This guide to March 2025 at Walt Disney World offers a free crowd calendar, weeks to visit & avoid, weather, ride refurbishments, and what’s new. All of this, plus info & tips for Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios. (Updated February 19, 2025.)
March 2025 will likely be a “tale of two seasons.” Or perhaps not, as there are some key differences between this year and last year that we’ll discuss in the crowds section below. The bottom line is that the second half of March 2025 will be busy, as many colleges and many school systems in the country will take their spring break…and that means trips to Walt Disney World!
If you’re somehow able to get past that (perhaps you’re an avid queue enthusiast, in which case 120-minute waits might be right up your alley), the month of March 2025 can otherwise be a good time to visit Walt Disney World. Let’s take a look at the highs and lows of the month…
While it’s always above-average in terms of crowds, parts of March 2025 won’t be as bad for a couple of reasons. First, because Easter isn’t until April 20, 2025. This is 3 full weeks later than the previous year, which will effectively spread out the Spring Break season and dilute crowds. Schools that plan their Spring Breaks around the Easter holiday won’t be off for Spring Break in March 2025.
However, many K-12 schools and colleges in the United States have their Spring Breaks earlier in March. That includes many districts in Florida, including the two counties with the biggest impact on Walt Disney World crowds. We’ll discuss the ramifications of Spring Break in the March 2025 crowd calendar section below. Here’s what else you need to know about the month at Walt Disney World, organized into convenient categories…
March Weather at Disney World
As far as the weather goes, March is the month when the weather starts to turn around and warm up. Temperatures rise over the course of the month, and although they are still on the cool side of mild, it’s usually quite comfortable. Sure, it can be abnormally cold or hot in March (definitely check the long term forecast before visiting as it really could be either), but you’re generally in for weather that’s almost ideal for touring the parks.
Lows at the beginning of the month are in the mid-50s and creep up towards the 60s by the end of the month. High temperatures range from 75 to 80 degrees. In looking at those numbers and the “comfortable” band on this page, you might think that it skews towards chilly. That can be true early in the morning and late at night, but keep in mind that you’ll be most active during the middle of the day when it’s warmest; personally, I prefer slightly cooler temperatures when I’m active, anyway.
The result is that I find March to be one of the better months of the year for weather in Florida, particularly towards the end of the month. At the beginning of the month you’re more likely to experience unseasonably cold weather, so I tend to avoid that. About the only downside to this mild weather is that it can make visiting water parks or spending much time in your resort hotel’s pool less appealing (or downright unappealing). This can be a bummer for those seeking a ‘tropical’ reprieve from winter in the North.
Being Michiganders, that’s exactly what my family wanted from our trips when I was growing up. I still remember an early March vacation during which my parents decided to stubbornly stick to our plans (I paint them as “stubborn” but the reality was probably that I was a bratty kid who insisted upon going) to visit Blizzard Beach. There was almost no one in the park, and we all spent the better park of the day wrapped in towels on our beach chairs.
I recall crossing the icebergs in Ski Patrol Training Camp and envisioning them as actual chunks of ice, which wasn’t that much of a stretch of the imagination at the time. I share all of this because you might not want to make concrete plans for the water parks or put too much weight in a hotel’s swimming pool when choosing a hotel or planning a March visit–you may not want to spend time at either.
March 2025 Disney World Special Events
Let’s start out with the nonpublic events in March 2025 that impact attendance at Walt Disney World. While there is no Beer Bong World Championship (let alone more unsavory events) held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports, there are youth events that can result in just as wild of crowds.
There are usually major dance and cheerleading competitions held in March that boost attendance at the parks and occupancy at the hotels, usually the All Stars and Coronado Springs. Here’s what was on the calendar at the ESPN Wide World of Sports:
- Youth Flag Football World Championships: February 28 to March 2, 2025
- The Quest Recreational Championship: March 7-8, 2025
- UCA/UDA All Star National Championship: March 8-9, 2025
- Disney Spring Training: March 10 to April 20, 2025.
