Spring Break 2024

[SeventyOne]

In western Pa. almost all school breaks for Spring occur within the week, before or after, Easter falls. It's just about always been like that. And generally it's only a few days, two or three, off. College schedules though, are all over the map when it comes to Spring Break. .....I know that Touring Plans maps out all the spring break schedules just about everywhere. And they had WDW at around level eight (high) for most of the WDW parks this week. Same with Universal. I can't recall them hardly ever missing the mark by 5 or 6 levels.....Disney & Universal also must have anticipated better crowds since they both put limitations on their lower level AP passes for this week.

That's what I figured -- having grown up in the heavily Catholic and Italian northeast, it was strange moving to Florida and learning Southerners don't really acknowledge Good Friday (or Columbus Day).

But even wonky local county schedules don't account for that much of a discrepancy, especially from Touring Plans. Out of curiosity, has the TP Blog addressed this yet?

 

[HandsomePete]

It seems like they just have the middle week of March locked in as a peak week no matter what because the 2025 pass-holder blockout calendar has this week next year blocked but none of the rest of March. Guessing the other two weeks of blackouts will be around Easter, which is really late next year.

It makes sense that they’d consider the weeks around Easter to be peak times given the Northeast is their core out of state market, but guessing at a third week is probably a crapshoot at this point. I think Orlando also brings in a lot of college kids in the first half of March who just want to go somewhere warm but skip the parks.

 

[Mad Dog]

That's what I figured -- having grown up in the heavily Catholic and Italian northeast, it was strange moving to Florida and learning Southerners don't really acknowledge Good Friday (or Columbus Day).

But even wonky local county schedules don't account for that much of a discrepancy, especially from Touring Plans. Out of curiosity, has the TP Blog addressed this yet?

They used to do that type of weekly update on the TP Blog, but since they redid their website a couple of months ago, the weekly breakdown hasn't appeared, for some reason......The first TP Blog Genie+ update in a good while was on the Blog last week. They said that it appears that Genie+ use has leveled off and/or declined. And that the time savings from Genie+ has declined by a lot, now only saving about an hour a day, whereas in it's beginning it was a couple hours savings.

 

[GAcoaster]

Last week was busy, this week is dead, next week and the week after will be busy. It’s local spring break, nothing, northeast/most of the country spring break week before or after Easter.

 

[MrRoamer]

I think the cruise concept is potentially very strong. I know of over 50+ families just from Winter Springs and Oviedo that were on the 2 Royal Carribean cruises last week.

Granted a small sample size, but I feel like most everyone I know got out of the state one way or another.

 

[IzzyB]

I am late to this post because I was on Spring Break myself lol

But no numbers should be used for last week as an indication of anything. Honestly it appears by some strange situation very few schools across the country had spring break scheduled for last week. This wasn't an Orlando only issue, Dollywood went from jam packed one day to absolutely EMPTY the next day. The park employees had whiplash and talked about it with us. We left and guess what? JAMMED packed park on Monday. I would only use numbers from this week and next week and the 2 weeks prior. I will say I hope OCPS picks more of these odd weeks as every single person I talked to who went somewhere or even stayed local very much enjoyed the very light crowds everywhere!

I had seen a list of schools around Dollywood (TN, NC, SC, GA) and only 2 districts listed had that week and one of them was half wrong as someone then replied to the FP post that they were in that county and only half were off that day. Other people posted that were not on that list and only one other person other than me posted that week. So I am not even going off of crowd levels, but actual listings of Spring Breaks.

It seems like they just have the middle week of March locked in as a peak week no matter what because the 2025 pass-holder blockout calendar has this week next year blocked but none of the rest of March. Guessing the other two weeks of blackouts will be around Easter, which is really late next year.

It makes sense that they’d consider the weeks around Easter to be peak times given the Northeast is their core out of state market, but guessing at a third week is probably a crapshoot at this point. I think Orlando also brings in a lot of college kids in the first half of March who just want to go somewhere warm but skip the parks.

They are blocking out when OCPS schools are out as they get the most APs probably from OC and want people to buy higher level passes who are locals is my guess. Mid-March is not peak Spring Break, but it is when OCPS is always out along with most other counties.

 

[OhHaiInternet95]

Kind of figured this year would be quiet. Hopefully Epic doesn’t flop—they’re playing Russian Roulette here.

 

[Brian G.]

Kind of figured this year would be quiet. Hopefully Epic doesn’t flop—they’re playing Russian Roulette here.

Did you not read the post above? Lol

 

[IzzyB]

Did you not read the post above? Lol

Has anyone looked at numbers last week? I assume it is busier along with this week. I know reports from Dollywood was that today was even worse than last week in terms of crowd levels being high.

