My WDW visits the past 20 years have all been Fall or Winter. I haven’t been in the spring since family trips as a kid.
We are looking at dates for a Spring 2022 visit.
Any thoughts on which of these weeks would be most likely to have lighter or heavier crowds? And thoughts on mid/late May weather? I have already researched pricing differences so don’t need any help on that.
Saturday April 2 - Wednesday April 6 (the new Disney race weekend will be these days)
Wednesday April 6 - Sunday April 10
Wednesday April 20 - Sunday April 24 (this is the week AFTER Easter Sunday)
Wednesday May 17-Sunday May 22
Saturday May 21 - Wednesday May 25 (TP crowd calendar shows higher crowds. Could it be that in prior years Memorial Day weekend fell on these dates in May and that is impacting the TP prediction?)
Nearly all of your dates show essentially the same crowd levels. I was just looking at these dates the other day.
Personally I like the end of April for weather. It starts to get crazy toward the end of May in terms of both temps and humidity. I’d stick to April if you can.
Also, don’t waste too much more time. Availability is thinning out for some dates in spring already.
I’m by no means an expert on this…but when we were researching when to go last May in 2021, and then in May of 2020 as well, we came to the conclusion of May because crowds were lower then compared to April. April has a lot of spring breakers, since various schools across the country have different times. But it seems people aren’t taking their kids out of school in May since they are wrapping up the semester. (If you go later in May, crowds start to pick up again, since colleges are typically wrapped up by then.)
Thank you for your input. Yes, April does look better on the crowd calendar which is counter to what I would have thought before looking at the crowd calendar.
Do you have any thoughts on why some of the APs are blocked out the week of April 18 which is the week following a late Easter (but not early April or May until Memorial Day weekend)? I would think the week after a late Easter would have lighter crowds than early April.
There are some parts of the country that have spring vacations (MA for one has vacation that week, NH the next). So perhaps that plays into it. But I know not why Disney does the things it does.
When factoring actual historical crowd levels, not just predictions for 2022, the second half of April usually does not have high crowds. Most of the spring breakers are gone around mid April.
April is also a historically drier month than May as far as average precip. Similar to the winter months.
If you are used to fall and winter temps, later May is not going to be as enjoyable.
I was looking at a festival one of my district’s are attending. They are spending 1/2 day at MK. The organizer tells them “you can go on Space Mountain”….
We stayed at POR a number of years in early December overlapping with Pop Warner.
We saw cheerleaders around the resort. The food court was slightly more crowded but still fine (waits weren’t long and could always find a table), and some of them were practicing in groups on grassy areas.
We didn’t see many in the parks, but occasionally the buses were more crowded at night returning to the resort… still manageable.
Our interactions with the young ladies and their families were positive and we were happy to return for multiple years during the same time frame.
