Spring Break Crowd Predictions for Disney World
It’s no secret that spring break is busy at Walt Disney World. Crowd levels increase during these school holidays, normally culminating with the peak week of Easter. That holiday has some of the year’s highest wait times, attendance, and congestion in Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios–but it’s not the only week of heavy crowds.
While spring break “season” kicks off in early March as universities, colleges, and K-12 school systems take their 1-2 week breaks, not all dates within that range are equally crowded. To the contrary, as covered in our Walt Disney World Crowd Calendars, some dates that fall within traditional spring break season are pretty good times to visit.
Our goals with this post are highlighting some of the recent crowd levels at Walt Disney World, looking at changes to park hours, analyzing general travel trends for spring break, and trying to predict which dates will be “red flags” on Walt Disney World crowd calendar for March and April…
If you don’t already have Disney Park Pass reservations, hope you like EPCOT! (Or Animal Kingdom, but only on some days.) For the next two weeks, Magic Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios are fully booked across all three buckets of Park Passes for many days.
On a positive note, Walt Disney World has been extending park hours for March and April, beginning with all dates the first two weeks of the month, with even longer hours Friday through Sunday. This wasn’t particularly noteworthy, as this has been happening with consistency for the last several months.
Walt Disney World releases boilerplate hours with Magic Kingdom closing at 9 pm, EPCOT and DHS at 9 pm, and Animal Kingdom at 7 pm, and then extends those closings as travel dates draw nearer.
For most of March, hours have been extended pretty significantly. Magic Kingdom is closing at 11 pm, and the other three parks have all had their opening times moved much earlier.
All of this is much easier to visualize on the DisneyWorld.com calendar’s month view. So…what gives? Why has Walt Disney World added so many hours for March?
The most straightforward explanation is that this is the week of spring break for both Osceola and Orange Counties, which are the districts in Central Florida that call Walt Disney World home. Both districts list March 14-18 as their spring breaks. Additionally, the Orange County School District calendar has March 11 as a student holiday/teacher workday.
Even if no other district in the entire United States had spring break that week, it would be incredibly busy at Walt Disney World due to those two local school systems. As we’ve seen time and time again in the last few years, holiday breaks in Orange and Osceola Counties have significant impacts on attendance at Walt Disney World. And in actuality, many other school districts around the United States will also have breaks coinciding with this same week.
We don’t have the time, resources, or inclination to comb through the schedules of every single school district in the United States. If we did, it would probably reveal a range of breaks in the next two months, with the bulk from mid-March through early April.
With that said, there are a several specific districts in Florida that are among the largest in the country and have an outsized impact on attendance at Walt Disney World. In a normal year, those districts and their respective spring breaks around the following timeframes:
- Miami-Dade County Public Schools: March 29 to April 2
- Broward County Public Schools: March 19-26
- Hillsborough County Public Schools: March 15-19
- Palm Beach County Public Schools: March 15-19
- Duval County Public Schools: March 8-12
Here are other major school districts and their normal spring break dates that could significantly impact crowd levels at Walt Disney World:
- Houston Independent School District: March 15-19
- Dallas Independent School District: March 15-19
- Gwinnett County Public Schools: April 5-9
- Chicago Public Schools: March 29 to April 2
- Fairfax County Public Schools: March 29 to April 2
Again, this is not an exhaustive list of spring break schedules, and these districts have not been updated for 2023, so the precise dates are likely +/- 1 day. These 12 school districts were selected because they’re among the country’s largest districts that are either near Walt Disney World or feed heavily into visitor demographics. That’s why Chicago is listed but Los Angeles Unified, Clark County (Nevada), and Honolulu’s school districts are not.
Additionally, our focus here is on K-12 school districts, but many universities have cancelled or modified their spring breaks. (Colleges usually have less of an impact on Walt Disney World crowds due to age demographics.) Notable examples include Florida State University, Ohio State University, Arizona State University, Boston University, and the University of Michigan. At these schools, students will receive several one-day “well-being breaks” without any scheduled academic activities.
