Our information to July 2024 at Walt Disney World gives a free crowd calendar, when to go to & keep away from, climate, new attraction openings & closures, and Independence Day occasions. Plus data & ideas for summer time season at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios. (Up to date July 2, 2024.)
July is the peak of summer time trip at Walt Disney World and the time when summer time storm season intensifies. Typically talking, July is a month for individuals who don’t have any higher alternate options. It’s a time when faculty is out of session and fogeys with younger youngsters and lecturers head to the parks in full power.
With that stated, when you have a visit deliberate for July, the sky isn’t falling. For one factor, “a wet, crowded day at Walt Disney World is healthier than an ideal day at house.” For one more, July has not been significantly busy at Walt Disney World. On the contrary, a lot of the month noticed below-average crowds–with a few notable exceptions that we’ll focus on under.
Usually, July is a literal good storm of climate and crowds. Walt Disney World’s main demographic is households, and on common, they trip about midway by way of the summer time break. Though faculty schedules in some districts have modified and Disney has raised peak season pricing on tickets & lodges, summer time remains to be the busy season at Walt Disney World.
This has shifted round in recent times, but it surely’s nonetheless typically true–and we’ll cowl the standard crowd dynamics over the course of the summer time season on this July 2024 crowd calendar.
JULY WEATHER AT DISNEY WORLD
The humidity is at “intense back-sweat” ranges every time the solar is up. On the plus facet(?), that back-sweat will often be washed away by the each day afternoon showers, which could possibly be a 20-minute prevalence or may final the higher a part of the night. Welcome to July in Florida.
When you suppose we’re exaggerating, let’s begin by having a look on the climate. July is the most well liked month of the yr with common excessive temperatures above 90 levels each single day of the month. Common lows and highs vary from 74 to 91 levels. As demonstrated by the “comfy” band on this web page for July, 27% of the time, the climate is in “sizzling” (85-100 levels) territory.
If there may be any silver lining on this, it’s that July has a larger share of “comfy” climate than August (20% vs. 15%)…so these hours of the day whenever you’re in your resort room asleep in air-con, it’s really not too dangerous outdoors!
Then there’s precipitation. Until you’re homies with Zeus, it will rain throughout your July journey. It’s not a matter of “if”, it’s a matter of “how typically and far how?”
Particularly later within the month, Florida is beginning to get into the coronary heart of hurricane and storm season, so you ought to be ready for that. You’re common each day probability of some quantity of precipitation in July ranges from 67% to 71%. I’m no mathematician, however that claims to me it’s a small miracle if it goes 2 consecutive days with none rain.
Along with our normal Distinctive Objects to Pack for Disney (overlook bringing the low cost 10-packs of ponchos that we usually suggest–pack this Olaf raft to get across the parks in type! 😉 ), we suggest studying our Suggestions for Beating Summer time Warmth & Humidity submit for concepts on issues to convey, and methods to reduce the have an effect on of disagreeable summer time climate throughout your trip.
JULY SPECIAL EVENTS AT WDW
The large factor is clearly Independence Day originally of the month. That first (lengthy) weekend can be particularly busy in consequence, however these crowds can be rewarded with a number of the finest fireworks exhibits of the yr. Magic Kingdom and Epcot each have particular fireworks exhibits for the Fourth of July.
“Disney’s Rejoice America” fireworks show is proven at Magic Kingdom on each July 3 and July 4. We extremely suggest seeing Rejoice America on July 3. When you’re unable or unwilling to courageous the crowds in Magic Kingdom, a terrific place to view it to see the complete scale of the fireworks is outdoors the park on the Ticket & Transportation Heart.
The explanation we suggest seeing Magic Kingdom’s Independence Day fireworks on July 3 is as a result of you may solely see the Luminous Symphony of Us fireworks at EPCOT with the “Heartbeat of America” finale on July 4. For extra on particular leisure, learn our Celebrating Independence Day at Walt Disney World submit.
For the final a number of years, EPCOT has had overlapping festivals in summer time, with each Flower & Backyard Pageant operating by way of early July and EPCOT Meals & Wine Pageant starting lower than a month after Flower & Backyard ends. Not so in 2024. Each occasions have been scaled again to “2019 regular” and now both will run in June or July. It’s two-plus months of Food plan EPCOT!
