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Disney Crowd Calendar for Every Month (Updated for 2020)

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Planning your trip to Disney World or Disneyland is a blast, but it can also be stressful. Are you an Annual Passholder at one of the parks going by yourself or with a friend? Or are you going for the very first time with your whole family? Either way, you’ll want to check a Disney crowd calendar to see how busy the parks will be during your visit.

There are many ways to do this. Books are a huge help, and websites can go even further by staying constantly updated.There are apps and websites, lists, and all sorts of great information packed into the web about Disney crowd calendars for Disney World; Disneyland; Euro Disney in Paris; Tokyo, Japan; and anywhere else Disney has a park or major attraction. There is a Disney tourist blog crowd calendar for everyone and everywhere.

What You’ll Find Here

What I’ve done is to bring all these great resources into one place. You don’t have to wade through Google trying to find the best and most accurate Disney crowd calendar. January or July, March or May, April or August, or any other month of the year. I’ve got you covered.

Find below a Frequently Asked Questions section here as well. This FAQ should help answer questions people have about Disney crowd calendars.

Check out the list below of Disney crowd calendar. Let me know if you still need help planning your trip. I’ve been to both Disney World and Disneyland, and I’m also an Annual Passholder at Disneyland.

I’ve been to the park here in Southern California virtually any time you could imagine going. I am more than happy to answer questions about seasonal trips and best times to go according to the Disney crowd calendar by park. Just email me or write below in the comments!

FAQ: Disney Crowd Calendars

What is a Disney crowd calendar?

A Disney crowd calendar is a guide to help you know when is best to visit the theme parks. They also allow you to know how crowded Walt Disney World or Disneyland is while you’re actually there.

How accurate are Disney crowd calendars?

In my experience, they are pretty accurate. There have been times I’ve been at Disneyland and wondered whether it was accurate. But it is hard to know the difference in person between 60% crowded and 75% crowded. So much depends on where you are in the parks. One line might be super long, while three others have hardly any wait at all.

Overall, I think that Disney crowd calendars are a great place to start. They enable you to get your bearings. They help you to know what to expect in general. My point is that you should definitely use them as a guide. Disney crowd levels vary significantly. Knowing this ahead of time can be magical for your visit.

Does Disneyland or Disney World have its own crowd calendar?

No, they do not. You can always check their room rates online, though. If room rates inflate, Disney likely expects it to be crowded. Use this as a rule of thumb, but it can prove quite accurate. There’s a reason those rates go up and down. It’s not just random luck.

Where do they get their information?

A lot of places, actually. Because Disney does not publish its own data on this, crowd calendars have to look elsewhere.

I mentioned one source above, room rates. These actually prove super helpful for predicting the crowd index at a given time.

Another resource is Disney’s event calendar. If there’s a lot going on (*ahem* Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge *ahem*), then it’s probably going to be packed. When there’s not a lot happening, though, it can be fairly empty by comparison.

One other helpful guide is school calendars. If kids are in school, the parks will have fewer people in them. The week of spring break, however, for Anaheim or Orlando, means high crowd levels. Disney crowd calendar builders know this and take it into account.

What months are best to visit Disneyland?

Before I get into the actual Disney crowd calendars, I want to offer my own two cents on when to go. This applies both in general to any given year, but also to 2020. Since I’m a Disneyland Annual Passholder, this only works for the parks in Anaheim, not Orlando, though they could be similar in some ways.

January: Usually not crowded. Wait until about mid-month, though, so that holiday vacationers have returned home.

February: Early in the month is often fine. Chinese New Year is a pretty big celebration at the park, though, so once this hits, expect bigger crowds.

March and April: Spring Break. Need I say more?

May: My birthday is in May (I was born on Star Wars Day!), so we go to Disneyland this month every year. Because some schools let out earlier than others, it can get pretty crowded. Star Wars Day is another big day for the parks. If you want to go in May but don’t care about Star Wars, stay away for the first week. May 4th (May the Fourth Be With You) is very crowded, but also very fun. They typically have limited edition content for the celebration too, such as special release shirts.

June, July, August: Seriously, don’t go. I know the summer is usually the easiest time for families to get time off. The problem is that’s true for every family. If there is any other time that you can go, I highly recommend it. Disneyland is not only packed this time of year, it’s also hot. Southern California gets incredibly high temperatures during the summer months. The hot weather combines with the crowded parks to create a rather unpleasant environment at times, even in the happiest place on earth.

September: This one is an in-between in my experience. Schools usually have started back up again. Summer vacations have ended. But the weather is still hot, and people want to visit before the holiday decorations get going in full swing for Halloween. Check one of the Disney crowd calendar guides below for September especially.

