My Way of Using Winter Weather to Beat Big Crowds at Magic Kingdom
Walt Disney World’s weather is wild. That’s true year-round, but especially in winter when there can be 30-40° swings in temperatures from the daily highs to lows. This photo report shares my near-freezing day in Magic Kingdom–covering what I accomplished, and (most importantly) actionable advice for beating the crowds on cold days and nights in WDW.
Winter is my favorite time of year at Walt Disney World. Probably an unpopular opinion among snowbirds who escape the freezing temperatures and winter weather of the Midwest and Northeast, fleeing to Florida for sunshine and warmth. But I far prefer the coldest days of the year (all 13 of them!) in Orlando to the hottest ones (all 43 weeks of them!).
Don’t get me wrong, I love sunshine and warm weather…but I’m just not equipped for those days with 90+ degree heat and triple-digit feels like temperatures. Last summer was just brutal–I’ll happily take the cold over that. When temperatures drop, you can always add layers to stay comfortable. On the oppressively hot and humid days, there’s only so much you can take off before security gets involved.
There are also a lot of misconceptions about how the weather impacts crowds at Walt Disney World. This is worth mentioning because we regularly hear comments from readers who are surprised by this. Contrary to popular misconception, rain usually does not clear out crowds unless it’s an absolute deluge lasting hours.
High heat also has minimal impact on crowd levels. Anecdotally, I think it does make guests grumpier and more meltdown-prone, but they play through the pain. (Seriously, there’s a noticeably better ‘vibe’ at Walt Disney World from November through March than during the summer months.) About the only thing you’ll notice when it’s really hot is that nighttime crowds increase as more people take midday breaks and more locals come out after dark.
Hot and rainy weather have minimal impact on crowds because both of those things are pretty much par for the course with Florida weather–if Walt Disney World wasn’t busy when it’s rainy or hot, the parks would be uncrowded half the time! To the contrary, tourists and locals alike prepare for these types of weather so it doesn’t send them heading for the exits. No one is forgetting their shorts for summer in Florida; if they do make the mistake of not bringing ponchos or umbrellas, they can easily purchase those in the parks.
What does make a difference is cold weather. More importantly, a wider range of temperatures or “surprise” lows. If the daytime high is in the upper 70s or low 80s but the nighttime low is in the 40s, that is the sweet spot. Bonus points if there’s a bit of precipitation, or better yet, wind, thrown into the mix. It also helps if these lows occur suddenly, during timeframes when lows are otherwise in the 60s.
Pretty much everyone looks at the weather forecast for Central Florida while packing. If planners see current temperatures in the 60s to 80s, they plan for that. Moreover, most people will dress for whatever season it is when they head out the door in the morning. So if it’s in the high 70s or low 80s, that’s shorts and t-shirt weather.
Anyone who has spent a good amount of time in Orlando during the winter can tell you that there’s a massive difference between a sunny 80° day and nights when temperatures are in the 50s or lower. Even on paper, that 30 degree swing is significant, but it’s absolutely massive once you account for the divergence in “feels like” temperatures.
We’ve been warning about this for years, and I’m not too proud to admit that this advice comes courtesy of lessons I’ve learned the hard way. As a native Michigander who grew up in the belt that got hit hard by the “Lake Effect Snow Machine,” I assumed no Florida weather could faze me. Then came a fateful trip in December 2010, with lows in the upper 30s. I haven’t made the mistake of underestimating Florida weather since. (That’s not entirely true–I’m a slow learner–but I’ve mostly not made the mistake of underestimating Florida weather since.)
Point being, even if you’re from the Midwest or Northeast and are used to cold weather, you shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming you’ll be fine–that Florida (of all places) can’t dish out winter weather. Your body will become acclimated to those 70-degree Florida daytime temperatures pretty quickly, making double-digit temperature drop once the sun goes down feel even more pronounced.
More importantly, Florida cold is far worse due to the humidity. I can’t reiterate this enough. The “feels like” of even 50º weather in Walt Disney World is significantly worse than at home. Florida’s humidity makes even semi-cold weather far less comfortable. I may not be a meteorologist, but trust me on this–it’s science.
