Crowds are not heavy and wait times aren’t high over Labor Day weekend at Walt Disney World. This shares our predictions for the September 2024 holiday, why we’re forecasting low to moderate crowd levels all long weekend, and daily park recommendations if you’re planning a visit.
By holiday weekend standards, Labor Day weekend has not been busy bad crowd-wise in the last decade. Even though it’s the unofficial end of summer, most school districts in Florida and other states go back into session a few weeks before Labor Day. Without these key school districts, the holiday weekend is not the “last hurrah” of summer crowds at Walt Disney World.
In a nutshell, Labor Day is too late for summer vacation and too early for fall break. It’s in no man’s land, somewhat similar to Martin Luther King Day (between New Year’s and winter break) or Memorial Day (between spring break and summer vacation). Crowd levels are similar as a result, as the primary draw is locals. If you want the Cliff Notes version of this post, that’s it–no need to read any further unless you want to dive deeper into the data, our other theories why it isn’t a busy holiday, and daily park recommendations for the long weekend.
We start by mentioning this because it seems like every year, there is “surprise” by the “unexpectedly” low crowds over the Labor Day weekend. For whatever reason, many Walt Disney World fans have outdated conceptions of crowds for Labor Day that haven’t been true for years. Many of these same fans still overlook Columbus Day and Veterans Day, which are always way worse.
With that said, we start by contextualizing Labor Day relative to other holiday weekends and not to other dates in August and September 2024. As always when it comes to Walt Disney World crowds, your frame of reference matters a lot. This has become the slowest 6-week stretch of the year for Walt Disney World, with reliably low crowds throughout.
August through most of September remain inherently unpopular because school just went back into session, which is a huge limiting factor on the pool of potential guests. Not only that, but this is one of the hottest stretches of the year and it’s the heart of hurricane season.
So it should be noted from the jump that Labor Day weekend is not slow as compared to other dates in the early fall off-season. Choose dates at random in August through mid-to-late September and there’s a reasonable chance they’re slower than Labor Day weekend. Accordingly, if you’re doing a long trip that just happens to encompass Labor Day weekend, you might notice a spike. If you’re just deciding whether to visit for the holiday weekend in the first place, worried about the prospect of crushing crowds, fear not.
It’s really the second scenario that this post is aimed at–how busy Labor Day is at Walt Disney World by holiday weekend standards, not relative to the rest of August and September. To illustrate, let’s look at past crowd levels with wait time data and graphs courtesy of Thrill-Data.com:
Above is a graph of crowd levels and average daily wait times across all of Walt Disney World for the entirety of the last 365 days. On the far left side, you’ll see mid-August and September 2024. The first set of green bars are August 28 through September 1. All of these are 1/10 crowd levels.
Last year, Labor Day weekend occurred September 1-4. Crowd levels that Saturday were 2/10 and Sunday was 4/10. Labor Day itself was also 1/10, with an average wait time of 24 minutes–that was 10 minutes slower than Saturday.
Almost across the board, Summer 2024 has been slower than last summer. The average wait time this July, for example, was 6 minutes lower than last July. (That may not seem like much, but it’s a big difference.) Given that, the smart money would be on Labor Day Weekend 2024 being less busy than last year. There are reasons that may not be the case, which we’ll discuss in a bit.
In case you want more comparisons, above is a graph of Labor Day wait times for the last several years. (The color-coding is relative to other Labor Day dates, not each year as a whole.)
The busiest Labor Day was 2017, when the average wait time was 33 minutes. To put that into perspective, the average monthly wait times this for January through May were lower than that. Within those months, every single holiday weekend was busier.
Speaking of holidays, Labor Day is the slowest holiday on average at Walt Disney World. Halloween is the only other holiday that’s close, and that doesn’t really count (in my opinion) because it’s not a federal holiday, isn’t celebrated by Walt Disney World outside of a hard ticket event, and occurs on random days of the week.
As far as weekend holidays, Labor Day is comparable to Mother’s Day in terms of average wait times. In a normal year, the Sunday of Labor Day is the busiest of the weekend (followed by Saturday), and even those days don’t hold a candle to Columbus Day weekend. Nevermind any of the November and December holidays…or even the winter and spring ones.