All of these are large events. In particular, the Youth Flag Football Championship describes itself as “one of the largest youth flag football tournaments in history with over 700 teams and 8,000 athletes! Over 2,500 games will be played with much of the action streaming live on ESPN+.” That’s a lot of participants, and keep in mind that very few of these athletes (who are children) will travel alone. Most come with families, so there’s a multiplier on that 8,000 that probably increases the overall attendees to somewhere around 20,000 (give or take).
Nevertheless, the actual impact of youth sporting events on crowd levels is debatable. If you end up at the same hotel as them or behind a large group of cheerleaders in line or in the same Haunted Mansion stretching room as them, your perception of them will likely be very different than someone who stays at a different hotel and only encounters small numbers of them in passing. We speak from experience (including that very specific Haunted Mansion example), and say that this is generally not something about which you should be concerned.
Speaking of athletic events, on a positive note, there is no runDisney race in March 2025. The Princess Half Marathon is in late February, and the Springtime Surprise is in early April. Neither have any impact on crowds in March. Another win!
Then there are the public events held during the month at Walt Disney World. The EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival will kick off on March 5, 2025 and run for the duration of the month and through June 2, 2025. This will spike ‘feels like’ crowds at EPCOT, as it’s a big draw for locals who show up specifically for the event–to see the floral displays, eat food, and buy merchandise.
One thing locals typically do not do–or do disproportionately less than tourists–is rides. As a result, congestion at EPCOT is higher but wait times often are not. Locals also visit EPCOT disproportionately at the start of events, on weekends and after work. Meaning that some dates in early March 2025 identified below as great times to visit won’t be so great for EPCOT congestion or feels like crowds. Just something to keep in mind as you plan your days (or times of day) in each park!
Regardless of whether you’re into gardening (I’m not) this is event has the park looking lovely. The flower tapestry by the Imagination pavilion, between Future World and World Showcase is incredibly picturesque, as are the many topiaries around the park. There’s much more than that, all of which you can read about in our Guide to EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival.
Finally, there’s After Hours at Magic Kingdom and After Hours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. These occur sporadically and, as the names suggest, are held after park closing. They have minimal impact on daytime crowd levels, but result in a slight bump in crowds during the evening ‘mix-in’ time.
We do not recommend changing your plans because of After Hours at Magic Kingdom, but you might want to do DHS on a different evening. Normally, that park is great for lower wait times at the end of the night, albeit to a lesser degree on After Hours dates.
Park Hours for March are usually pretty good. Walt Disney World has quietly been extending these, with Magic Kingdom now closing later and the other 3 parks opening earlier as a result. Of course, there’s a reason for this: spring break attendance forecasts!
March REFURBISHMENTS & NEW ATTRACTIONS
In terms of attractions that will be closed during March 2025, check the Walt Disney World Refurbishment Schedule. There will be several ride closures this spring, the biggest of which are Test Track and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. The latter is closed until 2026 for a complete retrack.
The former is currently closed for the Test Track 3.0 Ride Reimagining. This fan-favorite thrill ride is receiving an update inspired by World of Motion, and went down for that work in mid-June. Walt Disney World hasn’t announced a reopening date, but work appears nowhere near finished and the current timeframe is Late Summer 2025 is the target. Our expectation is that it reopens sometime between the second half of July and October 1, 2025.
Otherwise, not much should be closed in March 2025, as Walt Disney World tries to wrap up winter refurbishment season before Spring Break rolls around. More good news: Walt Disney World is no longer a veritable construction zone, as most major projects have now wrapped up and the next development cycle is just starting to begin but doesn’t yet impact the guest experience. The front of EPCOT is no longer a sea of construction walls with a giant dirt pit in the middle, but Animal Kingdom will be starting to ramp up projects.
The biggest new additions at Walt Disney World are both in Magic Kingdom: Tiana’s Bayou Adventure and TRON Lightcycle Run. Both attractions will offer a standby line as of March 2025 (ditching their virtual queues), as well as Lightning Lane line-skipping–as do almost all popular attractions at Walt Disney World. We highly recommend consulting our Guide to Lightning Lane Single & MultiPass at Walt Disney World & FAQ for everything you need to know.
