Disney World’s Slowest Six Weeks Since September

Cool Kids’ Summer is starting to heat up at Walt Disney World, after a shoulder season slowdown that brought the lowest 6-week stretch of crowds since last year’s off-season. This wait times report covers data for Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. It also offers our on-the-ground observations, forward-looking forecast for Summer 2026, and why this week might be a turning point for higher crowds.

Before we get going, it’s worth noting that we’re over a month into what has become Walt Disney World’s slower “half” of the year, encompassing most dates after spring break and before fall break. This includes most of the summer, which is no longer peak season. That shouldn’t be a huge shock to longtime fans, as this was a trend first observed in 2016-2018; it’s just become more pronounced in the last few years.

August and September have been even less busy than May through July. This is neither surprising nor unexpected. Summer has become like a prolonged shoulder season, with only a few slight spikes into above-average territory. As discussed here, the six weeks after spring break saw low to moderate (at worst) crowds. Those are starting to creep up into average or above territory, with the potential for higher crowd levels in June 2026.

For starters, it’s worth emphasizing that what’s covered in these “crowd” reports is actually posted wait time data that’s pulled from My Disney Experience and compiled into graphs. It’s valuable for tracking and comparing wait times across days, weeks, months, and years. A lot can be gleaned from posted wait times, but they’re 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. 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.

If you want to understand more about these reports and crowd calendars, their strengths and limitations, or addressing misconceptions about crowds, see our list of the “Top” 10 Ways Walt Disney World Fans Are Wrong About Crowds. That’s worth reading if you want a better understanding of WDW attendance patterns, feels like crowds vs. wait times, and a few fairly easy ways to “beat” the crowds.

With that background out of the way, let’s take a look at recent Walt Disney World crowd levels. As always, all graphs and wait time stats are courtesy of Thrill-Data.com:

We’ll start with the monthly numbers for Walt Disney World as a whole dating back to 2019. As you can see from the far left of the graph (before the gap in data caused by the COVID closure), Walt Disney World is still nowhere close to its late 2019 and early 2020 highs. February 2020 remains the busiest month in WDW history. (We were there a lot–it was insane!)

Since the lows of last September, Walt Disney World has gotten progressively busier. Or rather, it had gotten progressively busier until shoulder season arrived. Although not every month has had worse crowds than the one before it, that was the general trajectory. It’s the same pattern year after year: crowds bottoming out in the fall, and climbing the months thereafter all the way through spring break.

In order for that climb to happen, there also has to be a drop. That started about one week after Easter. Up until that point, April actually was busier than March, but the final few weeks of the month dragged it lower. April ended up being below March and February, and roughly on par with December.

Meanwhile, May 2026 was even lower; the slowest month since last October. This trend is likely to continue in the coming months, and it’s likely that June 2026 will be slower than May, and so on and so forth. That is the trend for the last couple of years, but I wouldn’t necessarily bet the farm on that repeating (especially in June and July; August and September will definitely be the two slowest months of the year).

Above is a look at the weekly crowd levels over the last year. The 7 bars on the far right reflect shoulder season and the start of Cool Kids’ Summer. The higher stretch before that is spring break.

Prior to the slight spike last week, the previous six weeks were not just the slowest of 2026, but since last September. In particular, the week prior to the Cool Kids’ Summer kickoff was particularly low, looking more like the off-season than the shoulder season.

This reinforces a couple of things. First, how busy Walt Disney World is to start the year, with January through March having fewer pockets of low crowds than in the past. It’s not going to surprise anyone that spring break is busy, but those dates in the first 2.5 months catch a lot of people by surprise, especially the infamous Mid-Winter Break/Mardi Gras/Presidents’ Day/Ski Week, which ended up on par with Spring Break.

Second, one of the big ‘sweet spots’ for lower crowds that has emerged is between deals. While it’s nothing new that the week before Memorial Day is slower, it is not always the lowest point during the shoulder season. The slowdown can better be narrowed to the point after the early Florida resident ticket deal starts (even if another one immediately takes its place), but before the big general public deals get started. That’s something to keep in mind if you’re planning for 2027 and beyond.

Zooming in more, we come to the resort-wide daily numbers for Walt Disney World.

Shoulder season arrived in full force with a sharp drop-off starting Sunday, April 12th. That’s when spring break unofficially wrapped up and the quieter six weeks began. To put that into perspective, Wednesday, April 8th saw 9/10 crowds across all of Walt Disney World and 45 minute average wait times. One week later on Wednesday, April 15th, the crowd level was 1/10 with a 24 minute average.

If you’re looking for when crowds bottomed out, that was May 17th through May 25th. For those keeping score at home, that timing is no coincidence. It’s one day after the first Florida resident ticket deal ended and one day before Cool Kids’ Summer began. If you exclude May 9th and 16th (both Saturdays), crowds were low from May 5-25, 2026. That would’ve been a great window to visit, and it’s safe to predict a repeat of that in May 2027.

Turning to on-the-ground observations, I’ve spent a lot of time in the parks over the last couple of weeks, particularly prior to the kickoff of Cool Kids’ Summer.

Suffice to say, this was a night and day difference as compared to the weeks around Easter. During spring break, I did a lot of Early Entry “stress testing” and it did not go well, especially at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Those were some of the worst mornings I’ve experienced in the parks since the height of revenge travel.

