Category — Disney World Crowds

DISNEY WORLD SPRING BREAK: THE PRINCIPLES

Walt Disney World Spring Break crowds are governed by two and a quarter factors:

• Public school Spring Break calendars, which are still largely framed around Easter
• The demand of snow-belters for a break from winter weather, which peaks in March, and
• The quarter factor, the date of President’s day.  Later President’s Days (which can range from February 15 to February 21) tend to make the first part of March better

An early Easter combines the first two factors, making for more than the usual horrible crowds in March but a great April; a late Easter spreads the first two factors out, yielding some good later March and early April weeks.

Easter 2012, on April 8,  is right in the middle of the possible range. President’s Day 2012, on February 20th, as almost as late as it can be.

As a result, 2012 Spring Break crowds at Walt Disney World will be fine the first week of March, but bad from March 10 through April 15, with the peak crowds (rated 11 on my 2012 crowd calendar) happening the weeks beginning March 10, March 31, and April 7.

2012 PUBLIC SCHOOL SPRING BREAKS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON WALT DISNEY WORLD CROWDS

Although more and more school districts are moving away from an Easter-centered Spring Break, the plurality of kids still have the week before Easter off.

As a result, the single biggest factor determining better and worse Spring Break weeks at Walt Disney World is the date of Easter–which can range from March 22 to April 25.

A later Easter has a couple of different effects: first, it spreads out the dates of breaks for school districts that don’t frame their breaks around Easter, and second, if particularly late, will push districts that typically take the week after Easter off into the week before Easter instead, to keep from compressing their May academic calendars.  We saw this in 2011.

An earlier Easter has the opposite effects.  Districts that traditionally try to take the week after Easter off will be able to do so, and districts that don’t base their calendars on Easter will be largely  compressed into a couple of March weeks.

(The compression point partly comes from only just so much March to go around, but also from the fact that such school districts don’t like taking the week before the traditional Easter break off, as it will lead into a set of political discussions (“If we could take that week off, why not slip it a week and take before week of Easter off? What do you have against Easter??”) that they don’t want to revisit.)

The date of President’s Day–which can range from February 15 to February 21–also has an effect. Because many districts both have a spring break and also take the week of  President’s Day off, the later President’s Day is, the better early March will be–as parents  avoid taking their kids out of school the weeks after a long President’s Day break.

The effect of the various dates in 2012 is to compress 2012 school spring breaks into three weeks: those beginning March 10, March 31, and April 7.

 ACTUAL 2012 SPRING BREAKS

The chart to the right illuminates this.

It’s based on data from a weighted sample including more than 125 of the largest relevant US public school districts.

(Click it to enlarge it; when it opens, click it again to enlarge it more.)

More kids are on break the week before Easter than any other week; the week after Easter and the week beginning 3/10 are the next highest break weeks.  I’ve rated each of these 11/highest crowds in my 2012 crowd calendar.

Next to no kids are on break between the week after President’s Day and March 10. I rate the week beginning February 25 2/lower crowds and that beginning March 3 3/low crowds.  Both of these are recommended weeks.

The later March weeks–especially the week beginning March 24–have fewer kids on break than the three weeks rated highest/11.  However, because of the snowbelt effect, I’ve rated both of these 10/higher crowds.  The week beginning March 24 may turn out better than this…but I wouldn’t bet on it!

Worth noting is that the peak 2012 price season has its first period 2/16 to 2/25, and then restarts 3/9 going to 4/14.

Price seasons aren’t crowd calendars–they are more subtle than that–but do provide a little confirmatory data…

Disney World’s calendars are showing some unusual features for next week beginning July 18, features that are usually associated with enormous crowds.

For example, the Magic Kingdom’s afternoon parade, normally at 3p, is scheduled for both noon and 3.30p the 18th and after, which one only sees on the days of the year Disney expects to be among its busiest.

Moreover, Epcot is open the 23rd until 9.30p, and Illuminations is on at 9.30 that night–in both cases, 9p is typical for this time of year.

These changes appeared on Disney’s operating calendars late last week.

