School is back in session and crowds have plummeted to their lowest levels in 3 years for the off-season at Walt Disney World. This wait times report covers data for Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. It also offers commentary about the why of attendance trends, ‘feels like’ crowds vs. wait times, and forward-looking predictions for Fall 2024.
Walt Disney World has not been busy for the last few months. It was a slow summer at Orlando’s theme parks, as discussed at length in Summer (Still) Is NOT Busy Season at Walt Disney World. That offers our theories as to why summer was slower, as well as why it’s not really all that surprising.
During the company’s most recent earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger reiterated this and warned investors of attendance softness and demand moderation through 2025. That’s also nothing new, as the company has cautioned of a slowdown at Walt Disney World. They’ve previously attributed this to the end of “revenge travel,” lapping the 50th Anniversary, and poor weather. The differences now are two-fold.
First, these warnings are no longer just about Walt Disney World. Back last year when this started happening during earnings calls, there was a contrast drawn between Walt Disney World and pretty much everywhere else, with the difference attributed to pent-up demand arriving earlier (and thus ending sooner) in Florida than California, Disney Cruise Line, and the international parks. It made sense and is something we witnessed firsthand. Now, the rest of the Parks & Resorts are feeling what began at Walt Disney World.
Second, there are no longer unfavorable or difficult comparisons for Walt Disney World. The 50th and pent-up demand ended over one year ago. The comparisons now are actually quite favorable, and Walt Disney World is still reporting weaker year-over-year results. This isn’t entirely a story of attendance (the earnings calls don’t focus on that as a key metric), but we’re seeing it play out in terms of crowds, too. Hence Walt Disney World just wrapping up its slowest month and week since 2021!
As always, what’s covered in these “crowd” reports is actually posted wait time data that’s pulled from My Disney Experience and compiled into graphs for tracking and comparing various days, weeks, months, and years. A lot can be gleaned from posted wait times, but it’s not necessarily conclusive of in-park congestion or crowds.
Posted wait times offer insight into how busy Walt Disney World is, but they are an imperfect measure of crowds. They’re almost always inflated, some lines don’t post wait times, they don’t account for Lightning Lane changes, EPCOT festivals, etc. Nevertheless, wait times are the only objective measure of crowds that we have. On-the-ground observations can be useful, but they also have shortcomings.
Frame of reference also matters. The majority of days in 2024 will be more crowded than their counterparts a decade or more ago. Same goes for comparing this year to 2020-2021. Really, the only worthwhile historical comparisons are from 2022 to 2024 and 2018 to 2019. If you’re expecting crowd levels on par with the 1990s, Great Recession or post-COVID reopening, you’re going to be disappointed–and conclude that Walt Disney World is “always busy.”
We just want to offer these important caveats to stress the limitations of crowd reports and wait time data for Walt Disney World. If you think there are too many asterisks attached, that’s fair–maybe this type of post is not for you. With that out of the way, let’s dig into the data and look at Walt Disney World wait times. As always, all graphs and stats are courtesy of Thrill-Data.com:
We’ll start with the monthly numbers for Walt Disney World as a whole over the course of the last year.
What’s most interesting about this is seeing a decrease every single month since February. In a normal year, there would be a noticeable spike for spring break and Easter, followed by a shoulder season slowdown and then summer spike (or two). Even with summers being less busy in the last decade, this was the dynamic we were seeing.
Instead, this year has shown a slow and steady decrease. It’s especially rare for May to be busier than July, which is something that never happens–but did in 2024! Unsurprisingly, August continued that trend. In fact, let’s zoom out a bit further…
The above graph shows monthly crowd levels since the start of 2019, and from that, we can see that August 2024 was the slowest month at Walt Disney World since October 2021.
For reference, October 2021 was a very weird time at Walt Disney World. As you might recall, the Delta variant and reinstated mask rules put a major damper on attendance, causing a deluge of cancellations from a wide variety of guests (albeit for two, essentially opposite, reasons). That was further exacerbated by fears of Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary drawing record-setting crowds. Obviously, it did not.
Because of the anomalies of crowd levels in mid-2020 through early 2022, we seldom use those for drawing comparisons. They were low for unprecedented reasons that hopefully will never be repeated again. Nevertheless, it is very noteworthy whenever crowd levels fall to lows not seen since 2020-2021, as happened last month.
