I was looking forward to our October trip, now not so much. I am so surprised that so many people pull their kids out of school for the parties...I thought maybe we’d be among the only few crazy ones doing that lol! I gathered the weekends would be mobbed, did not think during the week would be so bad.
You should still definitely be excited. We were there last year the week before Thanksgiving--party season and a holiday--and had an amazing time! Our crowds, it turned out, ranged from 6 to 10 with several of our days either 9s or 10s but between a good touring plan, midday breaks and judicious use of FP it seriously was never a problem. The only time where the crowds really felt crazy was the non-party evening at MK, but we knew that would be the case, loaded for bear, and had actually one of the most magical evenings of the trip. If you're willing to make a plan and stick with it (basically) the crowds really don't have to be an issue. It was my first time so I wanted to do
everything and we did--we did an EMH every day, opened a park and closed a park every day (thus the midday breaks), saw five different nighttime spectacles and the only show or ride we missed was Splash Mountain (it was closed for refurb half of our trip and then when it came back up it was actually closed the time we had planned to ride it--there were two other times we could have ridden it but they were both late enough and just cool enough that, being big old wussies we really didn't feel like getting wet). The entire week we only waited more than fifteen minutes four times (and two of those were FOP FPs--also Anna and Elsa in Epcot which I suppose two grown men could have skipped, but Anna said the most wonderfully scandalous vaguely off-color thing that we still giggle about today, I can't actually recall what the other "long" wait was). At any rate we never waited longer than a half hour for anything.
As far as what to "worry" about, the only real thing I would say was non-party evenings at MK, and the flipside of that, if you have hoppers, is party days at MK. We went on a Friday morning EMH at 7, with no FPs (we had FOP, ROL and the Safari at sunset for that night) and it was just astonishing. When we left for our afternoon nap it was like the park was still empty! Since it closed at 6 I'm pretty sure it must have stayed that way until 4 when the party guests arrived. AK was a little like that at well. We had two EMHs one of which was CL10 and seriously FOP absorbs so many people that for the first two or three hours it was like the rest of the park was empty.
It was my first time so I really did want to do everything and wasn't really comfortable leaving the plans to what happened to be available with day-of FP but if you've been before and are willing to go a little more with the flow you might be able to do even more than we did. We really didn't capitalize on same day FPs. A couple days we only did the three and usually we only did four or five--but a lot of people do a lot more than that!
Seriously, don't go into it wondering how bad it's going to be. We had some crowds while we were there but it was still such an amazing first time that we've already scheduled two more trips to WDW and one to
Disneyland. There's so much information on this board about how to navigate the crowds and still have an amazing time. You got this!