Assuming these changes aren’t errors, my guess is that  Disney World is projecting crowds coming to Orlando in quantities even higher than already typically high July crowds to celebrate the final film of ArryHay OtterPay and an associated convention.

If so, keep your eye on these calendars for possible further changes–e.g. 8a openings and addition of more Extra Magic Hours.

In this post, I’m covering the Christmas-New Year’s season 2011-2012.

(I’ve also posted on spring break crowds at Disney World here and summer 2012 crowds at Walt Disney World here.)

DISNEY WORLD CROWDS FROM MID-DECEMBER 2011 TO EARLY JANUARY 2012: THE PRINCIPLES

Disney World usually sees its highest crowds and prices of the year in the second half of December, in the week that includes Christmas, and the next week that includes New Year’s Eve.

This is for a pretty basic reason: most kids are out of school these weeks.

However, not every school district has the same break schedule.

• Not every kid gets two consecutive weeks (or more) off
• And the days of the week that these holidays fall on matter

As a result of all this, I’m seeing the week beginning the 17th of December 2011 as an OK week, with crowds beginning to build in the middle of that week and lasting through the morning of 1/2/2012.

SCHOOL BREAKS AND DISNEY WORLD CROWDS

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2012 CROWDS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

In the image below you’ll find Walt Disney World 2012 crowd forecasts. (Click it to enlarge it; when open, click it again.)

(For the 2013 Crowd Calendar, click here)

Crowd levels are ranked by week from 1-11 in the following way:

1: Lowest of the year

2: Lower

3: Low

5: Moderate-minus

6: Moderate

7: Moderate-plus

9: High

10: Higher

11: Highest

HOW TO INTERPRET THE 2012 DISNEY WORLD CROWD CALENDAR

The “low crowd” weeks–those rated 1-3–represent the only crowd levels a family visiting for the first time, and unsure if it will ever return, should consider.

However, lower crowds, especially lowest crowds, do not always mean a better week. The lowest weeks are low for a reason–typically because they are in the hurricane or the ride closure seasons. See this for recommended 2012 weeks for first time visitors, and for the 2012 Week Picker, see this.

The “moderate crowd” weeks–those rated 5-7–have crowd levels I would not recommend to first time visitors. However, I’d go during such weeks myself with no hesitation, and think these levels are OK for returning visitors who don’t need to see everything and already know how to work Walt Disney World.

The “high crowd” weeks–those rated 9-11–should be avoided by everyone. They aren’t, which is why they are so high.

You may have noted that there’s no level 4 or 8. There’s a reason for that.

MY DISNEY WORLD CROWD CALENDAR GOES UP TO 11

My analytics only let me distinguish 9 groups–the lowest through the highest crowd levels noted above.

Since the influence of the Unofficial Guide and TouringPlans.com has led almost all Disney World crowd calendars to top out at 10, this presented a problem of needing to skip a number. The skipped number is hard to place among 9.

However, I’ve always thought that the really nastiest weeks of the year deserved an 11 for emphasis. So I assigned 11 to “highest.” That let me skip two numbers, the ones that separate the moderate crowd levels from those higher and lower.

A NOTE ON DISNEY WORLD CROWD FORECAST ACCURACY

This site’s forecasting approach has stood the test of time.  But nobody’s perfect, and it can’t hurt you to look at other Disney World crowd calendars—such as TouringPlans.com –far and away the best daily crowd calendar on the web.

(TouringPlans.com charges a trivially small fee. Buy Testa and Sehlinger’s book and get a discount on TouringPlans.com.)

I particularly suggest checking other forecasts for 2012 Spring Break–late February, March and early April–visits, as crowds in this period are the hardest to forecast.

MORE ON WHEN TO GO TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

• For when to go to Walt Disney World, see this
• For the next best dates, see this
• For the best and worst times to visit, see this
  • For 2012 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
  • For the 2012 Week Picker, see this
  • For 2013 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
  • For the 2013 Week Picker, click here
  • For 2014 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
• For forecasting crowds at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For the 2012 Crowd Calendar, click here
  • For the 2013 Crowd Calendar, click here
  • For the 2014 Crowd Calendar, click here
• For seasonal pricing at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For 2012 price seasons, see this
  • For 2013 price seasons, click here
  • For projected 2014 price seasons, see this
• For weather at Walt Disney World, see this

DISNEY CROWD CALENDAR UPDATE

I’ve updated my Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar to reflect recently-released December 2011 Disney World operating hours.

