2026 Is Disneyland’s Busiest Year Since Revenge Travel.

The first half of the year has been a wild ride at Disneyland, with the highest crowd levels since pent-up demand peaked in 2022. The latest four months of the year-to-date have had 8/10 crowd levels, with even busier weeks plus a few surprise 9/10 and 10/10 days to start Summer 2026.

Thus far, the single biggest explanation for the busier parks was the Winter & Spring 2026 Disneyland Park Hopper Ticket Deal. At the beginning of the year, we wrote that this ticket deal was a game-changer that alone had the potential to upend crowd calendars. We predicted higher crowds for the duration of the deal, pointing to the fact that this was the best ticket discount Disneyland had offered in roughly a decade, and it had a larger eligibility pool than normal.

Unfortunately, this prediction has proven correct. The parks were slammed for most of the first five months of the year, and the ticket deal was such a smash success and had such limited reservation availability that Disneyland actually ended it early. This is actually the second consecutive year of the winter and spring ticket deal being the big driver of attendance, so past precedent paired with a better discount and wider eligibility resulted in predictably high crowds.

What’s most notable about the spike in crowds year-over-year for January through June 2026 at Disneyland is that it comes against the backdrop of Disney revealing during the most recent earnings call that domestic attendance was down 1% year over year. That was even with the aforementioned California resident deal, which almost certainly boosted Disneyland’s numbers. In the absence of that, domestic attendance would’ve been even lower.

The crowds have turned out despite Disneyland not really giving diehard fans a reason to visit in 2026. The 70th Anniversary was fantastic when it launched, but it’s old news at this point as it limps into its final months with less than it offered last year.

Bluey’s Best Day Ever is a huge hit, but only with a certain demographic. The festivals and other events have become tired, virtually indistinguishable from year to year. Otherwise, nothing new has opened and there hasn’t even been returning entertainment to get fans excited.

All of the big expansions don’t debut for at least another year, with 2028 being more likely. So it really has been all about the California resident ticket deal, which did the heavy lifting to pack the parks in the first several months of 2026.

Against that backdrop, let’s dig into the data and look at Disneyland Resort wait times. As always, graphs and stats are courtesy of Thrill-Data.com:

Let’s start with the daily numbers for Disneyland Resort as a whole.

You can divide this pretty much in half at Christmas Eve (the lowest green bar towards the middle) to see how much wait times have spiked over the last ~6 months. There’s scarcely any green in 2026, aside from late January and into early February, and again in early March. Even those stretches are punctuated by spikes. Other comparatively slow days are one-offs, often due to weather.

Spring Break through the end of the California resident ticket deal was particularly bad, with the exception of a brief window after Easter. But even after that ticket deal expired on May 21st, it hasn’t been like flipping a switch on lower crowds.

Four of the busiest days of the year were June 1-4, 2026! In other news, the last window of $104 ticket days until September was June 1-4, 2026. That’s not a coincidence. As we’ve pointed out previously, gaps in the lowest-priced single day tickets produce that dynamic. We can also safely predict that September 8-9, 2026 will be busy for precisely the same reason.

Weekly wait times for the last year underscore the spike starting around Spring Break (several 8/10 and 9/10 weeks), a slower week post-Easter, and then crowd levels holding steady in 7/10 and 8/10 territory since.

If you look at the left side of the graph, you can see crowd levels for last June and July. That’s more consistent with what we’d expect to see right now. Last year, crowd levels dropped to below-average levels as soon as the California ticket deal ended. Summer crowds didn’t really arrive in full force until the second half of July before subsiding in mid-August.

To Disney’s credit, there are 15 New & Returning Experiences for Kids Rule Summer 2026 at Disneyland. That’s a sneakily strong slate, and could offer some explanation as to why crowd levels haven’t really relented since the California resident ticket deal ended.

Monthly wait times data tells a similar story.

Each of the last four months has had a crowd level of 8/10. You’d have to go back to July 2022 for a busier stretch, although that same holiday season had three busier months.

This is really remarkable, as the typical dynamic would be decreasing wait times starting with Easter and every month that followed until wait times bottomed out in September 2026. And in fact, that’s what we’re already seeing at Walt Disney World, and more or less what happened last year at Disneyland despite the 70th Anniversary starting. There’s a lot of June left to go, so it’s still possible that happens in Summer 2026.

Finally, we have yearly wait times at Disneyland.

