It’s no secret that Disneyland is a very busy place. Daily attendance can vary between 15,000 and 75,000 guests per day in one park! There are advantages and disadvantages to crowded and slow days alike. The general rule of thumb is the shorter the hours, the less crowded the park with be. A day with 10a.m to 8p.m. hours will be a lot less crowded than days with 8a.m. to midnight hours. Days with short hours will have less entertainment, fewer restaurants open, and likely more attractions closed. Because of this reality, the decision for you to consider with your family is this:
Do I visit on a day with less guests, shorter lines, and less open or do I visit on a day when virtually everything is open, the park is open late, and there’s lots of guests and crowding?
Although it is not an exact science, there are high-attendance days you can count on being busier than others.
★Holiday Weekends (Presidents Day, Memorial Day, etc.)
★Spring Break Weeks (remember not all schools are off at the same time and spring break typically encompasses several weeks)
★Fourth of July
★Thanksgiving week–especially Thanksgiving day and the day after
★Christmas week and the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. (The Worst!)
★Late June through the end of August
★Saturdays
★The day after it rains (when guests make up the day the missed)
That being said, there are days you can count on it being less crowded than others
★Daily January, February (except for the holiday weekends), and early March and early November. Most notably, Tuesdays through Thursdays are the least crowded.
★Sundays during the summer months tend to be the slower than the rest of the week,
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Thank you so much for posting this. We are trying to plan our first trip to Disneyland and I was going to e-mail you and ask you this very question! Thanks for all the great advice!
Thanks so much for this! We got passes recently, so I definitely don’t mind going on days when not everything is open if there might be 50,000 less people!!! 🙂
PS I’m getting super excited for the CHOC Walk!
This is awesome! Thanks. For what it’s worth, I’ve noticed a trend towards Saturday being less crowded than Sunday due to the So Cal APs. We used to avoid Saturdays, but now we enjoy them.