Suffice to say, Labor Day is the weakest holiday weekend of the entire year from an objective and historical perspective. And it’s not even a remotely close call. We compared it to Memorial Day and MLK Day above, but both of those beat it handily. Labor Day weekend wait times are lower than all other non-fake holidays. (Sorry, International Talk Like A Pirate Day and Whacking Day. We still love you.)
If you’re wondering why Labor Day won’t be busier (above and beyond it being in the off-season after school goes back into session), this section will explain that. Fair warning: much of what’s discussed here is very similar to our post analyzing low wait times for Fourth of July.
All of the rationale from that will hold true when applied to Labor Day Weekend, too. The big one here is that many cost-conscious consumers have been pushed away from weekends by higher prices on park tickets, accommodations, and airfare. That’s the case even on regular Friday and Saturday nights. Unsurprisingly, it’s even more pronounced for the holiday weekend.
The above chart shows the nightly standard room rates at Disney’s Pop Century Resort. Notice the difference in rates for August 30 through September 1 as compared with the days before and after? It’s the exact same story with date-based pricing for park tickets, and I’m guessing that if I pulled up a flexible calendar on Southwest Airlines, it would show something similar.
The bottom line is that guests with flexibility are going to choose different dates in that timeframe. We know this because this has been happening all year long–people have been gravitating towards cheaper days of the week, and cheaper weeks within the same general date-ranges.
With it not being peak vacation season, the biggest drivers for Labor Day attendance at Walt Disney World are Southerners, diehard fans wanting a quick getaway, and locals. However, both the Pixie Pass and the Pirate Pass–two affordable admission options for locals–are blocked out for the entirety of Labor Day weekend (August 30 to September 2, 2024). That’s even more Floridians than normal who thus wouldn’t be in the parks over the long weekend, which should result in an exaggerated version of the ‘wonky weekends’ dynamic we’ve been talking about for over a year.
We’ve long suspected that there’s a disproportionate number of Pixie Dust Annual Passes in circulation, in large part because it was the only AP tier that was sold for over a year. Although that hasn’t been the case for a while, inertia has probably kept the discrepancy going. Floridians got used to paying a lower price, found it worked out just fine for them, and didn’t upgrade when it came time to renew. And at a little over half the cost of the Pirate Pass, the price is certainly right–especially for cost-conscious locals.
Walt Disney World doesn’t release statistical breakdowns of its AP population, so this is only theory. However, it’s also corroborated by crowds. Whenever these passes (especially Pixie Dust) are blocked out beyond their normal weekends, it shows up in wait times data. This happened, most recently, over Independence Day weekend. That was another holiday that was “surprisingly” slow. (Except it wasn’t if you’ve been paying attention to trends.)
One way 2024 will be different from last year is in terms of discounted tickets. There are two main options currently, the Florida Resident Discover Disney Ticket, which is valid through September 28, 2024 with an advance park reservation. More significant is the 4-Park, 4-Day Walt Disney World Magic Ticket, which is valid through September 22, 2024.
These are hugely popular promos that can save visitors a ton of money (over $100 per person!) and they’re also repeats of deals that were offered last year. The key difference is that both of those aforementioned ticket deals were blocked out for the dates around Independence Day and Labor Day.
As a result, there were reports of the parks being “dead” or “ghost towns” last Fourth of July that made national news and prompted a response from CEO Bob Iger. He attributed the slowness to weather and the exhaustion of pent-up demand. While those were undoubtedly contributing factors, the bigger variable was the ticket blockout. We know this because Labor Day was a repeat of Independence Day.
Disney learned from that mistake and did not block out those ticket deals for Labor Day weekend. This means that, in all likelihood, Labor Day 2024 will be busier than last year. That’s not to say it’ll be busy–it probably won’t for the reasons discussed above. We just want to mention this as a countervailing factor; a reason to expect slightly higher crowds than last year.
With that said, crowds have been trending lower this summer, with June and July down significantly year-over-year and August showing similar signs of softness. The only meaningful exception to that was Fourth of July, which was up year-over-year but still very slow by objective and historical measures. (And honestly, I’m not sure if it being slower than 2023 would’ve even been possible.)