After a slow decline from the height of revenge travel in 2022, wait times are up measurably in 2026. Of course, this year is not yet over, so it’s not exactly an apples to apples comparison. At the same time, given the weekly and monthly increases thus far this year, it sure seems like 2026 is reversing the trend.

There’s zero chance 2026 meets or beats 2022, but it should surpass every year since. That alone is notable, given that each previous year had their own marketable draws and 2026 mostly doesn’t. Unless Bluey and Bingo really are that big, and our toddler would argue that they are!

Anecdotally, we’ve spent a couple of days at Disneyland since the resident ticket deal ended (albeit not June 1-4, 2026), and it was like a breath of fresh air. Wait times were noticeably lower, but that wasn’t even the biggest thing.

Congestion wasn’t nearly as bad, and the parks were simply more pleasant places to be. The biggest exception to this was DCA on a Grad Nite, but that’s about par for the course. Otherwise, it already felt like Disneyland was turning a corner, and we had our two most enjoyable days in the parks since February.

With that said, neither ‘feels like’ crowds nor wait times were low relative to last summer, only as contrasted with the last few months. The parks also were not slow as compared to Walt Disney World, which also feels busier than it did at this same time last year but not nearly as bad as Disneyland. (This is also par for the course, and a lot comes down to infrastructure when we’re talking about congestion or ‘feels like’ crowds.)

The biggest explanation for the elevated crowds at Disneyland even after the California resident ticket deal ended is that the $50 Kids’ Summer Ticket Deal started literally the next day.

For visits from May 22 through September 7, 2026, children ages 3 to 9 can visit both Disneyland and Disney California Adventure for $50 per day. One to 3-Day Park Hopper tickets are available, and you can add-on Lightning Lane Multi-Pass directly to the tickets. These tickets are now available for purchase, and while you can buy directly from Disneyland, this deal is also available via Get Away Today with even greater savings.

Like other ticket deals, this Kids’ Summer Ticket Offer uses a separate “pool” of park reservations, and those are often more limited in availability than regular tickets. Reservations may be difficult to get for any particular date, especially as the ticket expiration date approaches.

The $50 Kids’ Summer Ticket is another shockingly good deal, amounting to a discount of as much as $150 to $369 off multi-day tickets. That latter number is not a typo–you can save as much as $369 off a 3-day ticket.

This deal has consistently been the best pricing on Disneyland tickets each of the last several years. And it’s even better in 2026 than it was in 2024 or 2025 thanks to the free Park Hopper upgrade. Of course, it only applies to children’s tickets and is for the summer, but still.

This is an exceptional deal if it works for your family. And it’s valid for the longest stretch of time when kids are out of school, so even out of state tourists should be able to more easily plan around the deal in 2026. In previous years, the $50 Kids’ Ticket Deal was offered in winter and spring, and not being available during as many school breaks might’ve lessened its impact on crowds.

Another factor that could contribute to higher Summer 2026 crowd levels at Disneyland is the launch of a Explore Key, new tier of Magic Key Annual Pass. This replaces the Enchant Key, and will add 39 more days of validity in June and July 2026. The goal of this is to reverse declining summer attendance, and it will succeed to some extent.

How much this moves the needle is the big question. The Explore Key went on sale in mid-January, and has been reasonably popular given that its $999 price point is almost $500 cheaper than the next highest tier. However, it’s still $400 more expensive than the lowest level AP.

It’ll also take time before Explore Keys fully enter circulation, so the impact on Summer 2026 crowds might be negligible. We’re expecting an uptick as a result of the Explore Key, but it probably won’t be the difference maker. The key variable for crowd levels at Disneyland over the rest of Summer 2026 is whether another ticket deal emerges.

Disneyland would normally release a summer and early fall ticket discount to replace the California resident ticket deal that ended on May 21st. This could be targeted at California residents or expanded to the general public. Disneyland has done both approaches in the last few years.

As noted above, the winter and spring California resident deal ended early because it was too good. Disneyland sold so many of those tickets that the parks were running into issues with reservation availability; the deal was quietly discontinued on April 2nd as a result.

Recent precedent suggested that Disneyland would have released a summer ticket deal after that with a start date sometime between May 22, 2026 and June 8, 2026. Obviously, all of those dates are in the past. We’d have to go back to 2023 for a later start date to the summer ticket deal (June 12, 2023). But even then, that ticket deal was announced on June 6th.

