Lowest Crowd Levels for Last 8 Weeks Since 2021 at Disney World
Like clockwork, there’s been another off-season slowdown at Walt Disney World. Crowd levels over the course of the last 8 weeks have been the lowest in the last 3 years. This wait times report covers numbers for Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. Plus commentary about the why of attendance trends and forward-looking predictions for the remainder of 2024.
These low crowds are not a new development–neither in the last few weeks nor in recent years. Excluding the post-reopening period, the window between when schools go back into session in August until early October has been the slowest stretch of the year at Walt Disney World for many years running.
This slowdown is hardly breaking news or some unprecedented event. Late summer and early fall crowds are low every year. This trend didn’t even start in August–it just worsened then. 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. However, what is unprecedented is the degree to which the parks have slowed down, and the consecutive months, at this point, of the downturn. Neither of these things are normal, and that’s especially concerning with Epic Universe on the horizon and no new attractions at Walt Disney World until 2027.
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.
What’s notable now is that there’s no longer an 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. In fact, this same stretch was very slow last year and every year, but with some key differences in 2024.
So 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.
As you can plainly see, there’s been a gradual monthly decrease 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 a summer uptrend. Even with summers being less busy in the last decade, this was the dynamic we were seeing until 2024.
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 and September accelerated it. Thus far, October is even slower than the last two months, but it’s only one week old–that probably won’t last. It would be fairly unprecedented in ‘modern’ and normal times. Let’s zoom out a bit further…
Above is monthly crowd levels since the start of 2019. This shows that August and September (and now October) 2024 have been the slowest months at Walt Disney World since October 2021.
Note that October 2021 is not precedent for this month to be slower than September. That was a very weird and not normal or precedential time at Walt Disney World. The Delta variant and reinstated mask rules caused a deluge of cancellations from a wide variety of guests. 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 has happened in the last two-plus months.
The weekly view shows an ever-so-slight spike in crowds as families took “last hurrah” trips the last week of July. This is normal, but usually to a more noticeable degree. Since then, crowds have more or less been very low.
With that said, this shows a lot more nuance and, as you can see, crowds have not been on a straight downtrend over the course of the last 8 weeks. While still very low, there was a gradual upward trend in mid-to-late September that resulted in a spike of crowd levels to 2/10 territory (and a 29 minute average).
We “warned” you about this in the last update to our list of the 10 Best and 10 Worst Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World in 2024 to 2026. That was the end of ticket deals for Floridians and the general public, resulting in a rush to use remaining dates on the “use it or lose it” promos before they expired. Note that we didn’t fully remove that window from our best weeks list, just offered caution that it would spike based on what happened last year.
Speaking of which, let’s zoom out to see the weekly data since 2019:
The natural inclination here is probably going to be looking at the bright green and concluding that crowds over the course of the last 8 weeks haven’t been that low by historical standards. Again, just keep in mind that every single bright green line on that calendar is a post-closure and reopening anomaly. Attendance was artificially restricted or people were cancelling trips.
Try to just look at the dates in 2022 and beyond. If you look closely, you should be able to spot the August and September offseasons, as they stick out as the slowest stretches in each of the last 3 years. The first difference with this year is that the slowdown is already longer, not yet over, and uninterrupted.
The one thing that prevented last year’s late summer and early fall offseason from being the slowest stretch since 2021 was the aforementioned ticket deal. Its final weeks spiked crowds to 4/10 levels, which actually is bad by offseason standards. Multiple readers who visit at that same time every year reported it was the busiest they’d ever seen that timeframe. This year, the deal had an impact, but it wasn’t nearly as pronounced.
Individual days reflect mostly the same trends. There were a couple of stretches with absurdly low crowds, with multi-day periods of 18-21 minute wait times that barely registered 1/10 crowd levels.
When you’re looking at resort-wide numbers for a multi-day stretch, those are insanely low. 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 every day during the first of those stretches, and it was shocking just 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.
This gave me flashbacks to Summer 2020 and not in a good way. I enjoy low crowds just as much as the next person, but this was “too low” for me. I like the parks to feel alive, as people are part of what makes the magic. Honestly, I’d take a manageable 3/10 crowd level over this low of a 1/10. That’s especially true when the weather is hot–it’s actually nice to have ~15 minute breaks in air-conditioned darkness. (I don’t want Space Mountain to be a walk-on this time of year–the queue is an escape!)
