Category — a. When to Go to Walt Disney World

OVERVIEW: MAY 2014 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews May 2014 Walt Disney World crowds, prices, deals and discounts, weather, and operating hours; adds a few other notes; and ends with week by week summaries.

The first half of May is a great time to visit, with low crowds, moderate prices, and typically the last gasp of nice spring weather.

Crowds increase in the second half of the month, peaking during the week of Memorial Day, and weather becomes increasingly summer-like.

Moreover, Star Wars weekends look to begin May 16 at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, leading to massive crowds there beginning the 16th on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

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2015 RESORT PRICE SEASONS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

The material below shows resort price seasons at Walt Disney World at different times of the year in 2015.

(For 2016 prices, see this, and 2017 prices, this)

Ticket prices don’t vary over the course of the year–although they typically have an annual increase during the year. See this for more on ticket prices.

Resort prices, however, are almost twice as high during some periods as they are at others.

2015 DISNEY WORLD PRICE SEASONS

Below are Walt Disney World 2015 resort price seasons by resort type. Value prices are based on Pop Century, moderates on Caribbean Beach, and deluxes on the Polynesian.

“X% Higher” means compared to the lowest prices of the year. Because these increases are different on some weekends vs. weekdays, increases are averaged across the recommended 8 night visit.

In addition to the below, Disney ups prices an additional $10-50 per night during certain weekends and holidays–particularly over the Marathon weekend, Martin Luther King Day weekend, Memorial Day weekend, 4th of July weekend, and Columbus Day weekend.

2015 DISNEY WORLD PRICE SEASONS: VALUE RESORTS

• Lowest of year–the value season—begins 1/4/15
• 45% higher–the peak season–begins 2/12/15
• 25% higher–the regular season-begins 2/22/15
• 45% higher–the peak season–begins 3/6/15
• 75% higher–the Easter season–begins 3/29/15
• 25% higher–the regular season–begins 4/12/15
• 45% higher–the summer season–begins 5/29/15
• 5% higher–near lowest of year–the value season 2—begins 8/16/15
• 10% higher–the fall season, with low prices, begins 9/11/15
• 50% higher over Thanksgiving begins 11/21/15
• 10% higher–the fall season, with low prices, begins 11/28/15
• 45% higher–the peak season–begins 12/11/15
• 80% higher–the holiday season–begins 12/18/15

2015 DISNEY WORLD PRICE SEASONS: DELUXE RESORTS

• Lowest of year–the value season—begins 1/4/15
• 33% higher–the peak season–begins 2/12/15
• 16% higher–the regular season–begins 2/22/15
• 33% higher–the peak season–begins 3/6/15
• 45% higher–the Easter season–begins 3/29/15
• 16% higher–the regular season–begins 4/12/15
• 12% higher–the summer season–begins 5/29/15
• 1% higher–near-lowest of year–the value season 2—begins 7/12/15
• Lowest of year–the value season—begins 8/16/15
• 12% higher–the regular season 2–begins 9/25/15
• 10% higher–the fall season, with low prices, begins 10/18/15
• 25% higher during Thanksgiving begins 11/24
• 8% higher–the fall season, with low prices, begins 11/28/15
• 16% higher–the regular season–begins 12/11/15
• 33% higher–the peak season–begins 12/18/15
• 55% higher–the holiday season–begins 12/25/15

2015  DISNEY WORLD PRICE SEASONS: MODERATE RESORTS

• Lowest of year–the value season—begins 1/4/15
• 30% higher–the peak season–begins 2/12/15
• 20% higher–the regular season-begins 2/22/15
• 30% higher–the peak season–begins 3/6/15
• 45% higher–the Easter season–begins 3/29/15
• 20% higher–the regular season–begins 4/12/15
• 15% higher–the summer season–begins 5/29/15
• 5% higher–near lowest of year–the value season 2—begins 8/16/15
• 8% higher–The fall season, with low prices, begins 9/11/15
• 30% higher for Thanksgiving begins 11/21/15
• 8% higher–The fall season, with low prices, begins 11/28/15
• 30% higher–the peak season–begins 12/11/15
• 50% higher–the holiday season–begins 12/18/15

MORE ON WHEN TO GO TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

• For when to go to Walt Disney World, see this
• For the best and worst times to visit, see this
  • For 2015 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
  • For the 2015 Week Picker, see this
  • For 2016 weeks to visit, ranked in order, see this
• For forecasting crowds at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For the 2015 Crowd Calendar, click here
  • For the 2016 Crowd Calendar, click here
• For seasonal pricing at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For 2015 price seasons, see this
  • For projected 2016 price seasons, see this
• For weather at Walt Disney World, see this

Want a second opinion?  Then check out my book lol.

