Spring Crowds Fall at Disney World
We’ve made it to May 2022 at Walt Disney World! With spring break season now officially over, we thought it’d be worthwhile to recap April wait time data in the parks. This report covers daily crowd levels and average attraction wait times for last month at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom, focusing on the last two weeks while also offering a look forward at what to expect in the month to come month.
You might notice that this is the first Walt Disney World crowd report in a while to have an optimistic title. Most have included phrases like “worst month,” “busiest week,” “spring break peak,” or “not off-season.” These haven’t been hyperbolic, but rather, a reflection of wait time data.
Unfortunately, January was elevated significantly as compared to last year, February was the busiest month in the last two years, and then March managed to top it and be even worse. Those two months had average wait times of 45 and 46 minutes, respectively. For those wanting to put those numbers into historical context, the average wait times for the entirety of 2020 and 2021 were 33 and 32 minutes, respectively.
Unsurprisingly, April 2022 started out with a bang. As indicated in our last crowd report, the month had an average daily wait time across all rides at Walt Disney World of 45 minutes. That was as of the start of Easter week, and our expectation was that it would only get worse from there.
Let’s dig into the data to see where April wait times ended the month. As always, all graphs and wait time stats are courtesy of Thrill-Data.com.
Above is a high level look at monthly wait time averages across the entirety of Walt Disney World.
Our expectation was incorrect. Wait times actually dropped at Walt Disney World in the second half of April. Granted, it was only by 1 minute, but that includes Easter, which is typically one of the year’s worst weeks.
Once we get into individual days, you can see the precise point at which spring break crowds dropped off.
Interestingly, the drop occurred on April 20. That’s the middle of the week after Easter, so it neither coincided with the end of the holiday week nor spring break for the Northeastern and Midwest school districts that still had spring break the following week.
For park by park analysis, we’ll start with Magic Kingdom.
As with Walt Disney World as a whole, Magic Kingdom wait times hit a 9/10 level on April 20 and have been falling since. These days been downright average, with lots of 6/10 or 7/10 crowd level days in the last two weeks. The first day of May 2022 was the lowest level day since early February at 4/10!
Here are the specific averages for April 2022:
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 96 minutes
- Jungle Cruise: 78 minutes
- Peter Pan’s Flight: 74 minutes
- Splash Mountain: 67 minutes
- Space Mountain: 59 minutes
- Meet Mickey at Town Square Theater: 50 minutes
- Meet Cinderella at Princess Fairytale Hall: 50 minutes
- Haunted Mansion: 50 minutes
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad: 48 minutes
Note that two meet & greets made this list, despite not being on it the first half of the month. As predicted, wait times for characters soared once those returned to normal on April 18.
You can actually spot the differential as the attraction names changed from “See [character name]” to “Meet [character name].” Look at how low the former is on the rankings as compared to the latter, and that’s despite the “See” option occurring during peak crowd levels and “Meets” starting during the off-peak dates.
It’s a similar story at Animal Kingdom.
There, wait times also fell considerably from their spring break levels. For the last two weeks, crowd levels were in the 5/10 to 7/10 range. (Technically, there was a spike to 8/10 on both of the last two days. No good explanation for that–it didn’t happen at the other parks.)
Here are the specific averages for April 2022:
- Avatar Flight of Passage: 99 minutes
- Na’vi River Journey: 72 minutes
- Kilimanjaro Safaris: 59 minutes
- Kali River Rapids: 44 minutes
- Expedition Everest: 41 minutes
- Dinosaur: 33 minutes
The few other attractions in Animal Kingdom are all below 20 minutes.
I don’t know about you, but it’s mildly amusing to me that Expedition Everest went from being the park’s second Individual Lightning Lane attraction (never selling well in that spot) to the 5th highest wait time in a park with only 8 measured wait times.
We continue along to Epcot.
Pretty much the exact scenario played out at Epcot. April 20 was a 9/10 crowd level, and every day since has been markedly lower. There have been days as low as 4/10, but the numbers have really been all over the place. With the 2022 Epcot Flower & Garden Festival now being “old news” to most locals, the decision to pepper Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind previews throughout mid-May makes sense. Those dates will help prop up attendance.
As for specific attraction wait times at Epcot, here’s what we have for the first half of April 2022:
- Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure: 87 minutes
- Frozen Ever After: 82 minutes
- Test Track: 66 minutes
- Soarin’ Around the World: 40 minutes
- Mission Space: 35 minutes
- Meet Anna & Elsa at Royal Summerhaus: 32 minutes
Again, there’s a big difference between the “See Anna & Elsa” and “Meet Anna & Elsa” character greetings despite the former occurring while crowd levels were markedly higher.