With the week by week view, we can see that crowds were fairly constant this summer. If you look closely, you can spot a downward trend, but it’s gradual. There were three slight spikes–at the tail end of June, again at the end of July, and finally right before school went back into session in August–but even those only got numbers back to May levels. None of this is uncommon for the summer season; it was just lower this year than in the past.
What’s also not surprising is that crowd levels have been dropping starting with the second week of August. As with the month as a whole, the last week of August was the slowest at Walt Disney World since the last week of September into early October 2021.
Let’s zoom out to see the weekly data since 2019:
That’s a surprising statistic at first blush–the lowest crowd week and month since 2021! But it really shouldn’t be. The same week last year was just barely busier, with a 25 minute average and 1/10 crowd level versus a 23 minute average and 1/10 crowd level this year. Two minutes can add up over the course of a day, but both weeks were incredibly slow–the two least busy weeks since October 2021!
Given the overall trajectory of crowd levels and the last week of August being reliably slow year-in and year-out, this shouldn’t be a huge shock. I’m fairly confident in predicting the last week of August 2025 will also be slow. Whether it’s more or less busy than this year probably depends on the broader economy, Epic Universe, and the Disney Starlight night parade as well as a potential summer event.
Individual days illustrate mostly the same, but with more bars.
From August 27 to 30, every day had an average wait time of 19-21 minutes. When you’re looking at resort-wide numbers for a multi-day stretch, those are insanely low. Keep in mind that several attractions bottom out at 10 minute or 13 minute wait times even when they’re walk ons. Then there are some films that post wait times on the basis of how long it is until the next showing. So for the stats to be this low, that means the headliners also had to have far lower wait times than normal. And they did!
I was in the parks doing field-testing every single day of that stretch (at first it was supposed to be Lightning Lane Multi Pass testing, but I had to postpone those plans because it was too easy), and I was shocked by how low crowds were. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train with a posted 25 minute wait during the middle of the day (on a non-party day!), Space Mountain at 10 minutes, and even Avatar Flight of Passage being a near walk-on before 3 pm! Despite my caveating above about ‘feels like’ crowds vs. wait times, these numbers paint an entirely accurate picture of how things felt.
Labor Day weekend actually saw a slight spike in crowds, but still wasn’t bad at all. The low crowds over the holiday made the rounds on social media, but this shouldn’t be the least bit surprising for readers of this blog. We explained the ‘why’ of that and offered historical stats back in Labor Day Weekend Isn’t Busy at Disney.
For park by park analysis, we’ll start with Magic Kingdom.
Magic Kingdom has already started its “porcupine pattern” of crowds for Party Season, with full operating days being noticeably busier than days of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. (Note that this does not include wait times during MNSSHP–only before it starts.) This is reflected in the wait time data and it’s even more evident from the in-park experience. Suffice to say, all of Magic Kingdom’s 10 slowest days of the year have come since the start of August.
See Best & Worst 2024 Crowd Days at Magic Kingdom for a fool-proof list of the least and most crowded dates at Magic Kingdom between now and December 2024. This includes a handful of red flag dates to avoid at all costs.
Animal Kingdom has seen its crowd levels all over the place this month. Just last week, average wait times ranged from 20 minutes one day to 40 minutes another day. That’s a huge spread–literally a doubling–and one without an obvious explanation.
The good news is that, as always, early mornings and late afternoons remain “undefeated” and actual wait times are minimal during those timeframes even on a busier day. Thankfully, those busier days should be far less common over the course of September.
Over at EPCOT, wait times have flatlined since the start of summer.
EPCOT is always a wildcard, but I’ll admit that this one caught me by surprise. We always point out that EPCOT is the locals’ park, and Floridians are more likely to visit for festivals and atmosphere than rides. This summer was Diet EPCOT, explaining the lower crowds once Flower & Garden ended.
However, the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival is now underway and it still hasn’t really spiked crowds. In fact, the first two days of the event had 1/10 crowd levels with 19 minute average waits. I was there for the first 5 days of the event, and “feels like” crowds were not any worse. It was downright shocking, especially since the weather for the first few days was fine (by Florida in August and September standards). I’d be concerned about this if I were Disney management, and it underscores why they can’t just phone in the festivals and expect locals to eat up re-microwaved leftovers.
Finally, there’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
As always, this is the park with the highest average wait times in all of Walt Disney World, owing to its disproportionate number of headliners coupled with stage shows that post no wait times at all (and thus do not drag down averages). May through the third week of August was fairly unremarkable at DHS.
