Visiting Walt Disney World During The Busy Season

When it comes to visiting Walt Disney World, many people choose to visit at times when the parks are quieter, but for many, that's not always an option. If you have children in school, as many visitors to Disney do, then you may have no choice but to visit during the busier seasons. So when is Walt Disney World at its most crowded? Around Easter and the 4th of July, along with the week between Christmas and New Years we traditionally see crowds at their very worst, but if you visit around Thanksgiving or Presidents' Week, you can also expect to see higher crowd levels. Essentially, any time when there are major national holidays, you can expect the park to be busier.

Of course, there are some positives to visiting at these times. Firstly, you'll probably need to use less of your precious vacation, especially important for those with very few vacation dates during the course of a year. It may also mean that you don't have to take your children out of school, which can save a real dilemma.

Although there will be more people to contend with in the parks, there are some benefits to visiting at a busy time of year. Disney needs to regularly carry out refurbishment work to the park attractions, known as rehabs, and they tend to do that during quieter times of the year. If you're at the parks during major holidays, you're more likely to find everything up and running for you.

You may also find additional shows or fireworks taking place during your stay. In particular, the holiday versions of Wishes are truly spectacular around Christmas or the 4th of July. Equally, for parades or shows that are not performed every night during slower seasons, such as Fantasmic! or Wishes, you'll invariably find there are more performances when the parks are crowded (sometimes more than once nightly), which can make planning your days easier, as you'll have more choice of when you want to see those things.

Larger crowds usually bring longer operating hours for the parks as well. If you're a night owl, this can really work in your favor, with the Magic Kingdom sometimes open into the early hours, even on days without evening Extra Magic Hours. If this suits you, it gives you an opportunity to enjoy the parks after a lot of the crowds have emptied out. And if you prefer to be up and at 'em early, that can also work for you, with the Magic Kingdom opening for Extra Magic Hours as early as 7:00 am at the very busiest times.

If you haven't visited Disney at a busy time of the year before, there are a few things you need to know. The first, and most important, thing is that you really do need to plan. While you can be a lot more relaxed when there are fewer people around, if you want to get on the most popular attractions in busy seasons, you really need a game plan. Using Extra Magic Hours if you're staying on property is one way of dealing with that, but another way to combat the crowds is by using Fastpasses. Unfortunately, a lot of people have now wised up to what used to be one of the best kept Disney secrets. To witness that, you only have to be at Disney's Hollywood Studios first thing in the morning to see the line for Fastpasses for Toy Story Midway Mania.

There are various tricks to using Fastpasses and one of the most important things is to first check that the return time fits into your plans for the rest of the day. If you're not planning on staying in that park all day and the attraction is showing a Fastpass return time late in the afternoon or the early evening, you may either need to stand in line or change your plans around a bit.