For park by park analysis, we’ll start with Magic Kingdom. Note the porcupine pattern due to Party Season.
Every single day of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party at Magic Kingdom has been 1/10 on the crowd calendar. Every single non-MNSSHP day has been busier than the party days before or after it (but not that bad all things considered). Nothing even remotely surprising or unprecedented about this.
Once again, we highly recommend doing Magic Kingdom during the day before MNSSHP, bouncing elsewhere by ~4 pm if you have Park Hopper tickets. If you don’t, it’s a much tougher decision. 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 during the offseason. The busiest day came right as the ticket deals expired, when it hit 8/10 with an average wait of 48 minutes. The very next day, it plummeted to 3/10 and 26 minutes. There’s an obvious explanation for this discrepancy (ticket deals), butless so for some of the highs and lows before that.
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. Our Animal Kingdom Afternoon Arrival Strategy is once again the ideal approach for this park, especially as Animal Kingdom will be open after dark again this holiday season. Just make sure you arrive in time to catch the last performances of Merry Menagerie.
Early Entry or rope drop also work really well. It’s so easy to beat the crowds at Animal Kingdom that Lightning Lane Multi-Pass is a waste of money unless you’re arriving after 9:30 am and leaving before 3 pm…which is exactly what most people are doing. (Don’t be like everyone else!)
EPCOT is always a wildcard, but I’ll admit that it’s ongoing low crowds have 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 EPCOT still hasn’t really spiked crowds. It’s been slightly busier than the summer lows, but not by a whole lot. And keep in mind that the park is without Test Track, which should–in theory–be pushing crowds to other attractions. Still, the park isn’t busy.
Aside from a few spikes ahead of the ticket deal ending and for other nice weekends, even the “feels like” crowds haven’t been terrible at EPCOT. 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. Daily crowds have had their ups and downs, but the overall trajectory is similar to Walt Disney World as a whole. It’s likely that these crowd levels will continue to trend up, especially as Magic Kingdom enters the peak Party Season, which also impact the dynamic at DHS because those displaced guests have to go somewhere.
As a reminder, individual park crowd levels are relative to other dates at the same park. Disney’s Hollywood Studios has the highest averages in all of Walt Disney World, due to its top-heavy ride roster (plus shows that don’t post wait times). Consequently, a 2/10 at DHS is a higher average wait time than it is at Magic Kingdom.
Above is a look at the weekly wait time averages for Universal Orlando. No surprise here–there’s a similar slowdown, and Universal Orlando has been dead since Labor Day. While the specifics don’t line up perfectly, this is also Universal’s slowest stretch in the last 3 years.
Universal has also been keeping limited hours, with neither park open later than 8 pm during regular operations for several consecutive months (the next time either park gets a 9 pm closing is Veterans Day weekend). Something tells me that if all four Walt Disney World parks did this, fans would not be forgiving.
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, we want to start by making clear that we are not suggesting these low crowds will last forever, that Walt Disney World is doomed, or whatever narrative former fans might want to see advanced. That’s not what we think at all. But none of this should really be all that controversial. Again, Disney’s own executives have conceded that a slowdown is happening, and that it’ll likely last into 2025.
It also doesn’t mean that the monthly downtrend that we’ve seen since February will continue unabated. Crowds will pick up at Walt Disney World, and probably soon. The turning point would normally come during the days leading up to the Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples’ Day holiday weekend, but Hurricane Milton probably has other ideas about that. Even with that storm, we fully expect October to end up being busier than September.
As discussed in the October 2024 Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar, this has become one of the busier months of the year. Regardless of what happens with Milton, fall break and convention season is right around the corner. This time of year is typically the busiest time since spring break–worse than all of summer in a normal year. That’s in large part because you have more vacations consolidated into less time, generally more attractive weather, and superior seasonal events.