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PICKING THE BEST TIME IN 2014 FOR YOUR DISNEY WORLD VISIT

Earlier this week I published the 2014 edition of this site’s famous “Disney World Week Picker.”

It’s the second most popular tool on the site for deciding when to go to Disney World in 2014–only the 2014 Disney World Week Rankings are more popular.

But these are different tools, and meant for different users.

The Week Rankings (I’ll come back to the Picker in a second, I promise!) are designed for first time visitors who may never return, and for that reason ding some weeks that returning visitors would just love, based on factors like the ride closure and hurricane seasons.

Moreover, the week rankings are based on my judgment on how to weigh tradeoffs between prices and crowds, and–other than that whole hurricane thing–don’t incorporate the misery of summer weather, or the potential absence of pool days in December.

The 2014 Disney World Week Picker, in contrast, puts all the tradeoffs among crowds, prices and weather in your hands. All you need to know is what kind of prices, crowd levels, and weather you want to avoid, and the best weeks that meet those criteria will be shown.

This makes the Week Picker especially appropriate for returning visitors, and for those who want to make their own tradeoffs, rather than use mine.

You can even “not care”–that is, get your weeks based just on prices and crowds, ignoring weather, or just on crowds and weather, ignoring prices. Give it a try!

The results you get will look like the image at the top of the page. That’s an example of weeks with low crowds, low or moderate prices at the value resorts (you get an answer for each resort type as their price differences vary), and avoiding winter.

Wondering when to go to Disney World in 2014?  Then check out the 2014 Disney World Week Picker!

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 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 the 2014 Week Picker, see this
• For forecasting crowds at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For the 2013 Crowd Calendar, click here
  • For the 2014 Crowd Calendar, click here
• For seasonal pricing at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For 2013 price seasons, click here
  • For 2014 price seasons, see this
• For weather at Walt Disney World, see this

Follow yourfirstvisit.net on Facebook or Google+ or Twitter!!

yourfirstvisit.net’s 2014 Disney World Week Picker is an alternative to the 2014 Week Rankings particularly suited to returning visitors or first-time visitors with specific weather concerns.

The way it works is that on this page there’s four ways to think about wait times, and underneath each four ways to think about prices.

Find how you think about crowds, then click the link underneath that fits how you think about prices.

That link will take you to a page asking what you think about weather.  Click the link on that page, and you’ll get your results!

Ready?  The 2014 Walt Disney World Week Picker starts now!

Click the link that best matches what you think about crowds and prices:

You wish to consider only weeks with low crowds, and:

• Low prices
• Low or moderate prices
• Low, moderate or high prices–just not the highest prices
• You don’t care about prices

You wish to consider only weeks with low or moderate crowds, and:

• Low prices
• Low or moderate prices
• Low, moderate or high prices–just not the highest prices
• You don’t care about prices

You wish to consider weeks with low, moderate, or high crowds–just not the highest crowds, and:

• Low prices
• Low or moderate prices
• Low, moderate or high prices–just not the highest prices
• You don’t care about prices

You don’t care about crowds, but are seeking:

• Low prices
• Low or moderate prices
• Low, moderate or high prices–just not the highest prices
• Damn…you don’t care about prices, either

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PICKING THE BEST AND WORST DAYS TO VISIT THE DISNEY WORLD PARKS

As I’ve noted extensively elsewhere, this time of year–basically, until December 20, excluding Thanksgiving Week–although Disney World is largely un-crowded, you can choose your way into a really crowded park.

The issue is varying evening hours and entertainment, which can draw, or repel, huge numbers of people.

This week is a particularly good example (see the image, from the calendar I post every Friday), with

• Two early 6p closes at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (10/2 and 10/5), each with no Fantasmic
• Four early 7p closes at the Magic Kingdom (9/29, 10/3, 10/4, and 10/6), each with no Wishes or evening parade, because of Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party and
• Late 10p closes at Epcot Friday and Saturday, because of the Food and Wine Festival

Here’s the basics: people are repelled by early closes and the absence of well-loved evening shows, and attracted by late closes and the traditional evening entertainment.

So look at Saturday 10/5 at the Magic Kingdom–it’s the only day in a four day stretch where the park is open later than 7p, and when Wishes and the evening parade will be showing. Moreover, Disney’s Hollywood Studios closes quite early, and people will avoid that park and be particularly drawn to MK for the same reasons.

So the Magic Kingdom will be just mobbed the 5th.

At Disney’s Hollywood Studios, the 3rd and 4th, with normal closes and normal evening entertainment, are between two days with 6p closes and no evening shows.  Both dates will be much more crowded than the early-close 2nd and 5th.

