Best & Worst Weeks to Visit Disney World in 2026 & 2027

Picking the best week for your Walt Disney World trip is challenging, especially when dates are limited due to school breaks or work schedules. This guide shares our favorite times to visit and worst ones to avoid in the next 2+ years based on past & predicted crowd levels, wait times forecasts, seasonal events, weather & more.

The goal is to combine the best quantitative wait times data and our qualitative on-the-ground experiences over the last two decades to supplement our 2026 Walt Disney World Crowd Calendars. The animating idea is that the vast majority of tourists aren’t visiting for a single day here or there, but rather, for 5 days to a week. Aside from “holidaymakers” from the United Kingdom, few families are doing more than 10 day trips and most non-locals are doing more than a single day or two.

As such, a practical planning resource shouldn’t just look at individual days or full months, but full week or longer date ranges that offer times to target and others to avoid. Enter this Walt Disney World crowd predicting and planning resource for now through 2027! 

When combined with our Best & Worst Days to Do Each Park at Walt Disney World, this should offer definitive advice for choosing dates and picking parks. This narrows down the week, and then that provides what you need to know to choose when to visit each park. It’s more of a “teach a person to fish” rather than the “give a person a fish” mentality of crowd calendars, but it also should prove more accurate and useful.

This considers a variety of subjective variables (explained in each recommendation) in conjunction with our evolving expectations about Walt Disney World’s attendance. It’s weighted heavily for crowd levels and is backed by historic wait times data from the the last three years.

Before getting started, we actually want to recommend a supplementary resource for parents of young children, teachers, and anyone else who is bound by school schedules: our new list of Least-Bad Weeks for Families to Visit Walt Disney World.

Although this list is valuable if your calendar is a wide-open blank slate, one common reaction we’ve heard from parents is that this is disheartening because it recommends avoiding dates that they can travel and visiting when they can’t. If you’re part of WDW’s bread & butter demographic–young families–and you’re locked into school schedules, you might quickly browse this and then consult that. The good news is that some breaks that once were wall-to-wall people and 10/10 crowd level dates actually aren’t that bad anymore!

To that point, we tweak these dates to reflect changing attendance patterns, discount releases, or special event announcements–all of which can change crowd trends. For the latest update, we’ve shifted some travel dates in light of deals that have been released already and evolving expectations for 2026.

The most consequential deals for crowds are tickets (not hotels or packages), especially targeted Florida resident offers. The first few ticket deals have been released as of mid-March, with another expected for Floridians that’ll end around September 26, 2026. (Start dates are irrelevant, only end dates.)

Wait times data from the last 3 years reveals that ticket discounts have caused crowds to spike in their final two weeks. These are “use it or lose it” tickets, so there’s always a last-minute rush like that. It’s especially bad on Saturdays and, to a lesser extent, Fridays through Sundays. Weekdays aren’t impacted nearly as much.

During the final weekend of validity for one such ticket deal, crowd levels were 8/10 with an average wait time of 44 minutes. Earlier that same week and in the weeks before, crowd levels were 1/10 with an average of 27 minutes. Afterwards, crowds plummeted again. That’s a huge difference, and without another explanation.

Ticket deals have already been accounted for in our recommended date revisions, especially for May 2026. More could change in September or October depending upon what else is offered. Once more discounts are released or other changes become apparent, we’ll make further revisions. As always, if you want updates on news & rumors, discount releases, crowd reports, and much more, sign up for our FREE Walt Disney World Email Newsletter.

For our latest update, we’ve added some new 2028 dates. Just keep in mind that the further into the future you go, the less reliable these recommendations become. That’s because Walt Disney World hasn’t released any deals or all blockout calendars for 2026 or beyond, and many school calendars aren’t yet available.

Beyond that, there are evolving factors that could result in heavier or lighter attendance. There are major known unknowns, like new attraction and entertainment openings, how crowd patterns continue to change in light of Epic Universe, when Tropical Americas opens, and more. Both of those could be majorly impactful to crowds this year and next. As for 2027, there are probably also unknown unknowns. Things I can’t even list here as wildcards because I don’t know what they are.

