We’re back with another edition of “Buster the MythBUSTER”! In today’s episode, we’re looking at whether Mondays are really the busiest day at the Magic Kingdom.
In many Facebook groups, blogs, Disney information sites, it is a pretty commonly held belief that one should avoid the Magic Kingdom on Mondays. The general thinking is that Mondays are usually the first park day for many visitors, and most people want to make the Magic Kingdom the first park that they visit. They want to start their WDW vacation by seeing the castle, riding the classic rides, seeing the parades, the fireworks, etc.
On the surface, this theory makes some sense, I guess. Many people travel into Orlando on the weekend, but don’t start touring the parks until Monday. They use their travel day to rest up after what possibly could be a long day in the car or on the plane. I know Buster and the Banshee generally follow this pattern. However, the proof is in the data, so let’s see what the data says.
Examining the Average Wait Time By Day Of Week
For the purposes of this myth busting exercise, we are going to use “average wait time” as a proxy for crowd level. Presumably, if the MK is more crowded, then the average wait time for its attractions is going to be higher. We are going to leverage the publicly available park data from thrill-data.com, which catalogs such things.
As you can see from the graph, Mondays indeed have the highest average wait time at 36 minutes. Meanwhile, Sundays appear to have the lowest at 29 minutes. The other days of the week fall in between these numbers.
On the surface, it does appear as if Mondays are the busiest day of the week. However, there may be more to the story…
Do Holidays / Special Events Skew the Average?
There are a disproportionate number of American holidays that happen to fall on a Monday (ex: MLK Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, etc). Holidays in general are some of the busiest days at Walt Disney World because many people schedule their trips around these holidays. So perhaps we should look at the day of week average excluding holidays weeks.
For the purposes of this exercise, I only included weeks in 2024 when there wasn’t a holiday or other special event (ex: RunDisney race weekend, Spring Break). I even included weeks like Easter where the holiday fell on a day other than Monday. I didn’t want anything skewing the averages. I just wanted weeks that were consistent in terms of special events.
Doing that, I identified a total of TEN weeks in 2024 which met this criteria. I looked at the average wait time for every day during this weeks and calculated a new average wait time by day of week.
When I did this, an interesting pattern emerged. The average for most of the days of the week, including Mondays were about the same. They were all within the 25 to 27 minute range. However, now it was TUESDAY that stood out as the worst day with an average wait time of 30.6 minutes. This was 14% higher than Mondays!
In conclusion, when we removed holiday weeks from the mix, Monday no longer stood out as being the worst day of week. It was pretty much on par with most other days.
Does This Even Matter?
When you look at the averages, the difference between the best day and the worst day is around 20%. If you take a ride like Space Mountain, which has an average wait time of around 40 minutes, a 20% difference equals about 8 minutes of additional waiting. Is that a huge deal? I guess over the course of the day, those 8 minutes here, 8 minutes there, could add up.
But consider this…
If you compare a quiet day to a super busy time of year, like Christmas or Easter, you might see wait times doubling or more. During its least busy times of year, the average wait time might be in the 15-20 minute range. Compare that to peak days when the average wait time is 50 minutes!
So the day of week you go to the Magic Kingdom probably doesn’t matter as much as the time of year you go!
Conclusion
Here is what I take away from looking at the data:
- While Mondays are the busiest day of week at the Magic Kingdom on average, when you factor out holiday weeks, it is no longer the busiest day. In fact, Tuesdays appear to be the busiest day of week, all things being equal.
- The time of year you go matters more than the day of week you go.
In other words… MYTH BUSTED!!
Do you agree with our conclusion? Do you think we are off base? Leave us a comment and let us know what you think!
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