Peak Christmas Crowds Arrive at Disney World
Like clockwork, peak season crowds have arrived for the week of Christmas at Walt Disney World. Wait times are already up and are only likely to go higher as the parks see their heaviest attendance during the closing weeks of 2021. This report shares recent data, thoughts on what’s likely to happen next with attendance this week, and why wait times don’t tell the full story–or anywhere close to it–of high holiday season “feels like” crowds in the parks.
Let’s start with that last point, as it seems like a lot of people missed that in our wait times report from last week, which was somewhat-regrettably titled December Crowd “Slowdown” at Walt Disney World. In today’s era of only reading the headlines on social media, that didn’t exactly play well with the Facebook commentariat. Despite the title’s air quotes, many “readers” lambasted the report, saying their trips during the first half of December were the busiest they’ve ever experienced at Walt Disney World.
That post’s analysis stated that we had “been in the parks a lot both before and after Thanksgiving, and there’s a clear before/after divide in wait times. That’s undeniable, as it’s evident in the data above. This is especially true for the parks that aren’t Magic Kingdom. Although anecdotal, our perception of ‘feels like’ crowds doesn’t reflect the same. It definitely hasn’t been as bad the last two weeks, but it has still been packed–busier than I would’ve expected for the first two weeks of December, especially without Pop Warner. To the contrary, the last couple of weeks have felt like the busiest early December we’ve ever experienced at Walt Disney World.”
The next couple paragraphs of that go on to explain how different demographics can impact the relationship between congestion and wait times, with a prime example being October 1 when Magic Kingdom was packed but had short lines. I’m not going to rehash all of that because, presumably, if you’ve made it to the fourth paragraph of this post, you’re actually reading beyond the headlines.
Nevertheless, it’s perhaps worth reiterating that the wait time data here isn’t just us running around the parks with a notepad, jotting down times we see in a notepad at random. It’s scraped from My Disney Experience constantly by Thrill-Data.com and compiled in graphs and all sorts of interesting charts on their website. That site is worth checking out if you’re a data junky, as you can create custom graphs, track wait times, etc–there are some really powerful and interesting tools.
As we’ve stressed repeatedly, wait times are not conclusive of attendance. There are several other variables that can impact “feels like” crowds, from festivals at Epcot to weather to ride breakdowns to operational efficiency. (That last one is huge right now, and why December 2021 is incomparable to December 2019.) Beyond that, wait times can be manipulated by Disney, are often inflated, or otherwise inaccurate. They’re an imperfect measure of raw attendance or crowds.
However, wait times are still the best measure of crowds. The alternative is relying on individual guest perceptions, which are much more flawed and incomplete. We are in the parks numerous times per week, and I could easily identify the difference between a 5/10 and 10/10 day just by eyeballing congestion–but not between an 8/10 and 9/10 day. It’s impossible for us to be everywhere at once, and hard to know whether we’re in a pocket of crowds, what efficiency issues exist, and whether guests are disproportionately doing attractions or loitering about.
All of this is why we try to offer a blend of data plus color commentary with our anecdotal observations in these crowd reports. Usually, I prefer the wait times to anecdotes–but know they also don’t tell the full story, especially right now, with the parks still not firing on all cylinders. As a supplement to that, I think on-the-ground accounts can be valuable, but I have the self-awareness to understand that my experiences are limited to a small portion of Walt Disney World’s 43 square miles (I’m a fast walker, but not that fast!) and not representative of everyone’s experiences on any given day.
Anyway, enough with the rambling preface. If you find value in these crowd reports, you probably already have a similar perspective–but I felt it was worth reiterating for new readers or first-timers who may question methodology or wonder what’s up with Walt Disney World wait times v. attendance right now.
Let’s turn to Walt Disney World wait times over the course of the last week…
We’ll start with a high level look at weekly wait time averages across the entirety of Walt Disney World. (As always, all graphs and wait time stats courtesy of Thrill-Data.com.)