When it comes to new additions for 2025, the bad news is that absolutely nothing will be open by March 2025. Disney Starlight Night Parade, Villains Unfairly Ever After, Little Mermaid: A Musical Adventure, and the reimagined Test Track all are slated for summer debuts. On the plus side, if you’re doing a bigger-picture Orlando trip, you might get lucky with soft openings of Universal’s Epic Universe. But even that is a longshot unless you’re visiting later in the month.
For an overview of what else is on the horizon, see What’s New & Next at Walt Disney World in 2025.
March 2025 DISNEY WORLD CROWD CALENDAR
We’ll start this free crowd calendar section with the same preface as other months—skip ahead a few paragraphs if you’ve already read it. Wondering why you don’t see a color-coded crowd calendar here? It’s because we don’t really trust them anymore and don’t think you should, either. If we just had a visual crowd calendar graphic here, many of you would only look at that and not read the accompanying explanation that covers what you might actually expect. That’d be doing you a disservice.
While they can be useful tools, crowd calendars are one small piece of a much larger puzzle. We no longer choose our own Disney travel dates based exclusively upon crowd calendars and we’d likewise discourage you from doing so. Crowd calendars are increasingly less reliable because of the way Disney manipulates attendance patterns, staffing, closures, and ride capacity.
Walt Disney World doesn’t release official attendance numbers, so crowd calendars utilize info like school schedules, airport traffic statistics, hotel pricing & occupancy, and other indicators as proxies for crowds. For years, this approach worked and made crowd calendars reliable. Walt Disney World attendance followed an identifiable pattern that tracked with the aforementioned proxies.
More recently, wait times don’t always reflect actual crowds because Disney has become adept and more sophisticated at manipulating both attendance and crowd flow. Think of this as the difference between the actual temperature and the “feels like” temperature, but with crowds. We can still actual crowd and attendance patterns, but not wait times. The latter are what most of you likely care about (the “feels like” crowds), but it’s more difficult to accurately forecast wait times via Walt Disney World crowd calendars.
We’ll start with some bad news, which is that predicting crowds for the first half of March 2025 is going to be tricky. Normally, this would be a great time to visit because it’s a lull in crowds. After Mid-Winter Break and Presidents’ Day, but before Spring Break.
However, there are two things you should be aware of when it comes to March 2025. The first is Mardi Gras. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but due to the proximity of Louisiana to Florida it very much is. As such, avoiding the dates leading up to March 4, 2025 is advisable.
This means that, unlike most years when it’s one of our favorite timeframes, the first week of March is NOT a great time to visit in 2025. Mardi Gras crowds should start heading home by Saturday, but we’d recommend avoiding March 1-7, 2025. There’s a high probability that crowds that week are significantly worse than normal–potentially in the 7/10 to 9/10 range.
Compounding matters is the aforementioned youth sporting events at the ESPN Wide World of Sports. Most of those attendees will arrive early and visit the parks in the week leading up to their weekend events. Accordingly, that Saturday and Sunday (March 8-9, 2025) shouldn’t be bonkers busy, but crowd levels will be moderate or above (5/10 to 7/10).
The other wildcard is that the lowest tier of Walt Disney World Annual Passes will be blocked out March 15-23, 2025. It’s often the case that weeklong blockouts like this result in locals moving forward visits to “get their Disney fix” before the blockout starts. That’s exactly what we saw in 2024–and the result was the days leading up to the blockout were among the worst of the Spring Break season.
However, there were a couple of key differences, the first and biggest being that the blockout was twice as long due to Orange County’s Spring Break and Easter occurring in consecutive weeks. The second is that more school districts in the Midwest, Canada, Northeast, and elsewhere had that week off. There were also one-off special events, as well as ticket deals that probably will not be repeated in lieu of last year.
As such, we are not expecting a repeat of this in 2025–and are recommending March 8-13, 2025 as one of the best weeks of spring. See our list of the 10 Best & Worst Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2025 & 2026 for additional recommendations.
This is more or less normal, reflecting the lull between the popular Presidents’ Day and Mardi Gras holidays in late February and the start of Spring Break season in mid-March. Weekends will be busier, especially when the weather is nice.
