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Notice
We’ve decided to retired our commentary on crowd calendars. We recommend the WDW Prep School crowd calendar if you’re looking for one.
Old post continues below…
There isn’t much of an “off-season” at Walt Disney World Resort anymore. But many people still search for “low crowd” dates when planning a Disney World trip, as crowds impact things from how quickly you need to make advance dining reservations, how early you need to arrive for rope drop, and how much you’ll get out of FastPass+.
This is where Disney World crowd calendars come in. In this post we cover:
Important: Disney World Closure and Crowd Impacts
Disney World Crowd Predictions for 2021
Crowd Calendar Basics
The Best Disney World Crowd Calendars
Why We Do and Do Not Like Crowd Calendars
How to Beat the Crowds
We make general predictions and link to some more specific resources, but more importantly we’re going to talk about how to use crowd calendars and, just as importantly, how not to use them.
We also cover how you can handle the crowds if you wind up in a park during a busy time. Read on to learn everything you need to know about Disney World crowd calendars!
Disney World Closure and Crowd Impacts
Last Updated June 16, 2020
The next section contains our original analysis of the 2020 crowds, before the parks temporarily closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. In this section, we’re going to discuss the challenge / futility of trying to predict crowds for the rest of 2020.
We always want things to be as predictable as possible, that’s partly why we have this site—to help you predict what your trip will be like. Hopefully the future will become clearer. Until then, we’ll offer our perspective on how to think about crowd levels the next few months.
Since Disney will be using a reservation system to control access to the parks, crowd calendars likely won’t have much value in the coming months.
There’s three factors you need to consider in thinking about crowd levels. The first is guest demand—how many people want to visit the parks. The second is park capacity—how many people will Disney let in (and will it be higher or lower than demand)?
The third is less obvious than the first two—it’s whether varying crowd levels even matter if the crowd levels are always “low” anyways.
We’ll discuss these three, hopefully getting you to the point of understanding that you really need to be looking at factors other than crowd predictions when you’re trying to decide whether to visit in 2020 or 2021.
What will happen to guest demand?
I’ve long been a skeptic of crowd calendars because guest demand is tricky to pin down. Even using historical factors, it’s challenging to predict how guests will respond to different events.
The Galaxy’s Edge opening was widely expected to bring high crowds to Disneyland, it didn’t. Same in Florida. Turns out many guests waited to visit Walt Disney World in February, and a month with traditionally low crowds saw some of the highest of the last year.
When Universal Orlando Resort reopened without a reservation system, we saw it have some mild crowds during AP previews (you might call that “pent up demand”) followed by very empty days. Recent weekends have seen more of a surge.
Universal Orlando is more of a locals destination than Walt Disney World, which has a heavy balance toward vacationers.
So, what factors will win the day with most guests? Pent up demand by locals? Fear of flying by travelers? Or do enough travelers not care? Will they care more if Florida cases increase? What if Disney lowers hotel prices? It would take one heck of a crystal ball to get all of this correct.
If guest demand stayed the same as it was before the pandemic—which it won’t—we’d expect the parks to hit capacity every day. Even in low season, attendance was not low enough to accommodate the amount of social distancing we’re expecting Disney to target.
If guest demand dropped a bit—which it will—we might see some days when demand is beneath the park capacity. Weekdays during September, for example, would be good candidates for such days.
What will happen to park capacity?
We know the parks will be operating below their actual capacity when they reopen. We expect them to start very low and slowly increase capacity, because that’s what Bob Chapek said they did at Shanghai Disneyland. Beyond that…
It’s feasible park capacity could increase slightly until sometime in 2021 or 2022 when it reaches the previous capacity limit. It’s feasible park capacity could be kept at a steady low level until the pandemic is resolved.
It’s also feasible capacity goes back down after it goes up. If Disney becomes concerned with virus case levels, they might reduce capacity to allow for maximal social distancing.
If you remember how quickly the situation escalated the first time around, you can imagine how quickly outlooks might change going forward.
The safe operating capacity of the park doesn’t care what demand is. If the park can only operate at 5,000 people, it doesn’t really matter if 10,000 or 50,000 people would usually be there. New Year’s Eve might be one of the quietest days of the year if capacity is low enough.
And does any of it matter, anyways?
That was the case that crowd levels are wholly unpredictable right now. But let’s say you could predict them…would it matter?
Even on those days when demand is beneath park capacity…what difference will it make? The parks are big enough that there probably isn’t a ton of difference between operating with 5,000 guests or with 4,000 guests (I’m pulling those numbers from thin air).