Thanksgiving week still represents the peak of this year thus far, with something of a lull in mid-December when it comes to wait times. It’s difficult to decipher, but this weekend–December 18-19, 2021–show a spike on par with the week leading up to Thanksgiving. In fact, this Saturday was significantly busier than the Saturday before Thanksgiving, with Sunday only one minute lower than its Thanksgiving week counterpart.
Breaking this down by park, where we’ll briefly look at Magic Kingdom. As has been the case for the last month, there’s little variance in daily wait times.
Most of this is explained by the lack of Disney Park Pass availability for Magic Kingdom. Fully booked is fully booked. Perhaps the more surprising thing is that Disney has seemingly capped crowds at lower levels than back in July, when fully booked days peaked higher.
If I had to guess, the reason for the lower cap is probably front-of-park congestion for Christmas castle projections, Disney Enchantment, and the mass exodus thereafter. Daytime density throughout the park can be bad, but we’ve yet to see anything on par with late July. Peak crowding occurs on Main Street in the evenings, which is somehow significantly worse than late summer.
This is something we’ve mentioned a few times, but we’d implore you to wait out the post-fireworks crowds before leaving Magic Kingdom. The congestion is borderline unsafe, and has been for the last month. You’re either going to be waiting for transportation in a sea of humanity outside the park or in a more pleasant situation inside Magic Kingdom. Walt Disney World will not strand you, so take your time leaving.
Mind you, this is with Walt Disney World artificially limiting crowd levels at Magic Kingdom. The above graph would look very different if Disney Park Pass were eliminated and organic demand were allowed to play out. Walt Disney World’s flagship castle park usually draws higher attendance than the other three–especially around Christmas.
This isn’t to say Disney is being “responsible” with crowding on Main Street and outside the entrance after park closing. Just that it could be even more chaotic, if things were allowed to unfold naturally. Just because the current situation is bad doesn’t mean it couldn’t be worse.
At this point, the Disney Park Pass system doesn’t exist for keeping crowds low–that hasn’t been the case for ages. It’s to keep them manageable and prevent attendance from overwhelming staffing levels and available resources. Some fans have advocated for eliminating reservations “since the parks are busy regardless.”
This perspective overlooks the possibility that crowds could get so much worse if this were allowed to play out in free-for-all fashion. Walt Disney World still is not equipped to handle the same guest loads as in a normal year. I’m no fan of the reservation system in the long term, but it’s a “necessary evil” in the short term given the demand-capacity imbalance.
Above is a look at Magic Kingdom average daily wait times by attraction for the last week.
Jungle Cruise is averaging 80 minutes, Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is averaging 81 minutes, and Peter Pan’s Flight is at 76 minutes. These highs are all just a tick lower than in our last crowd report, but other rides were higher, resulting in an average wait of 34 minutes. That’s still good enough for Magic Kingdom to hit 8/10 on the crowd calendar as measured by wait times.
That alone should underscore how this is not a measure of “feels like” crowds. Anyone who was part of that post-fireworks mass exodus would likely tell you it felt like an 11/10 on the crowd calendar.
Continuing to Epcot, where crowd levels once again spiked over the weekend to their pre-Thanksgiving levels with December 19, 2021 hitting 9/10 on the crowd calendar.
As always, “feels like” crowds at Epcot–especially in World Showcase–are always worse on weekends and evenings. We’ve spent a ton of time at Epcot this holiday season and our anecdotal experience is that the park has felt very busy almost every night. Wait time data simply does not tell the full story–or even the best story–when it comes to Epcot. There are simply too few rides and too many other reasons why people visit Epcot.
In particular, Harmonious viewing is pure chaos.
Speaking of which, we’d implore you to read our Best Harmonious Viewing Locations at Epcot for advice on where to see the new nighttime spectacular. We regularly see guests camped out 6+ rows deep in spots that offered good views of IllumiNations, but are subpar for Harmonious.
