Busy Day Guides - Still important?

[Hollywood Goof]

Hi all.

Me and the family are heading back in October 2018 and looking for advice regarding the busy day guides. I know that as of this writing, they're not up yet, but this is more about finding out how relevant these still are, especially around this time of year.

On every visit previous, we typically follow the guide very closely and have no real reason to stop trusting it, however, we're finding that following the guide this trip would give us a couple of very LONG days right next to each other. So for the sake of spacing out our long days, we have considered ignoring the Guide this year and risking one of the 'busier' days. We last went in July, so are the 'busy' July days as busy as a 'busy' October day? Or would it not be so bad?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[Lucyjane45xxx]

October is getting busier and busier over recent years. I don't think there really are any 'quiet' periods now.
If I were you, I would check the historic wait times on the dibb for last october and see what the crowd levels were like.
We went in May and followed it most of the time and it worked really well. We went to HS on a saturday as that was the only time we could squeeze the visit in and the busy day guide said it would be busy, and it was insanely busy, we left after a couple of hours.
Saw the wait times at other parks were lower and hopped to one of those instead

[Wigan Lass]

I think many people agree that last October’s crowd calendars were way off the mark. Moderate crowds predicted, the reality was heavy crowds for much of the month with MK being particularly busy on non party days. There was much said about the reasons for this - pandora opening, new firework show at MK and rebooking of trips cancelled due to Irma...but the indication seems to be that this October will be equally busy (lots of reports of Disney accommodation being fully booked). Many american schools have a fall break now too and american sites particularly refer to the Columbus Day holiday being really busy at Disney for the past 2 years.

I would still use busy day guides as a start place for plans, but in October I’d probably look at things like going to MK during the day on party nights, avoiding Epcot from late afternoon at the weekend etc as a sensible approach to planning

[SophieLou]

We were there last October and I'd say yes it's very important. Agree with Wigan Lass on Magic Kingdom, it was insane on non party nights with those who wanted to see the fireworks and worse when you added EMH in too. If you don't have Halloween party ticket, go early on party day to do some rides, see parade etc and then pop in for an evening for the fireworks with another 3 fastpasses. It was very busy when we were there, lots of 2 hour queues in the Disney parks for the big rides, so you'll have to plan carefully and better to drop something out your plan to shorten a day, than going on a busy day. If you are there around Columbus Day I'd avoid Disney then entirely and do it later in the holiday. Waterparks are quieter in October even at weekend so you could try going there on the weekend/busy days? Sea World is another good one when Disney is super busy.