Wait times right now

[friedela]

One of the problems is that people don't always take into account all the inactive time they'll be spending outside in lines or waiting for shows, parades, fireworks, etc. So you can keep pretty warm by walking briskly from ride to ride. And your adrenaline will be pumping on rides to keep you warm (and rides are heated to a certain extent -- like inside the buildings). But once you stand inactive for a while outside in the cold, especially at night as the temps are dropping, you really start to feel it -- especially if you weren't dressed appropriately for cooler weather to begin with. And if you were damp from water rides or rain and never fully dried out... oh, chilly!

Damp cold is SOOO not fun! That could really ruin a day I am sure. Do you pack rain boots if the park is expecting rain?

 

[theluckyrabbit]

Damp cold is SOOO not fun! That could really ruin a day I am sure. Do you pack rain boots if the park is expecting rain?

If the weather report forecasts steady rain all day, then yes to the rain boots or waterproof shoes/boots. DL (especially) and DCA have uneven ground, and the puddles form quickly. Some can be deceptively deep. I'm short, so getting splashed over my ankles isn't hard, especially if I'm trying to keep up with DH's longer strides. At night, I can't really gauge puddle depth in the dark, so having waterproof shoes or boots really helps. If the forecast is for intermittent showers, then I can maybe skip the boots. But it never hurts to pack extra socks and maybe extra shoes in a locker. We saw people this past Sunday who were limping in a most pitiful manner -- it had rained earlier and their shoes must have gotten soaked. Then they ran around the parks all day in wet shoes and socks, so by night they had major blisters. Ouch!
ETA: Someone in the recent rain gear thread ordered a sort of rain overshoe from Amazon. They were pretty inexpensive compared to rain boots and worked well for a few days in the parks. Can we chat rain? (see post #60 for the rain shoe covers; see post #32 to see what 'wet and freezing' looks like at DLR -- imagine that from open to close in the parks! A hoodie and a poncho aren't enough!)

 

[JohnR5101]

Damp cold is SOOO not fun! That could really ruin a day I am sure. Do you pack rain boots if the park is expecting rain?

That reminds me of a BIG mistake we made at WDW in 2013. It was September, so mostly pretty warm and humid. We had a few brief times when there was a short shower during the day. But as soon as the sun came out we dried out very fast. Never did get cold. In fact we were thankful for the shower to cool off a bit.

Well, one of the days a thunderstorm came in the evening. We were on Splash at the time and of course got fairly wet. Then we queued up for Thunder Mt but they halted it because of lightning in the area. We were under the covered part at the time. So we just waited there until the danger past, they reopened the ride and we got on. But the rain was coming down pretty hard and we got thoroughly soaked. Temperatures had dropped quite a bit because it was a real storm, not just the occasional showers we had experienced in previous days. So there we were all wet and with a dinner reservation at Liberty Inn at park closing time. So before going into the restaurant I ran down to Main st to just buy a couple of dry shirts. Stores were closed. So we went in for dinner and they sat us right under an air conditioning vent that was trying to keep the temperature really low. We nearly froze to death. Can't remember why we couldn't get reseated in a better location (maybe there was lots of AC everywhere). So we learned a lesson with that experience.

 

[sherilaine]

Here now, drizzle and 53 and it’s great!! We’ve gotten so much done and honestly don’t find it cold at all!!

 

[mummabear]

Out of curiosity, what does "freezing" look like in Southern California? ETA: Nevermind, I just saw the temp. LOL. Yeah, it was -38 here last week with the wind. That's -36 Fahrenheit for you Americans, lol. I'd take a rainy "cold" day at DL any day, lol.

I regularly get -32C when we head home in winter. Freezing here has more to do with being unprepared than the temp, but we were not expecting 4C in California...