Category — a. When to Go to Walt Disney World

DISNEY WORLD SPRING BREAK CROWDS FROM FEBRUARY THROUGH APRIL 2015

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 but vary more than you might think
• 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 2015, on April 5, is in the middle of its possible range. President’s Day 2015, on February 16th, both is early, and by a quirk of the calendar, is the same week as Mardi Gras–which some southern schools get off as well.

As a result, 2015 Spring Break crowds at Walt Disney World will be

• Horrible Presidents Day Week
• Fine the last week of February and the first week of March,
• Very rough the weeks beginning March 7, 14, and 21
• Horrible the week before Easter–the week beginning March 28
• Really horrible the week after Easter, from April 4 through 11, as more schools than usual are off this week in 2015
• ..and back to fine after April 11

2015 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 weeks before Easter or following 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.  

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 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 2015 is to put most 2015 school spring breaks into five consecutive weeks: those beginning March 7, March 14, March 21, March 28 and April 4.

ACTUAL 2015 SPRING BREAKS

The chart above illuminates this.

It’s based on data from a weighted sample including more than 165 of the largest relevant US public school districts.

(For how the database is built, see this. Weekends are in black, except Easter, in red. Click the image to enlarge it.)

President’s Day week–not charted–will be more than its usual mess, because of its 2015 overlap with Mardi Gras. I’ve assigned it a crowd ranking of 11/highest.  Crowds will start to show beginning the Thursday before and remain high through the 21st.

Next to no kids are on break between the week after President’s Day and March 6. I rate the week beginning February 21 4/low-plus crowds–higher early in the week, better later.  The week beginning February 28 is rated 3/low crowds. Both of these are recommended weeks.

The weeks beginning March 7, 14 and 21 have a lot of kids on break, and even more visitors coming to take a break from the snow. For 2015, I rate all three as 9/high crowds.

The week of March 28 is the week before Easter, typically the busiest week of spring break at Disney World.

However, in 2015 more kids are on break after Easter than before it, so I have the week beginning the 28th ranked as 10/higher crowds, and the week beginning April 4th as 11/ highest crowds.

Only a few school districts are on break after the week after Easter–and many of these had earlier long breaks in February. So I don’t see any real crowding issues from April 11, 2015 through late May! Almost all of these later spring weeks are recommended.

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DISNEY WORLD CROWDS FROM LATER DECEMBER 2014 TO EARLY JANUARY 2015

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 2014/2015, more kids are out  New Year’s week than early in Christmas week, but there’s still plenty enough on break Christmas week to wildly crowd the parks…

SCHOOL BREAKS AND DISNEY WORLD CROWDS

Most years, there two typical sorts of breaks:

• Long breakers–districts that take at least 2 full weeks (and three weekends) off
• Short breakers–districts that take off as close to only December 24 to January 1 as they can

In 2014, a Thursday Christmas, and the patterning of school breaks around it, will make it easy for many families to head to Walt Disney World either week.

But the Thursday New Years Day results in next to no schools re-opening Friday January 2 for a one-day week.  Wouldn’t be prudent.

So almost all kids will be off all of New Years week, and unlike some years–like 2013–both weeks will be really lousy all week long.

ACTUAL 2014-2015 CHRISTMAS SEASON SCHOOL BREAKS

The chart above illuminates this.

It’s based on data from a weighted sample including more than 160 of the largest relevant US public school districts.

(For how the database is built, see this.)

The weekends are in black and the two holidays–Christmas and New Year’s Day–in red.  Click the image enlarge it.

You can see that many breaks begin Saturday the 20th, with hardly any kids on break before then, but almost 30% of kids are still in school the first two weekdays of Christmas week. By Christmas Eve, though, everyone is out, and pretty much everybody stays out of school through January 4, 2015.  A few–very few–breaks continue past January 4.

So I’m classing both weeks as 11/highest crowds, but of the two, New Year’s week will be a little worse.

