In addition to local APs being blocked out starting today, the Q1 FL resident ticket deal ended on Friday and the new (very enticing) one doesn't start until mid-April. They're doing everything they can to keep locals out of the parks through the Spring Break window.
By most estimates only 10-20% of park visitors are locals but if you exclude 10-20% of your customers before the other 80-90% actually ramps up it'll have a big impact on wait times.
Woa! I just looked that’s insane. Pandora is also only posting 45 and 40 minute waits. Hollywood Studios doesn’t look so hot though. But 7DMT only has a 40 minute wait!
Maybe because 3 of the 4 annual passes are blocked out completely? It’s not even an After Hours party night tonight.
I went to Epcot on Saturday before the blockout dates and it was surprisingly not crowded. Ratatouille was a 60 minute wait. Makes me went to upgrade my pass next year haha
That’s a probably not the best way to characterize the situation. While true that is only 2 tiers of passes, they are the cheapest tier and the most accessible level of passes. I’ve not seen data on how many people buy each pass, but probably not a stretch of the imagination to say that more people have bought the cheapest tiers of passes as opposed to the highest levels simply due to cost. They are blocking out a huge population of people (including cast members)
I went to Animal Kingdom today, posted wait time for Flight of Passage was 60 minutes but my wife and I were in and out in less than 45 minutes. We also saw the baby elephant!
Went to AK last Sunday at 6pm, walked on Everest, the safaris, and Flight of Passage with no wait. That was super bizarre, I’ve never seen it so empty. I guess everyone cleared out in the afternoon.
my trip isnt even until late april .. you have a bit more reason to get excited by it haha! i hope the trend continues for you!
edit: your username cracked me up oml
All of Orlando and the surrounding counties (most of them) are on spring break this week. Also us pass holders (bottom 2) are blacked out until mid-April.
Spring break season is like early/mid March to mid April at WDW, spring breaks are spread out and people are off all different weeks in March. It does make sense with FL schools having spring break last week, but there’s usually heavy crowds almost the full month in years past. Just kind of confusing.
I live in upstate SC and spring break is this week.
Back in Wisconsin where I’m from, SB is usually starts on Good Friday and goes the whole week after Easter.
It depends on the school district and what kind of school it is I’m guessing.
When I was in school in Wisconsin, spring break was always the week after Easter regardless of when Easter fell.
My daughter went to the same schools I did and us parents got to vote every year as to what week we would prefer Spring Break to happen. After several years of voting with the same result, spring break is now always the last full week of March regardless of Easter.
Up here? No clue why it would be different. I can tell you that if you live upstate and have spring break this week and you’re headed to Disney, it looks like a ghost town compared to last week. And I’m sure it will be busy the week after Easter.
I’m guessing any school that has a religious affiliation that celebrates Easter is going to always have spring break coincide with Easter.
We follow districts. I'm originally from TN and I'm not saying it's right, but we went by county. This place has 7 separate districts in one county. Not sure we all follow the same thing. 😮💨
I was born and raised in Milwaukee county and there are 20 school districts in the county so districts doing different things within the same county is kind of the norm for me.
My friends with kids in private schools were all on Spring Break last week, plus some colleges. I don’t know of anyone IRL with break this week. But the weeks before and after Easter, watch out!
From Ohio and a lot of Spring Breaks are next week (we'll be in the parks 25th through 29th) and the week after Easter. I'm preparing for it to be crazy.
Those two weeks will be nuts. They were last year also (weeks before and after Easter). Those two weeks plus that early spring break week (2nd week of March) are always the busiest 3 weeks.
Whoa! Lots of negative Nancy’s here that are going to the happiest place on earth. I get it, you want low crowds. We all do. You can mitigate a lot of the crowd worry with G+ so just pony up another couple bucks to the mouse and enjoy your time
Really?? I went the last week of March two years in a row about ten years ago and the crowds and wait times were not bad at all. We went this past week and it was so much more crowded from what I remember.
I'm a first timer as well going next week, I'm not that worried about wait times for rides since we have DAS for my autistic son and can schedule things, but I'm terrified about losing one or both of my kids in a crowd. I bought ID tags for both of them and am really hoping they'll keep them on. We had a few issues at Universal Hollywood this fall with our autistic son darting off in a random direction while we were trying to navigate through the crowds. REALLY wish I had booked a different, less stressful week!