You are better off just standing in the uncrowded courtyards of Japan or Italy than packed like sardines on the bridge between France and the United Kingdom. That was a great view for IllumiNations or Epcot Forever, but not Harmonious!
This is a very different nighttime spectacular, and the viewing advice has changed. However, guests haven’t “caught up” to that, and are still staking out subpar spots. It’s sort of like when Main Street Electrical Parade ended, but people kept camping out for it on the curbs every evening for months because they were reading outdated resources.
(If you take away absolutely nothing else from this post, it’ll be worth your time for the tidbits about leaving Magic Kingdom and watching Harmonious. Seriously, so many headaches can be avoided with those two tips.)
Anyway, here’s the attraction breakdown for Epcot.
Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure remains the anomaly that we might as well throw out from the data. Following that, Frozen Ever After is still averaging an extremely high 107 minute wait, and Test Track is at 81 minutes. Everything else, including Soarin’ Around the World, is under an hour. As we’ve mentioned before, Future World becomes a ghost town after 8 pm and ~95% of the guests in Epcot all cram into World Showcase.
Animal Kingdom is once again climbing to pre-Thanksgiving wait times, and we’d expect that trend to worsen over the course of this week.
This weekend saw 10/10 crowd levels, with hour-long averages. Granted, there aren’t many rides in Animal Kingdom, but that’s still not great. Spoiler: it’s not going to get any better until 2022.
Over the weekend, Avatar Flight of Passage averaged 162 minutes (!!!) and Na’vi River Journey averaged 71 minutes. Kilimanjaro Safaris wasn’t much better at 70 minutes, while Dinosaur averaged 56 minutes. Tusker House Restaurant is also on that list for some reason, which I can only assume is a scraping error. Then again, we haven’t dined there in a few months–perhaps they added a ride inside since then.
Expedition Everest “only” averaged 48 minutes. That’s much higher than it was before as an Individual Lightning Lane attraction, but almost certainly not the highest it’ll go now that it’s on Genie+ temporarily(?). We continue to recommend staying late at Animal Kingdom, even if that means arriving late. You’ll encounter significantly lower posted wait times after 5 pm, and the actual wait times will be even lower than that.
Finally, there’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios. This continues to be the busiest park at Walt Disney World, and it’s back at 10/10 crowd levels. We were not at DHS over the weekend, but will be later this week and are already dreading it. Hollywood Studios is unpleasant when wait times are 8/10–it’s downright miserable at 10/10.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios simply cannot absorb crowds with its current lineup. On the plus side, Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular is now back–we’ll see to what degree that helps things. Our guess: not at all. Walt Disney World likely increased the attendance cap by a corresponding degree, meaning it all nets out on fully booked days. (Honestly, I wouldn’t bet against DHS waits getting worse with the return of Indy.)
On Sunday, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance averaged a 133 minute wait time, Slinky Dog Dash averaged 97 minutes, Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run averaged 86 minutes, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway averaged 83 minutes, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster averaged 75 minutes, Toy Story Mania averaged 67 minutes, and Twilight Zone Tower of Terror hit 59 minutes.
The total average time it would take to do all 7 of those rides is exactly 600 minutes–or 10 hours. Tack on another 40 minutes if you wanted to do Alien Swirling Saucers for some reason. It would take you from park open to close just to do those attractions, plus lunch and dinner. That’s without any shows, meet & greets, shopping, etc.
This is why Genie+ is worth it at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, even if you’re only able to knock out 3 headliners with it. That’s the likely scenario given that Slinky Dog Dash is gone within seconds and Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run fills up in under 2 hours after that (the latter is often refilled throughout the day, though).
As I sit here writing this on December 20, approximately 3.5 hours after park opening, every headliner except Slinky Dog Dash is available with return times before 5 pm. (Follow our Speed Strategy for Genie+ Selections and DHS Lightning Lane Ride Ranks to max out your Genie+ count at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.)