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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.

Outside of those two weeks, you are much more likely to run into trouble in the fall by choosing to go to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot on a bad day—

• Epcot on a day when it’s open late for Food and Wine,
• The Magic Kingdom on a day when Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party is not showing, and evening hours and entertainment offerings are thus more extensive.

See the chart, which shows the weighted percent of US school kids in my database with more than a three-day weekend in later September, all of October, and in November before Thanksgiving week.

(For how the database is built, see this.)

In it, weekends are in black, and the two holidays in color—Columbus Day in red, and Veteran’s Day in orange. Everything else is blue.

The first conclusion you can draw is that the only time when even 9% of kids are having more than a three day weekends is over the Columbus Day holiday weekend, and that next to no kids have the full weeks before or after off (the much lower percentages on Wednesdays is the giveaway to that).

This is already known to be a moderate crowd week—from the Columbus Day holiday and Canadian Thanksgiving—so as a “fall break” there’s no real news here.

Note also that hardly any kids have a break weekend that includes Veterans Day.  This holiday is celebrated on its actual date—November 11–although if it occurs over the weekend, days off will be on Friday or Monday.  So more than half of years, it does not lead to a three day weekend, as it does not in 2014.

Moreover, even if it does, most private, non-unionized employers don’t have it as a holiday, so it’s not a particularly great time for parents to go to Walt Disney World.  In 2014, some Jersey Week families may stretch their stay to Tuesday, but, since few parents have it off, they are just as likely–perhaps more likely, given the tradition–to take extra time off the week before.

Second, beyond those, there’s not a lot of material fall breaks.  Yes, you can see them every week shown, especially at the end of September and the first week of October, but not much—at most around 7% of kids, and more typically much less.  There’s just not enough here to materially affect your choices as to when to go to Walt Disney World, other than Jersey Week and Columbus Day week.

Note: none of this is about Thanksgiving week, which is quite crowded and a lousy time to go!

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

For example, in 2014, crowd rankings go from 8/high-minus at the beginning of August down to 2/lower 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 2014 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 more than 180 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 or July; this year, about 165 of the 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 2014.

So you can see that kids don’t start going back to school in real numbers until the week beginning 8/9; almost half are back in school the week beginning 8/16; almost 70% are back during the week beginning 8/23, and more than 90% are back in school shortly after Labor Day. Moreover, vacation patterns typically don’t have people returning from their vacation the night before school begins, so the effect of these back-to-school  dates is offset into earlier August by around a week.

Thus, in the 2014 crowd calendar, the week of 8/2 is rated 8/high-minus crowds, the week of 8/9 7/moderate-plus crowds, the week of 8/16 6/moderate crowds and the week of 8/23 3/low crowds!

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OVERVIEW: FEBRUARY 2015 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews February 2015 Walt Disney World crowds, prices, deals and discounts, weather, and operating hours; adds a few other notes; and ends with week by week summaries.

Early February 2015 will have some of the lowest crowds and prices of the year, but also the risk of ride closures.

The end of the month brings slightly higher prices and crowds, but better weather and few closures.

In between–the period from Thursday the 12th through Sunday the 22nd–we will see high crowds and high prices.

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OVERVIEW: JANUARY 2015 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews January 2015 Walt Disney World crowds, prices, deals and discounts, weather, and operating hours; adds a few other notes; and ends with week by week summaries.

Early January 2015 will be dominated by holiday crowds and prices, but after the 3rd, most days will see low crowds and low prices–with upticks around the Marathon (weekend of the 1oth) and the Martin Luther King Day three day holiday weekend.

Late January has some of the lowest crowds and prices of the year at Walt Disney World.

Even so, January is not recommended for first-time visitors who may never return, because of ride closures.

New Year’s week–ending in 2015 around January 3–has among the highest crowds and prices of the year. Park closings to additional guests are common in this period, as are 8a openings and daily morning Extra Magic Hours.

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