Speaking of which, there are the normal crowd patterns for Independence Day vs. Labor Day. All else being equal, Fourth of July Weekend is usually much busier than Labor Day. And unlike the comparison to Columbus Day and Veterans Day, all else actually does seem to be equal here. So it would stand to reason that August 30 to September 1, 2024 should be even slower than July 1-4!
For reference, wait times peaked on July 1 at 31 minutes (3/10 crowd level). July 2 had a 30 minute average; July 3-4 were 25-26 minutes and 1/10 crowd levels. I wouldn’t go as far as predicting lower crowds for Labor Day weekend, if only because those numbers are so low that the safer bet is an increase–there’s not much room for them to drop even further, even if that’s what our signals point towards.
Honestly, the outcome-determinative factor is probably weather. That’s still an unknown, but it’s probably safe to forecast more of the same: high heat and humidity…and maybe rain. (Just like the other 44 weeks of summer in Florida.)
As someone who plans on spending a lot of time in the parks this Labor Day, I hope that isn’t the case. I would happily take unseasonably mild temperatures that draw more locals out of the comfort of their A/C at home and into the parks, even if that means 4/10 crowds or higher.
There are other wildcards. The first is Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, which not only draws visitors to Florida but also throws a monkey wrench into attendance dynamics this time of year. Second is the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival, which starts Labor Day weekend and should result in a spike in congestion or “feels like” crowds at EPCOT and could also draw diehards from out-of-state to take weekend getaways.
With that in mind, we always get questions about when to do each park over holiday weekends. Honestly, that’s the far tougher question than whether Labor Day will be busy or slow, due to the ‘conflicts’ with MNSSHP, start of EPCOT Food & Wine Festival, and our standard Best & Worst Day of the Week Advice, which does not apply over any holiday weekends.
If it were me and I did not have Park Hopper tickets, I’d do the following:
- August 30: EPCOT
- August 31: Disney’s Hollywood Studios
- September 1: Animal Kingdom
- September 2: Magic Kingdom
If I did have Park Hopper tickets, I’d do this:
- August 30: EPCOT
- August 31: Disney’s Hollywood Studios -> Magic Kingdom
- September 1: Animal Kingdom -> EPCOT
- September 2: Magic Kingdom -> DHS
Here’s some explanation for these picks, including some that are at odds with conventional wisdom…
Doing EPCOT first puts it on the second day of Food & Wine Festival. That’s after the initial day-one rush of bloggers and vloggers, but before the weekend warriors arrive in full force. It’ll still be busy–busier than normal–but this is the best day for it. (Wait times at EPCOT won’t be bad, but congestion will–it’ll feel far worse than the wait times suggest.)
The big tension here is between Monday and MNSSHP at Magic Kingdom. Normally, Monday is the busiest day of the week at Magic Kingdom. Also normally, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party days are slower at MK. However, Labor Day itself is normally slower and Magic Kingdom was not busy last year on this day. So it’s actually a pretty easy pick. If you want a full day in MK, you’ll need to choose a different date–switch Magic Kingdom and DHS.
Everything else works backwards from those choices. Sunday is the busiest day, so prioritize the easiest park–Animal Kingdom. That leaves Saturday for Disney’s Hollywood Studios by process of elimination. The Park Hopper picks operate from a similar ‘work backwards’ perspective, starting from not being able to stay late in Magic Kingdom on September 2, so then switching to the next ‘hardest’ park (DHS) on the slowest day.
In the end, it’s important to emphasize that there are several ‘competing’ variables at play when it comes to the park-specific recommendations, and some or all of those could be ‘wrong’ as a result. I have a higher degree of confidence in the bigger picture prediction that Labor Day Weekend will be slow than the granular park picks. The good news is that the bigger picture prediction matters a lot more, and should mean choosing the best park each day matters a lot less!
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Are you visiting Walt Disney World for Labor Day Weekend 2024? What do you think attendance will be like for this year’s holiday weekend? What about as compared to this month, last year, or the rest of August and September? Do you agree or disagree with our predictions? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
