Category — n. Approaching Dates at Disney World

OVERVIEW: FEBRUARY 2016 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews February 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.

Early February 2016 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 11th through Sunday the 21st–we will see high crowds and high prices.

[Read more →]

DISNEY WORLD SPRING BREAK CROWDS IN 2016

Walt Disney World Spring Break crowds are typically 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 2016, on March 27, is early in its possible range. President’s Day 2016–covered in more detail here–is also early, February 16. Unusually, Passover 2016 is decoupled from Easter, and begins April 22.

As a result, 2016 Spring Break crowds at Walt Disney World will be

• Bad Presidents Day Week
• Fine the weeks beginning February 20th and February 27th
• Bad the week beginning March 5
• Very rough the weeks beginning March 12, 19, and 26
• ..and back to fine after April 2.  The weeks of April 2nd and 23rd may in fact have more crowds than I am forecasting, but not enough to move them into the “bad” category.

2016 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 2016 is to compress most 2016 school spring breaks into three consecutive weeks: those beginning March 12, March 19, and 26.  There’s also breaks clustered the weeks of April 2, 16, and 23rd, but since these weeks are not nearly as attractive to snow birds, I don’t forecast they will be bad.

ACTUAL 2016 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, but see this–has a crowd ranking of 10/higher.  Crowds will start to show beginning the Thursday before and remain high through the 20th.

Next to no kids are on break in 2016 between the week after President’s Day and March 5. I rate the week beginning February 20 4/low-plus crowds–higher early in the week, better later.  The week beginning February 27 is rated 3/low crowds. Both of these are recommended weeks.

The week beginning March 5, 2016 has fewer kids on break than I thought I’d see when I published my draft crowd calendar 9 months ago, so I’ve bumped it down to 8/high-minus crowds. It may even turn out to be a moderate crowd week–but don’t bet on it.

The weeks beginning March 12, 19 and 26 have a lot of kids on break, and even more visitors coming to take a break from the snow. For 2016, I rate all three as 11/highest crowds.

Only scattered districts are on break in April 2016–e.g., Georgia districts the week of the 2nd, Massachusetts districts the week of the 16th, and New York districts the week of the 23rd–and people escaping winter are much less prevalent in April compared to March.

So I don’t see any real crowding issues from April 2, 2016 through mid-May. Almost all of these later spring weeks are recommended. If I’m wrong, the weeks of the 2nd and 23rd will be worse than I’m forecasting–but still OK.

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OVERVIEW: JANUARY 2016 AT DISNEY WORLD

This page reviews January 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.

Early January 2016 will be dominated by holiday crowds and prices, but after the 2nd, most days will see low crowds and low prices–with upticks around the Marathon (weekend of the 9th) 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. For returning visitors–and first timers who know they can return–it’s a great time to visit.

[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 →]

DISNEY WORLD CROWDS FROM LATER DECEMBER 2015 TO EARLY JANUARY 2016

Disney World 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 2015/2016, 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 2015, a Friday 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 Friday New Year’s Day results in no schools re-opening between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

So almost all kids will be off all of the week that includes New Year’s Day, and unlike some years–like 2013–both weeks will be really lousy all week long.

ACTUAL 2015-2016 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 19th, with hardly any kids on break before then, but almost 30% of kids are still in school the first three weekdays of Christmas week.

By Christmas Eve, though, everyone is out, and pretty much everybody stays out of school through January 3, 2016.

A few–very few–breaks continue past January 3.

So I’ve classed both weeks as 11/highest crowds, but of the two, New Year’s week will be the worse.

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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.

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