With that stated, a lot is occurring in Summer time 2024, beginning outdoors the parks with the “Disney Desires That Soar” drone present at Disney Springs. This can run for the complete month of July and we extremely suggest seeing it! In actual fact, “Disney Desires That Soar” is the spotlight of summer time season at Walt Disney World!
Bouncing again to the parks, the ¡Celebración Encanto! Sing-Alongside at EPCOT and CommuniCore Corridor are each now open. Neither are something particular, however when you have youngsters, they may benefit from the Encanto sing-along.
There’s additionally the Lion King thirtieth Anniversary Celebration at Animal Kingdom. This is also pretty unremarkable. There’s some particular meals and souvenirs for buy, plus photograph ops, however that’s actually about it.
JULY REFURBISHMENTS & NEW ATTRACTIONS
For an thought of what’s going to be closed in July, examine the Walt Disney World Refurbishment Schedule. The excellent news is that there aren’t many points of interest which can be at the moment closed. The dangerous information is that those which can be or can be are pretty main.
The most important trip that’s at the moment closed is Check Observe, which is being reimagined. A reopening date has not but been introduced, but it surely’s unlikely to return any time this yr. We’re anticipating it to reopen for Spring Break 2025 on the earliest.
Along with that, Nation Bear Jamboree is closed till mid-month for its reimagining and Peter Pan’s Flight can even go down in July 2024 for a month-plus refurbishment. Ending on a constructive word, Rock ‘n’ Curler Coaster did reopen early–returning late final month versus the previously-scheduled late July.
Each of the most recent main points of interest at Walt Disney World are in Magic Kingdom, with Tiana’s Bayou Journey now open as of late final month! That is the reimagining of Splash Mountain, and tells the story of “The Princess and the Frog” after the occasions of the film. As mentioned in Tiana’s Bayou Journey Experience Evaluate: Failure, Flawed or Incredible?, the attraction is a combined bag.
When you’re visiting in July 2024, there are two different issues you need to find out about Tiana’s Bayou Journey. The primary is that it makes use of a digital queue…for now. But it surely may swap over to a standby line in some unspecified time in the future this month. See The best way to Experience Tiana’s Bayou Journey for all the pieces you might want to find out about its (lack of) standby line, Lightning Lane, and digital queue.
The large obstacle to ditching the digital queue and switching to standby is downtime and reliability points. As mentioned in You Would possibly Have Issues Driving Tiana’s Bayou Journey at Magic Kingdom, the reimagined trip is having troubles proper now and continuously has a number of hours of downtime per day. It in all probability gained’t drop the digital queue till it’s working extra persistently, with out frequent breakdowns.
Then there’s TRON Lightcycle Run at Magic Kingdom, which is the latest brand-new (not reimagined) main attraction at Walt Disney World. See our Digital Queue Technique Information for TRON Lightcycle Run for particulars, ideas & tips for fulfillment, and extra. Sadly, you can not be part of each the digital queue for Tiana’s Bayou Journey and TRON Lightcycle Run on the identical time, so that you’ll have to strategize with a view to expertise each in the identical day.
Bouncing again to EPCOT, there’s a bunch of different new stuff there. This contains World Celebration, Moana’s Journey of Water, and Luminous: Symphony of Us, all of which is able to solely be <6 months outdated as of Might 2024. That’s nonetheless fairly new within the grand scheme of issues! There’s additionally Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, Area 220 Restaurant, Remy’s Ratatouille Journey, and a bunch of different stuff.
For an summary of what else is on the horizon, see What’s New & Subsequent at Walt Disney World in 2024 & 2025.
JULY 2024 DISNEY WORLD CROWD CALENDAR
There’s no color-coded July 2024 crowd calendar to start out this as a result of that’s reductionist and doesn’t provide the full image of Walt Disney World attendance tendencies. Furthermore, WDW crowd calendars are much less dependable as a consequence of how Disney manipulates attendance patterns, staffing, closures, and trip capability. It higher serves readers to supply a proof when it comes to what to anticipate crowd-wise this summer time at Walt Disney World.
Since Disney doesn’t launch official attendance numbers, crowd calendars use issues like faculty schedules, airport visitors statistics, resort pricing & occupancy, and so forth., as proxies for crowds. We use these to forecast wait occasions and the ensuing crowd ranges. In brief, predicting wait occasions by way of Walt Disney World crowd calendars is an imperfect science. Hopefully that is smart!
