Over the weekend, I finished up and posted the revised–and, barring typos–final versions of the 2014 Disney World Crowd Calendar and 2014 Weeks to Visit Ranked in Order.
Material like this is the most popular stuff on this site.
I publish initial forecasts about 15 months before the respective year begins, and then, with Disney’s final price seasons and my analysis of public school calendars in hand, revise it the summer before.
I’ll be publishing more on how specific parts of each were built over the coming weeks, but for now, the only big change was downgrading the week beginning March 29, 2014, which I formerly had as a “recommended week.”
This week will be more crowded than I had thought in the draft material–I had had it as 3/low, it’s now 5/moderate-minus–and in turn its week ranking has shifted from 14th best of the year to 17th best of the year. While it’ll still be an OK week, this change is enough to knock it out of the “recommended weeks.”
Besides the details promised above, still left to do this summer are the 2014 “Cheat Sheet” and “Week Picker.” (See this and this for the 2013 equivalents.) And after that I’ll start working on the 2015 forecasts!!
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14 Comments on "The Revised 2014 Crowd Calendar and Week Rankings are Out!"
Hi Dave,
We just visited disney last year in December 10th week and we loved the weather but was a little crowded for the holiday stuff. This year we are considering going week of sept 13th but are concerned about the rain/heat? We are hoping to get the free dining offer. Should we risk going in sept or move our trip to 11/29? We are flexible with dates. Thank you!
Joyce you should be fine! There’s a huge convention at the Orange County Convention Center through the 27th. That’s made hotel rooms tight throughout the county, but the parks should be just fine!
Hi Dave, We are planning a visit to DisneyWorld Feb 25th-Mar 1st. That looks like a low crowd level on your crowd calendar but I have noticed several hotels are booked up inclding the Dolphin hotel. Maybe there are a lot of conventions during this time. I
m just wondering if that will affect crowd levels in the parks? We orginally were going to come the 1st week of March but heard Mardi Gras can cause higher crowd levels.
Hi Elizabeth! I’ll be going into this in more detail later, but September–and in particular the week of the 13th–is South American spring break. The FIFA world cup will be in Brazil in the summer of 14, and this will hold SA soccer-mad people people in place in the summer and shift their Disney trips to September… hence I bumped up the September crowds more than usual. They are all still in the “low” category.
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Hi, Dave. Thank you for compiling all this great information! I’m curious as to why the crowd levels for September are expected to be higher in 2014 than in past years. Any insight?