Suffice to say, October will become busy at some point. There are several days and at least one week in there that will end up being the busiest since April. The bigger question mark is what happens after that. Going by past precedent, there will be a gradual decline after most school districts have had their fall breaks, before another spike in the lead-up to Veterans Day, another very busy holiday that catches Walt Disney World visitors by surprise. After that, the peak holiday weeks will once again be very busy. So whatever the explanation for lower crowds, it must also explain the higher ones throughout the next 3 months.
How busy the next few months will be and when the crowds will spike is an open question. My guess at this point based on everything we’ve seen, not to mention Milton, is that October 2024 will be less busy than last October. This is hardly a bold prediction, as crowds have been down at Walt Disney World year-over-year…which were already at low levels last year during this same timeframe.
In both years, we’ve noticed that the increased number of international guests have been noticeable. This has long been a popular time for trips for guests from the United Kingdom, but I’ve never noticed as many British accents (as a percentage of all guests) at Walt Disney World as in the last two offseasons. (This is corroborated by MCO passenger stats, which are being propped up by double-digit gains from international travel as domestic numbers drop.)
This makes complete sense–it’s a matter of lagged pent-up demand. International revenge travel has been the big ‘thing’ for the last year-plus, both with Americans heading abroad and vice-versa. But that trend has been playing out for about the last 18 months at this point, and it’s probably going to run out of gas soon. What happens when this whales (non-derogatory) have finished their revenge travel?
What’s perhaps most notable here is how nothing Walt Disney World has done for promotional pushes since the start of summer have really moved the needle on attendance in a major way. Not the ticket deals, not AP appreciation, not Free Dining, not Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, not the drone show, not the start of EPCOT’s Food & Wine Festival, and not CommuniCore Hall (okay, that last one was a joke).
Hopefully a lesson has been learned in that, because a comparable slate for next summer is not going to be enough to lure guests away from Universal’s Epic Universe. Obviously, competing with a new park isn’t an option–but that’s not the goal. It’s siphoning away some days or stays from some guests. As excited as I am for Disney’s Starlight Night Parade, that alone won’t be nearly enough. I really hope there’s a plan beyond what we already know, and that Disney knows they’re not “untouchable.”
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on the August and September slowdown at Walt Disney World? Predictions as to when or whether heavier crowd levels will return in October through December 2024 or even Winter 2025? 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? 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!
Florida doesn’t seem like an ideal destination with back to back hurricanes this late in the year
This data sure doesn’t match resort availability and price. We have DVC – it is almost always booked, only a day or (rarely) two here and there available, so I checked the resorts – the current and near future rates are well over $1000 / night and many are far above that. $5,000 – $6000 for 3 nights? It’s surprising how many people can afford that.
They have crossed the line with too high prices and too complicated app.
We go about once per year, if we’re lucky. If we can, we shoot for September or early December (week after Thanksgiving). This is solely to bypass crowds. As a matter of principle, I refuse to pay an extra fee per ride. The whole Genie+ and Lightening Lane screams, “Disney is trying to extract every penny from you”. Bring back the Fast Passes! It was an equitable system. Everybody loved it. The price of parking is always increasing, which also adds to the feeling of being squeezed. Every time I turn around, I see yet another announcement of increased ticket prices. I have not seen any ticket deals for visitors outside of Florida in a long, long time! For us, it’s all about the price gouging. The culture wars are nonsense. I do not believe there appreciable decline in visitors because of that.
While I agree with most of what you’re saying, there was just a general public ticket deal that ended a couple of weeks ago. Also, ticket prices haven’t gone up (save for future dates in 2025) since December 2022. That’s actually one of the few things that has not increased!
The impact of the culture wars is difficult to measure. I agree that its impact is massively overstated by those who have a vested interest in it for whatever reason, but I don’t think it’s having zero impact. With that said, I also think that the peak impact it had is already in the rearview mirror–it’s not an explanation for crowds being down this summer or fall relative to last year, because last year was “worse” in terms of controversies for the company.
We live in CA and love to visit Disney World about every other year. I have been trying to price out a vacation for a couple of years. We can pretty much go anytime of year. Last time we went we still had free fast passes and free shuttle from the airport. So for us pricing and total cost is part of the issue. The other is so many rides go down or being refurbishined for long periods of time. Then to get on the rides that are available we have to buy the paid fast passes now or there is a strong chance we won’t get to ride them. I read your blog most days and when you post about a sale I quickly price it out. It just doesn’t move the needle for us. I think what would move the needle is bring back the buy 3 nights/tickets get 2 nights/tickets free and include the paid fast pass for free. I know that would move the needle for us.
