The best time to visit Disneyland and other theme parks? Below are 6 simple insider tips to help avoid visiting Disneyland and other theme parks on crowded days.
The Best Time To Visit Disneyland
- The two weeks after Thanksgiving weekend are the least crowded time to visit during the holiday season.
- The middle of January until early March are the lightest attended months of the year. Avoid the holiday weekends of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and President’s Day.
- The most crowded weeks to visit Disneyland and other US theme parks are the last two weeks in December, the first few days of January and the two weeks near Easter.
- If at all possible, try to avoid visiting on a school holiday or weekend. Try to avoid Saturdays which are normally the most crowded days of the week. The next most crowded days are Fridays and Sundays.
- Tuesdays and Wednesdays are generally the least crowded days of the week.
One of my favorite tricks is checking local online hotel rates around the park. The crowds are the lightest when the rates are the lowest. I always recommend checking hotel rates when visiting a theme park or amusement park to help avoid visiting on a local or state holiday you may not be aware of.
Season Passholders and local single day visitors make up the vast majority of most theme parks’ attendance. However, Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and other theme parks in the Orlando area are primarily visited by tourists from all over the world. All of my previous tips still apply to the resorts in Orlando, but you also need to ensure you consider the holiday patterns of tourists from other countries such as Brazil.
When booking a trip to Orlando, pay special attention to the hotel room rates, because that’s your best guide of when to visit. It all comes down to supply and demand. When less visitors are expected, hotel rates will be much lower. When more crowds are predicted, room rates will be much higher.
In my experience, TouringPlans has the best Disneyland crowd and attendance tracker in the market. The TouringPlans crowd tracker provides some future dates for free. Attendance information about dates coming up in the next 30 days does cost a few dollars. The crowd calendar and other tools that TouringPlans provides are well worth their small cost.