October, November, December: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. While these months are not usually as bad as the summer, they can still be quite crowded, even with the cooler temperatures.

For these months, stay away around the actual holidays themselves unless that’s just your thing. Early October, mid-November, and early December would be the times to go, in my opinion.

The week after Christmas is insane. Like, absolutely bonkers. Do not go between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s just not worth it. To quote the first resource below: Forget About It.

Disney Crowd Calendar Resource List

Is It Packed?

First up for Disney crowd calendars is a fantastic website called “Is It Packed?”. As the name suggests, this site is intended to provide a Disney crowd calendar for knowing whether or not the parks are, well, packed to the brim with people.

Their site is unique in that they offer full Disney crowd calendars for each month of the year. It is January as I update this article, so let’s take a look at next month, February 2020.

They have every single day mapped out for you on their Disney crowd calendar. The crowd index for the parks has a title and a color. This way, you have a perfect idea of how to plan your trip.

For March, it’s a bit of a mixed bag, as you can see in the image above. Some days, Disneyland has a crowd level through the roof (Forget About It) and others where it shouldn’t be too crowded at Disneyland at all (Ghost Town)! They also have a “Best Bet” feature where you can see which days in any given week are the most likely to be an easy trip in terms of crowd index.

What about specific attractions within the parks? They’ve got this, too! They posted an article a few weeks ago detailing how crowded Disneyland’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge attraction will be in the coming months of its grand opening in Anaheim, California.

Most of June will require a reservation for Galaxy’s Edge, they report. They say that August 27-29 should be a decent time to go if you can wait, but that September would be even better (the later you can wait, the less crowded the park will be).

June 24-30, the first week with no reservation required, will pack the parks out at Disneyland or Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. You probably won’t find me at Star Wars Land (as some are calling it) until at least the middle or end of September.

Disney Touring Plans

I’ll say this upfront, so you can skip to the next one if you’re not interested: this is a paid option. You can get a full year for $15.95. What do you get for that price?

Well, according to their website, quite a bit:

Disney Touring Plans
Disney Touring Plans (Source: Disney Touring Plans)

They write the following:

Our Crowd Calendar shows how busy each Disney theme park every day of your trip, on a simple 1-to-10 scale. Using our crowd calendar, you’ll be able to plan which park to visit each day to avoid crowds. You’ll also see:

Each park’s opening and closing times
The park’s Extra Magic Hours schedule
Any special events that might affect your visit
We’re so confident in
our crowd predictions that we show yesterday’s results – our predictions and what actually happened – in the How We Did section of the page for everyone to see.

If you’re trying to decide when to visit Walt Disney World, the crowd calendar will show you how busy Disney is across different weeks, months and seasons.

They write that their “touring plans will save you up to 4 hours in line versus families without a plan. 4 hours every day!” That’s quite a claim! If they are able to even some close to that, it would probably be worth the $16 price tag. A good Disney crowd calendar tool can truly be magical for your visit to the happiest place on earth.

Mouse Wait

Here’s another free option for Disneyland crowd calendars. (One drawback to this app is that they currently only service Disneyland, not Walt Disney World, or any of the international theme parks around the world.)

Mouse Wait Disneyland Crowd Level Calendar
Mouse Wait Disneyland Crowd Level Calendar (Source: Mouse Wait)

I can personally vouch for how good this app is. Mouse Wait will tell you the Disneyland crowd index by park and by percentage. For example, Disneyland might have a crowd level of 75% of full capacity, but California Adventure could only be 50%.

If you have this information readily available, you can make the most of your trip and save a ton of time by switching parks when least crowded.

As you can see in the image above, Mouse Wait has Disney crowd calendar apps for desktop, laptop, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. The Apple Watch function, in particular, is really nice because you can simply check your wrist and get an idea of the crowd index level at just a quick glance.

Other Websites

There are tons of websites out there with Disney crowd calendars on them. The Disney tourist blog crowd calendar scene is practically a cottage industry. Here are a few others for you to try out:

WDW Prep School

Magic Guides

Undercover Tourist

Dad’s Guide to Walt Disney World

Kenny the Pirate

A Disney Crowd Calendar Book

If you’re more of a book type person, I recommend getting a copy of Birnbaum’s 2020 Official Guidebook to Walt Disney World. It has just about everything you could possibly want or need to know about when and how best to visit Disney World.

I hope this article has been helpful for you. Please consider sharing with it a friend or family member who is trying to plan a Disney trip.

What is your favorite Disney World crowd calendar? Do you use a Disneyland crowd calendar website or app before you go or while you’re there? Let me know in the comments!

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Neal Tucker is one of the world’s most engaging Disney influencers, with thousands of views and responses across his blog, podcast, and social media profiles every month.

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