Best Weeks to Visit Disney World in Summer 2025

Summer is not our favorite time to visit Walt Disney World. As much should be obvious from the fact that there’s an over 3 month gap after early May on our recommended side of our list of the 10 Best and 10 Worst Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2025 & 2026. (Updated May 29, 2025.)

The good news is that only a couple of weeks in summer make the worst list, too. As we’ve been pointing for years, Summer (Still) Is NOT High Crowds Season at Walt Disney World. Attendance has been trending down from June through August. There are a number of explanations for this, but even at its busiest, summer was never as bad as Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, or any other more consolidated school breaks. Having multiple months off always meant that crowds were more spread out.

During a recent panel at Walt Disney World, executives corroborated this and indicated that the shift has been more pronounced in the last few years. As with so much else, the post-COVID period has changed travel patterns. More parents are willing to pull their kids out of school throughout the academic year, or are willing to take shorter trips throughout year. Winter has seen an increase in demand (a trend that predates “revenge travel”), and Walt Disney World reportedly recorded its highest resort occupancy levels over a 10-week stretch that ended in March.

Despite all of this, there is still the misconception that winter is off-season and summer is peak season. Even though the trendline has been changing for almost a decade at this point, vacation planners still base travel decisions on outdated information. It takes a while for ‘conventional wisdom’ to change.

Walt Disney World leadership essentially confirmed as much, revealing that their pre-visit surveys show that the belief among prospective guests is that crowds are highest in summer. Among actual Walt Disney World guests, surveys reveal that the perception of crowds in summer are the lowest. In other words, there’s a massive ‘expectations vs. reality’ chasm among those who visit versus those who do not. (No such data was shared for winter, probably because it’d be viewed as bad news, but I’m guessing it’s essentially the inverse.)

There are a number of potential mitigating factors and explanations for this. One would be that “summer” includes off-season dates through the technical end of the season in late September. Another would be that, from the perspective of consumer psychology, it’s better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed. People in January expect lower crowds, so when they encounter higher ones than anticipated, it feels even worse. By contrast, summer visitors go in expecting the worst, and are pleased when wait times are lower than feared.

In any case, I thought that was interesting and it corroborates what we’ve been saying here for a while, so it seemed worth sharing. The point is that summer can be an expectations-exceeding time to visit, and this year has its own selling points. There’s also the reality that many families can only visit during school breaks, and not-so-coincidentally, none of the best weeks of the year on our list above occur when school is out of session.

With all of that in mind, here are four weeks we recommend visiting Walt Disney World during Summer 2025:

• June 1-7, 2025
• July 6-12, 2025
• August 3-9, 2025
• August 10-16, 2025

The last set of dates is our favorite, but all are good options for different reasons, as we’ll lay out below.

Let’s start by talking crowds. There really isn’t a tremendous amount of variance in summer crowds, and to the extent there has been over the last few years, it hasn’t been consistent. Usually, there are a variety of factors explaining anomalies, from spikes in gas prices to weather to discounts, blockout dates, etc. All of this is why we’ve described summer crowd calendars as snake oil.

Conventional wisdom used to be that the weeks around Fourth of July were the peaks, with crowds steadily building to that and declining after. That hasn’t been the case in a while, though, In each of the last two years, the Independence Day holiday was among the slowest stretches of summer. I wouldn’t necessarily bet on a repeat of that this year, but I also wouldn’t bet against it. Higher airfare along with ticket and resort rates could keep people away.

To the extent that there has been a trend, it’s that there are typically twin peaks in summer. One around the halfway point, and one that we’ve described as a “last hurrah” as travelers scramble to take trips before school going back into session. These peaks aren’t completely consistent, but have more or less been the end of June and end of July, with Mondays and Tuesdays being especially bad.

If you can travel before summer crowds start building or after the last hurrah–families don’t normally go on vacation the week after their kids get out of school, or the week before they go back into session–you’ll be in the best shape. Hence the above recommendations.

The absolute best of the bunch will be August 10-16, which is after Central Florida schools go back into session. There will be a very predictable drop that occurs that week, with the only slight potential problem being that your kids might also go back to school that week. But if your schedule allows for it, August 10-16, 2025 is our #1 recommendation for summer visits to Walt Disney World, without a doubt.

Back in the day, this used to be one of our absolute favorite weeks to visit. Walt Disney World still ran summer hours despite the falling crowds, so it was really the best of both worlds. I remember almost empty second-showings of SpectroMagic and Magic Kingdom closing at midnight in low to moderate crowd levels.

Walt Disney World has gotten better at attendance projections and doesn’t extend hours nearly as early as they used to, so that hasn’t been the case for the last several years. Still, our expectation is that Magic Kingdom will stay open until 11 p.m. that week. Moreover, there should be two performances of Starlight for the majority of that week.

Despite those August weeks being back to back, there are actually a couple of differences between them beyond just the crowds.

Walt Disney World has now announced the dates of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, and the start is Friday, August 15, 2025. This means that the first week in August has zero MNSSHP dates, and the next week has one at the tail end. If you plan on attending the party, that pushes you to the second week by default.

The reason we do NOT recommend the following week (August 17-23, 2025), despite even more schools going back into session then, is because that will immediately have 3 parties as opposed to the normal 2. That will significantly disrupt attendance dynamics in Magic Kingdom.

