Planning Disney: When To Go

I am planning to do a series of posts about how I planned our Disney trip. I am by NO means an expert, but I did learn a lot during the planning process. I am recording this for friends who are planning upcoming trips and also for myself to look back on later. It will probably be quite boring to everyone else. :)

*When I originally wrote this, I forgot to add that you need to set up an account at www.mydisneyexperience.com when you are first planning your trip. That is the website you will use to make all your dining reservations and Fast Passes, and they have an app that is super easy to use as you are navigating the parks.

Obviously the first thing you need to decide when you are planning a Disney trip is when you want to go! I knew I wanted to go during a low crowd time, and I wanted to go when it wasn't hot. I always heard that February was low crowd, so I looked at Curran's school calendar and saw that she had Friday Feb 13 and Monday Feb 16 off, so I told our travel agent to book our trip then so she would only miss two days of school {which turned into 3 when we added an extra day at the last minute}. WELL...I should have done my homework because President's Day Weekend is considered Peak season! WHOOPS! It is more expensive and more crowded than an other week in February. Lesson learned. It really wasn't too bad overall- Thursday and Friday were great; Saturday and Sunday were definitely more crowded.

What we did get was AWESOME weather! It was definitely cold in the mornings and evenings, but it was very nice during the day, and we had a 0% chance of rain every day. We had clear blue skies the whole time! It was wonderful. At some point, I really want to go to Disney in November or early December to see it decorated for Christmas, but I think late January or early February will be our "go-to" time of the year. We loved it. The only bad thing about Jan and Feb is that that is when Disney does most of their refurbishments, so there are usually some ride and restaurant closures.

Several Disney bloggers have crowd calendars that detail the best and worst times of the year to go, so I would recommend checking those out first thing.

This site has each month detailed and will give you the best week to go during each month. They also do monthly crowd calendars about 7 months out.

Here is another good blog I love, and this link helps you pick a time of year that might be good. It's not nearly as detailed as the above blog, but it gives you a quick picture of what each month in 2015 looks like. If you scroll towards the bottom of her home page, then you will see a more detailed month by month guide.

And here is another one. I didn't know about him when I was planning the trip, but I did start following him on Facebook when I was still early in the planning process.

Next up- where to stay!