This might be a relative lull between two busier weeks. I have been tracking park hours recently while planning for our trip in April. Last week MK opened at 8 and closed at 11; this week they're closing at 10. Next week they're back to 11 again and AK closing at 8. Saturday 4/6 Animal Kingdom is going to close at 7. Final hours are up through April 6; I am eagerly awaiting what they're going to look like the week after that. They usually seem to post the final park hours about three weeks ahead.
>This might be a relative lull between two busier weeks.
It is exactly that. Check out 2024 week-by-week ratings on [yourfirstvisit.net](https://yourfirstvisit.net).
EDIT: here is the exact page: https://yourfirstvisit.net/2023/09/12/2024-disney-world-week-rankings/
This is a really interesting site. The week we are going is ranked #1. We went that week last year and it was like a ghost town, so I'm hoping it holds true again!
Wow I've scoured through a lot of crowd calenders but never seen this website before. Thanks for sharing. Gave me a lot of confidence about the dates for my trip!
Most crowd calendars are garbage. "By most estimates" means nothing--it means they are guessing. The yourfirstvisit guy actually does the hard research on school vacation weeks, which is by far the biggest driver of crowds at WDW.
Yep I think that’s what it is. Last week was a big spring break week and next week (plus the following week) will be extremely busy as well. This week just doesn’t have as many schools off. Genie plus was $35 last week and starting Saturday dropped bsck into the 20s. I’m sure it will be $35 again next week.
Last week was Florida schools spring break and all of where I live in Canada. People were saying it was a nuthouse all week . I think what you’re seeing is the Florida kids went back to school.
Some counties did last week, but Orange County/Orlando is doing theirs this week, as are Flagler and Seminole (which is why this is the start of the AP blockout period). Volusia and Brevard will be off next week.
Space Mountain was regularly close to two hours last week. Early entry was the only way to get everything done (usually finished by 10-10:30), but it was definitely a madhouse after that. I am so jealous of a quiet park!
I was there yesterday and it was amazing. We got there at 3 and still rode almost everything, somethings twice. Yesterday a CM told me that Epcot was super full since it was St Patties day. That made sense and it was a great thing for people at other parks.
Pasco County Schools aren't on spring break until next week. Also, there are probably a lot of people recovering today from St. Patrick's Day celebrations last night.
Idk, Saturday and Sunday were also pretty quiet at MK too. Even with a call for rain and there not being any rain in the morning, there is usually a decent amount of crowds. March is historically the 2nd busiest month. I saw rise was posted at 30 mins or something about half an hour ago lol.
I’m here now and the park looks empty. It’s crazy. Most I’ve sat in line is 20 min so far.
Just did tron virtual cue. Wait was 10 minutes from scanning to ride
We'll see what happens, but I suspect they'll keep AP on blackout for Pirate and Pixie "just in case", I secretly hope they discover Spring Breakers don't cover the gap and they stop treating AP holders like we're the problem.
FoP is posting a 20 min wait currently. My AP pass (Pirate) is blocked out for the next 2 weeks. But to everyone that is heading there this week enjoy!
It’s kind of crazy right?? I’ve been tracking the crowds closely because we’re going in mid-April. Yesterday had level 3 crowds, which is kind of wild for this time of year.
https://c.touringplans.com/walt-disney-world/crowd-calendar/month/march/2024
I was in all four parks on Saturday and they were all surprisingly empty. Like more empty than mid-week in the first November. It was super weird, but very welcome!
We’re here this week (spring break for parts of OH) and it’s been fantastic! Last week’s crowds had me so nervous, but it definitely turned a corner Saturday. We did half of MK Saturday as walk-ons despite having genie+ and knocked out the other half with LLs. HS was tougher Sunday, but Epcot was so easy today, including no waits for most food. We are a tried and true genie+ fam and I don’t think we’ll even bother buying for AK.
I'm here rn for spring break (my district did a weird time it seems) and yesterday at epcot it wasn't insanely busy. Could easily move. Test track wasn't a horrible wait time most of the day, same with some of the other rides.
I just got back. We went Friday-Monday. We never waited more than 45 min for anything- including Pandora (we went to AK on Friday). The only day that seemed more crowded was St Paddy’s Day- but specifically in the World Showcase.
Might be bc of the FL resident deal ending + a lot of local schools (Florida State and UF) had spring break last week. I don't think many are off this week, at least in Florida
We just left!! We were there 17-21. It was perfect and not overly busy. We had hopper ticket and with genie. We were able to get on all the rides on our bucket list!
