Thanksgiving Crowds

[Gregandmel]

What are the crowds like during the Thanksgiving Break? I know Christmas is crazy-busy, but what about Wednesday - Sunday of Thanksgiving week (with T-Day being Thursday?). Just curious. Always trying to plan around school and work schedules. Blech!!

[ibelieveindisneymagic]

It is pretty busy then too! A lot of people take advantage of the holiday to miss less work/school.

I'd say that it is pretty close to Christmas, not quite as crazy, but still rather busy.

However, with good planning (and an early start most days), you'll still have a super time!

[faline]

I agree. Expect lots of crowds. As long as you expect it to be very busy and go with a mindset that allows you to go with the flow, you might be able to accomplish more than you might think.

[ransam]

I have heard it's busy, but I have had two friends go over thanksgiving and both said it wasn't that bad. I'm hopin.

[faline]

I have heard it's busy, but I have had two friends go over thanksgiving and both said it wasn't that bad. I'm hopin.

I think it all has to do with your expectations. If you know it will be busy and adjust your expectations to meet the situation, you'll be fine!! I've been to Disney when you can practically walk onto everything (not so true in recent years) and when you can barely walk through Fantasyland and have had fun regardless!!

[buzznwoodysmom]

We have gone to Disney at all different times of the year. Thanksgiving week happens to be one of our favorite times to go. Yes, it's busy, but it's really not that bad.

We typically arrive around the Friday or Saturday before Thanksgiving and stay till the Saturday or Sunday after. The parks have been just moderately crowded up until about Wednesday in the past, with a gradual increase as the week nears Tday.

We usually skip the parks on Thanksgiving day, and do our last park on the Friday after. Friday usually being the busiest day of our trips, depending on the park we visit on that day. Last year we did Animal Kingdom on the Friday and it wasn't crowded at all. In our experience Epcot has seen larger crowds on the Friday after Tday because that was when they started their holiday festivities.

Honestly it's not been any worse than early summer for us. More recently we have found Mardi Gras week to be more crowded than Thanksgiving.

[Gregandmel]

I've been checking the wait times on my MDE app on my I-Phone this week just to get an idea. No surprises that the first hour the park is open - they are reasonable. The popular rides ramp up to a 90-120 minute wait time pretty quickly (Soarin', Test Track, 7 Dwarfs Mine Ride, Toy Story Mania, etc…). The rest of the rides that aren't the main attraction are 45 mins or less. The busiest times are between about 10am - 3pm and then the wait times start to lessen. As we were driving to my sister's yesterday morning, the wait time on Thanksgiving for one of the rides was 2 hours 15 minutes. Yikes! But guess there weren't any real surprises with the wait times other than the first hour or two of opening - they were less than I thought they would be.

[Kplaster]

We just got back Sunday from a 10 day trip over Thanksgiving break and it really wasn't bad until Thanksgiving day. Prior to then we expected there to be a lot of people but I would say it was mild to moderate on crowd level. Much better than christmas week. I would recommend going this week if you can just make sure you come before Thanksgiving. It seemed like it just kept getting busier after Thanksgiving with everyone coming in.

[TIGGER17179]

What about the week after Thanksgiving?