With all of that said, let’s dig into the data and other variables to rank the 10 best weeks and 10 worst weeks to visit Walt Disney World in the next 2 years–the entirety of both 2026 and 2027, along with a few weeks in 2028. Despite the above caveats, most of this will also translate to 2028 and beyond, as well. The off-season has been more or less the same for decades, as has peak season, etc. Most crowd changes happen at the margins, resulting in the tweaking of start and end dates.

Worst Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2026 to 2028

Winter Break (January 1-5, 2027; January 1-4, 2028) – We fondly remember visiting Walt Disney World around New Year’s Eve over a decade ago. Crowds were bonkers in the days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, but so too were hours. You could enter at 7 am and leave by 9 am, sleep during the middle of the day, then return from 11 pm until 3 am. It was quite the sleep schedule, but it worked well. Then, once New Year’s Day arrived, the parks were dead until Marathon Weekend runners arrived almost a week later.

Times have changed, and anyone still expecting a holiday hangover or serene start to the year is in for a rude awakening. It’s still true that the parks are quiet to start the New Year. But that lasts all of ~4 hours on New Year’s Day. After that, crowds increase and can be worse than the heart of the holiday season due to schools still being on break, lifting of AP blockouts, and early-arriving runDisney fans.

All major school districts contribute, but the biggest factors are locals. Winter school breaks are nothing new, so the equation has not changed there for the country as a whole. What is different is the local population, which has absolutely exploded in the last decade as more households with school age children move to Central Florida. Expect these New Year’s crowds to only get worse in the years to come unless Walt Disney World adjusts AP blockouts and adjusts ticket and resort rate charts upwards.

Presidents’ Day (February 12-21, 2027; February 18-29, 2028) – The week of Presidents’ Day is one of the worst weeks as measured by average wait times. This isn’t just that holiday alone, but also school districts that use it as a proxy for mid-winter break or their “ski weeks” as well as runDisney Princess Half Marathon bookending the holiday.

This particular week is even worse when it coincides with Mardi Gras, making it more likely that schools in the South will also have winter breaks. The good news is that Mardi Gras will not coincide with Presidents’ Day (the holidays occur one week apart instead), effectively diluting the crowds. It’ll still be top 10, but not top 5 as was the case in 2026.

Looking further down the road, 2029 is more of an anomaly thanks to Leap Day, which is when Mardi Gras will occur. Our expectation is pretty much uninterrupted elevated crowds from the Friday before Presidents’ Day until Leap Day, and perhaps a few days beyond. We’d recommend avoiding that stretch if at all possible.

Regardless of Mardi Gras, it’s a popular week for winter breaks and those choosing sunshine over ski slopes, making it an easily-identifiable week to avoid that’s predictably bad even when it’s not among the absolute worst.

Spring Break (March 16-29, 2026; March 15-28, 2027) – During 2022-2023, the week of Orange County’s spring break was among the busiest of the season and almost on par with Easter. In 2024, blockouts were more aggressive and a Floridian ticket deal ended (by design) just before Orange County went on Spring Break. As a result, the week was not busy at all–it would’ve been a great time to visit.

Last year, the worst dates of ‘early’ Spring Break season were March 17-29, with March 17-24 being especially bad. Making predictions two years into the future, it’s hard to know what Walt Disney World will do differently with ticket and AP blockouts, new attraction openings, etc. Given that and how much these worst dates have bounced around in the last ~4 years, we’re erring on the side of caution and recommending that you avoid the entire 2-week stretch.

This is the safe move. Central Florida school districts have early breaks relative to the Midwest and Northeast, and those tourists plus lesser blockouts makes it likely that week will be very busy–without regard for anything else. Orange County’s break could still be busier, but it’s far less of a sure thing if Disney clamps down on discounts for Floridians and blockouts.

One thing to keep in mind is that there are hundreds of schools around the United States that are out of between mid-March and mid-April. In aggregate, they have a big impact on crowds. Unless there’s a freak anomaly, all of these weeks are going to be some degree of very busy–even if they don’t make this list.

Easter (March 30 to April 6, 2026; March 29 to April 5, 2027) – This is a fairly safe prediction year in and year out, regardless of what else happens. In fact, you could probably (accurately) predict today that the week leading up to Easter will be busy in 2028 or 2054. Easter week has been the busiest of spring break season for as long as we’ve been covering Walt Disney World, although mid-March when Orange County is out has come close a couple of times (blockouts make that unlikely in the future–see above).