Following that, expect the Spring Break ‘season’ to unofficially kick off on March 14, 2025. This is because that’s the Friday several school districts in Central Florida (and beyond) will start their recesses. But really, Orlando-area districts are all that matters that early on–anyone traveling from out of state won’t be in the parks that Friday.
In the past, the start of Orange County’s Spring Break has been one of the worst weeks of the year. That was not the case last year due to a mixture of the AP blockout as well as blockouts on the ticket deals, along with significantly higher prices for tickets and exclusions for various other discounts. Unsurprisingly, all of that had the effect of making Central Florida’s Spring Break less busy in the parks.
This year already seems like it’s shaping up to be busier. Walt Disney World has released a Florida resident ticket deal for Winter and Spring 2025–and it is not blocked out for this week. It does require reservations, so whether those are capped at a meaningful level is what will likely be outcome-determinative for crowds. Our guess is that Walt Disney World learned from last year’s mistakes and this week ends up being very busy again in 2025.
As a result of Orange County and other Central Florida school districts having their Spring Breaks (including student breaks and weekends), March 14-23, 2025 should be pretty busy.
However, the aforementioned AP blockouts for all but one day in that range should help to at least partially offset that. We’re now expecting slightly high crowds (around 7/10 to 8/10) but not peak season ones. A lot hinges on reservation availability via the ticket deal, which thus far appears fairly unrestricted.
Crowds won’t let up the next week, either. Although it’s a far less common break for Florida school districts, many Midwest and Northeast schools have the last week of the month off. On top of that, APs aren’t blocked out. Consequently, March 24-30, 2025 will be among the busiest of the season. Not Easter week bad, but another 7/10 to 8/10 week.
To that point, if you’re wanting a silver lining, at least Easter isn’t until late April 2025! Even with fewer pockets of low crowds, March 2025 as a whole won’t be as busy as last year. The only true 10/10 week of Spring Break is Easter, and that’s almost a full month later in 2025.
In fact, given how Spring Break is more diluted this year, we wouldn’t be surprised if few–if any–dates in March 2025 even hit 9/10 crowd levels. That’s good news, as the difference between 7/10 crowds and 10/10 crowds can be much worse than the difference between 4/10 crowds and 7/10 crowds.
March PRICING & DISCOUNTS
As a result of Spring Breaks being fairly common in March, you typically won’t find much in the way of exceptional promotions in a normal year. See All Current Walt Disney World Discounts for specifics.
However, “good” is a relative term when describing these discounts, as March is above average in terms of rack rates and ticket prices. Even a higher-than-normal percentage off an astronomical price is still a high price!
For hotels, much of the month is peak season, which is exactly as expensive as it sounds. Only holiday pricing is worse. For tickets, the pricing is not as bad, but it’s still far from the off-season in terms of per-day pricing.
Overall, March is a tale of two months–but also a month on the rise. Normally, the last week of February/first week of March is one of the year’s “sweet spots” for planning a vacation. In fact, we love it so much that it’s one of the top weeks of the year on our aforementioned rankings. The timing of Mardi Gras means that won’t be the case in March 2025, and those major youth events that aren’t normally terrible on their own could turn slightly above-average crowds into high ones.
The good news is that the second week–at least, most of it–should be pretty good. There’s a reason that window ranks so highly–and it’s not just that the wait times are low. March typically offers pleasant weather, longer hours, and the start of the spring bloom with Flower & Garden Festival beginning. After that, March’s attractiveness deteriorates, but even later in the month, I still think the weather goes a long way to compensate for crowds.
To that point, before you freak out about heavy crowds, remember that better weather and also the likelihood of extended hours. You can still beat the crowds if you arrive early, take a midday break, and stay late. Savvy strategy, strong use of Early Entry & rope drop, our step-by-step itineraries, and staying late can help overcome crowds. That’s even before buying Lightning Lanes, which is obviously advantageous during Spring Break season. You can always beat bad crowds–but the same isn’t true with miserable weather!
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
Do you agree or disagree with our thoughts on March at Walt Disney World? Have you done Walt Disney World during Spring Break before? Do you think it’s a good or bad time to visit? Any questions? Hearing your feedback about your experiences is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts or questions below in the comments!