It’s entirely possible that some K-12 school districts on the above list also could’ve cancelled their spring breaks. I took the effort to find the official calendar for each of the aforementioned districts, but cannot confirm they haven’t modified their plans since publishing those.
As you can see from the above lists, half of the major school districts we’ve targeted have their spring breaks March 14-18. Suffice to say, our expectation is that this ends up being the busiest week of March or April at Walt Disney World. We anticipate it being even busier than the week of Easter.
On a related note, several readers have asked what we expect Walt Disney World will do to celebrate Easter. Probably nothing aside from a few desserts, but that’s just our guess–no official announcement has been made.
As such, our prediction is pretty much a repeat of Mardi Gras Crowds at Walt Disney World. Just replace all of the references to “Mardi Gras” with “Spring Break” and that more or less is our forward-looking prediction.
In particular, we forecast that March 11 through March 20 will be the busiest week of the quarter, and one of the worst 5 weeks of the entire year at Walt Disney World. We highly recommended anyone with flexibility avoid those travel dates.
Beyond that, don’t be surprised if the entirety of spring break is busier than normal at Walt Disney World. For one thing, remote work and learning are a game-changer on this front, and make it easier for guests to take “hybrid” work/play trips to Walt Disney World. This phenomenon is hardly unique to spring break, but it could be especially pronounced in the coming couple of months as more people look for a reprieve from harsher than normal winters.
Officials in South Florida are preparing for an influx of visitors in March and April, with hotel bookings already up 20% year over year. Obviously, Walt Disney World is a bit different than the beach cities, but we would anticipate similar travel trends.
Intuitively, this makes sense. Florida is always a popular spring break destination thanks to its warm weather, which may be even more attractive than normal. Additionally, Florida has garnered nationwide headlines for the last couple of years as the highest-profile state that has been “fully reopened.” While that will cause some potential visitors to steer clear of Florida, it will attract many others–including both those who have been vaccinated and those who are just generally fatigued with restrictions.
As we’ve pointed out several times, Walt Disney World is taking a more conservative and cautious approach (as are many businesses) than Florida as a whole. That doesn’t mean visitors to the state will actively avoid the Walt Disney World. during spring break trips. Some will, but many won’t know until arrival and others won’t care.
Overall, that’s about what you can expect to experience during Spring Break at Walt Disney World. To summarize, our prediction is elevated ‘feels like’ crowds from around March 11 to April 18. The worst of those crowds will almost certainly be March 11-20, 2022.
Following that, March 27 to April 3 will also be another bad week because of another runDisney event, and then the week of Easter will be even worse. We’d actively avoid those dates if at all possible, or at least leverage our Walt Disney World Park Itineraries to beat the crowds. Arriving early and having sound strategy is as important as choosing the “right” dates to visit.
Outside of those couple weeks, we wouldn’t necessarily avoid spring break season–just be aware that attendance levels will be higher than they’ve been during the January and February off-season (minus Mardi Gras). As always, crowd levels at Walt Disney World are becoming increasingly difficult to predict and still surprise us from time to time. Nevertheless, we’re reasonably confident in this spring break forecast.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you visited Walt Disney World during spring break season in the past? What did you think of the crowds? Are you visiting this year for Easter or spring break? Any other major school districts having spring breaks during these windows? Anything else we missed that could impact crowds during March and April? Do you agree or disagree with anything in our Spring Break Crowd Forecast for Walt Disney World? Any questions we can help you answer? 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!
Passover begins on the weekend of March 26-28, so I would prepare for crowds of travelers beginning as early as the week before… Najd especially the week of March 29.
Yes! I was coming here to say this. In spite of COVID, it looks like Passover will still bring an exodus from the NY/NJ area to Florida. My friends want to ride Rise and there is no park pass availability for the Passover dates of 3/29-4/1. I told them to keep checking…
We’re going 3/12-17! Park days 13-16. Perfect!!!! The busiest week! We have no flexibility as we’re renting dvc. This trip was actually rescheduled from last year (2020)! Oh well!! We will just roll with it. Doing Epcot on sat (13), MK on Sunday, HS on Monday and AK on Tuesday. Not a lot of change to be made as we have all of our dining set. Any tips/suggestions????