In the end, it doesn’t really matter which of these spring break weeks has higher crowd levels. That’s almost entirely academic, an interesting thing to watch for those of us who obsess over crowd trends and attendance patterns. The bottom line for most planners looking at this from a practical perspective is that late March through late April will be very crowded.

Note that the 2027 dates are for the week after Easter, as the previous entry covers Easter. The week after Easter is never as bad as the one leading up to the holiday. But in weeks when Easter falls in late March, it’s also usually the case that the first week in April is elevated. It won’t be truly terrible, but it’s sufficiently busy to merit inclusion.

Summer’s Twin Peak (June 22-29, 2026 and July 20-27, 2026; June 21-28, 2027 and July 19-26, 2027) – Summer crowd calendars are snake oil. There has been very little consistency in attendance patterns for June and July in the last several years, save for lower across the board numbers.

Conventional wisdom used to be that the weeks around Fourth of July were the peaks, but that hasn’t been the case in a while–each of the last three years, Independence Day was among the slowest of summer (see below).

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 being especially bad (hence these dates being Monday to Monday).

If you have no choice but to visit during summer, avoiding these weeks is your best bet. The good news is that neither June or July are particularly busy with the exception of these weeks. See Why Summer is the New Low Crowds Season for more insight.

Columbus Day (October 9-17, 2026; October 8-16, 2027) – This actually ended up being the second-busiest week of the second half of last year, surpassing even Thanksgiving and Christmas. Data from the previous year is unusable due to Hurricane Milton causing a deluge of cancellations. The year before that, it was #9.

Our expectation is that this stretch will once again be top 5 for the second half of 2026 and 2027, but we’d be surprised to see a repeat of it surpassing Thanksgiving and Christmas. That was a surprise. Regardless, it’s a clear red flag right now. Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day is a proxy for many fall breaks, and that results in an influx of visitors to Florida.

It also ushers in the end of the off-season, and is usually the busiest week since Easter (even when it’s not busier than Thanksgiving and Christmas). For that reason alone, Columbus Day or fall break easily makes the list–you could visit even a week or two earlier and enjoy much, much lower crowds.

Holiday Hijinks (November 2-10, 2026; November 1-9, 2027) – This one always catches people by surprise. It’s what happens when two or three “holidays” collide. Well, if you count Jersey Week as a holiday. For those who aren’t familiar with it, Jersey Week is when approximately 73% of the Garden State descends upon Walt Disney World.

The real holiday here is Veterans Day, which is always a “sleeper” holiday for crowds–in that it’s under-discussed but a surprisingly high amount of government workers, students, and others do have the day off. We’ve been warning about Veterans Day crowds for years, as it has been almost on par with Thanksgiving some years. It’s a long weekend that can have an outsized impact on crowd levels.

This set of dates to avoid could be extended until the Friday after Veterans Day as we’ve observed elevated crowds in the past throughout that whole week. However, recent trends suggest a mid-week downturn and the height of the crowds arriving before Veterans Day. The week that follows still isn’t good, but it’s not as bad as Jersey Week before it.

With all of this said, confidence in the predicted dates is low for November 2026. Aside from Veterans Day, we don’t know when the Wine & Dine Half Marathon race or Jersey Week will occur. So pencil in this window as one to avoid, but expect those precise dates to change. You also might want to expand those windows slightly.

Thanksgiving (November 21-27, 2026; November 20-26, 2027) – Just about any Walt Disney World fan is familiar with the crowds of the final three weeks on this list. They’re hardly a secret or surprise, and are predictably busy year in and year out. These weeks still catch some casual visitors by surprise, as there are persistent urban legends that the holidays are quiet because “everyone is at home with their families.” Obviously, that’s hogwash.

Offering a bit more insight here, Thanksgiving week crowds tend to be worst the Sunday through Tuesday before Thanksgiving. The holiday itself tends not to be too bad, at least not compared to the few days beforehand. Those time frames are still busy, just not the threat level midnight crowds of the prior 3 days.

