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When you think of Disney World, you probably don’t think about New Jersey, but maybe you should. New Jersey residents flock to Disney World every November at the start of the month for an unofficial holiday – Jersey Week. But what the heck actually is Jersey Week? What is Jersey Week? Jersey Week is the name of the week when the NJEA Convention takes place in New Jersey, which is an annual teacher’s convention. The NJEA convention took place from November 6-7 this year. New Jersey schools are closed on both days, so many Jersey families take advantage of this and book a trip over the 4-day weekend. This convention also lines up with Veterans Day (November 11), another date when students get off from school. Some school districts even give children off the entire week and call it fall break. That means that Jersey Week 2025 is in that timeframe between November 5 and November 12, with heavy park attendance expected between November 6 and 11. As an unofficial week, there is no confirmed “start time” for when N.J. residents originally began flocking to Florida, but people have been referring to Jersey Week online for many years now, with some threads dating back to at least 2009. And those threads claim “Jersey Week” existed as a term for 10 years prior, which means N.J. residents have been showing up in big enough crowds for others to notice since around 2000. This year, Jersey Week was also lined up with other major happenings in Disney World, like the opening of a brand new attraction, Zootopia: Better Zoogether, at Animal Kingdom, Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party in Magic Kingdom, Jollywood Nights at Hollywood Studios and the EPCOT International Food & Wine Festival. Jersey Week is no longer just a phrase used unofficially by the Disney community; it is getting recognized nationally. NPR recently did a story earlier this month in an episode of “All Things Considered” about the “holiday between Halloween and Thanksgiving” – AKA, Jersey Week. Is Jersey Week actually the “busiest week” at Disney World? If you go on Reddit, TikTok or read Disney blogs, they’ll warn you that Jersey Week is the busiest week in Disney World and they’ll tell you to avoid it at all costs. But that is far from true. The busiest times to visit Disney World are the week of Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter. And surprisingly, Easter was reported to be busier in 2024 than Christmas. As the team’s resident Disney Adult and expert, I recently traveled to Disney World to see firsthand if Jersey Week is really that busy. I’ve been going to Disney since I was four years old, so I’ve got some pretty decent Disney credentials. In recent years, I’ve been to Disney World in February, June, August, October and now, November. So I can tell you the truth. The short answer? No. Jersey Week is not the busiest week I’ve ever been to Disney. The long answer? It was crowded as hell in some areas, like Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. But the ride wait times were not bad. I went to Animal Kingdom on November 7, and the average wait time for Flight of Passage (the most popular ride in that park) was only 65 minutes. I even saw the wait time under 45 minutes a handful of times throughout the day. TRON maxed out around 75 minutes when I went to Magic Kingdom, on a Sunday, too! When I went in June 2024, Flight of Passage had a 240-minute wait and TRON got up to 300 minutes. Surprisingly, the park with the longest wait times when I visited during Jersey Week 2025 was EPCOT. But, those waits still didn’t touch the wait times I saw in 2024. This week, the highest wait time I saw posted was Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, which was 110 minutes. However, that ride is currently under refurbishment as of Nov. 10, and people were rushing to ride it one last time before it changes from 3D to 2D. Test Track had an average wait that ranged between 75 and 95 minutes, but Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind was under an hour for the most part, and when the park opened, it was only 15-20 minutes at rope drop. I visited all four theme parks and Disney Springs, and the most crowded place I went to was Disney Springs! Magic Kingdom felt crowded on Main Street U.S.A., but that area is an intentional bottleneck and always feels crowded, especially around parade times and fireworks shows. Areas like Tomorrowland and Frontierland did not feel crowded at all. Even Fantasyland felt fairly manageable and not too crowded, even with Peter Pan’s Flight at its regular 45-minute posted wait time. Disney blogs, like Undercover Tourist, put the crowd calendar at an 8 (on a scale of one to 10) for the week of Jersey Week. The same calendar rates the week of Thanksgiving at a 10, meaning crowds are highest then. I’d say that only Magic Kingdom felt like a Crowd Level 8, and it really only felt that way on Main Street U.S.A. Once you got through the thick of that, the crowd levels during Jersey Week were completely manageable. In fact, November is a time I will now highly recommend to people, and will discourage traveling to Disney in June or August. The weather in November is much better than the summer months; it is still hot (with an average high of 78° and a low of 60°), but it rains far less. It only rained for a few hours one day during the week I was there. I went to Hollywood Studios for the first night of Jollywood Nights. It is an event that is unrelated to Jersey Week, but it falls during the same time (as does the first night of Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party at Magic Kingdom). For Jollywood Nights, special guests could get into the park at 5:30 p.m., but the park did not close to regular guests until 7 p.m., so there was an overlap of event guests and regular guests that made Hollywood Studios feel very, very crowded. Once the park closed to all non-party guests, Hollywood Studios felt practically empty in some areas, like Galaxy’s Edge. Ride times were walk-on for attractions like Tower of Terror. Slinky Dog Dash was only a 25-minute wait, which IKYK, that can get up to a 240-minute wait time. The only long wait times during the special event were actually for the unique photo ops with Disney characters dressed up for the party, like Scrooge McDuck, Stitch dressed as Santa and Mickey & Minnie, of