Just booked!

[Glasgow]

Ok - just got booked for AKL in December. Taking our 2 1/2 y.o. so it should be a great time!

Something I am confused about though. I called a couple of times and AKL, WL and several other resorts were fully booked for the week after T'Giving. I kept calling and eventually got booked though.

My impression from reading many, many posts over the years, however, was that the beginning of December was one of the 'slowest' times of the year but the non-vacancies seem to indicate otherwise.

Is there something I don't know about? Additionally, I'd think that with the recent downturn in the economy that it would be even more scarce. Hmmm.

Either way, I'm excited about going again!!

 

[Rob562]

I think it's a two-part answer.

First, with the dearth of guidebooks out there, I think the "secret" is out about the "slow" times of the year, making them just "slower" rather than "slow" (when you compare the difference in crowd-size with what it was years ago).

Also, on-site occupancy is not a good judge of how busy the parks will be. In order to get a good gauge on that, you would need to know how full the OFF-site hotels are, too.

On any given day, on-site guests only make up a percentage of the total number of Guests in the parks. Disney's hotels run at a relatively high occupancy rate year-round. So there's a pretty stable base number of Guests.So the more full the off-site hotels are, the more people there will be in the parks.

You could have trouble getting a room in early December but still find the parks to be virtually empty, because there's noone staying off-site. But then you hit Christmas, and all the on-site hotels AND the off-site hotels are jam-packed, and you get shoulder-to-shoulder people in the parks.

-Rob

 

[Glasgow]

Good points Rob. Our last two trips have been in Feb and Sept so I'll get a good idea how the beginning of Dec compares. Crowds during February were quite sparse and most rides were walk-on.

 

[shoppingnut]

Also the end of that first week in December starts Pop Warner.