Finally, there’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
If you’ve visited DHS in the last two weeks, you’ve benefited from a significant reprieve in wait time levels. There’s a good chance you didn’t realize it, as Disney’s Hollywood Studios can be unpleasant during the middle of even a “decent” day, but wait times dropped from a peak of 76 minutes to a range of 45-57 minutes in the last two weeks. When you add it all up, that’s a huge difference.
Here are ride-by-ride wait times for Disney’s Hollywood Studios in April 2022:
- Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance: 128 minutes
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror: 118 minutes
- Slinky Dog Dash: 106 minutes
- Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run: 73 minutes
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster: 71 minutes
- Meet Disney Stars at Red Carpet Dreams: 63 minutes
- Toy Story Mania: 63 minutes
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway: 62 minutes
- Alien Swirling Saucers: 42 minutes
While still very high, keep in mind that these are numbers for the entire month. There’s only so much the last two weeks can do to take down the average after the sky-high start to April. With that said, here are a few notes about DHS wait times:
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is so high because it’s operating at half-capacity due to a “stealth” refurbishment. It’ll likely remain at this level through at least the first half of summer.
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster remained elevated because it was down a lot the second half of the month, so it didn’t benefit from lower daily numbers to drag down its monthly average.
- The (excellent) Red Carpet Dreams featuring Mickey & Minnie takes the cake for the longest meet & greet wait time of the month.
As a reminder, the 8 am official park opening time makes it easier to minimize wait times at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, especially if you’re staying on-site. See our post on Early Entry at Disney’s Hollywood Studios that covers doing both Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway before the park opened to regular guests. (Although now you’d be better suited bouncing from Galaxy’s Edge to Sunset Boulevard rather than Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.)
Additionally or alternatively, there’s Genie+ and Lightning Lanes. Even if you’re only able to knock out 3-4 headliners with the paid FastPass service, Genie+ is arguably worth it at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We have several recent posts that are helpful on this front, including the following:
- Best Way to Use Genie+ at Hollywood Studios
- Speed Strategy for Genie+ Selections
- DHS Lightning Lane Ride Ranks
- Ride Reservation Refill Rules
- My Day Using Genie+ Lightning Lanes in Peak Crowds at Disney’s Hollywood StudiosÂ
Just in case that’s not overwhelming enough, more DHS strategy posts are in the pipeline. I won’t rest until I’ve covered all the ways to conquer crowds at Walt Disney World’s most frustrating park!
…and then I’ll have to redo them all once Fantasmic returns and throws a monkey wrench into things.Â
Looking forward, you can expect…I’m honestly not sure. We recently updated the May 2022 Crowd Calendar for Walt Disney World based on incredibly limited Disney Park Pass reservation availability. The reasoning for that is relatively straightforward–all dates that run out of reservations should be equally crowded.
As such, we stated the following: “Crowds could still drop in the coming weeks to their normal 6/10 to 7/10 levels, but we’re no longer predicting that given how many dates are already yellow on the Disney Park Pass reservations calendar. To the contrary, our expectation is that remote work and ongoing pent-up demand will keep the month somewhat elevated. Not as bad as spring break, but worse than a normal May.”
The problem with this reasoning is that most of late April was also yellow or grey on the Disney Park Pass reservation calendar. Yet, wait times dropped across the board in a consistent fashion that cannot be explained away by weather, attraction uptime, or anything else. Crowd levels went from 8/10 to 10/10 most days to a range of 5/10 to 7/10 most days.
Now, it’s possible that meet & greets helped better absorb some of the crowds (keep in mind that most characters don’t have posted wait times, so they get ignored by the data). It’s also possible that the longer hours helped better spread out crowds to some degree. Personally, I find this unpersuasive to account for the entirety of the discrepancy. Some of it? Sure. All of it? No way. Attendance had to have been lower for the last couple of weeks.
Ultimately, I cannot explain why or how that would’ve happened given the (lack of) availability on the Disney Park Pass calendars. It’s possible that potential guests made reservations when they saw them starting to book up, but didn’t follow through with trips.
Another theory is that cancellations have already started to pile up due to the rising costs of gas, airfare, and various other reasons–and those cancelled Park Passes aren’t being automatically added back into the inventory for some reason. If either are true, why wouldn’t Walt Disney World manually adjust the Park Pass system to add capacity? It just doesn’t make sense.