For reference, last summer’s ticket deal started on May 16th, which was the 70th Anniversary kickoff. It offered all guests a 4-day, 1-park per day ticket for $100 per day ($400 total) or a 3-day, 1-park per day ticket for $120 per day ($360 total) valid May 16 through August 14, 2025. That actually ended early by normal standards, with most past summer ticket deals running through mid-to-late September.

There was also a ‘fully-loaded’ Costco ticket deal for summer that was incredibly popular and sold out at many stores. Following that, Disneyland offered a widely-targeted PIN code deal, which was basically available to everyone for whom Disney had an email address. That wasn’t a summer ticket deal, though.

This year, it’s just the $50 Kids’ Summer Ticket Deal and the Explore Key. Curiously, there’s also a Free Disney Dining Gift Card of Up to $100 with Magic Key Annual Pass Renewal. That’s “curious” because it’s for renewals as opposed to new purchases, suggesting Disneyland is having issues with retention. It was released a little over a week ago, suggesting that Disney might pull more “levers” to boost attendance this summer and beyond.

It’s exceedingly difficult to reconcile all of the above or make sense of what happens with Summer 2026 crowds at Disneyland. Even though crowds have demonstrated staying power even after the resident ticket deal ended, and the heart of the summer season is still ahead (twin peaks are typical in late June and late July), I’m skeptical that Disneyland can maintain 8/10 and above crowd levels without another ticket deal.

In our view, the most likely explanation for this is that Disneyland is in ‘wait and see’ mode to assess sales of the $50 Kids’ Summer Ticket Deal and release the next special offer accordingly. And frankly, for good reason. The winter and spring deal was too good. The great deal came with the cost of crushing crowds. When it gets as busy as it was many dates from mid-March to mid-May, guest satisfaction suffers and it’s a waste of money and time for all involved.

It’s my understanding that Disneyland was blown away by the response to the first 2026 ticket deal, and I’d hazard a guess that they want to avoid a repeat of the crowds and chaos this summer. Accordingly, they’re likely holding off on the next ticket deal for as long as possible, wanting to assess bookings and sales of those $50 Kids’ Summer Tickets to see where the next ticket deal should be priced and who should be eligible.

It’s possible that there is not another ticket deal coming. That Disneyland is going to overcorrect, and the $50 Kids Summer Ticket Deal is it. With each passing day, this outcome seems more likely. The main summer ticket deal was already announced by this point every year from 2022 to 2025.

Even with the odds seemingly against it, we’re still expecting a last-minute summer ticket deal that ends up being comparable to 2023. The reason I’d look back to 2023 (or 2022) as opposed to 2025 (or 2024) is because those earlier deals were available to Californians as opposed to the general public. My gut is that, with the $50 Kids’ Summer Ticket Deal being offered to the general public, Disneyland will try to thread the needle by pairing that with a targeted discount.

If there is a summer ticket deal, then Summer 2026 is likely to be busier than last summer despite the lack of new offerings. One clear and decisive lesson we’ve learned from the last couple of years is that pricing is the bigger driver of crowds than anything else. Saving $150 to $369 on each kids’ ticket is simply too good of a deal to pass up for many families, and that’ll be doubly true if many can take advantage by pairing that with a ticket deal for adults.

If there are no additional ticket deals for Summer 2026, our expectation is that crowd levels end up dropping below last year. That’s a bold prediction that is unsupported by current trends, but it’s nevertheless our expectation. Again, it all comes down to pricing. With no deals and a dearth of $104 dates, we’ll gradually see wait times decrease, as is typical of the next few months, and to a more pronounced degree than last year.

The bottom line is that whatever happens with crowds is contingent upon future deals, or the lack thereof. Once more special offers are released (or it’s clear they aren’t coming), we’ll update our 2026 Disneyland Crowd Calendars and list of the 10 Best & Worst Weeks to Visit Disneyland in 2026 & 2027 accordingly.

Planning a Southern California vacation? For park admission deals, read Tips for Saving Money on Disneyland Tickets. Learn about on-site and off-site hotels in our Anaheim Hotel Reviews & Rankings. For where to eat, check out our Disneyland Restaurant Reviews. For unique ideas of things that’ll improve your trip, check out What to Pack for Disney. For comprehensive advice, consult our Disneyland Vacation Planning Guide. Finally, for guides beyond Disney, check out our Southern California Itineraries for day trips to Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, and tons of other places!

YOUR THOUGHTS

Thoughts on crowds thus far in 2026 at Disneyland? Surprised that the year to date has been so busy? Are you taking advantage of the 2026 Kids’ Summer Special Ticket Offer at Disneyland? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? 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!