Category — 1. Summer at Walt Disney World

OVERVIEW: AUGUST 2016 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews August 2016 Walt Disney World crowds, prices, deals and discounts, weather, and operating hours; adds a few other notes; and ends with week by week summaries.

There are no great times for first-timers who may never return to visit in August. Kids start going back to school in August, so crowds go down later in the month–but that’s also when the peak of the hurricane season kicks off.

Prices begin the month low at the deluxes, OK at the moderates, and high at the values. Moderate and value prices drop to among the lowest of the year August 19.

For first-timers who can’t return, the best week is that beginning 8/6–higher crowds and prices than later in the month, but lower hurricane risk.

For those who can return–or are returning–the later in the month, the better.

[Read more →]

OVERVIEW: JULY 2016 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews July 2016 Walt Disney World crowds, prices, deals and discounts, weather, and operating hours; adds a few other notes; and ends with week by week summaries.

Because pretty much every US school kid is on break in July, July overall is the most crowded month at Walt Disney World.

Prices begin the month OK at the deluxes and moderates, and high at the values. Moderate and value prices stay at this level all month, but at the deluxes prices drop to low levels on July 12.

Weather is miserably hot and humid all month long.

There are no good weeks in July, but the later the visit the better–especially if you are staying in a deluxe.

[Read more →]

THE 4th OF JULY IN 2016 AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

Disney World celebrates the 4th of July at several parks–and on July 3rd as well!

Hours may change a bit later, but here’s the current scoop

On Sunday, July 3, 2016, the Magic Kingdom has a special fireworks show “Fantasy in the Sky” at 9p.

On Monday, July 4, 2016

• The Magic Kingdom has the same show at the same time–“Fantasy in the Sky” at 9p
• Epcot’s Illuminations has a special holiday ending added, and is shifted from its normal 9p time to 10p, and

Moreover, the normal Wednesday evening Extra Magic Hours at the Magic Kingdom will happen Sunday the 3rd instead.

Those following this site’s Revised FastPass+ High Crowd Itinerary for Walt Disney World will be at the Animal Kingdom Sunday, and at Hollywood Studios the 4th, but with the evening off.

By adding a park hopper they could go to Epcot or the Magic Kingdom for the evening fireworks.

FOURTH OF JULY CROWDS AT WALT DISNEY WORLD

July is the most consistently crowded month at Disney World, and in the month, visits that include the 4th of July see the highest crowds.

July is the most crowded month because every US schoolkid on a typical (that is, not year-round) calendar has the entire month off.  This is not true of either June or August. Within July, many parents gravitate towards the week of the 4th for their vacations, because since the 4th is a holiday, they need to take one fewer vacation day to get a week off.

And people want to see fireworks on the 4th…so the Disney World parks offering fireworks on the 4th of July will be packed!

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

OVERVIEW: JUNE 2016 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews June 2016 Walt Disney World crowds, prices, deals and discounts, weather, and operating hours; adds a few other notes; and ends with week by week summaries.

If you must go to Disney World in the summer, the beginning of June is your best choice for a first visit.

Crowds, while not good, are lower then than most of the rest of the summer, prices are OK–except at the value resorts–and the full weight of summer weather is not yet in place.

(The end of August is the next best choice.  Prices and crowds are much better, but you are not only in peak summer then, but also the peak of the hurricane season.)

Crowds build over June, peaking the last week of the month.

[Read more →]

DISNEY WORLD 2016 SUMMER CROWDS: THE PRINCIPLES

Walt Disney World summer crowds are governed by two factors:

• Public school summer break calendars, which have start and end dates more varied than you’d think
• The beginning of the peak of the hurricane season, in mid-August

Pretty much all kids are off all of July. As a result, July is the busiest summer month, and during it, the week that includes the 4th of July the busiest week.

Varied dates for when summer breaks begin means June can start well, and then build to high crowd levels.

August has the opposite pattern, beginning with high crowds, but, through the combination of a trickle turning to a flood of back-to-school dates, and savvy travelers avoiding the peak of the hurricane season, it ends quite un-crowded.

Families that can only visit in the summer (for example, school teachers) should go as early in June or as late in August as their schedules permit. [Read more →]

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

For example, in 2015, 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 2015 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; this year, 170 of the 186 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 almost 90 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 12.4 million actual kids in the database.)

Above are the results of this for when kids go back to school in 2015.

So you can see that

• Kids don’t start going back to school in real numbers until Monday 8/10
• More than a third are back in school the week beginning 8/15
• Almost 60% are back during the week beginning 8/22, and
• More than 80% are back in school before Labor Day.

In 2015, pretty much all kids are back in school by the Wednesday 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 2015 crowd calendar, the week of 8/1 is rated 8/high-minus crowds, the week of 8/8 7/moderate-plus crowds, the week of 8/15 6/moderate crowds and the week of 8/22 4/low crowds.

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