The 4th will be particularly crowded at the Studios.   On the 4th, it has morning Extra Magic Hours, which always draws extra people from the Disney resort hotels–and those without park hoppers then stay all day. Moreover, there’s nothing going on at other parks other than Epcot’s later 10p close to draw people away from it. And the Magic Kingdom’s 7p close will have people looking away from the Magic Kingdom for the next best alternative…

So the takeaway?  If you can see the evening shows on a different night, then make your principal park visits on days with they have materially early closings. 

You will find easy lines and un-crowded parks, and see more than you would on days with longer hours–because those longer hours attract disproportionate crowds!

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PREDICTIONS ABOUT DISNEY WORLD CROWD IN 2014

This is a supplement to my general material on the best and worst times to visit Walt Disney World  and my specific Disney World crowd calendar.

I published a revision of the 2014 crowd calendar earlier this summer—the last revision needed, barring typos or unanticipated events—after the full set of public school calendars I analyze (about 180 this year) became available.

The 2014 calendar revision includes both some changes in approach and in specific week rankings—though only a couple of weeks changed crowd class–e.g. from “green” (lower waits) to “black” (moderate waits)–or week class, e.g. from “recommended” to “not recommended.”

The purpose of my Disney World crowd calendar is to indicate (especially for first-time visitors who may never return, but the math is true for everybody) better weeks, which are marked in green; not so good weeks, marked in black; and bad weeks, marked in red.

Because my recommended itineraries are 9 days and 8 nights, “weeks” as I define them begin on Saturdays and end 9 days later on a Sunday.  That is, they include two weekends and the weekdays between.  I’m not like other people, but I am consistent to myself…

Each week gets a crowd rating, from 1 to 11, where 1 is lowest crowds.  In a bold step, for the 2014 crowd calendar I added “4” and “8.”   There’s a long story behind that, which I’ll skip so that I keep my one remaining reader.

These ratings are ordinal, not cardinal.  A week rated “9” is not three times worse than one rated “3”—but it should be better than a week rated 10, and worse than one rated 8.

Ok, with all that preamble out of the way, here’s some comments on 2014 crowds at Walt Disney World, focused on weeks that got revised but also including some general observations on each month.

DISNEY WORLD CROWDS IN 2014: NOTES AND CHANGES

January 2014

New Years crowds are driven by school holidays, which are profoundly affected by the day of New Years.  A midweek New Years means many kids are off that whole January week, with massive crowds continuing through the Saturday after New Years. That’s what we see in 2014, with crowds extending to Saturday January 4th.

The rest of January tends to be low-crowd, with exceptions over the Marathon Weekend and Martin Luther King Weekend.  The week beginning January 11 has the Marathon at one end and MLK weekend at the other (though with great days in between), so I bumped its overall rating from 3 to 4 to reflect the weekend effects.

February 2014

Crowds are high in February beginning the Thursday before Presidents Day through the Saturday after.

Most kids get just a three day weekend here, but a ton of kids in the snowier New England states have the whole week of President’s Day off—and other kids are taken out of school.  So crowds this week are massive.

Other kids get a longer weekend beginning Thursday or Friday at the end of the week before Presidents Day, and Disney also has a dance competition that begins late that week, and another running event—the Princess Half-Marathon– at the end of the week of President’s Day.

To reflect the impact of earlier-beginning long weekend holidays and the dance competition, I changed the week rating of the week beginning 2/11 from 3 to 4.  This week will be fine until Thursday, but then crowds will build.

The week beginning 2/22/14 had its rating changed from 2 to 3, to reflect the weekend crowds at the beginning of the week from President’s Day and hangover effects from the running events the weekend of the 22nd.

The rest of February is great from a crowd point of view.

March 2014

March and April are the hardest times to forecast.  Crowds are affected by the date of Easter, traditional school break dates in districts that don’t tie their spring breaks to Easter, and the need of northeasterners to get away from the snow. I can quantify the impact of spring break dates, but not so well the ebb and flow of those escaping the snow.

Unless Easter is very early, typically the first week of March is fine—and I’m forecasting it as such in 2014. However, I’m a little worried about the impact of visitors from the massive HIMSS conference (which ends 2/27) and for that reason have bumped the crowd rating for the week beginning 3/1 from 3 to 4.

The rest of March looks pretty bad to me…

April 2014

In my draft 2014 crowd calendar, I had thought that the week beginning March 29 would be pretty good, but the school calendar analysis showed more kids on break that week than I had expected.  (I’ve figured out how to get this closer for 2015.)  So I’ve changed my crowd rating of this week from 3 to 5, moving it from the “low” to the “moderate” class.  It may be worse—but in my dataset, 80% of districts with this week off also have another major spring break.

