Kids are headed back to school, Thanksgiving break seems like an eternity away, and the summer is winding down (even if temperatures remain high). That can only mean one thing – Disney World’s slow season is right around the corner. In this article, we’ll take a look at the trends from last year and try to time when we’ll start to see a marked drop in wait times at Walt Disney World. Data via thrill-data.com.
Last year, we saw wait times start to drop off on the final Friday of August. Interestingly enough, weekends have been the slowest days of the week at Walt Disney World for some time now, which might go against what you would expect. Essentially, Mondays are the busiest day of the week with Wednesdays being the second-slowest. Weekends have been roughly 12-15% slower than Mondays and 5-7% slower than other days of the week. Before we get sidetracked too much, suffice it to say that we expect a Friday or Saturday to kick off the wait time slide.
In terms of timing, we expect the final weekend of August to be about right again this year. That would mean wait times would start to dwindle a bit starting next weekend. Last year, the slowest day of the year was Wednesday, August 31st with an average posted wait time across all attractions at all four Disney World theme parks of just 21 minutes. We would expect to see similar dips, or even lower posted wait times, this year in the final days of August and the first week of September.
The only caveat is, of course, Labor Day. Last year, there was a “spike” in wait times on the Sunday before the Monday, September 5th Labor Day. It was over as quickly as it began, which the week ending September 11th being the slowest of the year.
In short, we expect notably lower wait times to start as early as next Wednesday and continue through the second or even third week of September. Wait times will start to tick up again in October, with some days eclipsing summer high wait times.
If you can visit over the next month or so, you should be able to enjoy Disney World’s slow season before we start to climb to some of the highest wait times of the year during the holiday period. Here’s a look at the average weekly posted wait times throughout all of 2022. We’re right on the edge of the yellow to light green period now in late August before likely experiencing the lowest wait times of the year in early September (dark green).
Of course, Disney World is working hard to smooth out the graph above by rolling out ticket deals when it’s green and introducing restrictions when it’s red. That is to say, this article represents a prediction based on past trends and is not representative of insider data on attendance. It’s possible that we could see variations in the timing and intensity of any wait time plunges. We’re definitely looking forward to lower waits, but maybe don’t pull your kids out of school and book a $7,500 last-minute vacation based on one graph.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!