We know the parks will have some new sanitation measures that will keep lines from moving as quickly as they did before. It’s not as if 5,000 people on August 1, 2020 will generate the same short waits that 5,000 people on August 1, 2019 would have. So I admit we can’t just be thinking about what low crowd levels look like.
But it’s hard to believe that any new changes are going to mean there’s a huge difference in guest experience between having 4,000 people or 5,000 people in the parks. That is, when you ever looked at crowd calendars before, did you care if they were 3/10 or 2/10? No. You were mostly concerned with avoiding 10/10.
In the past, as long as crowds were at, say, a 7/10 by TouringPlans metrics, it was pretty easy to have a great day at the parks. Granted, this was when you had FastPass+ to keep you out of lines, but most of the stress didn’t occur unless you were really in the heart of peak season.
Even with changes to the parks keeping wait times up a little bit, I don’t think crowd levels are going to be a huge obstacle toward planning in the near future. Will there be days with 15 minute waits and days with 60 minute waits? Sure.
But the days with 60 minute waits will still likely be as easy to navigate as other days. And they’re a far cry from days with 180 to 300 minute waits, all of which we’ve navigating successfully in the past.
I wouldn’t call this good or bad news. Low crowds are nice, yes, but the reasons for low crowds have an impact beyond crowd levels. This is why we’ve got an entire separate post discussing how we’re thinking about visits in 2020 and beyond.
Disney World Crowd Predictions for 2020 [Original]
If you’re looking for yet another set of predictions about how many people will be in Animal Kingdom on a Tuesday six months from now, you won’t find that on this page.
I’m going to start this post with an overview of 2019 and 2020 Disney World crowd predictions. If you’re looking for some more detailed information, keep reading because we link to some good resources next.
As I update this, Walt Disney World is heading into the busy holiday season for 2019. With Rise of the Resistance opening December 5, expect the entire resort to have sustained crowds through the end of the year and then peaking again around the days before January 13 (the Walt Disney World Marathon) and then again on January 20 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).
February is mostly average crowds, (note: it’s been a bit above average this year) with a peak around Presidents Day Weekend (February 17). March may start slow, but the month picks up as more and more schools around the country have Spring Break.
On March 4, 2020, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway will open at Hollywood Studios. This will lead to increased crowds at that park but shouldn’t be a significant enough event to impact the resort as a whole. Even at Hollywood Studios, we think this may be an improvement because the increased ride capacity will offset some of the demand following Galaxy’s Edge (particularly Rise of the Resistance).
After Easter (April 12) passes, spring break crowds will die down and there is a lull until the end of May, when summer vacations start. End of May, June, and July sees some of the busiest crowds. As heat increases, hurricane season arrives and people go back to school, late July and August see lower crowds.
On October 1, 2021, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure will open at Epcot.
Once Labor Day passes, the resort is at its lowest crowds until around Columbus Day (October 12). Once Columbus Day hits, a mix of holidays and miscellaneous events like Jersey week (which I had the pleasure of experiencing this year) keep crowds at a sustained level through the holiday season, with peaks around the actual holidays.
When are the best times to visit Disney World?
Some dates you’ll want to look at are:
After Martin Luther King Jr. Day until early March, except for Presidents Day (note: this hasn’t worked out well in 2020)
Mid July through August, if you don’t mind the heat
After Labor Day until Columbus Day
If it’s prices you’re focused on, you might want to check out our post on the cheapest times to visit Walt Disney World—these also usually coincide with low crowds.
If you’re open to visiting Walt Disney World when crowds aren’t at their lowest but when the weather is good, you could also target mid-April to late May, between spring break and summer break for most schools.
Want More Detail?
If you jump ship now, you’ll miss out on a riveting tome on the use an abuse of crowd calendars (joking, sort of). But I get that you might just want to be told where to go to find the best crowd predictions. So before we go on, here are three sites we recommend for more detailed predictions: Touring Plans (Paid, Affiliate Link), WDW Prep School, and Disney Tourist Blog.
Crowd Calendar Basics
Thanks for sticking with us! With our predictions and some external links out of the way, let’s get into the nitty gritty of what crowd calendars are, why they’re imperfect, and what they’re actually really good for.
What is a Crowd Calendar?
A crowd calendar is (as you might guess) is a calendar that attempts to predict daily crowd volume at a theme park. This post is concerned with Disney World crowd calendars, we also have a post focused on Disneyland crowd calendars. The goal of these calendars is to give you an idea of what time of year to visit the Disney parks.