Regardless, wait times at Walt Disney World not being as bad as the Park Pass calendar foretold is a good problem to have. It now makes us a bit more optimistic that May 2022 will once again be “shoulder season” with those 6/10 to 7/10 crowd level days.
The real problem is that we don’t really have any solid foundation for making that prediction aside from past precedent, which has been repeatedly wrong thus far in 2022. Nevertheless, I’m going to roll with it. My prediction is that May 2022 won’t be nearly as bad as the last 3, and could end up being one of the better months of the year when all is said and done. We’ll report back on how things are going at Walt Disney World in a week or two.
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
Thoughts on crowds in the second half of April 2022? Predictions on crowds for May 2022? Think that this month will end up being significantly less busy than February through April, or are the moderate crowds of the last couple weeks a red herring? If you’ve visited within the last month, what did you think of crowds and wait times? Any parks or times of day noticeably worse than the others? Do you agree or disagree with anything in our report? 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!
We are going June 20-28 and I’m not going to lie, all the posts of crazy wait times have me a tad nervous. What do you think summer crowds will look like?
I would expect it to be busy, but you never know if pent-up demand will fizzle out by then, or if gas/airfare prices or other variables will put a dent in demand.
If not, following the advice here will help you beat the crowds–especially if the earlier opening times keep up. I would not worry about it!
One interesting piece I’ve noticed in reference to the May calendar: I’m have an AP and am going on a trip with my non-AP mother beginning May 13 — the Park Pass availability has been better for me than her park ticket with a resort reservation! Maybe points to your theory on trip cancellations hogging all the Park Pass availability. Otherwise I can’t see the benefit to allocating Park Passes towards APs over resort guests.
Hi Tom,
We were at Hollywood Studios today and it was great. Staying at the Swan so we got there at 7:00. By 8:00 we had knocked off Tower and Rockin by 8:00. My daughters also signed us up for Genie +, so by lunch at 11:30 we had also gone on Slinky, Mania, and stopped for Mimosa’s. Did Minnie and Mickey at 1:00, relaxed at Brown Derby for a bit, did Frozen and then Millenium. Back at the hotel now and heading over to Epcot for dinner and extended hours there. I judge crowd levels very unscientifically…by the lines at Starbucks and the Popcorn/Pretzel stands, and the lines weren’t long at all…maybe 3 or four. Walked into Starbucks at 2:00 and half of it was closed down…the line still was all inside and got through in 5 minutes. This is the first day of our trip and if this is any indication it should be a great week. With half of Tower shut down I would definitely recommend knocking that off first thing as the wait time for it was longer than Rise for most of the day. Thanks for all of your advice too!
Someone needs to come up with a Starbucks WDW Crowd Calendar, sorta like the Waffle House Index for storm severity! Not even joking–I think that very unscientific measure probably has as much accuracy for “feels like” crowds as do wait times! 🙂
I have to agree with the others in saying that Disney got in hot water politically and is now facing a boycott from many Disney fans. This has been building for the past few months and has now reached fever pitch. Many are choosing to boycott not only for their political stance, but for their attitude towards raising prices and eliminating park perks. I’m sure Disney will right the ship soon, but when you start to hear talk of Disney board members being ousted, I would think there might be a bigger storm brewing…..
We shall see. If it does have an impact, that’ll be visible from mid-June through July (peak summer tourist season), not the normally quieter month of May.
Personally, I don’t put much stock in what the loudest voices on social media say (thankfully for all, Twitter and Facebook are not real life). Just as Chick-fil-A isn’t exactly hurting for business, I don’t think this will materially impact Disney’s bottom line. I could be wrong, though.
Now, a pullback in consumer spending due to inflation or increased travel costs (e.g. gas & airfare) or a recession…that’s a different story.
It is an onion: Disney CEO Morrel Fired over political issues. Read or listen to audio on this Journalist report.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/disney-just-fired-its-corporate-affairs-chief/
We are not going because is the increasing costs and reduction of perks just like you mentioned. When I priced out Disney vs. Europe, we can go see France for the same $$, so that’s where our next vacation will be. Disney is fun and I love it, but they are too crowded most of the time to warrant that much $$$ to spend vacation waiting on lines. 3 of our last 4 vacations were Disney and that will not be the case in the upcoming years.
