Spring break is not one weekend, it is a month of them. American universities break at different times through March, so the crowd arrives in waves, and underneath it the pool season is only just waking up. Which pools are actually open changes week by week through the whole of it.
When it lands
March into early April, spread across several weeks rather than one.
What is different about this weekend
The same venues, the same city, behaving differently enough to be worth planning around.
The season is still opening
Strip dayclubs run March to October, and they do not all start on the same day. In early March some are open, some are weekends only, and some have not opened at all.
The weather is a real variable
March in the desert swings hard. A warm afternoon and a cold, windy one can be a day apart, and pools do close for weather.
The strictest doors of the year
March is when identification gets checked most carefully, because it is the month with the most people trying it on. Every Strip dayclub is 21 and over, with no flexibility.
How the weekend runs
- The first week of March is the quiet one. Few venues are fully open and the crowd has not arrived.
- Mid March to the end of the month is the busy stretch, and it overlaps with March Madness, which fills the sportsbooks and the bars as much as the pools.
- Weekends are far busier than weekdays through March, more so than in high summer, because the crowd is travelling on short trips.
- Early April tails off before the season proper starts in May.
Getting in
- Confirm the pool is open that week. This is the single most useful thing to check in March and the one nobody does.
- Tickets are cheap by the standards of the season, and tables are the most affordable they get until October.
- Have an indoor plan. A cold, windy March afternoon closes pool decks, and the trip should not depend on one.
The pools that run it
Every Strip dayclub opens for this one. These are the rooms, with what we last confirmed about each.
What has changed since the last time you read about this
The archive covered spring break week by week through 2014 and 2015, listing which pool opened on which date. The dates in those posts are long dead, but the pattern holds exactly: the openings are staggered through March, and the Palms has historically been among the first to open.
Why there are no prices on this page
Door and table rates for this occasion are set per venue, change every year, and are usually announced a few weeks out. Publishing last year’s numbers would be worse than publishing none. Each venue page carries what we have actually confirmed, alongside the date we confirmed it.
Questions people actually ask
Are the pools actually open in March?
Some of them, some of the time. The season officially runs from March, but individual venues open on their own dates and often at weekends only to begin with.
Which week is busiest?
The middle two weeks of March, when the largest number of universities are off at once.
Is it cheaper than summer?
Substantially, on rooms and on tables. The trade is that the weather is a gamble and the venue list is incomplete.
What happens if it is too cold?
Pool decks close or run at reduced hours. Marquee is the exception, because its dayclub sits under a heated dome and can run whatever the weather does.
Check what is actually open today
Opening days and hours move through the season. The live list is the one to trust over anything written months ahead, this page included.
