CaptainHappenstance
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2018
Backstory
My family (me, wife and 10 y/o son) are looking into a trip in mid-April 2019 during our son's Spring Break. I checked some crowd calendars and projections line up with common knowledge about the parks around Easter - about as crowded as it gets. I was a bit bummed because Spring Break is really the only time my family can go for an extended period of time due to other summer obligations, so I decided to do some research into common Spring Break dates to see if I could talk myself down from worries about super high crowds at WDW. Since I geeked out on data for an hour and already did the research, I figured I'd share in case anyone was curious or may find it helpful.
Approach
I found the Top 120 school districts by enrollment (for 2014) from the US Dept of Ed. For each district, I mapped it to the US Census Bureau's Region and Division (e.g. Florida is South Region - South Atlantic Division). I then looked up the Spring Break dates for each of the top 50 districts and identified which week of the year those K-12 schools had off. I stopped at 50 since the results seemed clear and the top 50 districts account for 6.3 million of kids out of the 8.8 million (71.37%) that attend school in the top 120 districts and about 12.4% of total US enrollment (~50 million as of 2015).
Observations
Observations about the Top 50 Districts
Looks like we may pass on an April 2019 trip. We're in the Pacific NW and not sure we want to fly across the country to wait in lots of long lines.
2019 Spring Break Week By District Count (Top 50 School Districts)
2019 Spring Break Week By District Enrollment (Top 50 School Districts)
My family (me, wife and 10 y/o son) are looking into a trip in mid-April 2019 during our son's Spring Break. I checked some crowd calendars and projections line up with common knowledge about the parks around Easter - about as crowded as it gets. I was a bit bummed because Spring Break is really the only time my family can go for an extended period of time due to other summer obligations, so I decided to do some research into common Spring Break dates to see if I could talk myself down from worries about super high crowds at WDW. Since I geeked out on data for an hour and already did the research, I figured I'd share in case anyone was curious or may find it helpful.
Approach
I found the Top 120 school districts by enrollment (for 2014) from the US Dept of Ed. For each district, I mapped it to the US Census Bureau's Region and Division (e.g. Florida is South Region - South Atlantic Division). I then looked up the Spring Break dates for each of the top 50 districts and identified which week of the year those K-12 schools had off. I stopped at 50 since the results seemed clear and the top 50 districts account for 6.3 million of kids out of the 8.8 million (71.37%) that attend school in the top 120 districts and about 12.4% of total US enrollment (~50 million as of 2015).
Observations
Observations about the Top 50 Districts
- Week 16 (April 14-20), the week before Easter, is most popular. 27.9% of children have Spring Break during this time. Next most common is Week 17 (April 21-27), the week after Easter, with 19.2% of children. Unsurprisingly, crowd calendars and Disney AP blackout dates nailed it. Bummer for me.
- 36 of the districts are in the South region, with 26 in the South Atlantic Division (Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia). The South has very large school districts.
- The most common week for the South region is Week 16 (11 of 36 districts) followed by Week 11 (March 10-16) with 9 districts and Week 12 (March 17-23) with 7.
- All 11 districts in the South that have Week 16 are in the South Atlantic Division, which is the most likely to travel down to Disney, in my opinion, due to proximity.
- NYC has Week 17 (April 21-27) off. Philly's Spring Break is only the Thursday and Friday before Easter and the Monday after.
Looks like we may pass on an April 2019 trip. We're in the Pacific NW and not sure we want to fly across the country to wait in lots of long lines.
2019 Spring Break Week By District Count (Top 50 School Districts)
2019 Spring Break Week By District Enrollment (Top 50 School Districts)
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