Looking forward, you can expect sky-high crowd levels throughout the next two weeks. This should end up being one of the 5 busiest weeks of the year–unless Walt Disney World set reservation caps lower after seeing the chaos of Thanksgiving. Orlando International Airport last night was far and away the busiest I had seen it in the last two years, and supposedly, MCO was even busier on Saturday. (It was quite the contrast to GRR, which was a ghost town by comparison.)
If I had to guess, going off nothing except instinct, my prediction is that wait time and crowd levels will peak for this week on December 22 or 23. Christmas Eve and Day will still be incredibly busy, but probably not as consistently crowded throughout those entire days due to guests doing “family stuff,” table service dinners, and so forth. That alone will act as a bit of a release valve on wait time numbers. It’ll still be an incredibly crowded couple of weeks, but that plus Park Pass limits and AP blockouts will prevent things from really spiraling out of control. We’ll be in the parks throughout this week to test Genie+ changes and see daily ops of Christmas entertainment, so we’ll keep you posted on how things are going.
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
Predictions on crowds for the two weeks before Christmas 2021? Thoughts on our forecast, analysis, or anything else? Agree or disagree with our take on “feels like” crowds v. wait times? If you’ve visited in prior months during the last year, how did crowds compare between then and now? What did you think of the wait times? Any parks or times of day noticeably worse than the others? 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!
Bold assumption Scott that people are “too lazy” to walk the parks and that’s why they’re in a scooter. Trust that anyone using a scooter wishes they could just walk instead. It’s much more of a hassle to drive and navigate a scooter through the crowds. People also don’t seem to realize it’s a significant additional cost. There’s no one using scooters as a “shortcut” and it’s ridiculous to try to police which guests are allowed to rent them.
Scott your response is ableist and fatphobic. Unless you are the personal doctor to the person using the scooter you have no right to judge if a person needs it. Disney does not have that right or ability either. Furthermore, you can’t judge a person’s health by their weight. You also can’t judge their diet by their weight. You should examine your own weight bias rather than wasting your time judging other people’s weight and scooter usage.
Hey Tom (or other WDW pros), any thoughts on how the Covid surge might affect things/ crowds at WDW going forward. I have a trip planned for MLK weekend but I’m debating canceling if Covid is totally out of control.
Our first year being local here and are very savvy (Tom’s word) park goers we are going to be in MK for Xmas eve and day! 27th for our favorite park Animal kingdom for the ambience. Dec 30th with MK being open until 1 Am we had to jump on that. No matter how crowded the parks are we will still have fun. Bring your patience everyone and you will have fun! Happy Holidays!
We live in Tampa and are Platinum APs and will head over on 23 Dec just for the Christmas lights, fireworks and hit the Christmas Shoppe. No rides. My family decided to pass on going on Saturday for this Thursday. So I am bracing for impact but look forward to seeing everything.
I just left after my first ever holiday trip since 1996 and…wow. I was in the parks from Dec 11-17th, after having hit only during green, 1/10 days over the past two years and it was a bit of culture shock.
Thankfully, we didn’t experience any glitches at all with our Genie+ day at HWS+MK, and were able to book 6 rides with it on 12/15. As someone who is only on my phone in the parks to take pictures, I didn’t feel that it particularly added to my screen time. We got off a ride, picked one for later, and moved on. I even strategized our ‘stacking’ so that we had rides in proximity to each other to minimize the runaround, and then took advantage of the extended Deluxe hours at MK to finish up.
With that said, I enjoyed our day on 12/16 just picking two ILLs for Flight of Passage and Remy, and doing shows much more. Maybe I’m just getting older, but most rides just aren’t worth waiting for, whereas shows give me more time for my effort. I actually like paying a-la-carte as well, as it was just less stressful to book and go and have it all done at once. I know that was the ‘worst’ of the options on the table for the Fastpass+ replacement, but I ended up liking it better and almost wish every ride was an ILL so I could just buy what I wanted when I wanted it.