Meanwhile, shoulder season was delightful…minus the weather. Still not on par with the off-season, but everything was manageable. Congestion was moderate at worst and wait times for headliners were often around 60 minutes (versus 120+ minutes just one month earlier).

Crowd-wise, it was pretty uneventful. I don’t have many great insights to add; the wait times data pretty much tells the story, in this case. Animal Kingdom was particularly slow, and my longest wait was literally for Nomad Lounge. Meanwhile, Avatar Flight of Passage had posted waits as low as 30 minutes (it had been a while since I’d seen that), with actual waits under 20 minutes. It was a similar story with Na’vi River Journey, and this mid-afternoon as opposed to early morning or the end of the day.

EPCOT was similarly slow. It’s easy to see why Walt Disney World has scaled back festival duration, as even in the last couple of weeks of Flower & Garden, it felt like guests were “over” the event. (Mostly as evidenced by modest food booth lines.)

Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom felt busier, but still, nothing like the weeks around Easter. It’s all relative, and those are the two parks at Walt Disney World with the highest average wait times. Even comparatively “slow” days still see multiple headliners at over an hour.

Completely subjective, but I felt like the parks had a great energy. Guests seemed in good spirits, Cast Member morale struck me as positive; everything was well-staffed, show standards were mostly good, as was maintenance.

The parks just felt alive to a degree that normally isn’t evident outside of the holidays. My gut is that this was attributable to all of the new offerings, many of which soft opened around this timeframe. Surprise and delight, indeed!

The biggest downside, without question, was the weather. It was already hot and humid, with ‘feels like’ temperatures flirting with triple digits. Only a month earlier, the weather was mild and comfortable. This is why, from a subjective perspective, I favor the shoulder season dates in the shadow of Easter as opposed to them right before summer.

Looking forward, Walt Disney World is now in that aforementioned midst of six months of slower crowds, with only a handful of spikes. Unless something goes terribly wrong, there won’t be another week as bad as those bookending Easter until mid-October 2026. With that said, there are some dates that are worth avoiding.

The latest update to our 2026 Walt Disney World Crowd Calendars added several red flag dates between now and Fall Break. Red flag is an exaggeration of what those actually are, as they’re nothing compared to the worst dates between October and April. They’re just dates that are best avoided, if you have the flexibility.

Likewise, our list of the 10 Best & Worst Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2026 to 2028 only lists two weeks to avoid: June 22-29, 2026 and July 20-27, 2026. Those are the ‘twin peaks’ of summer that typically wrap up each month. Another elevated week could be August 3-8, 2026, which is the ‘last hurrah’ before school goes back into session.

One big potential wildcard to flag is Fourth of July. That has been the slowest week of summer for the last few years, but that could change due to the US Semiquincentennial. We’re skeptical since Disney hasn’t really done much in the way of marketing, so it really depends upon Americans’ appetites (and budgets) to do something “special” for the US Semiquincentennial and viewing Walt Disney World as such a destination.

Another potential wildcard is this week (June 1-6, 2026). Last year, the first week of June was inexplicably busy, and that was without much of a big summer kickoff or anything with drawing power. Remember, Cool Kids’ Summer was thrown together relatively last minute, and only the Villains and Little Mermaid stage shows were open for the kick-off. Test Track and Starlight Night Parade didn’t debut until much later.

This year, Cool Kids’ Summer has a much stronger lineup and opening dates were clearly communicated for most of these offerings months in advance, giving guests more lead time to plan. As we just discussed in How Walt Disney World Just Had Its Biggest Week in Years, there are a lot of new and worthwhile additions that just debuted. It’ll be interesting to see if the totality of that package has drawing power for casual visitors, or if it just caters to fans. We should know once the summer wait times data starts rolling in.

Ultimately, it’s impossible to say whether the Summer 2026 will be slower or busier than last year. On the one hand, Walt Disney World has put together a formidable summer slate, with something for everyone. Even if the new additions aren’t enough to entice first-timers, they should move the needle for fans who visit every other year or more.

Perhaps even more significantly, Walt Disney World rolled out the aggressive discounts even earlier this year, suggesting they are finally “learning” that summer is slower and doing more to increase occupancy and attendance. This is seemingly reinforced by comments from earnings calls, during which the company’s CFO said forward bookings are stronger for this period on a year-over-year basis. Walt Disney World deal-hounds can actually do better than last summer, when prices were already down to 2019 levels via discounts.

On the other hand, all of the same headwinds that we discussed last summer still exist (see Why Summer is the New Low Crowds Season at Walt Disney World). On top of that, the conflict in Iran has resulted in higher gas prices, airfare, and exacerbated inflation.

Then there’s construction around the parks, which has worsened since last summer. That coupled with the perception that waiting another year will result in fewer walls and more new attractions might convince some infrequent visitors to skip this year and instead visit in 2027.

All of this makes it difficult to predict precisely how Summer 2026 will play out, but it’s still safe to say this will be a slower stretch, with average or below crowds for most of the next two months. After that, the typical off-season in August and September 2026 will almost assuredly be when crowds bottom out for the year.

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YOUR THOUGHTS

Were you at Walt Disney World during shoulder season? What were your impressions of crowds? Visiting during Cool Kids’ Summer? Have you visited in the past during the month of May? Pleasantly surprised or did you find it to be incredibly busy? 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!