For a Walt Disney World crowd calendar, there will almost always be four calendars grouped together: a Magic Kingdom crowd calendar, an Animal Kingdom crowd calendar, an Epcot crowd calendar, and a Hollywood Studios crowd calendar.
Is there an official Disney crowd calendar?
No! Disney itself does not publish crowd calendars. The best way to see when Disney thinks the crowds will be highest is to look at the rack rates for the rooms and ticket prices.
Higher rates usually mean Disney expects more crowds. Then again, Disney obviously would like to be operating pretty near capacity as much as possible, so they often release deals to bring in the more budget-minded travelers when crowds might otherwise be low.
How Are Most Crowd Calendars Built?
A few years ago when I first wrote this post, I reached out to some people to get an insight about how they built their crowd calendars (it’s tough because obviously they don’t want me to turn around and do the same). But here’s a look at some of what people told me…
Crowd calendar predictions are based on a few factors.
School calendars are the primary driving factor of crowd calendars. Most guests at Disney World are vacationing families, families can’t go when kids are in school, ergo more kids off school across the country means more people in Disney World.
School calendars include major and minor holidays. I don’t have kids, so when I’m just lounging around Disney World mid-February and then wake up one morning to huge Presidents Day crowds, I’m shocked.
Weather plays a minor role. Some people are back in school in August, but hurricane season also plays a role in keeping crowds sub-peak in August and September.
Finally, there are other special events. The Walt Disney World Marathon, Food and Wine Festival, and new ride/land openings are all things that impact crowd levels. Extra Magic Hours is also a regularly occurring “event” that can boost crowd levels in a given park for the day.
Beyond those popular, well-known events, there are under-the-radar things like sporting competitions at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports. Major events at WWOS, like Pop Warner Super Bowl and the national cheer competitions transform low crowd times to high crowd times.
What Are The Best Disney World Crowd Calendars?
There are three Disney World crowd calendars (and related content) that we recommend:
Touring Plans (Paid, Affiliate Link)
Disney Tourist Blog (Recommended)
WDW Prep School (Recommended)
I like all three of these for different reasons. Disney Tourist Blog gives the most holistic look at “when to visit,” which includes a discussion of crowds.
WDW Prep School is driven by the fundamentals, and they’re true experts in this area. Their calendars have the most detailed looks and explanations as to what they’re expecting to drive crowds on a specific day. I love that they include things like “D2 Summit Championship cheer competition,” which definitely impacts crowds but most other crowd calendars ignore.
And then there’s Touring Plans. I’m a Touring Plans affiliate, so if you purchase their service through a link on this page, I’ll receive a small commission. (Note: Their service includes their customized itineraries, not just the calendar.)
Touring Plans relies on data to make predictions about crowds, and their crowd predictions are actual data points—they’re tied to expected wait times for attractions. So if you’re wondering “well what does 7/10 mean?” Touring Plans has an answer. You can see how their wait time predictions yesterday did, if you’d like to spot check them.
Full access to the Touring Plans crowd calendar requires a subscription that comes at a cost of $14.95 per year, and also includes their main product that builds individualized plans for you each day of your visit. $14.95 could almost buy you a whole cocktail at Disney prices.
This was Crowd Calendars 101. You know what a crowd calendar is, have some idea of how they’re made, and what the most accurate one we’ve found is. But we’ve still got much more to say about crowd calendars, specifically whether and when you should use them.
Why We Don’t Usually Like Crowd Calendars
I’ve edited this post about 50 times to flip whether I start with pros or cons, and today I guess I’m in “con” mode. Keep reading below for “When we really like crowd calendars.”
In short, I don’t like crowd calendars because I think focusing on them is a poor use of your time. Most days, the challenges posed by crowds are solved by a good FastPass+ strategy and a good rope drop strategy, which we discuss in more detail below.
And guest what—you want to know those things on all days anyways. That is, your prep for a “level 5” day should be the same as your prep for a “level 10” day.
Related to this is that you cannot count on crowd calendars to save your trip. The surest recipe for a bad trip is thinking “we’ll just go when crowds are low and it’ll just be easy.” This can be true, but I’d never recommend counting on it.
Moreover, crowds are just really difficult to predict. Virtually every Disney expert (including us) completely botched their predictions about Galaxy’s Edge crowds on both coasts.
We were down on crowd calendars before that, and now we’re really down on them. (It turns out that if then ten loudest voices in the community—including Disney itself—are telling people “don’t come it’ll be crowded,” then no one comes because they expect it to be crowded.