Then came last week, culminating in August 29. That day had a 20 minute average, which is insanely low by Disney’s Hollywood Studios standards. Low as the crowds were at EPCOT, I guess Food & Wine did pull people away from DHS?
For the sake of comparison, here’s a high-level look at the weekly wait time averages for Universal Orlando. No surprise here–it was also the slowest week of the year at Universal (and August was the slowest month).
Universal has also been keeping limited hours, with neither park open later than 8 pm during regular operations throughout September. Something tells me that if all four Walt Disney World parks did this, fans would not be forgiving, but as always, Universal gets a pass.
We’ve mentioned it before, but Universal Orlando has had a rough year with attendance down 9.3% and Comcast revealing that revenue at Universal’s theme parks was down 11%. Comcast attributed the decrease to a lack of new attractions in Orlando, and indicated that this downtrend was likely to continue until the opening of Epic Universe in 2025.
Turning to commentary, I actually don’t have a ton to add from my on-the-ground experiences. The wait times, by and large, tell the full story. There’s nothing contradictory in the feels like crowds nor is there any good way to explain away the low crowds. Sure, there was “some weather” over the holiday weekend, but last week was actually fairly fine (again, by Florida in August and September standards, which is very much graded on a curve).
This is why I was so hard on the 2024 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival. In the face of falling attendance, it feels a little like Walt Disney World is asleep at the wheel. I’m bullish about the D23 announcements and think Walt Disney World is going to be in great shape for 2027 through 2030 or so. Those will be huge drivers of attendance, much as Pandora through Cosmic Rewind provided a massive boost during that expansion phase.
The problem is that 2027, by my math, is 3 years away. What’s Walt Disney World’s plan for the short term? Disney Starlight Parade is a nice start and could be a fantastic addition for next summer. But why phone in the EPCOT festivals right now? Why not add entertainment or give people a compelling reason to visit right now?! Discounting certainly helps, but it can only take them so far. So what’s the rest of the plan? It doesn’t seem like there is one.
Looking forward, our expectation is that crowds continue falling for at least a couple more weeks. As discussed in our list of the 10 Best and 10 Worst Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2024 to 2025, September is the best month of the year to visit from a wait times perspective. With only a couple of exceptions, the entire month sees below average attendance.
There’s really no “bad” time to visit as far as the September 2024 crowd calendar goes. The last week or two will be the busiest stretch of the month due to the expiration of ticket deals. Depending upon how many locals bought those and are rushing to use them at the last minute, September could end up being slightly busier than August. However, “busier” is a relative term, as both months should be really light compared to the entirety of October. August and September are one of the last bastions of the off-season at Walt Disney World.
This has been consistently true even as attendance has spiked during other previously off-season months. Whereas other off-season months have gotten busier, September has stayed the same–and (knock on wood) always should remain that way due to school schedules and less desirable weather. There’s a possibility that September 2024 will be busier than last year due to international visitors, the end of the ticket deal, or other wildcards, but it still should not be bad by any objective metric.
Ultimately, our expectation is that attendance continues to decrease over the course of the next couple weeks, but probably not enough for September to take the crown from August as the least crowded month at Walt Disney World in 2023. The biggest question is probably whether last week will end up being the slowest since 2021, or if this week or next week will dethrone it once the dust settles.
Looking forward even further, the big question marks are group events and convention crowds. There’s an outside chance that the last week of September sees an outsized spike due the arrival of these, plus early fall breaks for various school districts around the country. But for the most part, it should still be too early for all of that to meaningfully impact crowds.
My expectation is that the real arrival of fall crowds coincides with Columbus Day weekend, and that continues to accelerate with only minor reprieves here and there throughout the holiday season. Early signs point to October through December being the three busiest months of the year (on average), albeit with the normal pockets of moderate crowd levels between the peak holiday weeks. Who knows, though. Crowds have been falling all year long and, aside from discounts, Walt Disney World has done absolutely nothing to entice fans to return.
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
Thoughts on early fall crowds at Walt Disney World? Predictions for the rest of the month or fall off-season? If you’ve visited within the last month, what did you think of wait times? Have you done Magic Kingdom during the day of a MNSSHP night? What about posted vs. actual wait times? Do you agree or disagree with anything in our report? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
