice even)
• Early lunch (beat the lunch crowds) since we're hungry already from getting up early and eating Breakfast Early.
• Then the afternoon you have your FP+s, and sprinkle in between the high volume throughput attractions (like Monster's Inc, Philharmagic, Tom Sawyers Island etc.) to take you through Dinner.
• After that it's Dinner, followed by some wandering and if lucky (although usually not) a few other FP+ attractions if you can get them.

 

[DisneyFive]

Rope drop is your friend for this one. Last August we did rope drop, and then headed back to the resort (typically napped) until dinner, then came back. Peak crowds are mid day. This helped for crowds, heat, energy level, and helped us avoid a lot of the showers that just so happened to hit in the afternoon.

Dan

 

[Klayfish]

I have yet to have any luck with getting additional E ticket Attraction FP+s after the first ones are used up on super crowded days. Once I try for my next one you're lucky to get Dumbo available let alone anything close to Space Mountain, BTMRR, Splash Mountain etc. So I never plan this way.

It's easy. You may have to refresh a time or two, but you can get any of the "Mountains" as a 4th, 5th, etc... Even on crowded holidays. We got 7DMT many times over the 4th of July holiday. Same for pretty much every e-ticket ride in every park...exception of FoP and Navi.