Hi Tom! Thanks for all the work you did helping to plan our once-in-my-boys’-childhood Disney World vacation! We were there April 10-15 for a very crowded week so I thought I would share our experience since I did a lot of research on your blog to prepare and strategize.
One piece of your advice that was spot-on was Genie+ working the best at Magic Kingdom and being a toss up at the other parks. I had only planned to buy it at MK, but ended up also getting it at HS and Epcot due to such heavy crowds, which I was aware would be an issue ahead of time, and had to do a lot of pivoting from the “plan!” For our two MK early entry mornings, we had planned to do Peter Pan and Space Mountain. Both mornings, each of those rides were down during early entry! We ended up starting with Small World and Buzz Lightyear instead, hoping we would be nearby when they both came back up. That didn’t happen but I got a LL later for Peter Pan, and did standby for Space Mountain at the end of our day. Despite getting my first LL reservation at 7am and being there for early entry, I was only able to get four LL reservations for each day, but it still saved a lot of time. One piece of advice for those looking to reduce walking, we focused on three “lands” at MK for each day, covering all six over two park days.
At Epcot, the plan was to follow your advice and use early entry from the International Gateway as our strategy, moving from Remy to Frozen. The line for Remy at early entry was 70 minutes, so I panic bought Genie+ while in line! While I was able to get 4 LL reservations that day, we only used 3 because the last one was too late in the day and we were just too tired since the LL reservations required us to over-walk that park! I knew that from your advice but panic buying clouded my mind temporarily!
At HS, I was going to buy the individual LL for Rise and do standby for everything else, but because I got shut out of scoring Rise at 7 am, I bought Genie+ instead. I was able to stack 3 LL reservations for the end of the day, killing time doing shows and eating until then. We did SDD at early entry and once again, 70 minutes at rope drop just like Remy! We never did get on Rise because it was down four times that day (April 12) and standby never dropped below 3 hours! But the boys did build lightsabers at Savi’s and that was so cool!
True to your advice, Animal Kingdom was the park we didn’t need Genie+ at and just made the best of the long lines since there are not that many rides there. Funny side story is I made our park reservation at this park for the last day of our trip (April 15) in hopes that Expedition Everest would reopen after its refurbishment in time. And . . . it reopened the following day!
That happened with Spyglass Grill too. We left the Caribbean Beach on April 13 to split our week between that resort and Port Orleans Riverside and the Spyglass Grill reopened the day after we left!
We loved our stays at both resorts! We got building #46 in Jamaica at the Caribbean Beach, which was so convenient to both the skyliner and a bus stop. And Sebastian’s Bistro was one of our top two meals of our trip, along with Homecomin’ at Disney Springs! I also asked at Riverside which bus stop got picked up first, and just a little more walking got us on the first bus both mornings without waiting.
Despite heavy crowds and not everything going according to plan, we had an awesome vacation thanks to your great advice! Thank you, Tom!
Were those the *actual* waits for Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure and SDD, or posted? If actual, yikes! That week was even worse than I thought!
Glad to hear your trip went well even with those heavy crowds–sounds like a fun one!
The actual wait times were about 10 minutes less than posted so 60 minutes at early entry for both Remy and SDD, so yes, it was pretty bad! After having our early entry plan foiled by rides being down at Magic Kingdom, we regular rope dropped Big Thunder for an actual wait time of 40 minutes! The thing that was the most surprising to me was how many rides kept having down time! Peter Pan, Space Mt, Splash Mt, Haunted Mansion, Rise, Midway Mania, Mickey and Minnie, Rockin Rollercoaster all had some down time that week. Is that normal?
Anyway, we still had a great week and mostly got to experience what we had hoped for.
Cheerleading Worlds was there the weekend of 4/20 to 4/23. That could have contributed to a large influx of people the days leading up to it (including my daughter’s family).
Lets be honest…The first three months will not be reflective to future attendence. Disney took a political stand which has angered many Disney Fans. This started at the end of March going into April. A time that most people had reservations but could not cancel. If you check social media, many people WILL NOT make reservations now. I won’t get political with this post but Disney was wrong in what they did. As a strong Disney fan of 60 years and the president of one the Chapters of the National Disneyana Fan Clubs; I don’t approve of what they did and see why so many people will drop their Disney Vacation Plans.
Tom said that the first 3 months of the year were busier than normal. And April was crazy. It just dropped a bit near the middle end. Maybe political motivated, but doesn’t seem to have dropped that much. Very interesting regardless. . I don’t really pay much mind to what Disney does/says politically myself. I find them funny. They are always so reactionary one way or another. Never a thoughtful approach.