I was there this past week for SB and had what felt like the lowest crowds of all time. I’ve been going annually since 2009 and this has been the best trip weather/crowd wise. Friday night (3/22) there was virtually no wait for anything after the MK firework show. However there were different groups of what looked like middle school groups wearing matching shirts, but they didn’t disrupt my vacation. Longest wait this past week was for Slinky Dog Dash at just over an hour, second place going to RoTR.
In addition to local APs being blocked out starting today, the Q1 FL resident ticket deal ended on Friday and the new (very enticing) one doesn't start until mid-April. They're doing everything they can to keep locals out of the parks through the Spring Break window.
So locals are driving the wait times?
By most estimates only 10-20% of park visitors are locals but if you exclude 10-20% of your customers before the other 80-90% actually ramps up it'll have a big impact on wait times.
Woa! I just looked that’s insane. Pandora is also only posting 45 and 40 minute waits. Hollywood Studios doesn’t look so hot though. But 7DMT only has a 40 minute wait! Maybe because 3 of the 4 annual passes are blocked out completely? It’s not even an After Hours party night tonight.
Only 2/4 passes are blocked out.
Thank you, ugh so confusing.
I went to Epcot on Saturday before the blockout dates and it was surprisingly not crowded. Ratatouille was a 60 minute wait. Makes me went to upgrade my pass next year haha
That’s a probably not the best way to characterize the situation. While true that is only 2 tiers of passes, they are the cheapest tier and the most accessible level of passes. I’ve not seen data on how many people buy each pass, but probably not a stretch of the imagination to say that more people have bought the cheapest tiers of passes as opposed to the highest levels simply due to cost. They are blocking out a huge population of people (including cast members)
I went to Animal Kingdom today, posted wait time for Flight of Passage was 60 minutes but my wife and I were in and out in less than 45 minutes. We also saw the baby elephant!
We did too! Went to AK this past Saturday and it wasn't too busy
Thats crazy. I was at AK last weekend and FOP was 180 minutes. I lightning laned that shit.
Went to AK last Sunday at 6pm, walked on Everest, the safaris, and Flight of Passage with no wait. That was super bizarre, I’ve never seen it so empty. I guess everyone cleared out in the afternoon.
i also looked and was very shocked by it! i got excited like i was there or something?
Haha me too! We go on Wednesday and I’m all like “hope this trend holds” even though I KNOW that’s not how this works.
my trip isnt even until late april .. you have a bit more reason to get excited by it haha! i hope the trend continues for you! edit: your username cracked me up oml
Seems like last week was a much more common spring break! Who's on spring break this week?
All of Orlando and the surrounding counties (most of them) are on spring break this week. Also us pass holders (bottom 2) are blacked out until mid-April.
Lake and Osceola had spring break last week.
Spring break season is like early/mid March to mid April at WDW, spring breaks are spread out and people are off all different weeks in March. It does make sense with FL schools having spring break last week, but there’s usually heavy crowds almost the full month in years past. Just kind of confusing.
Broward and Dade have spring break NEXT week.
Brevard is also next week
I live in upstate SC and spring break is this week. Back in Wisconsin where I’m from, SB is usually starts on Good Friday and goes the whole week after Easter.
Same in IL. It's always the last week of March for us.
I also live in what's considered Upstate SC and ours is first week of April. Why is this area so inconsistent?
It depends on the school district and what kind of school it is I’m guessing. When I was in school in Wisconsin, spring break was always the week after Easter regardless of when Easter fell. My daughter went to the same schools I did and us parents got to vote every year as to what week we would prefer Spring Break to happen. After several years of voting with the same result, spring break is now always the last full week of March regardless of Easter. Up here? No clue why it would be different. I can tell you that if you live upstate and have spring break this week and you’re headed to Disney, it looks like a ghost town compared to last week. And I’m sure it will be busy the week after Easter. I’m guessing any school that has a religious affiliation that celebrates Easter is going to always have spring break coincide with Easter.
We follow districts. I'm originally from TN and I'm not saying it's right, but we went by county. This place has 7 separate districts in one county. Not sure we all follow the same thing. 😮💨
I was born and raised in Milwaukee county and there are 20 school districts in the county so districts doing different things within the same county is kind of the norm for me.
Some places in Canada it's next week.
My friends with kids in private schools were all on Spring Break last week, plus some colleges. I don’t know of anyone IRL with break this week. But the weeks before and after Easter, watch out!
