Touring plans predicted CA crowd levels at 6 for the week of April 6, 2026 but levels have been consistently at 9. Any idea why this would be? Haven’t most Southern Cal schools finished spring break? Is it the food festival? We are going next Tuesday 4/14. Do we expect crowd levels to stay at 8-10?
I don’t know about this week specifically but from our experience in years past this time of year is very popular for school groups particularly performing arts ones (choir, bank, orchestra, dance) to both perform in the park and tour sights in S. California while they are there to perform. And on our most recent trip to DLR in February there were already a ton of school groups that were there and we noticed them alllll over DCA and not nearly at the same degree or concentration in DL.
My theory to my family when we noticed that was that the groups were able to probably get a reduced cost on tickets for their performers (who perform on the stage in the Hollywood Backlot area in DCA), if they chose to just tour DCA and not hop to DL or even if they completely excluded DL on any and all days they are on their “tour”.
Just from my local area (Salt Lake County, Utah), the school groups that do go on this tour, either went this week or the week before.
And because it’s not too bad of a drive, Disneyland/SoCal are a very popular destination for a lot of Western states so I would also look at when the biggest school districts in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington are scheduled as between the Spring Break trips with families and traveling school groups planning to go on or adjacent to spring break, will all add up.
I don’t know anyone in Oregon or Washington with kids to have a pulse on their spring breaks but a lot of my co-workers are in the Phoenix, Arizona area and we have friends in Clark County (Las Vegas) that teach/have kids and all of their spring breaks have happened or were this week. My kids are in the 2nd largest school district in Utah and the largest school district also had their spring break this week. And both of them have solid performing arts backgrounds and families with decent incomes to be able to pay for experiences like choir/band/dance tour down to DCA to perform.
I would expect that now that Spring Break is on the tail-end as long as no big school districts in the pacific states have Spring Break this upcoming week, it will hopefully see some relief this week.
Also, throw out all hopes of even a nice 6 being a reprieve from crowds as my more recent experience with DLR is that when crowds are lower for tourism they reduce the operations to match and lower prices to attract/draw crowds in and while it ends up being less people overall, it’s also less CMs staffed to man the operations that can make a crowd feel more seamless, so you might still end up waiting in lines for things.
And all that to say, definitely hope your day is staffed well and has lower crowds, but also go in prepared for one of the other of those to be a factor and just have a good game plan of what you want to do and where you want to start and you’ll be ahead of the majority.
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I recently read that the California ticket deal has been so popular that they ended it early. You can see in this article the dates that it was already sold out for. That might help with planning. I don’t know if TP continuously looks at things like this when making predictions. I am seeing the same thing with the Kids Ticket deal for summer already being sold out the first few days of June and assuming that means big crowds.
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Yeah DCA was definitely crowded the 2 days that we were there this week! We’re in WA and our spring break was this week (week after Easter) and I know lots of school districts with either this week or next week around me as their breaks.
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It’s spring break this week in Washington State, so a popular time to visit DLR and the west coast. Also, the DLR ticket deal was half priced tickets for So Cal residents, and they can use those 3 days any 3 days until May 21st so expect plenty of crowds through then.
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When I lived in the Bay Area, and now in the Sierra Foothills of Nor Cal, spring break was always the week following Easter. I don’t think TP looks at when Easter is, which varies each year. Therefore, their numbers for spring weeks aren’t dependable. It should be much better this week, as the vast majority of schools have already had their spring break. Crowds look decent today, for example. Don’t lose hope, but go prepared for craziness; it can then only feel better than expected.
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I have no idea if DLR gets the same level of detail but I do remember reading that for WDW, they actually do look at many school district calendars for the largest school districts that are more likely to choose WDW as a destination, to be able to pinpoint weeks where there may be more impacts. And they did an article all about how it’s not at all across the board on whether Easter impacts Spring Break or not, but for certain regions it is, but not across the board. And I think I remember reading from that article that most school districts that don’t follow Easter, end up last week of March or first week of April so if that’s Easter, then it’s a very, very busy time to go. But like I said, no idea if they do the same in DLR (but I think they do look at school districts nationally for WDW so I don’t see why they wouldn’t throw them in for DLR).
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I love Touring Plans and have been a subscriber for many years for the DL app. Those on Chat often say that TP is really set up for WDW; it has more subscribers. I don’t know for certain that they don’t factor in when Easter is, but having prepared spreadsheets of crowd predictions, I feel fairly sure that it’s best to predict the crowds for Easter week by looking at the previous year’s actual crowd numbers. The ticket deals inflate the numbers, so if there is one now and not the previous Easter week, increase your prediction by at least 2 points.
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