course. Some of these waits were over 40 minutes during the party. Three important things to know about Jersey week If you’re on the fence about traveling during Jersey Week, here are my three biggest takeaways that might sway you one way or another. It is crowded, but the ride wait times aren’t bad. You can easily get on Cosmic Rewind in under an hour during this time. I promise, June is way more crowded than the first week of November. Some people are in the parks at this time to prioritize holiday parades and fireworks, rather than rides. Tickets are expensive, but not the most expensive time of year (that would be Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day or Easter). Flights are not as expensive during this time as during the summer months, if that is a contributing factor. The weather is lovely! If you’re looking to escape the cold of the Northeast in November, Florida is a great place to travel to. I was in shorts or a skirt the entire time, without the need for a sweatshirt or long sleeves, the entire week. Disney World and the New Jersey Connection New Jersey is one of the most Disney-obsessed states. There are even surveys that prove it. New York and New Jersey make up some of the most common Disney Vacation Club members, according to a DVC Tour Guide I met on this trip. Jersey folks just love Disney World! Disney World is an under three-hour flight, or less than a day’s drive if you want to road trip it. It is easy for anyone in New Jersey to get to Disney World; we have three major airports, like EWR, JFK or LGA, to fly out of. You can even hop on a plane out of Trenton or Atlantic City if you’re in South Jersey. On average, there are around 20 flights from EWR to MCO every day, so it is easy to find a flight that fits anyone’s schedule. If you pay attention, you can find cheap flights for under $250 on airlines like United, or flights on Spirit Airlines can be as little as $150. While traveling to Disney World for Jersey Week, I met a number of families from all over Jersey, and even talked to cast members at the parks who are from NJ. Just some of the towns representing our beautiful state during Jersey Week were: Absecon Cherry Hill Haddonfield Franklin Lakes Lake Mohawk Mahwah Manahawkin Spring Lake Tinton Falls (That’s me!) Toms River Disney gives the love back to New Jersey, as there are areas of Walt Disney World that are directly modeled after New Jersey. For starters, there is an entire Disney World resort called the BoardWalk Inn. It is situated on Disney’s BoardWalk, which is a boardwalk that transports you straight to the Jersey Shore, just not the fist-pumping kind. Disney’s BoardWalk has an ice cream shop with a sign that reads “it’s always ice cream weather here,” which is a sign you can find something like that at pretty much any beach town along the shore. There are trolley bike rentals, movies outside by the water, caricature artists, performers along the boardwalk and bars with fancy crafty cocktails. These are all things you’d be able to find at a handful of beach towns in the Garden State. There are even games on the BoardWalk where you can win a prize, much like the boardwalks in Point Pleasant and Seaside Heights. The BoardWalk Inn opened in 1996 and was designed to look like early 20th-century boardwalk entertainment districts, with direct nods to Coney Island and Atlantic City. Inside the BoardWalk Inn, you’ll find a miniature version of Lucy the Elephant, one of New Jersey’s most notable icons, displayed in the lobby next to a photo from when Lucy debuted in 1882 in Margate City. Over at the Atlantic Dance Hall, you’ll find something you’ll never see in New Jersey – no cover charge. The dance hall is open to everyone at 8 p.m. every night with a live DJ and no cover charge to get in. Over at Disney’s Yacht Club Resort and Beach Club Resort, you’ll see more Northeast inspirations, with more Newport and Martha’s Vineyard vibes. However, at the Beach Club Resort, you’ll find another New Jersey connection, the Cape May Cafe! A sit-down buffet restaurant where guests can grab either breakfast or dinner. There’s colorful artwork along the walls of the lobby and in the restaurant that transports you to the calm beaches in Cape May County. There is no definitive proof, but it is rumored that Walt Disney even considered building a theme park in New Jersey. It is also said that he visited Coney Island back in the early 1950s while planning to build Disneyland, and he loved the boardwalk atmosphere. Jersey Week travel numbers Disney will never release guest demographics, so they’ll never actually say if N.J. is the top state that visits the parks, but we did get some travel information about people heading to Orlando in November. We spoke with our friends at KAYAK to see just how many N.J. residents were planning to travel to Disney World, and the number is not small! KAYAK provided us with travel data that shows just how significant Jersey Week is for Orlando travel. 20% of all flight searches by New Jerseyans traveling between Nov. 5-12 (“Jersey Week”) are for trips to Orlando More than two-thirds of New Jerseyans (67%) searching for travel during Jersey Week are looking to fly out of EWR The cheapest airport to fly out of for Jersey Week in 2025 is EWR, with an average airfare of $209. That is a stark pivot from Jersey Week last year, when EWR was the most expensive airport with an average airfare of $296. It’ll cost New Jerseyans $215 on average to fly out of JFK and $237 on average to fly out of LaGuardia. Hotel costs in Orlando during Jersey Week are averaging $191/night, about 8% more expensive than last year’s Jersey Week. Jersey residents are so obsessed with Disney World, the first state that shows up with interest in “Disney trips” and “Disney flights” on Google Trends is New Jersey (after Florida). One of the families I met on this trip said this is their 14th year as Disney Vacation Club members and their 10th trip traveling for Jersey Week. Another family of 12 visiting from Jersey actually took advantage of the fall break, making their Jersey Week travels from Nov. 1 to Nov. 8. It is a favorite time of year for many folks in New Jersey, and we can’t wait until the day Disney maybe officially recognizes one of its largest gatherings of New Jerseyseans every year. Or at least, maybe Disney can make a New Jersey spirit jersey for us, it’s right in the name after all?
