How busy are the parks in early/mid october?
 

Always been late June to mid July so used to the busyness.

How busy are they in early to mid October? Particularly universal. We've always stayed onsite to get the express passes. Would this be needed in October?

I don't know about Universal but from every report I've heard from Disney, the October crowds were much larger than expected this year. There were even a few level 10 crowd days at MK according to TP's historical data.

ETA: You can also use the historic Busy Day Guide to view - hover over any park to see the actual crowd level that day. As an example, October 11th (a Wednesday, which is typically evening EMH but also the only non-party weekday that week) was rated 9.5 for MK.

https://www.thedibb.co.uk/forums/bus...?hours=10+2017

Manageable.

Early starts, fast passes and having a plan will see you do most things.

We normally have a night at universal and box the 2 parks off over 2 days.

I tend to do discovery cove at the weekend to avoid crowds. Sticking to the week days you'll see the benefit.

Since all the improvements and deals Disney/Orlando is a 365 days a year now.

Pretty ordinary in my experience.

I agree with this - We found last October (middle 2 weeks in 2016) at Disney to be incredibly busy too, more so than in the previous July when we'd last visited. It was walking shoulder to shoulder at times. Spoiled the whole atmosphere we found.
Fastpasses are all well and good for the rides, but its the fact that you couldn't get a seat to have a cup of coffee or an ice- cream that really spoiled the experience.
It doesn't help that MK shuts on several nights for the Halloween parties I suppose - and a victim of its own success, great for Disney but not so brill for guests! :d:

As a result - Hubby and I have agreed we won't go in October again.

We were there 19/10 to 2/11 this year. The middle Saturday at MK was heaving. We heard photographers saying that they'd never seen it so busy. MNSSHP fills up most of the month so the days it isn't on are very crowded.

That said, we just did FP after FP, booking the next in the queue. All the big ticket rides were gone or had huge queues so we just went on whatever was available.

Universal wasn't busy though

We found October was just getting busier and busier so avoid it now.

A day later - Oct 12th - it was rated 3.8. And a week beforehand on Thurs Oct 5th it was rated 2.0. Both of which indicate fairly low crowd levels - well, low for MK anyway. ;)

Which, perhaps, just goes to show that it's best to visit MK on a day that is recommended rather than one where MK is not recommended.

Early to mid October, especially around Columbus Day, typically has average crowd levels. It isn't the quietest time of year by any means (and it seems to be getting busier as guests are keen to visit for the Halloween party days and Food&Wine festival) but it's not the busiest time of year either.

See the When to Visit page for a rough idea of crowds (although this is probably becoming more and more out of date).

Yup, I noticed that. It was really all over the place. I think it's mostly people avoiding MK on party days since it closes early. Which makes sense if you're not on a hopper and want a full park day.

I pointed out the 10 days though so people don't go expecting the 2-4 crowds every day that October always used to be. Those days are long gone!

Yeah, it does look like October was very variable! Crowd levels of 3 or 4 on some days and then 8 and 9 on a couple of days. Depending on which parks you visited on which days it could either seem like the crowds were average or the crowds were manic. Although it looks like Animal Kingdom was consistently busy (Pandora was/is still affecting crowd levels).