Disney World Crowd Calendar Update For March 2024

This past weekend, from Friday, February 23, through Sunday, February 25, 2024, our crowd calendar performed well, particularly at Magic Kingdom where our predictions were spot on for all three days. At the other three parks, our accuracy was also high, with only a single instance of missing the mark by more than one level. Over the last 30 days, we observed that crowds at Hollywood Studios were lower than we expected, while Magic Kingdom experienced higher attendance than anticipated.

In response, we’ve taken a fresh look at our predictions for attraction wait times. It’s time to apply these updated forecasts to the Disney World Crowd Calendar. For those concerned about significant changes to your trip’s planned crowd levels, you’ll find relief in knowing that most of the updates are minor. Out of 2,680 crowd level predictions in this update, only 72 show a change of 2 or more points, with a mere two predictions shifting by 3 points. This indicates that our predictions are aligning more closely with post-pandemic theme park travel trends.

It’s important to note that along with the expected variability in crowds, unforeseen factors like weather conditions, including rain and thunderstorms, as well as unscheduled attraction closures, have occasionally led to days where actual crowd levels significantly diverged from our predictions.

Navigating the Shifts: A Detailed Look at Disney World’s Crowd Calendar Updates

As we delve into the recent updates to the Disney World crowd calendar, we see some historical patterns coming through, especially in relation to seasonality and holidays. Here’s a breakdown of the changes observed and their implications for park visitors through the end of 2024.

Seasonal Adjustments:

• Spring (March – May): Our data suggests a modest uptick in crowd levels during the spring break period, with notable increases observed around Easter. This aligns with traditional patterns of family travel during school recesses but not to the same extreme that we usually see at Christmas. Forced to choose between Christmas or Easter, I’d have to go with the latter. Outside of these peaks, the crowd levels remain relatively stable.
• Summer (June – August): Summer months, particularly early June and late August, show slight adjustments in crowd predictions, reflecting a typical surge in visitation. However, the middle of the summer presents opportunities for visitors to experience lower-than-average crowd levels, due mostly to the hot Florida climate.
• Fall (September – November): The updates reveal a mixed pattern in the fall, with Halloween and Thanksgiving periods showing expected increases in crowd levels. The Halloween season, especially, continues to draw more visitors with themed events, while early November offers a brief respite before the Thanksgiving holiday crowd.
• Winter (December – February): The end-of-year holidays, including Christmas and New Year’s Eve, stand out as peak crowd periods as always. The updates confirm this trend, with adjustments reflecting high demand for the holiday festivities. January and early February, in contrast, show a return to more moderate crowd levels, post-holiday.

We hope these updates help with your vacation planning. They reflect the predictions of our latest round of modelling which takes into account factors like park operations, event schedules and historical trends going back to when we first starting tracking Disney world crowds in 2009. Since then, we’ve collected over 60 million wait times for attractions at Walt Disney World, Disneyland Resort and Universal Orlando.