Category — Disney World Crowds

DISNEY WORLD SPRING BREAK CROWDS FROM FEBRUARY THROUGH APRIL 2014

DISNEY WORLD SPRING BREAK CROWDS: 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 early March and early April weeks.

Easter 2014, on April 20, is very late in the possible range. President’s Day 2014, on February 17th, is in the middle of its possible range.

As a result, 2014 Spring Break crowds at Walt Disney World will be

• Fine the last week of February and the first week of March,
• Very rough the weeks beginning March 8, 15, and 22
• Better the week beginning March 29
• Fine the week beginning April 5,
• Horrible the week of April 12 
• Bad, but not horrible, the week beginning April 19
• ..and back to fine the week beginning April 26

2014 PUBLIC SCHOOL SPRING BREAKS AND THEIR EFFECTS ON WALT DISNEY WORLD CROWDS [Read more →]

DISNEY WORLD CROWDS FROM LATER DECEMBER 2013 TO EARLY JANUARY 2014

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

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

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

In 2013/2014, more kids are out Christmas week than New Year’s week, but there’s still plenty enough on break New Year’s week to wildly crowd the parks…

SCHOOL BREAKS AND DISNEY WORLD CROWDS [Read more →]

FALL BREAK CROWDS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD?

One of the things you’ll see now and then on blogs and discussion boards is the claim that “fall breaks from school crowd Walt Disney World.”

“Fall breaks” are multi-day school holidays before Thanksgiving, and if material, would have an effect on Disney World—because Disney World is most crowded when it’s easy for kids to go.

If you check the facts, though, you’ll find that fall breaks are both uncommon and scattered across October and early November—other than Jersey Week and the Columbus Day weekend. [Read more →]

This site’s Disney World crowd calendars always show crowds dropping off in later August.

For example, in 2013, crowd rankings go from 9/high at the beginning of August down to 1/lowest in early September.

This page both explain how that comes about and also reviews how the site’s crowd calendars are built.

END OF SUMMER 2013 CROWDS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

The highest-crowd periods at Walt Disney World all have one thing in common: they are convenient times for parents to take their kids to Orlando.  That is, they are times that kids are out of school and that parents traditionally can take off of work.

What’s not so clear until you do the numbers is that actual school vacation dates are much more varied than you’d think.  And there’s no good source you can go to that explains what all these varied dates are.

So every year about this time one of my nieces goes to almost 200 school district websites and captures all the key vacation dates for the upcoming academic year. (This time of year because you’d be surprised many districts don’t put their calendars up for the upcoming year until June; this year, about 180 had their calendars out by the time we agreed to stop collecting data.)

These include the 100 largest school districts in the U.S., plus eighty more of the next largest school districts in the more highly-populated states east of the Mississippi–that is, the states from which in particular Walt Disney World draws its visitors.

I then create a database that shows based on district enrollment every kid who is off on every date, sum these by state, and weight them based on the state’s proportion of total US visits to this website (because Disney won’t tell me actual visitation by state!) See the image above for a screenshot example.

Finally, I calculate percentage of total weighted kids on break by date and use that to inform the crowd calendars. (There’s about 12.6 million actual kids in the database.)

Above are the results of this for when kids go back to school in 2013.

So you can see that kids don’t start going back to school in real numbers until the week of 8/10; almost half are back in school the week of 8/17; almost 70% are back by the week of 8/24, and almost 90% are back in school by the week of 9/2.

Thus, in the 2013 crowd calendar, the week of 8/10 is rated 9/high crowds, the week of 8/17 6/moderate crowds, the week of 8/24 2/lower crowds, and the week of 9/2 1/lowest crowds!

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FALL FREE DINING MEANS SLIGHTLY LONGER LINES–BUT NOT ENOUGH TO MATTER

Every year shortly after the traditional fall free dining offer comes out, I start getting questions like Katie’s about whether free dining will make the parks more crowded than my forecasts.

The short answer is “no.” Free Dining this period has been happening forever, and is thus already built into the crowd forecasts.

The longer answer is a little more complicated, but still mostly no:

• Yes, free dining increases crowds more than they otherwise would have been (though, as noted, this is already reflected in the crowd calendars). But not much. If Disney sells 30% more of its hotel capacity because of free dining, that’s on the order of 30,000 more people in the hotels per night.  But divide this across four theme parks, the water parks, Downtown Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, and off days, and it’s a drop in the bucket!  And, to boldly repeat myself, this is already reflected in the crowd calendar.
• Because the free dining periods is shorter this year, it may have slightly more of a crowding effect in September 2013, as people who can do so–most can’t–move trips from the later August periods traditionally offered into September.  The effect of this is naturally capped by both the limited number of WDW hotel rooms, and resistance to taking kids out of school their first month back. Moreover, savvy travelers avoid going to Florida during the peak of the hurricane season–which (along with September being a tough time to take kids out of school) is exactly why Disney offers this deal!
• September crowds have been going up bit by bit for years now, principally because of growth in South American visitors on their “spring break” (recall that the seasons in South America are upside down). This actually has more of an impact than free dining, but it’s still small.
• Finally, because of the kick-off of Mickey’s Not-So-Halloween Party September 10, 2013 which days you go to the Magic Kingdom will really effect the level of crowds there.  See this.

Now when people like me talk about “crowds” we really mean “wait times.”

You may well see larger crowds in the streetscapes of the parks (you have larger street crowds during low-wait times, as not as many guest are in the lines!), and because of free dining, all the more fun restaurants will be booked solid.

But the wait times for rides will still be low compared to other times of the year. 

Now if you roll in at 11.30a, wait times will be high–as they always are by late morning.  Common sense and a good itinerary are still required. But wait times will still be much better than the equivalent times during the more crowded times of the year!

PEAK 2012 CROWDS WILL BEGIN DECEMBER 22, UNLESS THE WORLD COMES TO AN END

In later December–beginning around December 20, but really rolling in on December 22–the 2012 holiday crowds will begin to slam Walt Disney World.

Unless of course the world comes to an end on December 21.

Multi-hour waits will be common on the best-loved rides (waits crossed 3 hours at times last year), senior managers will be bussing tables, and park closures are possible.

Yes, there will also be a wonderful Christmas program and fun stuff on New Years Eve, but all in, because of the crowds and waits, this is a lousy time for a Disney World vacation.

But for the hundreds of thousands of you who will be there then, here’s some thoughts on how to make the best of it!

DEALING WITH THE HOLIDAY CROWDS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD [Read more →]