Most people won’t be prepared for a dramatic drop when the sun goes down. At that point, their options are to bear the cold weather in whatever they’re wearing, head home, or buy warmer clothing. There’s a reason racks of sweatshirts roll out to every gift shop when the temperatures drop–but at $60 a pop, buying your way out of the cold is a pricey proposition.
People start dropping like flies. An hour or so after sunset, Magic Kingdom can clear out on days that are abnormally frigid. We’ve had late nights when the park is a ghost town, as the cold weather drives a lot of guests away. The parks clear out in a way that just doesn’t happen in other extreme weather, short of a veritable monsoon or hurricane scare.
On busy days between November and February, the best way to ‘forecast’ a lower crowd level in the evening at Magic Kingdom is taking the difference between the day’s high and low temperatures. The bigger the spread, the more likely crowds will be lower. That’s a better predictor than day of week trends, crowd calendars, or anything else.
To illustrate, I want to share my recent experience in Magic Kingdom on a night in January when temperatures dropped into the 40s. Daytime was pretty uneventful. Both because the park was pretty busy and because I wasn’t focused on efficiently. Most of my day was spent saying goodbye to Country Bear Jamboree (on loop), plus the Peoplemover and Carousel of Progress. I did that trio of attractions over a dozen times–probably no need to walk you through that.
Instead, let’s pick up when things actually get interesting–my near-freezing night in MK immediately after Happily Ever After, which was shown at 8pm. That left a little over 2.5 hours on the clock in Magic Kingdom, as the park closed at 11pm.
My first instinct was to knock out Peter Pan’s Flight, as it is possible to beat the crowd to that if you’re fast after the fireworks.
Unfortunately, I was not. The Lightning Lane overflow queue was already in use, so I had a pretty good idea that the 55 minute (not 5 minute, the photo deceives) wait was too close to accuracy for comfort.
If you watch the fireworks from Fantasyland, Peter Pan’s Flight is a great first stop after that on a night like this. Otherwise, wait until the final 30 minutes or so.
I did Haunted Mansion instead, which was a posted 20 minute wait time and actually a walk-on.
Now that I’ve finally had a chance to see Hatbox Ghost in person, I can’t say that I like it. I get why other fans are excited about this–it’s new and who doesn’t love new things?! Also, Hatbox Ghost is just flat-out cool. The gnarly cane, the enormous top hat, the rib cage showing through his trench coat for some reason, the nice box for conveniently storing his own head. Women want him, men want to be him.
Setting aside his enviable looks and accessories, Hatbox Ghost just feels too shoehorned into this spot and doesn’t flow with the rest of Haunted Mansion. To each their own, but I hope the work is eventually done to move this AA to the attic, where he belongs.
Speaking of spirits, Frontierland was a ghost town.
I’m honestly a bit surprised they haven’t been running Country Bear Jamboree from park opening until closing. The stage show was playing to (literally) full houses every single time I did it, to the point that looping sometimes wasn’t even possible.
I know it won’t happen, but I’d love if Imagineering changed the show to be Disney songs during the day and Country Bears ‘After Dark’ at night. Sorta like how Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along rotates with Impressions de France. Have the bears sing Toy Story songs or whatever until 8pm, but let them do the grown-up routine featuring violence, humor, horniness, and other hijinks in the evening hours!
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was posting a 20 minute wait time at this point, but was more like 10 or so. I don’t recall the exact number, but it was not a walk-on.
I was actually slightly surprised by this. It’s an outdoor roller coaster, meaning that 44° temperature feels even colder. Regardless, the line moved quickly–far better than the 85 minute wait time it hit at one point earlier in the day. (That also helps explain why it still wasn’t a walk-on at this hour.)
Pirates of the Caribbean was posting a 5 minute wait time, which was more or less accurate in the sense that it takes that long to walk through the empty queue.