The week that begins two weeks before Easter typically has few US kids on break (many UK kids are off then, but not enough to profoundly affect crowds), and this is true for 2014 as well. The week before Easter is always the worst week for kid’s breaks—and will be so in 2014 as well.  The week after Easter is never good, but it is better in years–like 2014–with a very late Easter.  Based on actual break schedules, I’ve lowered the crowd rating for the week after Easter from 9 to 8—still bad, but not as bad as some years.

Late April crowds beginning seven days after Easter are just fine!

May 2014

Early May crowds are fine.  Later May sees a build in crowds, peaking the week that includes Memorial Day, partly because of a trend towards earlier ends to summer breaks—which leads to earlier beginnings to these breaks, and more kids out of school in late May and early June.

Star Wars Weekends clot Disney’s Hollywood Studios Friday-Sundays in later May and early June.

June 2014

Early June crowds have been worse than forecast both of the past two years, and schools are out even earlier in 2014.  As a result, I’ve changed the rating for the week beginning 6/7 from 7 (Moderate-plus) to 8 (high minus).  Later June sees even higher crowds.

July 2014

Some kids don’t get out of school til the end of June, and others go back in early August.  But pretty much all kids are out in July, so it’s the worst month for crowding at Disney World (some holiday weeks the rest of the year are worse than any single July week, but overall, July is the worst month).

There may be fewer tourists from South America during their July 2014 winter break because of the FIFA world championships in Brazil absorbing some vacation time and budget.  But I’m not expecting to see this affect July crowding much—though, as we’ll see, it may have an effect in September.

August 2014

August crowds seem to have been getting a little better, likely for the same reason that early June is getting a little worse—the trend towards earlier returns to school.

As a result, I’ve dropped the crowd ratings in each of the first three weeks of August 2014, from 9 to 8 the week beginning 8/2, 9 to 7 the week beginning 8/9, and 7 to 6 the week beginning 8/16.  However, all three weeks remain firmly in the “avoid” or “not recommended” categories…

Later August is just fine from a crowd point of view.

September 2014

September is typically the lowest crowd month at Disney World.  All US kids are back in school by early in the month, and parents resist taking their kids out of school at the beginning of terms (that’s why later January and early February are almost as uncrowded).

I have, however, bumped the ratings up for the week of 9/13, which went from 1—lowest crowds to 3—low crowds.

There’s two issues I see this week, which is typically spring break for South American kids (though many families take their kids out of school the week before as well, which I’ve bumped from 1 to 2).

One is that some South American families who missed their traditional July visit because of FIFA will come in September instead.  Second is that the next part of Harry Potter will have opened at Universal by now, creating an even stronger than normal draw to Orlando for South American spring breakers.

I’m still classing these weeks as low—just not as low as in prior years. Note that beginning in early September and going through most of the rest of the year, which day you go to the Magic Kingdom really matters.

October 2014

Other than the week that includes Columbus Day (the week beginning 10/11 in 2014) October is a great month for avoiding crowds at Walt Disney World. Worries some express about the impact of fall breaks on Disney World crowds are overblown.  I made no changes between the draft and final ratings in October.

November 2014

November has two problematic weeks—Thanksgiving week, and the first full week of the month, Jersey Week.

Jersey Week is not bad, but is worse than the weeks before and after it. Thanksgiving week is bad.

The month’s crowd ratings did not change.

December 2014

You won’t find a sound guidebook or website that does not trumpet the period between the Sunday after Thanksgiving and the middle of December as a wonderful time to visit.  The three weeks here are always my top three ranked weeks of the year for Walt Disney World visits, and are so again in 2014.

Well, people read this stuff and make decisions based on it, and every year these three weeks get a little more crowded.

So for 2014 I’ve increased the crowd rating of each of these three weeks—the week beginning 11/29 from 2 to 3, the week beginning 12/6 (Pop Warner Week) from 3 to 4, and the week beginning 12/13 from 2 to 3.  These are still classed as “low crowd” weeks—just not as low crowd as they were just a few short years ago.

I worry sometimes that this is my fault…my “Weeks to Visit Ranked in Order” pages have been seen more than 2.5 million times…but then I decide that I’m just not that important.

Later December—the weeks that include Christmas and New Years—is always a mess, and the mid-week holidays in 2014 mean that all of the weeks beginning 12/20 and 12/27/2014 will be horrible in 2014 as well.  My crowd calendar goes to 11 just for these weeks…

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 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 2013 Crowd Calendar, click here
  • For the 2014 Crowd Calendar, click here
• For seasonal pricing at Walt Disney World, see this
  • For 2013 price seasons, click here
  • For 2014 price seasons, see this
• For weather at Walt Disney World, see this

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