Tell me where to start with planning first DL trip

[Wes1stTrip2016]

If your school gets out in May, I would go straight after school. Weather is lovely and local schools largely don’t get out until late June, so the crowd is lower in early June/late May than the rest of the Summer. Late August is also slower than mid-July as kids start going back to school in other states. Avoid July 4th for sure. If you get other breaks, local schools don’t do Fall break (except some year round schools), and locally Spring break is only one week and usually closer to April but I’d avoid March due to Food and Wine festival crowds.
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What about the early June "Grad Nites" that someone else referred to? I had originally started to plan for an early June trip as its both DH birthday as well as our anniversary - but became leary of the grad nites. Some of the crowd calendars have them as DO NOT ENTER type of days.

 

[DizneyMommy]

Most grad night groups arrive later in the day because they stay until around 2am in the park. They then go home on their school's bus, they do not stay in hotels and come back the next day. Their families do not come with them, and usually do not get an opportunity to purchase additional tickets. It is not really an extra crowd until later in the day. DCA will also close early those days though. I've been on grad night days many times, go early, knock out the big rides, and then enjoy the park, it never felt unreasonably crowded to me. WAY less than summer, and even still it is not every day either. I believe these are the grad night dates this year. Personally if I was planning a trip I would still go at that time over summer, maybe just try to plan my first 2 days on 2 non-grad night days.

Fri/Sat 6/1 & 2
Tues/Wed 5 & 6th
Fri/Sat 8 & 9th