Speaking of which, the other reason we highly recommend these first two weeks in August is Disney Starlight Night Parade. You know how crowds have gotten crazy for Happily Ever After on non-party nights from August through December? Expect that to be much worse with a brand-new night parade. Everyone wanting to see Starlight–which is many guests–will be consolidated into fewer opportunities per week. This is all doubly true given that Disney Starlight: Dream the Night Away’s debut was delayed to mid-to-late July 2025.

Honestly, I’m not 100% sure what to expect from this–both in terms of the size of the monkey wrench Starlight will throw into attendance dynamics and what, if anything, Walt Disney World will do to mitigate. Disney could make major operational adjustments or none at all (odds-on favorite). No matter what they do, Magic Kingdom is going to be crazy and chaotic on non-party dates. There’s no way around it.

These weeks in August are as good of a buffer as you’re going to get. The first week lets the new parade smell wear off a little, and also benefits from some schools starting to go back into session. And even though the second week has one MNSSHP, it’s on that Friday, meaning you have Tuesday through Thursday to attempt seeing Starlight with lower crowds. The parade route will still be very busy, but lower is a relative term–it won’t be as chaotic and crazy as the last week of July.

Then there’s Test Track 3.0. Officially, this is slated to open in late Summer 2025, which should mean July. But Walt Disney World has been pretty bad at meeting deadlines lately, so I’m taking that with a grain of salt.

Personally, if Test Track were my must-see, I’d plan a visit in early October 2025. Test Track is not my must-see, so I’m assuming it won’t be open during our summer trip and will be pleasantly surprised if it is. Nevertheless, an August visit increases the odds of getting to experience that.

At the intersection of new things and crowds is Universal’s Epic Universe. Our expectation is that this new park is going to have an initial rush for its first couple of weeks, during which it is very busy. But after that?

Early ticketing policies, a lack of Annual Passes, and locals getting first visits out of their system (average Floridians and existing UOAPs aren’t going to buy several single day tickets–they’ll make a visit or two, and then wait for deals or APs) might result in a slower than expected summer. That could reach a crescendo in August as school goes back into session and tourists wait for Halloween Horror Nights season to start.

Basically, going before summer crowds start to build or after the last hurrah is optimal. The August dates cover the latter. The June dates cover the former. Early June is also, on average, the least hot time of summer. June 1-7 has an average daily low of 72° and average high of 89°. By contrast, the August dates average a low of 76° and 91° on the high end of the spectrum.

As someone who lived in Central Florida for several years and has visited even longer, I’ll roll the dice on early June over mid-August. Without looking up the stats, I would’ve guessed there was a much bigger spread. (My perception is that June has nicer mornings and evenings, whereas August is miserable from the time you wake up until you go to sleep, with only a slight reprieve when the sun goes down. YMMV.)

Weather is worth underscoring. Greater “awareness” of Florida’s oppressively hot and humid temperatures is likely one big reason why summer has been slower in recent years. Even if my perception is that crowds are now lower in the summer than winter, I’d still take the latter with higher wait times but a qualitatively better experience.

The fact is that heat, humidity, and hurricanes are a gamble anytime from June through October. We don’t want to belabor the point, so if you’re on the fence about this tradeoff, see Is It Still Worth Visiting During the Early Fall Offseason at Walt Disney World? for a greater discussion of weather vs. crowds.

Now that Walt Disney World has announced Starlight dates and we know the parade won’t debut during the first half of July, I’d also add some bonus dates that are historically less-crowded.

Based on wait times data from the last two summers, your best bet is going to be the week immediately after Independence Day: July 6-12, 2025. On average, this week actually outperforms the first week of June ever-so-slightly. Or at least, did in 2023-2024. We didn’t include it previously because we expected Starlight to debut then, which would’ve made Magic Kingdom a madhouse.

Another wildcard is the week before that (June 29 to July 5), which includes Independence Day. If going by the data alone, this is another slower summer week. However, we’d be reluctant to do that because there are anomalies (aggressive discount blockouts) from the last two years that don’t apply this year. Accordingly, we’d expect the lead-up to Fourth of July 2025 to be busier than before.

Ultimately, that’s our thought process on the best weeks for families to visit Walt Disney World in Summer 2025. Again, the whole point of this is recommendations for planners with kids in school who have to work around those schedules. If you don’t, either go a week or two later or even earlier (if you don’t care about Starlight).

Shoulder season should be a great time for lower crowds, as it’ll be the calm before the storm (if there is a storm) with Epic Universe and Walt Disney World’s summer additions. The late August and September off-season is reliably uncrowded, and this year should be no different, with the exception of Magic Kingdom due to the one-two punch of Starlight and Party Season. Beyond that, the biggest factor in summer trips is weather, and that’s always going be a wildcard.

Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!

YOUR THOUGHTS

If you’ve done Walt Disney World in mid-August, what was your experience? Was it worth hitting the cheaper dates and lower crowds, or was the weather too hot and humid? Expectations about Starlight during Party Season? Thoughts about anything else covered here? If you’re a frequent visitor during this timeframe, what’s your take on crowds, wait times, seasonal offerings, weather, etc? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!