“I think what would move the needle is bring back the buy 3 nights/tickets get 2 nights/tickets free”
I’ve been wondering whether this is one of the special offers they’ll bring back as a counter to Epic Universe. It would be smart, as it locks people into staying on-site and visiting Walt Disney World for multiple days.
Even if it does return–and that’s a big if–there’s no way it’ll include Lightning Lanes. Maybe that’ll happen eventually if Walt Disney World gets hit hard by Epic Universe or a recession, but it’s highly unlikely in 2025.
And yet, they keep raising their prices.
If Universal get their ticketing right for Epic (i.e force people to spend days at their existing parks in order to spend a day at Epic) than rather then lifting WDW attendence up (tides lift all boats theory) I think WDW attendence will fall even further.
Rather then spending 5-7 days at wdw and 0-2 at universal in a typical 1 week vacation I think the script will be flipped with people spending 4-7 days at universal and 0-3 days at disney. So even if overall attendence next year at orlando theme parks rises by 50 per cent, then taking the mid points of my simple example the attendence at wdw itself will still fall by 50 per cent next year relative to this year. That would be disasterous.
Wdw need new modern attractions quickly. And to create some goodwill with consumers by bringing back some perks. But mostly new attractions
I expect that to be the early bird option for Epic Universe, but that single day tickets will also be available.
Remember, the stakes are also incredibly high on Epic Universe for Universal. They need this to be a massive hit, with strong attendance numbers out of the gate. They cannot risk an overly aggressive ticketing approach that alienates locals or causes people to “save Universal until next time” and just do WDW in 2025.
The point still stands that WDW is in for a rough few years while waiting for these new attractions to open. I just don’t think Universal is in the position to really block them out like the leaked ticketing info suggests. Universal’s position simply is not that strong.
Yeah… but I don’t see this as being about attractions. I’ve been going to WDW for years, severeal times a year. A cynic might say “same old; same old”. And yet, I LOVE it. What is finally having an impact IMO is the prices. Ticket prices were just raised. They are outrageous.
Why does it seem packed every time I’ve been there? I wish I could have gone on a day that was this low, and I go pretty regularly.
We were at WDW for Sept 20 -30. I found it pretty crowded at the parks and at our resort and most of the more popular/newer rides had high wait times. We don’t do rope drop/early hours. We tried going in the late afternoon/evening and it was still busy in the parks. I physically cannot stand in line for an hour so we bought the Multi Passes and Individual Lightning Lane passes for rides every day and still had trouble getting on some of the more popular rides/newer rides as no new slots for rides ever opened up once they were full in the morning, so the only rides we could pick in HS for example after using our first ride of the day was something like Star Tours that already had a low standby wait times. During the entire ten days there we only managed to get on Slinky Dog Coaster and Remys Ratatouille one time each. Both of these were not that thrilling so I’m glad we didnt wait in line for an hour or 2 to ride them. We were never able to get onto Frozen. Rise of the Resistance was underwhelming and a bit of a let down after all of the hype and I regretted buying multiple non refundable Lightning Lane passes for this ride although we were able to modify 2 of those passes for Guardians of the Galaxy rides instead which was the best new ride at WDW in our opinion. Guardians of the Galaxy ride pretty much was the highlight of our WDW trip. We bought Lightning Lane Passes for Tron also which was good but not as good as Guardians and it was very fast and just over too quickly. I couldn’t imagine waiting in the standby line for Tron for 2 hours for such a short ride, not worth it IMHO. We had done Avatars Flight of Passage on our last previous visit back just before free fast passes were eliminated and we really enjoyed it, but again I can’t physically stand in a line for 90 minutes so we paid for lightning lane passes to ride FOP a couple of times each also. Between the Multi Passes and the Individual Lightning Lane Passes each day we spent a small fortune. The boat ride at Pandors was very boring and I wouldn’t bother doing it ever again. Tianas Bayou Ride was also very disappointing and boring aside from the Splash Mountain drop that was the only thing left of the original ride. We had the free dining promo and stayed at Pop Century but found out a couple months after booking that the food court there would be under refurbishment and we could get mobile app orders