What kind of question is that – isn’t there only one answer to when is the best time to go to Walt Disney World which is anytime (and as soon as possible pretty please!) But after listening to a podcast and hearing all of the things that other people consider when planning their holidays it got me thinking; when is the best time to visit…..

Some of the things they covered:

• School holidays 
• Special events (food and wine, flower and garden)
• Family celebrations
• Season (Halloween/ Christmas)
• Weather
• Historic park attendance figures

Have I ever taken any of that into account……I did think that we have only ever planned our holiday around season as we wanted to experience Halloween and Christmas but then remembered weather has actually played a part in when we go. For a couple of years we went towards the end of June/ beginning of July; I honestly thought I was the kind of person who liked hot weather which I do but what I don’t like is hot and incredibly humid weather so we gave up on June/ July and swapped to May – however you aren’t guaranteed great weather then but at least you aren’t sweating 5 minutes after stepping outside!

Another sunny day at Magic Kingdom!

So, if the weather – amount of sun, lowest rainfall and all that other weather stuff is important to your holiday when is the best time to go? Typically Florida’s warm season runs from early May to the end of September with average daily temperatures of 30 degrees or above so if you like hot weather this is a great time to visit; however this is also the  time when the probability of thunderstorms increases and unlike at home which after a storm it has a tendency to cool down it is highly likely that it will become more humid. Nerd fact for you, last year 52% of the rain in Orlando fell during a thunderstorm and during the warm season there is a 59% chance of rain each day

What about crowd levels at the parks, the busiest times are quite obvious – christmas, easter, school holidays, thanksgiving but did you know there are other things that affect crowd levels? January and July are typically the times when the South American tour groups descend on the parks and resorts (you can see and hear them coming from a mile away with their chanting and matching shirts). 

Walt Disney World is also the home of many cheerleading competitions and also Pop Warner which takes place at the beginning of December ( a football and cheerleading competition – 64 football teams and 400 cheer teams). James and I still have nightmares about a bus journey back from the Magic Kingdom where the cheerleaders sang and chanted for the whole journey “I said boom chick a boom!!!!” oh my goodness get me off this bus!!!

I’d like to travel on one of these every day!!!

I guess at the end of the day everyone is different when they sit down to plan their holiday; and this is the key here you do have to plan a WDW holiday to make sure that you are aware of what’s going on when, where things are and what you want to do to make sure that you don’t come home thinking “I wish i’d done that” and there are some great websites/ discussion forums around that you can find all of the info you might ever need (or you go on them to cheer yourself up when you don’t have a trip planned anytime soon!)

Well after all of that talk about planning I’m off to price up a holiday – will I take any of my own advice; maybe but not sure that it works for a departure tomorrow 🙂