I will be there March 8-14. I appreciate the extended hours so I can see the parks when it’s dark because that is my favorite time to be there. I’ll take the increased crowds if it means I can be in parks at after sunset.
Any insight as to why Monday Mar 8th has extended hours at MK? I did not expect that.
We’ve decided to go for it and take our kids for the first time May 18-20. We’re just doing Magic Kingdom because they’re little still. What do you think the crowds will look like then? As always I love reading your blog, thanks!
We just returned from a week at WDW, staying at the Riviera Wednesday to Friday and were very surprised by the 30-40 minute wait at the Caribbean Beach Skyliner station to get to Hollywood Studios Thursday morning. Also noticed crowds in all the parks much heavier than previous months have been.
I had a hard time with this new mandate at first because, I didn’t see any explanation WHY. Now that I’ve read this post, I understand.
Disney cannot take chances with people coming from other states.
Thank you. I dont like it…, but, I thank you.
We are going to hollywood studios on the march 11th should I be concerned or will we potentially just miss the craziness that’s about to come out way?
You should just miss it, although DHS is usually varying degrees of bad right now.
I think you mean 70% of half capacity. 35% of half capacity would be one sixth of full capacity. 😉
Yeah…I wasn’t happy with the way that was worded before publishing, but I hoped people would get the general idea. I’ve tweaked it so that it (hopefully) better conveys what I meant, but it still is a bit clunky.
So if you had to pick a park to go to on Friday, the 12th, which one would you pick?
Assuming the rest of your visit is before March 12, I’d put DHS on that date since crowds there don’t fluctuate nearly as much. (As a general rule, always go to DHS on the day of your trip you expect to be the busiest.)
Animal Kingdom would be my second choice since it opens at 8 am and most locals, especially those who just started a holiday break, won’t get up that early.
I’m going the last week in April and I’m hoping to miss most of the crowds. Every time I read something like this it makes me a little nervous .
We’ll be there the week after you (first week of May) and park hours aren’t long at all. Seems like that indicates smaller crowds.
At this point, the lack of longer park hours has more to do with those dates being further into the future. WDW will probably extend those, too.
Regardless, late April and early May should be pretty well past the vast majority of spring break dates. You should be good!
My friend and I are down here now and each day we did the parks including universal it felt crowded. We thought coming down here during this past week would be the sweet spot before spring break and after Presidents’ Day/Mardi Gras but it’s been quite busy. Lines have been longer than we anticipated even during the weekdays. With the hours being shortened than when we were here pre covid we didn’t get to ride everything we wanted to. Still had a good time though!
We are on our way home right now. We had a great week. We were there Sunday-Saturday and at the parks Monday-Friday. The crowd was very manageable. This was our first visit and we followed your advice and never waited over 45 minutes except for Tower of Terror and the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train where we waited an hour. On several rides we walked straight on and others we waited maybe 30 minutes. Starting early and staying late is key. We stayed at Magic Kingdom until 10 last night and didn’t wait any longer than 20 minutes toward the end except for Seven Dwarfs where we waited for 40 minutes but worth the wait to ride at night. The weather was great also. Thank you for your help.
I believe many colleges added an extra week over Christmas/winter break last year and eliminated Spring break this year due to Covid.
We’ll be there April 4th to 8th and were expecting that might be the worst week with Easter being the 4th. Crowds don’t bother me – I’m a teacher so we’re used to planning and going during school breaks (ours is the 2nd to 9th this year). Feeling good that that week may be less crowded than President’s Week (but we’ll be prepared for it to be just as bad).
Okay Tom, insert long dramatic sigh. Now on to your itinerary recommendations – early in, early out!
“…early in, early out!”
Yep! But I’d add an “…and back in at night.” Seriously, if you can return at night after a midday break, it is very much worth it when crowds are heavy. So many people “give up” and go home that nighttime becomes much more pleasant. Outlasting the crowds is the third key to success on busy days! 🙂
Hi Tom,
This is a HUGE bummer. I read your previous crowd calendar and planned a trip for March 14-21 because it was recommended. Now I find out it will be hell. There are 13 of us so we can’t reschedule. Please help! Any suggestions for park strategy adjustments with these extreme crowds?