I was there the first week in April. Hollywood Studios was so overcrowded, we did use the genie and lighting lane. We were there when the park open. The lines were ridiculous, 2 rides all day ! At 4 o’clock I said I am out of here. I am a DVC member ,I go once a year. I was so disappointed! What a waste of money. I am not planning to go back anytime soon.
We were in Florida from 8th – 22nd April (from the UK) and were pleasantly surprised with how we found our Disney days. We were actually impressed as how easy it felt to get on rides without the Genie+ and yes we did have to wait in line but found the lines were never as long as the predicted time. We even managed to get on Smugglers run which we thought was going to be impossible. We didn’t get on 7 dwarves but didn’t expect to either. We did big thunder a few times and the other rides/shows we like and never queued for more than 50 minutes (we have had to queue for longer on previous visits at Eastertime). When compared to our Universal day, Disney was a dream. Universal was packed, we could barely move (we had a wheelchair with us and passage was incredibly difficult at times). We did manage to ride the Hogwarts express between the Harry Potter worlds but the crowds were so busy we hardly stayed in either area. We did not manage to go on any other rides at universal but did manage to get some butterbeer after a 10 minute queue. Overall we enjoyed our Disney experience more than our Universal one, more so as Disney appeared to cater more effectively for wheelchair users (in my opinion).
Hey Tom, thank you for all your amazing work. We are going to be at Disney World 8/25-8/31. How are you feeling the crowds will be around then? We scheduled it hoping that the normal end of August wind-down would occur, but it’s so hard to tell. Between Tower of Terror refurb, Genie+ weirdness, and Halloween parties, it’s more complicated than ever. Thank you!
In a typical year, crowds would die down the week before your trip. As for whether that happens this year, it in part depends on if/when Annual Passes return. If it’s right around then, there might be a slight spike in crowds.
Still should be below average. Great time to visit so long as the weather cooperates.
We were at MK on 4/20 and actually had a great day thanks to your Genie strategies! We managed the whole day without waiting in line for more than 10 minutes, and we only skipped three significant rides (seven dwarves, splash mountain, and Peter pan, none of which were make or break for us). We also rode space mountain twice (once during early entry and once with genie), caught the parade, did lunch at Cinderellas table, met Rapunzel and Tiana, saw the fireworks, and went back to the hotel for a nap (we could have gotten a splash mountain genie if we skipped the nap, but the kids were wilting!) Now that I’m typing it out it’s unbelievable! It’s really all thanks to the strategies I developed reading here; I couldn’t believe all the people who were making rookie mistakes — at 7:15 am I chatted with a woman on the bus who said she had done a lot of planning, then turned to her daughter to say that it was probably time to buy genie+ and start making their choices.
We actually had great experiences everywhere the week after easter – for HS we just went two half (more like 3/4) days instead of one whole and it worked really well.
As someone with a May 20-28 trip coming up who was watching the May park pass calendar closely in the leading months, I was watching the April calendar fill up for Spring break, and wanted to make sure to get May park passes while everything was still green, but also wanted to book dining reservations at 60 days out simultaneously. Then, I started seeing May days turn yellow, but it was only ever Epcot being sold out — my thought was for Guardians of the Galaxy previews. It seemed to me like those yellow days were spurring people to book park passes on those days earlier, because then those days would start selling out of other parks as well, even while all the other days remained green. At least, this is my hope, that our trip will be less busy than I was bracing for! I can’t really explain how by the day of, availability is fully grey, and yet the day ends up at a 6/10 instead of a 10/10 though.
Can we chat annual pass?! Do you have any predictions as to when AP sales may return? I let mine expire but the renewal link still works for me. Ideally, I’d rather wait and buy this summer so I’d have a full year from July vs from end of March, when mine expired. I know none of us know, but if you had to venture a guess – any idea when AP sales might resume??
https://www.disneytouristblog.com/when-will-disney-world-sell-annual-passes-again/
I haven’t updated that since March, but that’s because I don’t think there have been any material developments to change those predictions.
We were in WDW April 19-23 and really the only day we found higher than expected crowds was 4/20 at MK, ironically when you say that crowds dropped after that. We stayed until almost 1am but we arrived around 11am and still took a late day break so that helped us and we never ended up waiting longer than about 45 min so while there were a lot of people in the park that day, we were able to do all we wanted to and had no really crazy long waits. I will always take an insanely crowded WDW day over a day working 🙂
“I will always take an insanely crowded WDW day over a day working “
100%
True in the same way that “a rainy day at Walt Disney World is better than a sunny day at home” is true!