Riding this so soon after Haunted Mansion, I couldn’t help but compare the Jack Sparrow and Hatbox Ghost AAs. I remember when Captain Jack was first added to Pirates of the Caribbean–it was a huge deal. There was even mainstream marketing along the lines of, ‘first the ride inspired the movie, now the movie inspires the ride!‘
I was one of the Walt Disney World fans who was excited for this, and I still think the AAs are pretty cool. However, I also have to admit that the luster has worn off, and I now think that Captain Jack feels shoehorned in, and the ride would probably be better off without him. Either way, it’s not a huge deal to me–I just think it’s an interesting parallel. Already, other stuff from the film franchise has been removed from Pirates of the Caribbean. I assume the same will happen with Jack Sparrow, eventually.
Jungle Cruise was next up, posting a 10 minute wait with an actual wait of 0 minutes.
This was actually one of a few walk-on attractions where I actually passed people in the Lightning Lane. Late at night, this actually isn’t uncommon–it often takes people longer to scan into the Lightning Lane than it does to walk through an empty standby line. It makes me wonder why they don’t just close the Lightning Lane at some point since it adds zero value? Probably because the perception of value is important, and/or because the standby line could suddenly get longer at which point the Lightning Lane would have some nominal value.
Since I didn’t go into this night thinking this would be a post topic, I stopped to screw around and take photos in Frontierland and the Central Plaza. I also did the PeopleMover twice towards the end of the night to get off my feet.
The biggest blunder I made was completely forgetting to grab a spot in the TRON Lightcycle Run virtual queue. I’ve mentioned this before, but I always gamble on joining the virtual queue now. Always the 1pm entry, and never right at 1:00:00pm on the dot. I’ll usually wait until at least 1:05pm, at which point I’m often in a boarding group that gets called after the fireworks. If I wait until the end of my window, I’m among the last groups.
That would’ve been a fantastic strategy on this night, as there appeared to be virtually no physical line for the virtual queue. As with the rest of the park, I’m guessing that the cold weather cleared people out and people bailed on their spots in the VQ. Earlier in the day, the return line had a long overflow area, so the difference in actual waits between day and night would’ve been pretty significant.
Space Mountain was my second-to-last ride of the night, with a posted wait time of 20 minutes and an actual wait time of less than 10.
This was actually the shortest I had seen Space Mountain in a while. There have been several times I’ve done it recently at the beginning or end of the day when the actual wait slightly exceeds the posted one. Plus, it’s indoors and this was a cold night–I was bracing myself for a 20-25 minute wait.
I debated doing Peter Pan’s Flight next, but I wasn’t confident I’d be done before park closing. Instead, I stopped for more photos before jumping in line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train at 10:58pm.
Above is the end of the queue behind me. I was actually surprised at how many people were in front of me–much “worse” (mild air quotes) than I was expecting given the lack of lines elsewhere.
Posted wait time was 55 minutes, my actual wait was just under 20 minutes.
Obviously, that’s not bad (at all) for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. Just for perspective, though, I’ve had waits as short as 7 minutes at the end of the night. Not that I minded–one way or another, I have to kill time before the park clears out for photos. It’s either waiting Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, eating corn dog nuggets, or browsing the Emporium for stuff I don’t actually want.
On the plus side, between the cold weather and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train taking slightly longer than normal, the park had really cleared out by the time I was off the ride.
Fantasyland was quickly emptying, and the Central Plaza was uncrowded once I got up there. On a normal day, these areas can still be packed 30 minutes or more after closing. That’s especially true if it’s a warmer day or Magic Kingdom closes at 10pm or earlier.
Here are some more photos from my near-freezing night in Magic Kingdom:
Ultimately, it was a productive night in Magic Kingdom. By the time I left the park at 12:15am, the temperature had dropped to 42° with a feels like of 38° (there was even a wind chill advisory issued for Orange County). That’s not even close to the coldest I’ve ever been at Walt Disney World, but it was frigid enough to clear out Main Street in a hurry.