Friday and Saturday are wildcards; usually both are very busy, but not always. We’ve officially removed Saturday from the above dates to avoid because it was downright delightful last year. We’d recommend erring on the side of caution and avoiding it if at all possible, but that’s no longer essential. The Sunday after Thanksgiving has been uncrowded for years, making that a great first day in the parks.

One thing to keep in mind here is that the EPCOT Festival of the Holidays always starts on Black Friday, so that weekend typically sees comparatively elevated crowds due to locals. If you do travel over the weekend, avoid EPCOT until the following weekdays.

Christmas (December 18-25, 2026; December 17-25, 2027) – The arrival of Christmas week crowds are very dependent upon the day of the week of Christmas. Due to its timing last year and this year, the week after (between Christmas and New Year’s Eve) saw or will see the worst of the crowds.

We typically advise avoiding the Friday before Christmas week all the way through the day itself. Hence the 2026 timeframe being one day longer. With that said, the true peak of Christmas crowds comes the following Monday and Tuesday, similar to Thanksgiving. And this week is never as busy as the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

“Not as bad” is a relative term. All second-half of December dates are very busy and most dates see 8/10 to 10/10 crowd levels. Last year, the lead-up to Christmas actually wasn’t that bad, but that bucked historical precedent. We’d expect to see a return to 9/10 or 10/10 crowd levels starting the Monday before Christmas for 2026-2027.

New Year’s Eve (December 26-31, 2026; December 26-31, 2027) – It’s the same story here. The week leading up to New Year’s Eve is almost always 10/10 on the crowd calendar, and would likely be more like 15/10 if the scale allowed for that.

If you were to place a bet on the busiest weeks of 2026 and 2027, the smart money would be on this week. If I had to make the same bet for the year 2071, I’d still pick the week leading up to New Year’s Eve. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll have the worst wait times given the uncertainty of making predictions 1-2 years into the future, but it is the odds-on favorite of claiming the crown.

This is almost always the #1 worst week of the year. The timing of Christmas and New Year’s Days does cast some degree of doubt on that, but honestly, not much. The week of New Year’s Eve will likely continue its run as the busiest week of the year for the next several years.

Best Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2026 & 2027

The list of the 12 best weeks to do Walt Disney World in 2026 and 2027 is less precise and more subjective. In part, this is a byproduct of most of the worst weeks crowd-wise being readily identifiable on the basis of school breaks and holidays. So objectivity there is easier.

By contrast, there are wider windows for some of the lower crowd dates; as a result, we narrow those to our favored time frames based on subjective considerations. With that in mind, let’s dig into our rundown of the best weeks at Walt Disney World between now and 2027…

Mid-January (January 9-14, 2027; January 8-13, 2027) – In the past, we’ve recommended late January while noting that the month is largely quiet after the holiday breaks end, with the exception of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend. This leaves three different weeks that are potentially good options for lower crowds in January.

In the past, all of those were almost equally good. That wasn’t the case last year, as the week before MLK Day was the best by a slight margin over the week after, and a significant amount over the week following that. In 2026, the optimal dates ended up being January 8-15 (we recommend a more conservative January 10-15).

The above date range has emerged as the clear winner, but both weeks should be superior to late January or early February as Snowbirds and South American tour groups start arriving. They’re not the only groups to lookout for, as cheer/dance competitions and conventions also contribute to crowds. All of those things are more likely later in January or February. Festival of the Arts also increases ‘feels like’ crowds at EPCOT, but it’s a great event you won’t want to miss.

Before Mid-Winter Break (January 31 to February 5, 2027; February 1-13, 2028) – Same idea here. Unlike some holiday weeks, there’s no gradual decline before or after mid-winter break (Presidents’ Day/Mardi Gras). It’s abrupt on both ends. The crowd levels in the first half of February could be close to on par with January. Perhaps slightly higher due to youth sporting events, conventions, and South American tour groups.

In addition to avoiding youth sporting events (mostly cheer and dance competitions), you should be mindful of Mardi Gras when choosing dates. It coincided with mid-winter break in 2026, but won’t in 2027 or 2028. Mardi Gras may not seem like a big deal to you, but due to the proximity of Louisiana to Florida it very much is.