Here’s another example of things going really wrong for one of our recommended crowd calendars:
with less than a week's notice touringplans is sending people emails saying the day they said was going to be a "1" is actually going to be a "9" lol Link
— josh (@easywdw) January 5, 2019
And crowd levels are always, to a degree, as fickle as weather. And weather in Florida varies wildly day by day. The Disney World water parks Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach (which don’t show up on most crowd calendars) are particularly impacted by weather.
How crowded a park “feels” or how much the crowds impact your visit will also vary. In early 2020, Hollywood Studios has been a nightmare not so much because of high crowds, but because those crowds have arrived so early (to get Rise of the Resistance boarding passes). This means a “level 6” can feel like a “level 10” because everything has lines 15 minutes into the day.
Conversely, last Christmas week we visited Magic Kingdom for rope drop on a morning when the park opened at 8AM with 7AM Extra Magic Hour. As non-Disney hotel guests we still only had about a 30 minute wait for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at 8AM because the level-10 crowds for the day weren’t at the park by 8AM.
Disney also has a ton of levers they use to manipulate actual crowds and overall crowd “feel.” They release hotel discounts, free dining dates, and special ticket options when they need to bring crowds in. The block and unblock annual passholders from certain days. Special events in a park on a given day can bring unexpected crowds.
If Disney understaffs or overstaffs rides or even just changes park hours, for example, wait times will be different than they would with proper staffing. Similarly, the number of Fastpass+ slots Disney allocates for a given ride will impact wait times. Disney Tourist Blog has a great discussion of operations and crowds.
When We Really Like Crowd Calendars
With all that out of the way, there are two very specific instances in which we use crowd calendars.
First, we use crowd calendars to check on events we might not account for. I know when Christmas is. I know when New Year’s Eve is. I don’t know when (or even what) “D2 Summit Championship cheer competition” is, but WDW Prep School does. If possible, do I advise you avoid these and similar dates? Sure.
Second, we use Touring Plans historical crowd calendars in the immediate term to see what things look like at the parks as our visits near. So if I’m visiting on an upcoming Saturday (not a holiday, etc.), I’ll check crowds for recent Saturdays and Sundays, as well as the Thursday and Friday leading up to the visit.
Touring Plans includes wait times every five minutes for every ride, so I can see whether, for example, people are heading to Alien Swirling Saucers or Toy Story Mania after Slinky Dog Dash.
Beyond those two cases, we assume the obvious. On days when it makes sense for us to visit the parks, like long weekends, times off from school, or holidays, crowds are going to be high.
When we can visit at expected “off” times, we try to do so. But we also never expect low crowds. Instead, we prepare ourselves to beat the high crowds…
How To Beat High Crowds at Disney Parks
If you wind up at the parks when the crowds are miraculously low, that's awesome. But if you’re there when the crowds are high, you're going to need to know how to beat them. And truth be told, you should always hope for the best but plan for the worst. Let's cover some basics.
Understand Rope Drop
The single most important thing you can do to beat the crowds at Disney parks is to arrive early. You want to be at the park for “rope drop”—the time when guests are first allowed on rides.
I’ve botched rope drop before by arriving too late on a holiday weekend, but if you arrive early enough you’ll be able to stay ahead of the crowds for the first few hours, covering multiple popular rides.
We have posts dedicated specifically to rope drop at Walt Disney World:
As we alluded to earlier, rope drop can be significantly impacted by park procedures. While Rise of the Resistance has been giving out boarding groups at an 8AM open, rope drop at Hollywood Studios has basically been dead. Crowds are too high to really beat them with an early arrival. Luckily, beating crowds doesn’t end with rope drop…
Master Fastpass+ At Walt Disney World
Our Walt Disney World FastPass+ strategy is our most popular post for a reason: it's detailed, and it works. On good days with some flexibility, you can fill a day at any Walt Disney World park without waiting in lines if you’ve mastered FastPass+. On most days, you'll keep yourself to one or two long lines, at worst.
FastPass+ is more difficult to use on higher crowd days, to be clear. It’s not a secret, and the more people planning a visit or in the park, the tougher a time you’ll have getting good FastPass+ reservations.
But it’s also one of those things that will have great results four out of five times, and even if the chance is less than 1% that you stumble upon a Tier 1 FastPass+ on Christmas Day, you can’t get lucky if you don’t know how to try.
Use Ticketed Events
Ticketed events that offer exclusive access to the parks during early or late hours are undoubtedly the best way to beat crowds, they just come at a price of about $100 to $150.
After Hours occurs after the park closes and typically offers no or very short waits on most major rides:
Villains After Hours at Magic Kingdom Review (coming soon)
After Hours at Hollywood Studios Review (expected but not scheduled to return)
Early Morning Magic at Magic Kingdom is my favorite ticketed event, and it will allow you to knock off a few of the most popular rides in that park and enjoy breakfast.