I’d be curious to know hotel occupancy rates during this shift. Locals don’t put the same demand on attraction wait times as tourists do, so this could be part of the puzzle. If a greater percentage of overall guests were locals in late April, park reservations would remain strong but wait times for the top attractions and hourly park attendance would drop.
Anecdotally, we’re starting to see improved resort availability. Better discounts also speak to this.
This is no substitute for actual occupancy numbers, but I don’t have any sources for those anymore.
I think Disney must be using the park pass inventory to manage crowd levels based off staffing now, instead of the other way around like we thought. (Ie instead of staffing according to how many passes are sold, they staff a certain level and then only sell as many passes as it can accommodate.) This can’t be the whole reason as it would seem all sold-out days should still be 10/10, but it does explain why weekends remain green for longer if they staff them up.
While your theory is certainly logical and plausible, I feel like this is more something unexpected or an error with Park Pass availability. While it seems like Disney would be keeping on top of that calendar, it wouldn’t be the first (or second, or third, or…) time they didn’t “rebalance” inventory to match park capacity.
WOW! I just love that shot of Slinky dog. AMAZING photo. This got me to thinking how so often we read the articles, see the accompanying pictures but rarely comment on them or appreciate their significance. Yet the photos play an intricate role in the story as they are usually apropos to what you’ve written underneath them and sometimes the photo itself is a funny visual statement. Every once in a blue moon there is a comment about your excellent photographic skill so consider today a full moon.
There’s actually an amusing (?) story to go along with that photo. I shot it with a technique called panning, which is essentially what it sounds like–panning the camera at the same speed as a moving object so it’s sharp while the background is blurred.
Even if you’re good at it, a lot of trial and error is required. So there I was, standing near the PhotoPass Cast Member in that area of Toy Story Land for SEVERAL passes of Slinky Dog Dash. After a while, I started receiving some photography tips because he (understandably) thought I just didn’t know how to take photos at night. I thanked him for the advice and went on my way once I captured this.
So do you think May 4-9 will be okay? We were there 12/28-1/13, then again in March 11-22. March seemed so much more crowded feeling than Christmas/New Year to me. It looks like it’s going to be nice but HOT May 4-9 so I’m hoping for a bit lighter crowd. What do you think? You said you don’t think it will be like spring break, so that means bearable right? Even if it is busy.
If I had to guess, I would now expect May 4-9 to be more comparable to mid-January than March. (If that helps.)
That’s when going entirely on past precedent and historical attendance in May, and just ignoring the Park Pass calendar.
Thanks! I mean it’s better to be in a hot busy Disney than at home any day. 🙂
I would just love one of those dream walk on days I hear about. We are planning on coming August 16-31 so hoping that might be when we get that, minus any park closing storms.
Our first trip ever in April 2018 we did get to ride Small World about 20 times in a row (just staying on) and we’re the only 2 on there. Me and my 7 year old daughter. It was her dream come true. I think I may have been having major hallucinations by the end, but it was an experience, that’s for sure. Ha ha!!
We went 4/19-4/27. I expected crowds to be so much worse. I have only visited during Sept/Oct. I found crowds very manageable and genie plus good overall. We have a new love for Uber but when we did use Disney transportation we had zero issues.
Disney transportation has improved so much since last spring. Part of it is increasing capacity (eliminating physical distancing), but they’ve also seemingly addressed some of the bus driver shortages, too.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised. Of the resort stays we’ve done this year, pretty much the only issue was at Coronado Springs.
We were there from 4/16-4/22. We’ve never gone during a holiday week, and I thought it was pretty rough, but manageable. Crowds did seem a little lower those last couple of days, but I’m not expert. We were at Magic Kingdom on 4/20 and yes, it was definitely busy. We beat the crowds that day by taking a mid-day break and coming back for extended evening hours, which was wonderful.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
I’m really curious why that Wednesday spiked (seemingly at random) and then crowds fell from there. I’m sure there’s some explanation, but for the life of me, I can’t figure it out.
In addition to being a holiday week, April 18-22 was also a school break for some northern schools and it was ridiculously expensive to get out of town the preceding weekend. I wonder if a lot of travelers had to travel either outbound or inbound mid-week and that caused a bump for Wednesday. Plus locals who were waiting for the holiday to pass. Just a guess.
Most Christian schools were on Easter break during this week.