Jody,
Thanks for asking your question to planDisney!
As you can imagine, crowd levels at Walt Disney World can change throughout the year. There are busier times, especially around major holidays, and popular vacation times. Here are some general rules that can help you figure out optimal times to visit.
School Rules!: If U. S. schools are in session, the parks tend to be lighter. If schools are out, the crowds get larger. So, Summer months, the week of Thanksgiving, and the Christmas-to-New Year holiday season are all extremely busy crowd level times at Walt Disney World.
Weekdays are for EPCOT:
EPCOT hosts several festivals throughout the year, not just the
EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival where they break out all the fun food and drink stands from around the world. Because of that, locals flock to EPCOT on the weekends, so it tends to be more crowded from Friday through Sunday.
Is this New Jersey or Florida?: Every fall the teachers in New Jersey have a convention that leads schools throughout the state to be closed. Seemingly everyone in the state relocates to Orlando, thus making that week, typically in early November, a pretty busy affair.
Fuhgeddaboudit!Happy Holidays, part 2: It is not just Thanksgiving and Christmas that pack in holiday crowds. Shorter three-day weekend holidays like President's Day and Easter break can also lead to busier crowds.
BONUS TIP
If you go to the Walt Disney World website and proceed through the steps required to
purchase tickets (but you can stop just short!), you will see that ticket prices vary by day. The per-day ticket price is a pretty good indicator of the demand, and therefore the anticipated crowd levels. Lower prices likely mean lighter crowds.
BOTTOM LINE
Summer, and the core Fall/Winter holidays are the busiest times at Walt Disney World. If you can visit in October, or May, you are going to enjoy some of the most reliably lower crowd levels.
Please do feel free to
write me back directly with any follow-up questions. I am glad to help you consider a few different time block options to see which might be best for your vacation scheduling.
Have a Magical Vacation!
Doug