Haven't been to Disneyland in a while? It may surprise you to learn that Sunday is the least busy day on average, with Tuesday being the busiest

It's theme park advice nearly as old as theme parks. Due to the way society treats work and school, it's no surprise that historically the busiest times to be at a theme park were weekends and holidays. To escape long wait times and shoulder to shoulder crowds, you'd be advised to go on a weekday when kids are in school.

Those days are long gone. It's not uncommon for someone to visit Disneyland on a weekday and remark, "Wow, I didn't think it would be so busy." Conversely, it's not uncommon for a guest to visit the park and think, "Oh, that wasn't as bad as I thought it would be."

There is a great web site called Queue Times, a wait time aggregation platform that swipes wait time data directly from the Disneyland app and archives it. It assigns each day a score based on how long the wait times were. As you can see in the attached screenshot, Sunday is the least busy day and Tuesday is the busiest day on average. Even Monday and Wednesday are no busier than Saturday.

Why is this? Well, it's a combination of aggressive dynamic pricing, liberal use of blockout dates, and the reservation system.

Dynamic pricing: Back in the day you paid one price to visit Disneyland regardless of the date. Hell, your grandpa had to buy separate tickets for each ride. Holidays, weekends and weekdays were the same price.

Today, dynamic pricing works on a tier system. A 1-day, 1-park ticket on a tier 0 day is $104 as of this post. However, a tier 6 day, reserved for the busiest holidays, is $224. Some guests wrongly think that the tier is indicative of how busy it will be, but forget how price sensitive guests are. Those tier 0 days can be a madhouse, and often are. Those who pay more don't escape the lines completely, but find that going on the weekend is actually doable these days!
Blockout dates: Disneyland has always imposed blockout dates for its passes, but they seem to be more aggressive than in the past. Even the highest priced $1600 Magic Key pass (formerly Annual Pass) is blocked out for the Christmas and New Year's weeks.

When I went on the Saturday before Christmas, a historically nutso time to visit, I was greeted with 30 minute waits for top tier rides like it's a small world and Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway at 1PM. Magic Key holders also have to contend with a reservation system that severely limits their ability to impulsively visit. It's not uncommon for reservations to be "sold out" days or weeks in advance, even when regular tickets are not.
Reservation system: A product of COVID and kept when the park reopened, the reservation system keeps things from getting too out of hand at Disneyland these days. Disney decided a while ago that guests that wait in 2-3 hour lines are unhappy and spend less. As much as the ticket prices have gone up, at least the visit is somewhat more pleasant than it used to be. I should know. I once waited 3 hours for the Rocket Rods in the 90s.

All this combines to make for more consistent crowd levels at Disneyland. Other local parks see a much wider range of wait times between their busiest and least busy days. A Six Flags park can see 2-3 hour waits on a holiday but 5 minute waits on a weekday for the same rides.

Not so at Disneyland. A light day is Space Mountain at 45-60 minutes. But a busy day isn't much worse, at 60-75 minutes, sometimes 90. It's no longer a chore to go on the weekend, and a lot of the time it's ideal, as long as you are willing to pay more.

So if you haven't been to the park in a while, and want to know the best time to go, it isn't always the weekdays anymore. They are the cheapest days, but they are no escape from long lines.