The prices of these events will give you pause, but with the exception of some disappointment at Animal Kingdom After Hours, they’re very effective at getting you on and off a ton of rides in a short period of time. Plus since they occur during early or late hours, you’re only gaining time (though you might need to sleep in the morning after After Hours).
Note that we don’t recommend using Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party or Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party to ride rides. Not only are those parties more crowded than the other events (so fewer short waits), but they offer exclusive entertainment you’ll want to focus on.
Pick Your Midday Attractions Carefully
There are going to be almost no short lines in the middle of the day. At that point, you've got two choices, assuming you're having no luck with Fastpass.
First, you can lean in to the crowds. This means picking one or two rides with fun queues, preferably indoors, and waiting in them. Disney Tourist Blog has a list of the best queues in Walt Disney World. If you need to get as many rides in as possible, and you’re not having FastPass success, this is going to be your only choice.
But really, there’s more to every Disney park than rides. Midday is really the best time to target non-ride attractions. This means parades, show attractions (like Festival of the Lion King and PhilharMagic) and shows listed in the times guide and app as “entertainment.”
In most cases, if you’re catching these in the morning, you’re doing it wrong. And if you're skipping out on them because you think rides must be better, well, we think you're probably doing it wrong, but we get it.
To get an idea of how this should work, we recommend checking out our one-day park itineraries. You’ll usually see we go fast in the morning, slowing down during the heavy afternoon crowds. Here are the itineraries for Walt Disney World:
Or Spend Your Midday Away From the Attractions and Parks
Whether you're in Disneyland or Walt Disney World, there is more to the resort than the rides and the parks. All the parks offer great restaurants, and this is a great way to enjoy some Disney magic in the middle of the day away from the crowds (and indoors). If you're more into beverage than food, you'll find good bars at every park other than Disneyland and Magic Kingdom.
If you’re staying at a Disney resort, or a resort with easy transportation to and from the parks, consider spending the middle of your day back at the resort, enjoying the pool, food & drink, or activity offerings. Even if you’re not staying at a Disney hotel, you can still visit one or two and take advantage of the restaurants, bars, and shopping. This is one of our favorite ways to scout resorts for future stays.
Conclusions
Even within their margins of accuracy, there are so much more important things to be worrying about than crowds. FastPass+ availability and ADRs (advance dining reservations) are the biggies.
If your favorite Epcot restaurant is only available at 4PM on a Tuesday but your partner says that won't work because Tuesday is a red day that week and you'll be at Animal Kingdom, where things are green, then go find yourself a new partner (I mean, talk it out first). If there is a way that over-planning can ruin a Disney trip, it is over-reliance on crowd calendars.
The truth is, if you’re planning carefully, you'll be minimally impacted by crowds. Between rope drop and FastPass+, you should be positioned well to relax through the afternoon, when crowds are at their highest.
Those rides you do wait in line for midday? They shouldn’t be the rides with waits of an hour plus. You cover those with rope drop and FastPass+. Double the crowd might take one of your lines from 20 to 40 minutes, but that's within the margin of error of Disney’s line times anyways (joke, sort of).
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All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered
Don't be overwhelmed by Disney World planning! Take a second to check out our most important content and you'll not only be an expert, but you'll save big $$$ along the way.
Just starting out? Check out our Walt Disney World planning guide! If you're still picking dates, we've got everything you need to know about Disney World crowd calendars. For picking your hotel, check out our Walt Disney World hotels guide.
When it comes time to book we’ll help you find discount Disney World tickets. Decide whether you need a dining plan in our Complete Guide to Disney World Dining Plans! And at 180 days out it's time to book those Disney World Advance Dining Reservations!
Don't forget to master your Disney World FastPass+ strategy a few months in advance. We'll keep you out of long lines so you can maximize the magical time in the parks! We've got park-specific guides as well: Magic Kingdom FastPass, Epcot FastPass, Animal Kingdom FastPass, and Hollywood Studios FastPass.
Know what to ride with our guides to: Magic Kingdom rides, Hollywood Studios rides, Epcot rides, and Animal Kingdom rides! Plus learn about the water parks with our guide to Blizzard Beach and our guide to Typhoon Lagoon! And for some some fun prep, check out our Ranking of Every Ride at Walt Disney World.
Finally, before you head out, be sure to check out our to-the-point packing list, 10 essentials you forget to pack for every Disney trip. And if you're interested in saving, there's no better list than our 53 Ways to Save on your Disney trip from start to finish.