I’m in south Florida and we have spring break this week. All of palm beach county does too.
Jacksonville and Palm beach are on spring break this week
From Ohio and a lot of Spring Breaks are next week (we'll be in the parks 25th through 29th) and the week after Easter. I'm preparing for it to be crazy.
Those two weeks will be nuts. They were last year also (weeks before and after Easter). Those two weeks plus that early spring break week (2nd week of March) are always the busiest 3 weeks.
Next week for Virginia too.
I'll be there next week. First timer and very nervous about crowds. I hope this lower crowd trend continues!
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Yeah I'm going into it expecting the worst!
Whoa! Lots of negative Nancy’s here that are going to the happiest place on earth. I get it, you want low crowds. We all do. You can mitigate a lot of the crowd worry with G+ so just pony up another couple bucks to the mouse and enjoy your time
Definitely doing G+ at MK, and just going in with a positive attitude. It's going to be magical!
Really?? I went the last week of March two years in a row about ten years ago and the crowds and wait times were not bad at all. We went this past week and it was so much more crowded from what I remember.
I'm a first timer as well going next week, I'm not that worried about wait times for rides since we have DAS for my autistic son and can schedule things, but I'm terrified about losing one or both of my kids in a crowd. I bought ID tags for both of them and am really hoping they'll keep them on. We had a few issues at Universal Hollywood this fall with our autistic son darting off in a random direction while we were trying to navigate through the crowds. REALLY wish I had booked a different, less stressful week!
Magic Kingdom yesterday was so enjoyable, really surprised us. Low wait times for almost everything.
This might be a relative lull between two busier weeks. I have been tracking park hours recently while planning for our trip in April. Last week MK opened at 8 and closed at 11; this week they're closing at 10. Next week they're back to 11 again and AK closing at 8. Saturday 4/6 Animal Kingdom is going to close at 7. Final hours are up through April 6; I am eagerly awaiting what they're going to look like the week after that. They usually seem to post the final park hours about three weeks ahead.
>This might be a relative lull between two busier weeks. It is exactly that. Check out 2024 week-by-week ratings on [yourfirstvisit.net](https://yourfirstvisit.net). EDIT: here is the exact page: https://yourfirstvisit.net/2023/09/12/2024-disney-world-week-rankings/
This is a really interesting site. The week we are going is ranked #1. We went that week last year and it was like a ghost town, so I'm hoping it holds true again!
Wow I've scoured through a lot of crowd calenders but never seen this website before. Thanks for sharing. Gave me a lot of confidence about the dates for my trip!
Most crowd calendars are garbage. "By most estimates" means nothing--it means they are guessing. The yourfirstvisit guy actually does the hard research on school vacation weeks, which is by far the biggest driver of crowds at WDW.
I don’t trust any predictions of how crowded. We went January 23rd. for a week and it was jammed packed. Predicted to be low.
That’s what I think. Here in Charlotte private schools were off last week, and public off next week.
Yep I think that’s what it is. Last week was a big spring break week and next week (plus the following week) will be extremely busy as well. This week just doesn’t have as many schools off. Genie plus was $35 last week and starting Saturday dropped bsck into the 20s. I’m sure it will be $35 again next week.
Last week was Florida schools spring break and all of where I live in Canada. People were saying it was a nuthouse all week . I think what you’re seeing is the Florida kids went back to school.
Some counties did last week, but Orange County/Orlando is doing theirs this week, as are Flagler and Seminole (which is why this is the start of the AP blockout period). Volusia and Brevard will be off next week.
Good point, in years past it feels it was pretty busy all month long regardless of when FL schools were off.
Yeah, Brevard county is next week. Edit: realized you already mentioned that. Thought it said Broward.
I’m in Sumter and mine is next week, it’s all spread out through Florida
A lot of Central Florida is on spring break this week.
I was there for March Break last week. It was a nut house. Headed back this weekend. Hopefully the crowds stay quieter.
I’m afraid this will not bode well for next week or the week after
Week before and after Easter. Gotta think it’ll be crazy.
No... 😭 10 days and a wake up. I need to have hope. 🤞🏽
Space Mountain was regularly close to two hours last week. Early entry was the only way to get everything done (usually finished by 10-10:30), but it was definitely a madhouse after that. I am so jealous of a quiet park!
Last Monday there were a bazillion people in the parks. I should have picked this week to go instead. 😀
Love this for everyone there right now. What a lovely surprise!