As talked about at the beginning of this submit, summer time crowd ranges usually are not as dangerous as you would possibly count on. That is really nothing new, however pent-up demand throughout a few years within the post-reopening period masked it and skewed numbers for a few years. In any case, wait occasions knowledge and ‘looks like’ congestion ranges within the final two years factors to a return to the pre-closure pattern of summers being much less busy.
For additional perception into this, see “Summer time Isn’t Peak Season at Walt Disney World” from again in June 2017 or, higher but, Summer time (Nonetheless) Is NOT Excessive Crowds Season at Walt Disney World from June 2024. Though printed seven years aside, the story largely stays the identical–the underlying rationales simply differ barely.
As lined in these articles, July is now not one of many busiest months of the yr at Walt Disney World–or a minimum of, it wasn’t from 2016 by way of 2019 and hasn’t been once more from 2023 to 2024. That’s to not say it was low season at Walt Disney World in July throughout these years (removed from it!), simply that the start of the month is now not massively crowded. It was nonetheless summer time trip season. Nonetheless, the parks had been busier in October than in July throughout these years.
Sometimes, the primary week of July–the one encompassing Independence Day–can be far and away the busiest week of the month. Crowds would step by step lower after that, dropping barely with every subsequent week. Nonetheless, that’s NOT how final yr performed out.
Final yr, wait occasions rose step by step between the week earlier than Memorial Day and the final week of June, and steadily dropped all through the primary few weeks of July. Most days up till the final week of the month had crowd ranges of three/10 to five/10.
Independence Day weekend was the slowest 4 days of the complete month, with 1/10 crowd ranges. Nonetheless, that was as a consequence of blockout dates for Annual Passholders, Solid Members, and low cost tickets. Whereas we don’t count on Fourth of July 2024 to be packed, we additionally don’t count on it to be useless once more. Extra within the average (5/10 or so) vary than low or heavy crowds.
Wait occasions and attendance are virtually definitely going to extend for the vacation lengthy weekend, particularly since Disney didn’t make the identical mistake with ticket blockouts for Independence Day 2024. There’s additionally Free Eating being provided for this July, and that well-liked promotion ought to assist buoy bookings. It doesn’t have as a lot of an influence on crowd ranges as some would possibly count on (it does for restaurant reservations), but it surely’s an element.
The underside line is that July crowd patterns have been hit and miss in the previous couple of years. Final yr’s Independence Day virtually definitely was an anomaly, as was the height of summer time crowds occurring in mid-June. It’s too early to supply exact predictions, however we’re already anticipating July 2024 to be busier throughout the board. Furthermore, it’s probably that summer time crowds gained’t peak till late June or early July.
One other factor that’s more likely to occur once more is definitely a phenomenon that’s persistently occurred the previous couple of years, which is one other spike in attendance the final week of July. That is probably a “final hurrah” for vacationers scrambling to take a summer time trip earlier than their youngsters return to high school in August.
It’s occurred repeatedly in the previous couple of years, with crowd ranges rising to round 7/10 or 8/10 that final week, which has been a pointy distinction to earlier within the month. Don’t be shocked if these ‘twin peaks’ happen once more in early July and late July 2024.
Though crowds could possibly be average or greater in the direction of the tip of July, they need to fall quick as soon as August 2024 rolls round. That’s par for the course, as colleges begin going again into session mid-month, and fewer households are inclined to take summer time holidays within the couple of weeks heading again into faculty. The result’s usually that crowds proceed to taper off all through August earlier than bottoming out in September. That very same dynamic happens yearly in late summer time and early fall.
With all of that stated, we do have phrases of warning so as to add. When you final skilled Walt Disney World within the post-reopening interval, and even in 2017 or throughout the Nice Recession, your baseline expectations and expertise in all probability can be completely different than somebody who visited throughout vacation weeks over the past yr or when pent-up demand was actually operating sizzling.
Not solely that, however a ‘low’ crowd ranges doesn’t imply that in absolute phrases. Even on 1/10 days, the parks is not going to be veritable ghost cities (for essentially the most half) permitting you to do snow angels on the bottom. You will see rides with 60-90 minute posted wait occasions. You will encounter areas of congestion. “Uncrowded” at Walt Disney World means one thing completely different than it does on the American Dream Mall or Wyoming in The Final of Us. The most well-liked rides, particularly throughout the center of the day, will nonetheless have lengthy traces.