only. Having an egg allergy I found the options on the mobile app order system extremely limited. Also, the food was horrible!! We had stayed here many times in the past and enjoyed the food but this time it was horrible. We also found most of the quality of the food at the quick service restaurants in all the parks had gone down in quality as well. We ended up spending extra money to eat out at table service restaurants most days and I wish I had paid the up charge to get the regular dining plan when I had booked our vacation package as we ended up spending much more on food outside of the quick service dining plan and ended up leaving with 16 unused adult quick service meal credits still on our account. Even some of the evening dinners we paid extra for at some of the Epcot Restaurants were of poor quality and very disappointing. We always enjoyed our WDW resort vacations in the past and used to go almost every year. Now the quality of the experience has gone down and the cost has increased so much that I don’t know if we’ll bother going back for a few years, if at all. Waiting for over an hour at the airport for the Mears shuttle we had to pay for to take us to WDW was also a big change from our WDW vacations of the past. I would have preferred that Disney continued their shuttle service to their resorts from the airport and charged extra for it than eliminating it altogether. We never had to wait so long shrn Disney ran their own shuttle service. At any rate, I certainly didn’t find the crowds to be low while we were there and while a few of the older less popular rides had shorter wait times the newer/popular rides still had very high wait times. We used to always visit at the end of November after Thanksgiving. We booked this September trip hoping for lower crowds. It was very very hot and there were still a lot of people there. If this is low crowd for WDW now I can’t imagine how bad it would be in November/December.
Was in Magic Kingdom on Sunday, Sept 8th(also a party day). Can confirm there were days around that week that were very slow. We just so happened to be walking by SDMT around 10:30 in the morning and saw the posted wait time drop from 40 to 20 minutes. We quickly walked over and got in line and it was a complete walk on. We couldn’t believe it.
This is what happens when people reach their breaking points between the insane price gouging, leadership greediness and Disney’s Political nonsense! Bob Iger and his leadership team need to open their eyes and change direction quickly as the Magic has worn off and people are no longer buying it!
I think the data is starting to betray a systemic trend downwards. We may want to hold off until October data is in to have firmer footing. Or maybe even wait to see the end of this year. But my guess is that the numbers are going to be materially down. If that is the case, I don’t think we can explain the data by the end of post-covid revenge travel. Ultimately, I think we are going to have to flesh out a new theory. I would propose a three factor theory: (1) diminished momentum in the Disney flywheel (recent movies are not moving the needle), (2) outsized price increases, and (3) culture-war influences.
I do think Epic Universe is a factor, but not as much as the other three. Epic Universe will be a greater factor in 2025/2026, but I don’t think it explains this year.
I definitely think that Epic Universe is a factor–and I’d put it well ahead of culture war stuff. Universal is seeing a commensurate drop this year and it has largely avoided being dragged into the culture wars (I think?).
With less than a year until Epic Universe opens, people are already postponing trips to Central Florida for theme parks. I’d imagine that started in earnest this summer and will continue through the first half (give or take) of 2025.
Other factors are likely bad word of mouth (it’s too complicated with Lightning Lanes, virtual queues, etc) and bigger picture trends as consumers trade down from pricier theme/amusement park vacations to cheaper/simpler options like the beach.
We must of hit an upswing because on Saturday, October 5th, it was packed. Before then though, it was actually nice. Much less crowds. I’m betting with Halloween coming, the crowds will continue to get busier until a few weeks after the new year.
Geez, with crowds this low it almost seems as though people are (FINALLY) “voting with their wallets” in regards to the declining quality of the product, increasing cost of the experience and apathetic leadership culture at the top of the company.
It’s fairly undeniable that people are finally voting with their wallets. It’s definitely not the only factor (see above), but it is a big factor.
I really wonder what story WDW’s guest survey data tells…and whether they’re listening to it and are planning on making any changes to reverse the trend. Guess we’ll have a partial answer once the inevitable price increases hit.