Memorial Day Weekend

not sure about crowd sizes for that weekend you can probably find it on touring plans web site, but as far as your dinning unless they are on a level 4 which only really happens around Christmas and new years I believe they will let you in if you have adr's

Well here are the crowd predictions for that weekend. That is a pretty crowded weekend.

Preview	Attachment	Size
	screen_shot_2014-03-23_at_9.32.58_pm.png	33.63 KB
	screen_shot_2014-03-23_at_9.31.19_pm.png	121.58 KB

My husband and I go to WDW almost every Memorial day weekend because it is usually my birthday weekend too. It is always very crowded but not as crowded as when we were there the week of Christmas. This year WDW is having a 24 hour day, "Rock your Disney side Party" starting May 23 at 6am and ending May 24 at 6am. This year's theme is encouraging guests to dress as their favorite Hero or Villain.
The 24 hour days are very popular and extremely crowded. If you go first thing in the morning you would probably get several hours of lower crowds. It will probably be filled to capacity, or close to it, but that usually happens later in the day and/or night because most people want to experience the fun of being in Disney all night long.
Here is the article on Disney parks blog.

disneyparks.disney.go.com/24-hour-event/

Last year they did a 24 hour day, Monstrous Summer, May 24 and May 25. WDWMagic reported that the MK parking lot was closed due to capacity between 10am and 11am and it reopened around 11pm that night. I don't know how accurate that info is though.

Are you going to there just over Memorial Day weekend? You didn't say how long you will be there. There is a good chance that the parks will continue to be extra busy the entire week following Memorial Day weekend.

Zz.

I believe I'm right in saying the Friday is the 24hiur magic kingdom day. We were there last year and it was very busy, the good news is that on the Friday from around 1am to 6am the magic kingdom was very quite.

I've never been on the actual weekend before, but we were there the Friday after Memorial Day last year and MK in the afternoon was much more crowded than what I'm used to (2 out of our 3 trips prior to that had been during the awesome crowd void that is the week before Labor Day). I've been to EPCOT, DHS, and AK when it was crowded, but personally, I'm the most sensitive to crowding at MK. I think it's because there are relatively few attractions that I stand in line for at the other parks. At MK, small changes in the length of lines can really throw a wrench in your plans. If I do a dozen rides and it takes me 10 minutes longer at each ride than I anticipate, that's two hours or extra touring time needed. Also, Main Street USA can be a huge bottleneck, especially at parade time. For what it's worth, here's a quick mini trip report from last year's Friday after Memorial Day in MK:

We were 5 adults (co-workers) using conference tickets, so we couldn't get into MK until 2pm. We got delayed a bit and actually got to TTC a little after 2. We were staying offsite, so when we parked at TTC, our first half hour was eaten up by parking, monorailing, getting our tickets from will call, etc. We hit Fantasyland right around 3:00 and we toured until about 8:00 when we stopped for dinner and proceeded to the parade.

We did Under the Sea (FP), It's a Small World, Stitch's Great Escape, Space Mountain/Carousel of Progress (we split up), Big Thunder Mountain, Met Mickey in Town Square, did some shopping and ate dinner at Cosmic Ray's. I feel like we might have squeezed in Haunted Mansion, but I can't remember for sure. Our touring pace was leisurely and we able to utilize fast pass for Under the Sea, but we had to do standby standby everywhere else. That took us about 5 1/2 hours and we watched MSEP before hopping the Monorail to Poly for Wishes & dole whips.

Part of our limited riding was because it was crowded and lines were substantial (30 minutes plus for most attractions), but also because the one lady that we took was a 64-year-old Russian on her first trip to Disney and taking her to It's a Small World and to meet Mickey at Town Square were top priorities. Getting to watch her experience those two things was some of the best Disney magic I've ever seen! Another member of our party really wanted some time to shop, so that changed our ability to hit more attractions, too. As we got into the evening, fast pass was also not available or convenient for many attractions.

We did a lot of back tracking because we didn't really do a lot of pre-planning. We were in town for a conference and I couldn't pin our boss down about car rental and other logistical issues until about a week before the trip, so it was a last minute decision to get the tickets and most people couldn't tell me what they wanted to do ahead of time because they had never been before. I felt like we hardly did anything because I am all about rope drop and I could have knocked out those rides in two hours on a normal morning, but my friends who didn't know any better had a great time.

The usual wisdom still applies: be at rope drop, prioritize the things you can't miss and get FP's, pack your patience and enjoy where the day takes you. You're going to hit the 24-hour thing of you're only going to be there Friday and Saturday, so it will probably be crazy, but I think I heard that EPCOT and DHS will be open 24 hrs. also? Can someone confirm? Because that should help tremendously with the crowds at MK!

Only Magic Kingdom will be open for the 24 hours.

Just in case you didn't know, the week after Memorial Day weekend is the week leading up to Gay Days at Magic Kingdom on that Saturday. So the crowd level will build up leading up to that weekend, since there are events and other things going on that whole week. I would avoid MK on both Friday and Saturday of that week, and Epcot on that Sunday, if they keep to the same schedule, because the crowd levels will be higher than even for the summer holidays.

Zz.

I needed to go ahead and put vacation time in for work and with my extra week, I just wrote down May 18-24 without really thinking about it. Now that I've made the connection that I could go down for the 24 hour day, I'm strongly considering it!! I guess I need to decide soon if I actually have the resources to make that happen.

The crowds is really the only thing I'm scared of. I have no issues getting to MK at 6 when it opens (I work at 6am every day soooo I could def wake up for Disney), but I don't do too well with wall to wall people.

Hey spamgoddess

We don't deal well with crowds well either but we had a good plan,

We went to the open of MK at 6am we entered the park, looked at the event merch, got our free pin and headed straight out of the park and headed to HS, sounds weird but... We got to HS by 8am ready for star wars weekends. We were only in Florida for a week coming from the UK and are both big Star Wars fans. We watched the parade, checked out the merch and then took advantage of the low lines for rides, what a lot of people don't know is that the Star Wars fans are not there to ride and so while the park is busy, most people are there for character and actor meets, and panels, in stores and waiting for parades the rides are all walk ons, apart from star tours and TSM. Smart touring will get you on these with out fast passes. We had out lunch at HS and after the parade we headed over to Epcot on the boat.

Epcot was a ghost town, as most guests were at MK or HS and I guess smaller kids were taken to AK? We rode everything as a walk on, soaring had a 20min wait. We killed a lot of time in Epcot just sitting. Then we watched illuminations and got the monorail to MK at 11pm, this was a mistake as people from MK had got the monorail over to Epcot to watch illuminations and people had parked at Epcot to go to magic kingdom. We got to MK at 12am and then just walked around the park. Apart from space mountain, thunder and splash the lines were all gone by 2am by 3am we were the only people in certain areas of the park. The best thing about it were there were no strollers anywhere and the paths were clear.

Hope this helps