Amusingly, there were almost as many PhotoPass photographers on Main Street as guests at one point–presumably because they didn’t have the ‘all-clear’ to leave yet from a manager. I got this shot to commemorate the occasion:
The moral of the story is that, between the end of the night and Early Entry/rope drop, you can knock out every high-profile ride in Magic Kingdom as a walk-on, even on a busy day with 7/10 to 9/10 crowds. That leaves the middle of the day for stage shows, snacking, or even accomplishing more attractions efficiently via Lightning Lanes, if you so desire.
All in all, a very satisfying day at Walt Disney World despite cold weather and winter attendance pretty far from off-season lows. Hopefully this demonstrates to you how it’s possible to have a great experience and use the weather to your advantage in order to beat higher daytime waits!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you done a freezing evening at Magic Kingdom? Were you able to accomplish a lot after the sun went down and temperatures plummeted? If you’ve done cold weather at Walt Disney World in the past, what are your recommendations? Do you agree or disagree with our advice? 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!
Hello, thanks for all your tips. I am going to be in Disney next week after a couple of days at Universal split trip. We have a convention ticket that starts at 5 PM in the Magic Kingdom next Wednesday when they have the late hours what would you suggest we do in terms of just the 5 pm -11pm? … when we arrive at Park at 5 PM we should be ready at 6 PM to try to get in the Tron virtual queue? We are a group of six and the other suggestions for making most of shorter day?
Just around the turn of the century, I made several post-Thanksgiving trips to WDW. There is nothing like the wind whipping off the World Showcase Lagoon to make a even a sparse crowd sparser.
A lot of people add a beanie to the mix. During the cold snaps into the 40’s a good sweatshirt under a light to medium winter jacket is good.
Do you know if there’s any actual policy or tradition at Walt Disney World to cause attractions to break down at the end of their last days of operation? According to social media, that happened with Country Bear Jamboree, and I believe it also did with the original Star Tours and Ellen’s Energy Adventure. Maybe it’s a coincidence, possibly caused by Disney not bothering to do routine maintenance on an attraction it knows is going to be gone soon anyway, but it’s starting to look like a pattern to me. I could see the logic: having the attraction “break down” at the end of its lifetime maybe makes it easier for fans to accept that it’s gone for good, instead of just having cast members tell everyone that the attraction is closed and no one’s allowed to go through it anymore ever again. Otherwise I’d bet you’d get a lot of guests begging the cast members for “just one more time.”
I think you’re overthinking it.
Walt Disney World stops doing routine maintenance (so you’re right about that) on attractions slated for replacement, which in turn increases the likelihood of breakdowns. I’ve encountered exactly this type of thing towards the end of Splash Mountain, CBJ, and Energy–on visits weeks or months before the final day.
I don’t think it moves the needle one way or another on fans “accepting” the change, and I also honestly don’t think Disney cares enough to do something conspiratorial. The simplest explanation is the best one.
A bit unrelated but … is that a Whalers hat?!
Yes it is!
Thank you for bringing up a delightful memory. In the early 90s (I was in middle school and my sisters were in elementary school), my parents did something they swore that they would never do: take us out of school to go to Disney World. I remember it was February, and the first day was delightful, and then the next few days were so cold (or at least felt so cold to us Texans). The parks were virtual ghost towns, and I remember being on a boat at the Swan dock (where we stayed) where a newbie was being trained on how to drive the boats. It took him several tries to successfully dock, and being on the water in the breeze made us feel like we were in Norway not Florida! I remember watching Captain EO not to cool off but to warm up! We went on Space Mountain what felt like 10 times in a row with no wait one evening. We brought the jackets that we had, but we literally didn’t own gloves or hats or scarves, so our souvenirs were gloves and hats and scarves that I remember costing a lot. But it turns out they were pretty high quality! When I took my then 3 year old daughter to WDW for the first time ever some 25 years later, it happened to be December, and I decked her out in that gear that I had kept.
That’s an awesome story!