These itineraries are a great place to start and can alone get you through a crowded day with relative ease: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/disney-park-itineraries/
Beyond that, the biggest things are arriving early AND staying late. Get there before the crowds and outlast the crowds. That may very well require a midday break–at MK, take the boat to Fort Wilderness for lunch (https://www.disneytouristblog.com/biggest-best-value-holiday-meal-disney-world/) at EPCOT or DHS, walk to Crescent Lake resorts or take the Skyliner to Riviera/Caribbean Beach.
I wholeheartedly agree with Tom’s suggestions. At his suggestion we went to Fort WIlderness for the lunch he wrote about and it was a real winner. Boat ride there, lunch and check out the new Tri-Circle-D Ranch. You might look into horseback riding there before or after lunch. Just so you know, the Tri-Circle-D Ranch is by the restaurant but you’ll need to take a Fort WIlderness’ bus to the horseback riding area so plan accordingly.
I always take a midday break from MK and have done the Wilderness break via the boats. Great experience. I’ve always walked over to the Contemporary for lunch and/or cocktails at the Wave.
Any thoughts on March 6-12? We chose this week to hopefully miss most of the Spring Break crowd. Fingers crossed we were right. Obviously March 12 seems like it’s going to be crazy so that’s good to know beforehand.
I would expect March to be pretty good up until the 11th. That’s usually the case–it’s the calm before the storm, so to speak.
I’ve been following Tom’s blogs too and our spring break (just north of Dallas school district) is the week of the 8th. We’re really excited we’re so early this year.
Thanks for the update Tom. Our family is adding a spring break trip (4/2 to 4/11) this year (in addition to our annual early December trip) primarily because travel to other places is more complicated due to what is or isn’t open. At WDW it’s a known quantity. I’ve been watching the park hours for that week and they seem to be stuck at the boiler plate hours although the weeks before and after have had adjustments. Any thoughts to why?
It’s simply too early. I’d wouldn’t be surprised if Disney waits to see how bad things are in mid-March before extending April hours.
Tom, we’re going down March 18 but avoiding parks that Fri-Sun based on hearing about these regional spring breaks. One daughter’s spring break (from Kalamazoo College) starts the 18th but it sounds like March 22-25 won’t be as bad as the week prior or the week after. Does this sound about right?
“Does this sound about right?”
Yep.
Good Morning!
Just got back from WDW last night. I can attest to your comment about the “feels like” aspect of crowds in the parks. I’m an experienced park goer and it “felt” crowded. Weather was perfect, cast members were amazing, but you will not get me back there until 2022 because of the safety measures ( which I condone ) that are in place. On Pirates, my grandson and I, and one other small party were the only ones on the entire boat. What this means Is you wander and meander a really long time outside in the sun and all wait times, even on flying carpets and Swiss family treehouse were high. Before MK opened, wait time at Seven Dwarfs Mine Train was 90 min. Hardly went under that all day.
They are opening parks early. We got in line at Epcot for test track and were finished with the ride at 10:30. But you add kids out of school and hotter temperatures and it’s not a pretty picture. Just letting others know. I predict huge crowds for the rest of the year. If you go, make sure your resort pool is not under construction cuz you’ll want to hang out there midday.
Thanks for sharing your experience–that Pirates of the Caribbean example is perfectly illustrative of how the 35% “limit” is deceiving. That attraction in particular is operating at less than half capacity, making its wait times longer than normal.
Thanks, Tom. I always appreciate your perspective on WDW planning. I’ve been spoiled with my last few trips – mid-September 2020, early-November 2020, and early-February 2021. They were all amazing with super low crowds. I think I might be in for a rude awakening with my trip planned for the week of March 1. But I’m still looking forward to it!
I wouldn’t say “rude awakening” because that week should still be pretty good…just not as good as early February.