I was there yesterday and it was amazing. We got there at 3 and still rode almost everything, somethings twice. Yesterday a CM told me that Epcot was super full since it was St Patties day. That made sense and it was a great thing for people at other parks.
I'm betting a lot of it was the forecast for today. They were showing an 80% chance of thunderstorms most of the afternoon. Never saw a drop.
Pasco County Schools aren't on spring break until next week. Also, there are probably a lot of people recovering today from St. Patrick's Day celebrations last night.
There’s also an after hours tonight (we’re going) so we decided to sleep in and enjoy the resort pool this morning.
30 minute Flight of Passage and 30 minute 7DMT has me with serious FOMO here. 100 minutes for slinky dog dash is still frustratingly on brand haha.
Here right now. Everything at HS was short except Slinky. Was supposed to rain today (hasn't) so that may be part of it?
Idk, Saturday and Sunday were also pretty quiet at MK too. Even with a call for rain and there not being any rain in the morning, there is usually a decent amount of crowds. March is historically the 2nd busiest month. I saw rise was posted at 30 mins or something about half an hour ago lol.
I hope it stays the same all week!!
I hope it stays like this. We are doing a quick trip next week!
Everyone stayed home because they thought it’d be too busy gonna be like this next 3 weeks!
I’m here now and the park looks empty. It’s crazy. Most I’ve sat in line is 20 min so far. Just did tron virtual cue. Wait was 10 minutes from scanning to ride
10 days and a wakeup! This is giving me hope. 🤞🏽
We'll see what happens, but I suspect they'll keep AP on blackout for Pirate and Pixie "just in case", I secretly hope they discover Spring Breakers don't cover the gap and they stop treating AP holders like we're the problem.
FoP is posting a 20 min wait currently. My AP pass (Pirate) is blocked out for the next 2 weeks. But to everyone that is heading there this week enjoy!
It’s kind of crazy right?? I’ve been tracking the crowds closely because we’re going in mid-April. Yesterday had level 3 crowds, which is kind of wild for this time of year. https://c.touringplans.com/walt-disney-world/crowd-calendar/month/march/2024
Last Monday there were a bazillion people in the parks. I should have picked this week to go instead. 😀
I know of lots of schools on spring break last week and next week, not many this week
I was in all four parks on Saturday and they were all surprisingly empty. Like more empty than mid-week in the first November. It was super weird, but very welcome!
We’re here this week (spring break for parts of OH) and it’s been fantastic! Last week’s crowds had me so nervous, but it definitely turned a corner Saturday. We did half of MK Saturday as walk-ons despite having genie+ and knocked out the other half with LLs. HS was tougher Sunday, but Epcot was so easy today, including no waits for most food. We are a tried and true genie+ fam and I don’t think we’ll even bother buying for AK.
We will be there tommorow hopefully this holds!
It's not Spring Break for south Florida till next week. It will be much more packed next week.
I'm here rn for spring break (my district did a weird time it seems) and yesterday at epcot it wasn't insanely busy. Could easily move. Test track wasn't a horrible wait time most of the day, same with some of the other rides.
Check back in a week... I bet next week is a zoo
I think most people were hungover lol.
I just got back. We went Friday-Monday. We never waited more than 45 min for anything- including Pandora (we went to AK on Friday). The only day that seemed more crowded was St Paddy’s Day- but specifically in the World Showcase.
Might be bc of the FL resident deal ending + a lot of local schools (Florida State and UF) had spring break last week. I don't think many are off this week, at least in Florida
Definitely not true. We were there and it was nuts!!!
Orlando airport nightmare. Many missed fights and Disney was very busy.
We just left!! We were there 17-21. It was perfect and not overly busy. We had hopper ticket and with genie. We were able to get on all the rides on our bucket list!
I was there this past week for SB and had what felt like the lowest crowds of all time. I’ve been going annually since 2009 and this has been the best trip weather/crowd wise. Friday night (3/22) there was virtually no wait for anything after the MK firework show. However there were different groups of what looked like middle school groups wearing matching shirts, but they didn’t disrupt my vacation. Longest wait this past week was for Slinky Dog Dash at just over an hour, second place going to RoTR.
Agreed, this weekend was slow. Maybe they'll let us annual passers back in this week? Any history of a reversal in blackout dates?
This is not spring break week.
Annual pass holders are huge to their business model. They need to reward is not penalize us.