If you ever want to relive that feeling from the Swan boat dock, stay at Wilderness Lodge during the winter and take the boat back late at night or early in the morning. I know exactly what you mean, as I’ve had very similar experiences doing exactly that.
“violence, humor, horniness, and other hijinks” just catapulted this blog into a new era and I am here for it.
I mean, who among us isn’t visiting Magic Kingdom to hear the delightful melodies of horny bears?!
At least I’m being honest about it!
Random question, but do the cast members ever recognize you or know you? Like, the guy with the camera and big back pack running around taking photos – especially at the end of the night?
I’ve wondered this for years. Always imagined Tom has to be some kind of minor celebrity there by now.
It used to happen more with Cast Members, but since 2020 there has been a lot of turnover and now there are a lot more non-fans and College Program kids. That demo is mostly on social media…and we largely are not.
Before we had the blog and were still living in Indianapolis (so like 2008-2010), there was a Main Street manager who recognized us. Even though we’d go a couple months between visits, we ‘closed down’ Magic Kingdom enough when we were there that I guess we were memorable to her. That was really cool for us!
Now, we mostly try to stay out of the way and go unnoticed by Cast Members. There’s a lot of understandable animosity towards bloggers/vloggers/influencers because “we” (not the two of us, but categorically) can sometimes make their jobs more difficult by spreading misinformation or entitled attitudes.
Tom, What is your thoughts on the placement of the hatbox ghost at Disneyland?
It’s definitely better, and what I’d call “good enough.”
In an ideal world, I’d love to see the bride redone (the tech on that AA has aged poorly) and moved slightly earlier in the attack, and then Hatbox Ghost slightly later in the attic surrounded by hat boxes from her other victims.
man, some of those photos actually made me feel lonely as a country bear,.. so weird to see empty what is usually so full,.
Ah yes, the old myth that you can just add more layers to be comfortable… No way! Anything more than a long sleeve shirt and jacket is too bulky and sucks. You feel like Randy in A Christmas Story, can’t move your arms, etc. And oh yeah, the humidity factor is huge when it turns cold! I recall working at 20K in winter, wearing a wool pea coat. 22 years later and I still wear it to work sometimes when it’s cold, with that awesome Magic Kingdom patch on it. Here in San Antonio, the humidity does the same thing when temps drop and it really puts a chill in the air.
But I agree, when it turns chilly a lot of the pansies, I mean less hardy, folks leave. We’ve seen the same with rain unless it’s mega-super-Florida summer hot. They clog the bathrooms, the stores, and block entry/exit points to all buildings with no consideration for anyone else. And many of the rats scurry off to their rooms, leaving a much less crowded park for us to enjoy. You know what I always say about WDW, the less crowds, the merrier!
As for the AA, I did not, do not and never will like the addition of Sparrow to Pirates. It looks totally forced and out of place. I can’t wait for the day when it is removed. Saw the hot box ghost in December and it was cool but I agree, seems out of place there and fits better int eh attic or graveyard scenes.
All you need is a good goose down coat–doesn’t even have to be thick, some of the thin ones are fantastic–and a wind-stopping layer (ideally GORE-TEX) and you should be good! The real myth is that thicker layers are necessarily better, but that isn’t always the case. Awesome that you still have your 20K coat. Just be careful posting about that–the Mouse might still want it back all these years later! 😉
Some purists were definitely against Jack Sparrow in PotC at the time, but I remember seeing a fan poll and like 95% were in favor of it. That’s an insane number–how often do more than like 70% of Disney fans agree on anything. Well, at least, anything that’s good?! Those movies were quite the cultural phenomenon at the time, so I totally get why they added the AAs, even if they were a bit shoehorned. Had they not, I’m betting there would’ve been complaints from first-timers that he wasn’t there.
I suspect they’ll remove Captain Jack at some point in the next decade now that the film franchise isn’t big, but they might want to pause on that for now. Johnny Depp is part of some weird culture war (I don’t even understand it…and am completely fine with that), and removing him might cause some people to think that’s Disney making a “statement” (even if it really was just undoing something that has outlived its relevance).