Across the board, February will have higher crowds than January, but the former is more appealing for some Walt Disney World vacation planner due to the likelihood of better weather and fewer refurbishments. We also recommend visiting before Presidents’ Day so you don’t miss out on the EPCOT Festival of the Arts, which is the #1 event of the year at EPCOT.

The 2028 dates are very much tentative at this point. It’s been several years since Presidents’ Day was that late, and it’s also a Leap Year with Mardi Gras one week later. That makes for a more challenging second half of the month, but also should make pretty much the entire first half of February 2028 more favorable.

Early Spring (February 28 to March 7, 2027; March 4-11, 2028) – Early March is a sweet stretch of mild weather and low crowds leading up to the start of spring break season, with most parks having 1/10 to 3/10 crowd levels during this week in March. Then, like flipping a switch, attendance surges almost overnight with the start of spring break.

This is a top tier time to visit thanks to the mild weather, EPCOT in bloom, and low crowds. It’s the calm before (and after) the storm, and there are only a handful of weeks that we’d rank higher from both a quantitative and qualitative perspective.

The week before this is generally pretty good, too. This is truly the calm between two storms, with the basic goal being to arrive after the height of Mid-Winter Break but before Spring Break. A lot of fans worry about the runDisney Princess Half Marathon as well as cheer and dance events at the ESPN Wide World of Sports, but neither have as big of an impact on park attendance, crowds, or wait times as some fans fear. They do, however, impact resort occupancy, crowds at the pools, and pricing. So that’s something to keep in mind.

These dates are more borderline in 2028. Mardi Gras pushes our recommendation later, and it’s now likely to be coincide with Spring Break for some colleges that have earlier dates. Consider this subject to change; visit in the first half of February if possible.

Post-Easter (April 12-26, 2026; April 11-25, 2027) – For both of these weeks, we’re essentially looking a week or two after Easter. Usually, crowds die down in the week immediately after the holiday, but there are still some schools with breaks then. The week following that is usually when the slower season arrives.

The added benefits here are (usually) spring weather and lower prices. There’s no guarantee of either, though, as summer weather can occur 10 months of the year in Florida and it’s possible for prices to remain elevated even after Easter. Both are uncommon, though, making this a great option if you’re looking for the optimal dates between spring and summer school breaks.

Shoulder Season (May 4-8 or May 17-21, 2026; May 7-16, 2027) – The first two weeks of May are usually the slowest of the month. Not by a wide margin, but the second week is sometimes better. Most recently, crowds were low from late April through May 16, 2025, with the lowest dates coming during the final 5 days of that stretch.

The problem with those dates in 2026 is that the main Florida resident ticket deal expires a full week earlier than last year, on May 16, 2026. As a result, the two weekends before that and, to a lesser extent, the weekdays immediately beforehand will be elevated. Our recommendations have been updated to reflect this.

Aside from the elevated weekends ahead of the ticket deal ending, the entire month before the Memorial Day holiday weekend is usually pretty good. Weekdays are reliably uncrowded since it’s the shoulder season between spring break and summer vacation. I would be equally comfortable visiting during any of those dates, save for the last few Saturdays during the ticket deal. Even Memorial Day isn’t that bad by holiday standards.

Crowds alone would be the tiebreaker with all else being equal, but weather is another variable to take into account. Earlier has a better chance of being milder, with less of a chance for extreme heat and humidity. As icing on the cake, prices are better and we’ve tended to find better discount availability during this earlier May window. Given that, we usually aim for earlier in May or, better yet, during the previous window post-Easter.

Independence Day (June 30 to July 5, 2026; June 29 to July 4, 2027) – This is a “bonus” week being added to the list since there’s otherwise a multi-month gap in the best weeks side of the ledger. If you’re perplexed by that, we’re going to assume you’ve never visited Florida during the heart of summer season.

The practical reality is that many families only have a few options for travel, and summer vacation season is far and away the biggest window. It feels like an oversight to gloss over that completely, especially since one of the best and arguably most fun long weekends of the entire year is here.

