Is Thanksgiving week always fully blocked for cast members?

[TheMilesMom]

My husband is a relatively new cast member and we're trying to plan a Disney World trip. I'm wondering if the entirety of Thanksgiving week, from the Saturday before on, is usually blocked to cast members? Or is it only, say, Wednesday-Sunday? Does it vary from year to year?

 

[adamreisinger]

My husband is a relatively new cast member and we're trying to plan a Disney World trip. I'm wondering if the entirety of Thanksgiving week, from the Saturday before on, is usually blocked to cast members? Or is it only, say, Wednesday-Sunday? Does it vary from year to year?

If I'm remembering correctly, Magic Kingdom was blocked most of that week last year, and I think Epcot was blocked Thursday and Friday. I believe AK and DHS were both available.

 

[rdaky]

Cast members have a lot of block out dates and if it's anywhere around a holiday, I wouldn't count on it. And then they have extra blockouts for unknown reasons, like right now, I'm pretty sure they are blocked out from MK for the entire month of July.

That said, we went with CM friends to Magic Kingdom on Thanksgiving day last year, 2023, and they were not blocked out and they used their regular main entrance passes and we entered with their main entrance guest passes (not comp tickets) because our annual passes were blocked out that day. I have no idea what the rest of the week looked like, and I absolutely wouldn't count on anything related to availability in advance.

It's so unpredictable and random.

 

[NileNellie]

It will most likely show blocked out for the months leading up to thanksgiving, but often times they will release days if the parks aren't as busy as they were expecting. That's what happened during spring break this year.

 

[BraveLittleToaster2]

Not sure which level employee your spouse is. We've encountered Block Out Dates for Magic Kingdom on almost every trip we've taken, the way we get around it is by using the free (comp) guest passes we are issued a few times a year instead of our main entrance silver pass. Those are not effected by the Block Outs.You can see the block out dates here.
https://blockoutdates.disney.com/en/calendar