For instance, going from a ten/10 crowd stage to a 1/10 crowd stage means you would possibly encounter a 65-75 minute common wait time for well-liked rides–resembling Seven Dwarfs Mine Practice, Peter Pan’s Flight, Slinky Canine Sprint, Remy’s Ratatouille Journey, and Avatar Flight of Passage–versus 90-120 minute wait occasions. Since these numbers are averages, it additionally means greater peaks and decrease lows. Beneath-average crowd ranges doesn’t imply each attraction is at all times a walk-on!
One other particular drawback level is Fortunately Ever After. Sadly, congestion is the not-so-new regular for fireworks at Magic Kingdom. For the sake of illustration, let’s say that there are–on common–40,000 folks in Magic Kingdom in the direction of the tip of a busy evening.
On a slower day, let’s say the quantity is 20,000 folks–half the variety of a busy day. Now let’s assume that 10,000 folks match on or round Essential Road USA. It’s a simple arithmetic drawback. No matter whether or not it’s a sluggish or busy evening, the variety of folks eager to see Fortunately Ever After exceeds the capability of the viewing areas on and round Essential Road.
Lastly, count on there to be day-to-day and park-to-park variance for the rest of July 2024. That is past the scope of this crowd calendar, and can largely find yourself being pushed by trip breakdowns, upkeep points, and climate.
If it’s a very sizzling or wet day, Floridians will largely keep away from the parks, which might scale back crowd ranges. If it’s an unseasonably dry or cooler (by Orlando in summer time requirements) day, Floridians will flock to the park. If a number of points of interest expertise downtime, that may trigger wait occasions to balloon all over the place else. All of those are extra random variables, however they collectively can transfer the needle on crowd ranges significantly.
JULY PRICING & DISCOUNTS
By way of promotions, there are more likely to be room-only reductions for Annual Passholders, Florida residents, and most people in July 2024. See All Present Reductions at Walt Disney World for the varied resort offers.
Usually, Walt Disney World has one thing of a captive viewers throughout the summer time months as many households can solely go to then as a consequence of faculty being out of session. Disney solely gives reductions with a view to fill resort rooms and entice extra visitors to go to. They don’t actually need any additional incentive for the summer time, as that’s when persons are most inclined to journey to Florida, even within the face of the climate we talked about above.
By way of pricing, July has greater than common charges. One-day park tickets are costliest throughout this month, with most of July being “peak” season (learn our Suggestions for Saving Cash on Walt Disney World Tickets submit for multi-day ticket suggestions to keep away from having to cope with seasonal pricing). Lodges aren’t fairly as dangerous, because it’s the “Summer time” pricing season for them most dates; total, resort charges are barely above common, outdoors from the dates round Independence Day.
Even with below-average crowds, you’ll nonetheless desire a strong itinerary for touring the parks. July can be a protected wager relating to seeing the brand new leisure and points of interest at Walt Disney World, and the longer hours. There’s additionally upside within the inclement climate: it clears out the parks. If there’s heavy rain for over an hour (and also you comply with our tricks to stick it out), you’ll be rewarded with a far less-crowded park after the rain stops.
Many visitors usually are not ready for heavy rain, and a heavy rain in early afternoon can imply considerably decrease crowds the remainder of the day. It’ll additionally calm down the parks a bit. From an goal perspective, July is among the worst months of the yr, but it surely does have upside and for those who’re pressured to go to throughout the summer time as a consequence of your faculty or trip schedule, you shouldn’t hesitate to take action. You’ll nonetheless have time!
Planning a Walt Disney World journey? Find out about lodges on our Walt Disney World Lodges Evaluations web page. For the place to eat, learn our Walt Disney World Restaurant Evaluations. To save cash on tickets or decide which kind to purchase, learn our Suggestions for Saving Cash on Walt Disney World Tickets submit. Our What to Pack for Disney Journeys submit takes a singular take a look at intelligent gadgets to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Experience Guides will assist. For complete recommendation, the most effective place to start out is our Walt Disney World Journey Planning Information for all the pieces you might want to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Do you agree {that a} wet day at Walt Disney World is healthier than an ideal day at house? Do you want July at Walt Disney World? When you’ve visited in July, do you’ve any ideas so as to add? Do you agree or disagree with our evaluation of July? Any questions we will help you reply? Listening to your suggestions–even whenever you disagree with us–is each attention-grabbing to us and useful to different readers, so please share your ideas under within the feedback!