That’s right, the Fourth of July is one of the best weeks to visit, not one of the worst. Due to aggressive Annual Pass blockouts, higher travel costs, and erroneous assumptions about crowds, this week has been the slowest of summer for the last 3 consecutive years. The week immediately before this makes the ‘worst’ list, so if you arrive earlier, you’re likely to experience elevated wait times. But once the calendar rolls over to July, crowds should drop.

This could change in July 2026 (but probably not 2027). The holiday is a proper long weekend and Walt Disney World is doing more to promote the Fourth of July for the US 250th Anniversary and there being more ticket deals without blockouts. We already know Disney is adding more nights of fireworks this year, but they might go even further, pulling out all the stops for the Semiquincentennial.

We’re skeptical–especially since Soarin’ Across America is opening earlier and Memorial Day is the summer kickoff event–but this is something to keep an eye on. Independence Day being slow is not as sure of a thing in 2026, but nothing has been announced as of yet that gives us tremendous pause. We’ll update this accordingly if there are additional signs pointing to it being bad.

Slowest Weeks Post-Summer (August 21 to September 4, 2026; August 20 to September 3, 2027) – Our post-summer recommendations used to attempt at taking weather into account, but that proved to be a fool’s errand. Instead, we’re now focused on avoiding the end of the ticket deal and when crowds bottom out.

To that point, the last week of August 2024 was the slowest at Walt Disney World since the last week of September 2021. The same week in 2023 was barely busier, with a 25 minute average and 1/10 crowd level versus a 23 minute average and 1/10 crowd level last year. Both weeks were incredibly slow–the two least busy weeks since October 2021!

This is a two-week stretch because the following week is not much busier. On top of that, there’s the start of the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival and other events that make us really like this stretch. Labor Day weekend does spike slightly, but it’s historically the least busy holiday of the year at Walt Disney World so don’t go out of your way to avoid it. The few weekdays after Labor Day are often the least busy of all, so don’t rule out September 8-11, 2026 for a quicker trip!

In fact, the entire month of September is off-season and delaying maintains low wait times while improving your odds of better temperatures and fewer storms. We think that’s worth an extra one minute in line (literally, that’s the difference), but the fact is that heat, humidity, and hurricanes are a gamble anytime from early August through late October.

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.

Before Fall Break (September 27 to October 4, 2026; September 26 to October 3, 2027) – This is a tricky one because there have been hurricane scares twice in recent years that could be artificially depressing the data. On top of that, there are often ticket deals that end right before this, and if those are extended later in 2026 or 2027, then all bets are off.

Regardless, we’ve seen this week consistently underperform even in normal circumstances over the last 4 years, so there’s reason to believe it’s a sweet spot. Statistically speaking, there should be better weather this week than around Labor Day (how many times can we get unlucky with hurricanes in this timeframe?!) It’s also after the major ticket deals end, and usually there’s a ‘last hurrah’ spike during those and downtick afterwards.

This also coincides with the anniversaries of Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Walt Disney World as a whole on October 1. Although that can spike ‘feels like’ crowds on milestone dates (Walt Disney World will celebrate its 55th Anniversary on October 1, 2026 and EPCOT’s 45th Anniversary is October 1, 2027), it’s usually the case that celebratory wait times are lower on those dates. We actually recommend visiting the parks on 10/1–it’s a lot of fun!

Post-Columbus Day (October 20-30, 2026; October 19-31, 2027) – This is a lower degree of confidence suggestion, at least for now–don’t be surprised if we narrow this date range based on events and discounts.

But based on the last few years, both of these weeks are surprisingly good. I was actually mildly and pleasantly surprised by that when combing through the data, as it wasn’t quite what I expected. Neither Halloween being on a weekend nor the runDisney Wine & Dine Half Marathon made a difference last year. The only slight spike (and not even that bad of one) was Friday and Saturday, October 24-25th. Other than those two days, every single day in this stretch had 1/10 crowd levels.

For years, conventional wisdom was that October was a great month to visit–a sweet spot of low crowds and nice weather. That ceased being true about a decade ago, and was driven in large part by an uptick in conventions business and the Free Dining promotion. With the exception of fall break and the aforementioned holiday, it seems to have resumed being true–at least to some degree–in the last 3 years.