My tips after this week are as follows:
-If you make a Genie+ reservation and use it and don’t book another one for a bit, it makes you wait the full two hours before you can do it again. No idea if this was an anomaly or not, but it was a little annoying in the middle of our day.
-If you want to do a popular show like Festival of the Lion King in high crowds, you MUST get there quite a bit in advance. There were a ton of people showing up last minute, and from the length of the line there was no way they were even getting into the next showing.
-Exiting Animal Kingdom is impossible when they first start showing the Awakenings. There is no crowd control like there is for the MK fireworks, and literally everyone just stops to watch the projections in a huge bunch from the tree all the way back to the bridge. There are no paths through.
HELLO
Found your recommendation for Genie+ at HS extremely helpful when we went last week. It was the only way to get on almost all of the rides and still have time for a couple shows and meet and greets. I did not end up getting it at Magic Kingdom or the other 2 parks and didn’t feel it was necessary (last week at least). I have gone at different times during the year mostly end of June/early July and felt last week was comparable to that time pre covid. Definitely not up to the crazy ness you see around Christmas which was what we had hoped to avoid (and thankfully did).
We were at HS on Saturday. Rope dropped Rise, then standby MF, standby ToT. Then MMMR ILL, Frozen sing a long, then Rise ILL and mobile order Ronto Roasters. Went back to hotel for a pool/rest break and had RnRC, Star Tours, SDD and TSMM set up for evening. Also rode MF again at the end of the night. It was crowded but didn’t wait more than 25 minutes in any standby line plus the LLs worked well. I think Genie + is totally worth it for us.
How dare you call me a reader in quotes. I am a skimmer, and very good at it, I rarely even finish the entire
I took your advice about Japan for Harmonious by the way. It was a pretty good view. I enjoyed the show I guess, but there were some technical difficulties for my viewing, since Cthulhu could only get a few tentacles through the portal.
I agree with Scott. Too many scooters. Young people using them. If people would remember to walk/ or drive scooters on the right it would help a lot with congestion. I was there December 7-16. Crowded! Wait times 100 minutes.
Drew you’re absolutely right about traveling at off times. I could fly round trip from NY for $72 in March, save a ton of money at the resorts (low prices and AP discounts), have great weather and low crowds. Unfortunately we can’t go till the week of Feb 20 – 26 which I believe according to Tom is one of the 5 worst weeks of the year. Our next opportunity would be April 10th which is also on that list. We’re very laid back and there’s so much to enjoy besides the rides that we find ways to have fun (horseback riding, kayaking, etc) but if these reports continue to look this dreadful we may forego Feb and just do our usual long trip at the end of August (sticky hot miserable weather but perfect for storm chasing). YAY!
This will be my 4th year in a row at Disney World(and Universal) for Xmas and New Years. Last year was nice at Disney with the somewhat restricted crowd sizes. The times before that were great too because of planning and FastPasses. Not sure how this is going to work out these next two weeks.
Hello Tom, new poster but reader and follower of you and I must say what you say is true
for seeing wait times. We went from Sunday Dec. 12th thru Sat. Dec 18th. What I noticed is that most of them are inflated anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes (depends on the ride of course). I and my wife took the 4 grandkids (ages 1 to 5) with are 4 adult kids and their spouses and had a great time.
We did take advantage of rider switches to make use of the wait time, but overall we had a marvelous experience. You are right about the crowds on the weekends, but I didn’t think
they were too outragious during the week. Animal Kingdom is dead as soon as it gets dark.
We walked on most of the big rides and several kiddie rides as well. I would say to anyone
if there is something you really want to go on just wait till 2 min to close of the park and
walk into that line. They have to let you in and it is always way shorter than the posted wait
time. Final thing you were spot on about MCO airport being crazy busy on Saturday night.
