Thoughts on what time has less crowds -days before Easter or days before Tgiving?

[ngl]

I know this is a crystal ball question but we are planning a trip back out to DL for late next year 2023 (Tgiving) or early 2024 (Easter). We live 1 hr from WDW, are DVC, AP so when anyone asks me this question about WDW I tell them it is very hard to predict these days because it seems times when the parks should not be busy, they are busy!

We are contemplating the weekend prior to Tgiving (Sun Nov 26- Tues Nov 28) or days before Easter 2024 (Thurs March 28 and Fri March 29) or days after Easter (Wed April 3 through Fri April 5). (Hoping to do Disney cruise out of SD so would do DL before or after). We haven been to DL before during school times for CA but not for us and it was not too bad. (We actually are heading there next weekend for a quick trip and are prepared for much bigger crowds!)

Trying to decide whether to put the cruise deposit down next week for the April 2024 cruise or stick with our original plan to go over Tgiving 2023 and go somewhere else after that in CA.

Any insight/thoughts appreciated! Thank you in advance.

 

[SeaDis]

Well, I will try first. We've done both periods multiple times.

Pre-Thanksgiving has been pretty consistent for us. We are usually there over the weekend and headed home by Tuesday to get back for the holiday. By Tuesday you can feel the crowds building. Of course it's busy, but not "Spring Break busy". We did not go this year but had multiple friends there. My take from their reports was the amount of attraction downtime made the crowd effect magnify to some extent. So that was a wildcard this year.

Easter floats around the calendar obviously. And the later in April it goes, the lower the crowds will be. Our kids' Spring Breaks were always the week after Easter so we noticed the difference as it moved around. When we were there one year in mid-April, like the 16th I think, it was dramatically different than late March or early April. So I would be careful about dipping into the last week of March/first week of April if crowds are priority.

If you can find them this early, it's a good idea to look for the major school district calendars for 2024. But I don't think they vary too much-- many are last week of March/first week of April.

Personally I would lean toward Pre-TG. But maybe because I'm partial to the holidays and also because VGC points are so high during Spring Break season. For your trip and a cruise, weather might be larger factor for you also. Tough call, best of luck with the planning.

 

[gelatoni fan]

Since you're already experiencing Christmas this year, I'd go with the Easter dates. It's unclear when the 100th anniversary stuff ends but there's a good chance that in 2024, you'll see the Magic Happens parade as well as entirely new fireworks and World of Color while Christmas 2023 may be a repeat of Christmas 2022.

Your dates miss the worst dates in terms of crowds so I wouldn't make any definite predictions about that.