Pre-Thanksgiving (November 16-21, 2026; November 15-20, 2027) – The final three recommendations are also the top three picks for our favorite weeks of the year to visit. Honestly, if we weren’t purposefully trying to spread out the choices to achieve greater variety, another week during the holiday season might be added here.

Quantitatively, crowds typically drop the day after Veterans Day and remain low until the Saturday before Thanksgiving (you might notice the bad and good windows start and end on the same day). This window is usually a little longer than what’s listed above, but the added dates are more hit-or-miss.

The ‘meat’ of this date range–Tuesday through Friday–is reliably fantastic, typically offering 1/10 or 2/10 crowd levels. The Monday before is usually a bit elevated, and you’ll find pockets of higher crowds depending on the park you visit.

Qualitatively, this is a great time to visit in terms of typical weather and seasonal events–Christmas is far and away our favorite time of year at Walt Disney World. The only downside to these dates is that they’re early in the holiday season before all of the resorts are decked out for Christmas and prior to the start of EPCOT’s Festival of the Holidays. Still, the other 3 parks will be decked out for Christmas, as well as many to most resort hotels.

Post-Thanksgiving (November 29 to December 6, 2026; November 28 to December 5, 2027) – This is our #1 week of the entire year at Walt Disney World. That’s been true for ages. Back when we lived in the Midwest, our annual Christmas trip usually started the Sunday after the holiday. (Even when we were still in school, we used to skip a couple days to make it a long weekend trip!)

This is the week of the year we have spent the most minutes in Walt Disney World since 2007. Probably by a pretty wide margin. We absolutely love the week after Thanksgiving. We have our time-tested approach down to a science, flying into Orlando on Saturday and actually doing our first day in the parks on Sunday.

We start with Magic Kingdom during the day, as it’s typically a Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party night–the first in over a week. That means shorter hours in Magic Kingdom, and smaller crowds as a result. For that same reason, do not attend that MVMCP. There’s pent-up demand from everyone still around from Thanksgiving who didn’t have the chance to attend earlier. Instead, do the Thursday night party.

Everything about this week is great–the weather, post-holiday lull in crowds, pricing, and the full slate of Christmas season entertainment. We joke that this used to be Walt Disney World’s “second-best kept secret” after Disney Vacation Club, which is to say it was a secret in name only since so many people knew about it. It no longer being a secret makes no difference since WDW’s bread and butter demographic cannot visit during this week. This is our top recommendation, and it’s not even a particularly close call.

Pre-Christmas (December 7-13, 2026; December 6-12, 2027) – As is probably evident, this is simply the week after that. It has all of the same qualities as our #1 week, but with a couple of significant differences.

First, crowds are starting to increase by this point. Families who want to be home for the holidays are more inclined to time their trip at the midpoint between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Locals and other Annual Passholders who are subject to blockouts squeeze in visits to savor the spirit of the season before they don’t have the option.

Second, prices are getting higher. They’re still not at peak season levels, but they’re about 15-25% higher than the previous week. That’s true for park tickets and resort rack rates, and also likely to be the case for Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party and Lightning Lanes, as well.

All of that adds up, and makes the middle of December noticeably worse than the sweet spot after Thanksgiving, but this still ranks very highly, all things considered. One thing to note is that, last year, crowds were low until the Thursday before Christmas, with the exception of that Monday. That would translate to great dates up until December 17, 2026 and December 18, 2026; minus Dec. 14/13th.

If you do end up sticking around and doing a park on that Monday, you should be able to sidestep issues by choosing your park wisely. It can be a very busy day in some of the parks, but dead in others.

Ultimately, that’s a rundown of the top 12 weeks of the year and the worst 10 weeks at Walt Disney World for all of 2026 and 2027, plus part of 2028. As you might’ve gathered by reading the entries, there are good and bad windows that stretch beyond what’s covered on this list–you should be able to deduce most of those based the rundown above.

With that said, we still hope to expand this list to a resource ranking all 52 weeks at Walt Disney World at some point in the future. After some tumultuous times, attendance is finally returning to familiar patterns…for the most part.

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

Do you agree or disagree with our Walt Disney World week rankings for now through Spring 2028? Are there any months you think are better or worse than we have them ranked? Any specific ideal weeks that you’d recommend people visit Walt Disney World? Other dates to avoid the parks? Any questions? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!