You can find the updated crowd calendar here.

A reminder–I always recommend checking another crowd calendar–preferably that at TouringPlans.com–before committing to a specific time to go to Walt Disney World.

I’ll be publishing my 2012 Disney World crowd calendar later this month.

In the meantime, for a consensus view on lower-crowd 2012 weeks, click here.

THE LOWEST CROWD WEEKS AT DISNEY WORLD

I’ve been working lately on my formal Disney World crowd calendar for 2012.

(The 2011 Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar is here; my 2012 Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World, Ranked in Order is here.)

For reasons I’ll post about later, the data sources I use as the basis for my Disney Crowd Calendar are becoming a little less reliable—especially for the relative ranking of moderate and high crowd weeks. So I’ve been re-thinking my approach.

See the image for the sophisticated analytic tools I use to support this work.

While doing such noodling I noticed a disboards thread on the lowest crowds at Walt Disney World over the year.

I was surprised at the variance among and vehemence with which various times were proposed.

So I went to my bookshelf and here’s what I found:

• Guidebook 1: Lowest crowds right after Labor Day
• Guidebook 2: Lowest crowds the first two weeks of December
• Guidebook 3: Lowest crowds in the middle of January

My own approach (which is good at “low” but not really reliable for “lowest”) at the first level, before modifications that I apply to it, suggests January-early February, and October.

Well, all these can’t be right. The only people who really know work for Disney World, and TouringPlans.com is the next most reliable source that I know about.

That said, I thought it would be interesting to canvass a number of sources and find how much they agreed or disagreed.

My starting point was the 2011 editions of four well-known guidebooks, the calendars on three strong websites, my own first level 2012 calendar, and a proprietary crowd calendar that the team at LeaveittoGenie.com was kind enough to share with me.

THE WISDOM OF CROWDS ON WALT DISNEY WORLD CROWDS

Only three of these nine had a specific point of view on 2012 at all, and only one (mine) was complete.

So what I did was infer their principles and apply them to 2012, adjusting for the changing dates of key holidays. In some cases I also had to infer (usually straightforward—see the analytic resources available in the image higher on the page) the distinction between low and lowest.

(In my “other” job, I’m a consultant specializing in business strategy, so this future oriented inference—I almost said BS—is what I do every day.)

THE LOWEST CROWD WEEKS OF 2012 AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

See the image for the result.

(Click it to open it; once open, click it again to enlarge it.)

Based on my inferences, 21 different weeks would be indicated by at least one source as lowest, with an average of about 3.5 votes each (out of nine possible).

Seven weeks were noted as lowest crowd in half or more of the sources (in the image, they are highlighted in green):

• January after the Marathon Weekend until early February, excluding Martin Luther King Day week, and
• The week after Labor Day until the opening of the Epcot Food and Wine Festival

THE LOW CROWD WEEKS OF 2012 AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

Based on the same approach, I also built a view of the “low crowd” weeks of the year at Walt Disney World.

Click the image to open it up.

• Thirty two weeks got noted as low
• Twenty two got votes as low from more than half of the calendars

A couple more in later April were impossible for me to infer because of the major change in Easter dates compared to 2011.

Likely some of these April weeks will get promoted into the “more than half” category once the sources develop their official 2012 calendars—remember that for almost all I am inferring some or all of their 2102 crowd calendars from their approach to 2011.

Click the image to see all these weeks–the ones with more than half the crowd calendars supporting them are highlighted in green.

(By the way, it’s because I am basing this on such inferences that I’m not identifying the sources—any errors here—and there’s bound to be some—are mine, not theirs.)

So there you have it—a best efforts shot at a broad-based view of the lowest and low-crowd weeks of 2012 at Walt Disney World.