Jan 2014

[Gayle]

Planning an entire family vacation Jan 2, thru Jan 8th. All 4 children and spouses and grandson and grandaughters. :mickey: Will the christmas decorations still be up the grandkids. Only time we can fit it in as 3 of my married children will be in college. Thank you for any info. What is the general weather, will we be able to use the pools.

[Strmchsr]

Most Christmas decorations will still be up. Usually the castle lights and Osborne Lights go through Jan 4 or so. After that things start to come down by they are generally up for a couple of weeks.

As for weather, it's variable. Pools are heated so you can usually get in them, but getting out can be a little tricky. It can be quite cold (2 years ago it was 33 with snow flurries at noon on one of my Jan trips), but you can also see highs around 80. Just depends. No way to give you a "general" idea but you can look at the historic weather page in Info Central for exact data for the last few years to get an idea.

[banditlove]

My family went at almost exactly the same time a few years ago (Wed, Jan 2 - Thurs, Jan 10, 2008). Your dates run from Thurs, Jan 2 to Wed, Jan 8). Because school was not back in session until Mon, Jan 7, we found that the parks were crazy busy until Sun, Jan 6 when everyone and their dog left for home :). Everything was basically a walk on from Sunday until we left on Thursday. I'm assuming (but I could be wrong, of course!!!!) that school will be out until Mon, Jan 6 in 2014. If you could extend or move your stay forward by a day or two, you'll have a better time of it crowd-wise. If not, I would suggest holding off on Magic Kingdom (always the busiest park) until Sunday, Monday or Tuesday.

When we went, Christmas decorations were still up (mostly) on Jan 9. We didn't get to DHS until Jan 7 or 8, if I recall correctly. Osborne lights were still up but this doesn't mean they won't come down earlier in 2014. Maybe 2008 was unusual in some regard?

2008 was our first trip to Disney and we went into it blindly. If I were planning a trip during a busy period like that again (we've only been in the first week of February since) I would not visit a park that has EMH on that particular day (if you want to take advantage of EMH hours I would start at that park for morning EMH and hop to another that doesn't have any EMH for the rest of the day or start the day in a park without EMH and then hop to a park with evening EMH).

We also went to US/IOA (which my family likes better than Disney). These parks were less crowded than the Disney parks. You may want to head there on the busiest days following your arrival and save the Disney parks for the less crowded days.

Weatherwise - expect anything. The first few days were freezing (hats, mitts, jackets, longjohns). The last few days we were in shorts and t-shirts. I wouldn't have gone to a water park (even the warmest days were too cold) but the heated pool and hottub were lovely. Only thing is we rented a house so getting out of the pool into the cool night air wasn't so bad - the warm house was only steps away. I may have felt differently if my hotel room was a five minute walk from the pool.

Hope you have a lovely trip!!!

[ibelieveindisneymagic]

As the others have said, weather will be iffy.

We went the almost the same dates in 2010 and loved it. The crowds were good (got lower almost every day of our trip) and I loved not being all hot and sticky at Disney.

The weather was a mixed bag. Some days we were in shirts and shorts, one day it was winter coats and mittens. We swam most days, the water was nice but getting out was rotten. DD swam one night, there were a few other kids in the pool with her, but all of us adults sat on the side. :swim: