Disney World is Not “Full.”

Disney CFO Hugh Johnston appeared at the 2026 MoffettNathanson Media, Internet & Communications Conference, and asserted that Walt Disney World cannot increase attendance because the parks are already “filled up.” This post covers his comments, the parallels to past statements by company leadership, and what he gets right and what’s mere puffery.

For starters, Johnston is reiterating what we’ve been hearing for a while. This same line of logic has been used since the “turbocharged” announcement a few years ago, and it’s arguably what sold Wall Street on the company investing $60 billion on theme park expansion in the first place.

Even if we’re critical of the accuracy of Johnston’s statements, we can certainly get behind the spirit of the messaging to its intended audience. If this is what convinces analysts and investors that this is not just the correct course of action, but the necessary one, then case closed. Sorry folks, the parks are full. The mouse out front should’ve told you.

During the conference, Johnston was asked about the balance of building out capacity, attendance growth, and pricing strategy. Here’s his reply:

Without expansion, we don’t necessarily have the ability to grow attendance massively because it’s already filled up. Now we could jam more people into the park, but then the guest experience declines, and that’s actually bad for the brand. So you don’t want us to do that, and we don’t think it’s a good idea either.

So then when we add capacity, without a doubt, it creates the opportunity. We’re seeing that in Paris right now to basically allow more people into the park. Now as a good analyst, you would ask the logical next question: does that mean the yield is going to go down?

That’s not been our experience because when you put in a big new attraction, you actually see a surge in demand for it as well. We tend to fill up [expansion] really quickly without having to discount. In fact, it actually offers some ability to charge more because, essentially, you’re offering something new that wasn’t there before.

We have the ability to grow attendance as we expand capacity. I would expect to see both pricing and attendance growth over any 3 or 4-year time frame. But at the end of the day, I wouldn’t overemphasize attendance as sort of a critical variable. I think we’re going to do well with it. It’s ultimately the combination of yield and attendance that matters the most.

Some of this probably sounds familiar from recent earnings calls. Let’s break down what he’s saying and why he’s saying it, along with our response…

Disney Talks Its Book

Disney has a long and rich history of tailoring its messaging to talk up its actions. Whatever they are doing, it’s going to be emphasized as a positive. Although the argument could just as easily be made that it’s less of a ‘tail wags the dog’ situation and Disney makes the right decision for its business, and then explains that accordingly.

Regardless, we’ve heard a lot of messaging about Disney’s approach to pricing and discounting, along with crowds and attendance over the years. Back in 2010, then-chairman of Parks & Resorts Jay Rasulo stated that Walt Disney World planned to “slowly wean our guests off discounting.”

Rasulo and then-CEO Bob Iger talked about ending deep-discounting on countless earnings calls. They indicated that these extreme measures put in place by Disney to prop up attendance and occupancy during the height of the recession were no longer necessary. They talked about how expansion coming online would mean the end of discounts, and more price growth.

There’s an old adage among attorneys: “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts; if you have the law on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table.” That expression can be applied to all facets of life. With its corporate communications, Disney is often pounding on the table.

Disney emphasizes the things that make the company look good and more valuable to shareholders, while also attempting to spin those into positives for consumers. When every other metric was abysmal in mid to late 2020, Disney emphasized guest satisfaction and ‘intent-to-return’ metrics on corporate earnings calls.

With all of that said, this isn’t to claim Disney leadership is incompetent and all of the above is superficial spin that’s unsupported by the fundamentals. Despite the stagnant stock price–which has virtually nothing to do with the parks–Walt Disney World and Disneyland have performed exceptionally well over the last 5 years.

Guest spending metrics have exploded, and the Experiences segment has set new records more times than I can count. Clearly the leadership team knows what it’s doing, and nothing here should be construed as claiming otherwise. What we are suggesting is that the parks are not “filled up” and without the ability to increase attendance.

Discounts Are Needed to Fill Up Parks & Resorts

With the exception of the revenge travel era, weaning guests off discounts has never happened. And that was absolutely an outlier as pent-up demand collided with constrained capacity as Walt Disney World struggled to scale operations back up after furloughing too many Cast Members.

Discounts since then have been aggressive by historical standards, in some cases bringing prices back in line with 2018 and 2019. These deals are undoubtedly a reflection of Walt Disney World not opening a new attraction with mainstream marketability (read: to national audiences of non-fans) since TRON Lightcycle Run.

I don’t doubt for a second that, all else being equal with the economy, Walt Disney World will scale back on discounts in 2028 and 2029 once the next wave of marketable new additions starts opening. But I’m also apprehensive that weaning guests off discounts will occur, then or ever.

Discounts themselves have marketing power, and Disney learned studying at the Kohl’s School of Business that it’s better to raise rack rates and offer stronger sales for the appearance of better deals. Similarly, targeted special offers can reach audiences that need greater incentive to visit than the general public. And despite being a rite-of-passage vacation, Walt Disney World is so large scale that they’ll always need to be somewhat responsive to the state of the American consumer.

In the here and now, it’s worth again pointing out that Walt Disney World has released a deluge of discounts already in 2026. Just today came a Florida resident deal offering $65/day admission, which follows the return of the 4-Park, 4-Day Magic Ticket, Up to 40% Off Resorts for Florida Residents and Annual Passholders, “Stay Longer & Save More” Up to 30% Off Room-Only Discount, Deep Discount on Rooms Starting at $99 Per Night and more, along with the stackable Kids Eat Free promo.

To repeat one of our favorite phrases, Disney doesn’t offer discounts out of corporate benevolence or charity. They’re doing so because the parks and resorts are not filled up to capacity (although the hotels are much closer). And I would hazard a guess that even with these aggressive special offers and a surprisingly strong slate of additions, summer is still going to be somewhat slow at Walt Disney World.

Attendance Still Below 2019

The easiest argument that Walt Disney World isn’t filled up comes via attendance stats, which are still far below 2019 levels despite several new attractions opening since then.

Across the board, Walt Disney World attendance increased almost every single year from 2007 to 2019. Cumulatively, the increase was by tens of millions of guests, with attendance at Magic Kingdom alone climbing from 16 million to nearly 21 million guests.

Here are the attendance totals for 2019:

• Magic Kingdom: 20.96 million
• EPCOT: 12.44 million
• Hollywood Studios: 11.48 million
• Animal Kingdom: 13.9 million

Here’s attendance for 2024:

• Magic Kingdom: 17.84 million
• EPCOT: 11.98 million
• Hollywood Studios: 10.3 million
• Animal Kingdom: 8.8 million

The 2025 attendance report has not yet been released, but it’s expected to be somewhere between flat and down 1% based on earnings calls. (We don’t know for sure since Disney measures by fiscal year, which differs from calendar year.)

Walt Disney World seems mostly okay with not hitting the 2019 high water mark for attendance, and Johnston alluded to this with his comments at the conference (similar sentiment has been expressed in the past by D’Amaro, Chapek, and Iger). I’m skeptical that they’re entirely okay with it, which helps to explain the more aggressive discounting we’ve seen recently.

The precipitous drop at Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom still being ~3 million below 2019, along with both EPCOT and Disney’s Hollywood Studios still hovering below 2019 despite adding blockbuster new lands and attractions since then cannot possibly be the desired outcome. There’s no way that was the plan.

With that said, per guest spending is the company’s key metric and they’ve achieved enviable growth there. They’ve also managed to record revenue, and the Experiences division is now the engine that powers the entire company.

In reality, the company wants to have its cake and eat it too: the intersection of higher guest spending and higher attendance. Meaning that if per guest spending stats could be maximized at the same time as Magic Kingdom breaking the 20 million barrier, Disney would absolutely take both. That isn’t possible over the course of the entire year, so they aim to thread the needle and balance those desires.

Disney also needs to maintain a certain level of guest satisfaction. If what I’ve heard is accurate, that took a fairly noticeable hit in the 6 months pre-COVID, which is one reason why Walt Disney World has eased back on the attendance accelerator and is now increasing park capacity.

This would also explain why Chapek was so eager to tout guest satisfaction and ‘intent-to-return’ metrics on earnings calls in the COVID-era, as they probably had improved considerably over the lows from roughly October 2019 through March 2020. The parks truly were unsustainably overcrowded then, and some degree of course-correction was needed.

Peak & Off-Season Extremes Have Different ‘Filled Up’ Levels

There are certain times of year when the needle is not threaded and this balance is not maintained. Holiday weeks, especially the peak between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, are still the busiest and priciest of the year. It’s a similar story around Spring Break, Fall Break, and other major holidays.

While some fans may nod along at Johnston’s claim that the parks are filled up, anyone who has visited during both a holiday week and random day in August or September knows that there’s a massive difference. “There’s no such thing as the off-season” is a claim that really grinds my gears, and is addressed at length in 10 Ways Disney World Fans Are Wrong About Crowds.

Suffice to say, the busiest days of the year are usually December 28-31, which often average 60+ minute wait times across all attractions at Walt Disney World. That easily clears the bar for a 10/10 crowd level. By contrast, many dates in August and September have average wait times of 20 minutes or less, which barely registers as a 1/10 crowd level. It should be fair to say that there’s a massive difference between 20 minutes and 60+ minutes–a full 40 minute spread!

Any of us would agree with Johnston that those late December dates are full at Walt Disney World. Arguably still more filled up than they should be, even if a far cry from 2019 levels. But if you went from the 83 minute average at EPCOT on NYE to the doldrums of Diet EPCOT on June 14-15 last year, there’s no way anyone reading this would believe the latter was anywhere close to full. “Dead” or “empty” would be the words used to describe that.

If you primarily visit during school breaks or peak season dates, you might be inclined to believe those are cherry-picked examples and that, for the most part, Walt Disney World is close to full despite having millions of fewer annual guests per park than 2019.

I would argue the exact opposite. That the parks are not close to full most of the year, and the peak dates are what’s the outlier. In fact, our most recent Walt Disney World crowd report discussed how, now that Spring Break is over, we’re in an approximately 5-month stretch of low-to-moderate crowd levels.

This is precisely why we’ve advocated for Disneyland-caliber targeted summer ticket deals. There’s plenty of excess capacity in the parks, and utilizing it would be a net positive for both guests and Disney, even at lower prices.

You may quibble with the specifics, but I don’t think anyone with experience of truly busy dates at Walt Disney World would argue that more than a handful of dates between mid-April and mid-October qualify as “filled up” or anything close to it.

If the parks were truly full or anything close to it, there would be a negligible difference in crowd levels because all dates would be close to whatever capacity ceiling Disney had set to balance congestion, comfort, revenue, etc. But in reality, there are still massive swings in crowd levels, with plenty of 1/10 to 3/10 days along with 7/10 to 10/10 days. And the differences between those crowd levels in terms of average wait times are often quite significant; they’re not virtually indistinguishable, as would be the case if the parks were always full.

Credit where credit is due, though. If Johnston were talking only about Disneyland when asserting that the parks are mostly full and cannot massively increase attendance, I’d agree wholeheartedly. The swings there are not usually as extreme, and it’s been a while since we’ve experienced a “dead” day that wasn’t rainy. If anything, the contrast between Disneyland and Walt Disney World underscores how much excess attendance bandwidth the latter has.

How to Fix “Full” Parks

The good news is that, if Disney has an issue with the parks being full, there are other ways to reduce crowds while increasing capacity and attendance beyond waiting for the new attractions to come online in 2028 and beyond.

Beyond physical park expansion, another option is adding entertainment. This is something that can be done on a quicker timeline, with stage shows, atmospheric acts (“streetmosphere”), parades, nighttime spectaculars, all helping to absorb or redistribute attendance. This was one of the goals of Rivers of Light and the whole Animal Kingdom after dark initiative.

With the major exception of Starlight Night Parade at Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World has largely gone the other direction in the last several years. Even pre-closure, entertainment cuts were occurring with regularity even as attendance increased. Post reopening, there’s still a ton missing.

The other solution is extending park hours, which increases park capacity and spreads out crowds. This occurs in effect because the average guest does not stay for the duration of the operating day, but rather, a subset of it.

Most people are not commando tourists who can go from rope drop to park close regardless of hours. They’ll do about 8 hours of the day on average, arriving early or staying late. Extending hours decreases the overlap–and thus crowds in the process–and allows attendees to “redistribute” crowds in a natural way.

This is a time-tested solution, and is why Magic Kingdom used to open at 7 am during peak season dates and stay open until midnight in the summer. Even then, Main Street was busy until 1 am, as plenty of people will stay out until 2 am or later unless the weather is prohibitively cold. It’s also why Magic Kingdom used to have Extra Magic Hours until 3 am.

Ultimately, that’s why I’d argue that Walt Disney World is not “filled up” in a meaningful sense of the term most dates. Moreover, on the dates when the parks actually are full, such as around New Year’s Eve, there’s still a willingness to pack more people in at the right price points.

What Disney wants is to “optimize” wait times, costs, and pricing to improve margins. That’s precisely why the company has reduced hours and entertainment instead of adding more to help absorb crowds while also cutting other costs. It’s not that Disney is inept at increasing attendance–it’s that the actual goal is yield management, and they are incredibly efficient at that!

There’s also the fundamental question of whether having fewer people–and by extension, children–experience rite of passage vacations to Walt Disney World is a bad thing. I’d argue that it is and definitely should not be the company’s strategy. It’s my position that Disney’s deep discounts to increase occupancy has been a net positive, whereas there’s a ton of runway for more aggressive ticket deals to raise attendance between mid-April and mid-October. But this is another topic, and one we’ve already covered at length elsewhere.

Regardless, we fully support Johnston in his messaging to Wall Street that Walt Disney World is full and needs expansion in order to increase attendance. After spending years watching Walt Disney World be the cash cow that was milked dry while the company threw away billions on streaming and assorted boondoggles, it’s really nice to see investors and analysts finally “discover” the parks & resorts as viable businesses.

If anyone from MoffettNathanson is reading this, I take it all back. The parks are all way too full, and if anything, they need $80 billion of investments as opposed to $60 billion, so long as $0 of that is allocated towards Fortnite or a super app.

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

What do you think about Disney’s CFO claiming that the parks are “filled up”? Any other considerations we failed to take into account or details we missed? Do you agree or disagree with my 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!