 

[Brian G.]

Has anyone looked at numbers last week? I assume it is busier along with this week. I know reports from Dollywood was that today was even worse than last week in terms of crowd levels being high.

Seemed pretty busy than usual but I didn't really pay attention to wait times today. haha

 

[UniversalRBLX]

Has anyone looked at numbers last week? I assume it is busier along with this week. I know reports from Dollywood was that today was even worse than last week in terms of crowd levels being high.

It was busy... but there's definitely some "inflating" of wait-times going on.

Velocicoaster on Saturday was posted an 80 minute wait with express queue only backed up to the raptor windows. Standby was only ~30 minutes.

Parks are busy, but they're not dramatically busy at all. Demand pricing has shifted attendance pretty much year round quite evenly to a degree. Honestly, the slow season has slowly started to become the summertime.

 

[Brian G.]

USH had one of its busiest days yesterday since Nintendo opened - so I'd wager those same types of crowds are in Orlando this week.

 

[Brian G.]

Has anyone looked at numbers last week? I assume it is busier along with this week. I know reports from Dollywood was that today was even worse than last week in terms of crowd levels being high.

Following up - seems today is nuts. VB at capacity. Long lines to get through parking. Checked ThrillData and nearly all attractions are well above their average waits and in the red.

 

[SeventyOne]

Again, traditionally third busiest week of the year. Changes by local schools show locals make up a decent sized plurality of visitors, but end of day, Easter week is always going to be huge, Even a statistically significant drop in guests from past years isn't going to make the parks feel unbusy.

 

[IzzyB]

Following up - seems today is nuts. VB at capacity. Long lines to get through parking. Checked ThrillData and nearly all attractions are well above their average waits and in the red.

It seems the most schools are out this week. My work is fairly dead this week with lots of OOO e-mails from people. This spring break season has been a little odd it seems.

Again, traditionally third busiest week of the year. Changes by local schools show locals make up a decent sized plurality of visitors, but end of day, Easter week is always going to be huge, Even a statistically significant drop in guests from past years isn't going to make the parks feel unbusy.

I am confused by what you mean with changes by local schools and which week is the 3rd busiest?

 

[Mad Dog]

Such an early Easter this year probably compressed the spring break season. It will be interesting to see what happens in April after this coming weekend. Second half of April could be problematic. 2025 spring break season will be very different from 2024 with a very late Easter.

 

[IzzyB]

Such an early Easter this year probably compressed the spring break season. It will be interesting to see what happens in April after this coming weekend. Second half of April could be problematic. 2025 spring break season will be very different from 2024 with a very late Easter.

Oh after this week attendance will plummet. I don't think a single school has spring break after this week. I will say it started a week earlier in some respects. So compressed, but started earlier, but that one week schools didn't use other than a few like Orange County. I am not complaining as my spring break lined up nicely to a dead week, perfect for me!

I will say Spring break is really dependent on the schools philosophy. Heavily Catholic areas always do this around Easter where Florida school districts line theirs up by the 9 week grading period. So whatever the last day of the grading period is, kids will have the Friday off for teacher work day and the next week off for spring break. Same with Christmas for Florida districts, it lines up with the end of the semester.

 

[UniversalRBLX]

Oh after this week attendance will plummet. I don't think a single school has spring break after this week. I will say it started a week earlier in some respects. So compressed, but started earlier, but that one week schools didn't use other than a few like Orange County. I am not complaining as my spring break lined up nicely to a dead week, perfect for me!

I'm very fascinated to see what happens next week and into summer. Lots of FL Resident promos being run at the moment. WDW next week will be odd as APs have essentially been blocked for a month now so they'll get back to filling the park, but after that I'd imagine it'll be soft.

 

[IzzyB]

I'm very fascinated to see what happens next week and into summer. Lots of FL Resident promos being run at the moment. WDW next week will be odd as APs have essentially been blocked for a month now so they'll get back to filling the park, but after that I'd imagine it'll be soft.

Yes, April will be much more dead than normal because of the early Easter. It also will effect the parks revenue since they had basically only 4 weeks of Spring break and one being rather dead.

 

[Mad Dog]

Yes, April will be much more dead than normal because of the early Easter. It also will effect the parks revenue since they had basically only 4 weeks of Spring break and one being rather dead.

Early Easter probably great for the first quarter fiscal report, but bad news for the second quarter report. Generally, where Easter is, on the calendar, has a fairly significant impact on the quarterly reports for the parks (so significant that Disney and Unioversal often mention in on their quarterly report if results are shaky). Bottom line, first quarter report might be OK but the second quarter report, if soft vacation bookings continue, could be pretty dismal, unless they open some of this new stuff in June instead of July.