Disneyland Crowds 2014 and thoughts on crowds...

[celiacla]

I hadn't seen anyone create a chart of the Disneyland crowds in a long time, so I took the data I found and created some. It is interesting to see how things have changed over the years. The slowest times were end of April and end of September. Spring break, Thanksgiving and Christmas were all more crowded than the summers, which surprised me a bit. DCA also seems to have a lot more variation in the crowds than Disneyland.

Hope someone finds this useful. I'll see if I can put something together for 2015 at some point.

 

[figment_jii]

Does this data come from Touring Plans?

 

[celiacla]

Does this data come from Touring Plans?

It's a combination of data from several places. I looked at isitpacked, touringplans, and a couple travel websites and then took an average of them. Touring plans seems to have some inaccuracy that I was trying to adjust for.

 

[celiacla]

After thinking about it, I decided to redo my graph only using the public isitpacked data, since I'm not sure if touring plans allows posting charts. That removes the ability to compare DCA with Disneyland, but the rest is pretty much the same. The 2015 data ends with predicted, since we aren't all the way through 2015 yet. It looks like 2015 had less slow periods, which fits what everyone has been saying. It still looks like the best times to go are the last week of August, end of January, end of February and most of May. I didn't realize just how much busier December was than July/August.

 

[3TinksAndAnEeyore]

Spring break, Thanksgiving and Christmas were all more crowded than the summers, which surprised me a bit.

Families with kids in school (like mine) end up squishing into those smaller vacation windows in November, December, and spring break month. I'd love to be able to go during non-traditional times, but I have a daughter who does not like to miss a day of school. I'm not a big fan of either DD missing school days, either. So, we expect the crowds.

On the upside, we have long hours and typically all the rides are up and running during busy times. There's more entertainment to spread people out. This Thanksgiving there will be four parades (five counting DCA) and two sets of fireworks. The ride lines may be a little longer than usual, but honestly, they never seem as bad as I remember them being when I was a kid. We will do park opening (though we only have one EE day), but this will let us get lots done in the first 2-3 hours.

 

[celiacla]

Families with kids in school (like mine) end up squishing into those smaller vacation windows in November, December, and spring break month. I'd love to be able to go during non-traditional times, but I have a daughter who does not like to miss a day of school. I'm not a big fan of either DD missing school days, either. So, we expect the crowds.

On the upside, we have long hours and typically all the rides are up and running during busy times. There's more entertainment to spread people out. This Thanksgiving there will be four parades (five counting DCA) and two sets of fireworks. The ride lines may be a little longer than usual, but honestly, they never seem as bad as I remember them being when I was a kid. We will do park opening (though we only have one EE day), but this will let us get lots done in the first 2-3 hours.

I guess I wasn't surprised that school breaks were busy, I was just surprised that short school breaks are busier than most summer days. This year I wanted to see Holiday time which I have never seen, so scheduled a Thanksgiving trip. It seems like it will be very busy.

I think if I were just trying to avoid crowds in the future, I would go during May or end of August/early September. End of February could also work, but it tends to rain more then.

 

[dznyfam3]

After looking at the chart you made, the beginning part of February was actually slower then the second half of February. Day 37 to 44of the year would put you just before the holiday in February. This would be consistent with how i felt the last week of February was this year. I was there that last week of Feb for Dapper Days and I felt the park was more crowded then I remember from the previous February at that time. Dapper Days has now moved to May so it will be interesting to see if that changes this data for next year. Our trip is planned for the week just before Presidents Day this year so I'm hoping it won't be too crowded.