Dec. 18th. We had to catch a late flight to Detroit cause of weather in Michigan, and I had
not seen lines to get thru TSA like that in a long time. Anyway Merry Christmas to all.
It’s pretty nuts here. At HS and Epcot yesterday and MK today and it feels far worse crowd and wait time-wise than TG week 2019. Also though I just miss FP.
We were there last week and I’ll provide the following points if helpful for other readers:
1. Crowds were bad, but early access for WDW resort guests was a huge success. We arrived 30 min before early access each day and were able to knock out all of our priorities (Rise of Resistance rope drop at HS, then watched the line go to 90 minutes once we left the ride, rope dropped Peter Pan at Mk, line was 75 minutes within an hour after we finished)
2. Bought ILL for Ratatouille and although it’s annoying to pay an extra one-time cost, it was nice to “guarantee” we were able to do this ride
3. The 1-day itineraries were super helpful in prioritizing rides, lines, strategies, etc. so thank you!!!
4. I think Genie+ is too buggy and annoying to be worth the time and price right now. I used it first day at MK and my wife commented that I was on my phone a lot that day trying to secure the next ride for us and the kids. The app would freeze a lot, and at the end of the day I wish I didn’t spendthe $60+ for our family of 4 to get maybe an hour of time saved vs just focusing on rope drop and other strategies.
5. I think an under-reported problem with wait times and crows is SCOOTERS. I’m sure people will disagree, but the amount of scooters allowed within the parks has gotten out of control. It slows down walking path’s, ride loading, etc. I fully support those with disabilities to have access, but it seems like there are definitely people that are too lazy to walk the parks ( I can confirm with my own eyes multiple examples last week) that instead are using scooters that clog up the parks. SOLUTION – Require a doctor’s note or medical history form to justify the need for a scooter. Remember folks, a healthy diet and exercise will do wonders for your life!! (And save it, too)
Hope you had a good trip out of Florida and away from the parks for a bit. Good luck with all the Christmas coverage…I guess at least you should get some good people watching in.
I was providing a recap of our recent Florida trip for a friend last night and I mentioned one of the significant reasons I think I actually enjoy the parks, is because we’ve prioritized traveling during off times. I could think of 1,000 things I’d rather do than fight those crowds over a holiday week (and that’s as a fan). I feel for people that can only go during peak times, but there has to come a point where it’s just not enjoyable. Who knows…maybe people dig the hustle and bustle.
“Who knows…maybe people dig the hustle and bustle.”
I am very crowd-averse (definitely NOT looking forward to our days ahead at DHS), but the one big exception to that for me is New Year’s Eve at Epcot (and NYE Eve at Magic Kingdom). There’s a certain collective energy and Disney does a great job with crowd control/guest flow on those days, so it’s really a non-issue.
(I say this now, not having any recent recollection of what ~100,000 drunk people all using noisemakers simultaneously at Epcot is like on NYE. Perhaps I should report back on 1/1.)
We were in the Parks the first 2 weeks of December. IMO they were very crowded. We made extensive use of ILL’s and G+. These, together with use of Early Entry Hours, saved us a lot of time. I would definitely recommend them for anyone who can afford them and who doesn’t want to waste a lot of time in lines. Initially we encountered several glitches with them but after a few days the glitches largely disappeared.
My biggest problem with WDW is the cost. All-in-costs at Disney ( including Parks, Resorts, Tickets, Restaurants, Etc.) seem to have exploded this year.
“My biggest problem with WDW is the cost. All-in-costs at Disney ( including Parks, Resorts, Tickets, Restaurants, Etc.) seem to have exploded this year.”
This is my biggest issue. There’s no way around the fact that you’re paying more (a lot more) and getting less with WDW right now.
I really hope that everyone there now through New Year’s has a much better experience than the Thanksgiving crowd. My Spring Break trip is at risk of being cancelled if all I read is more of the same. I was there Thanksgiving week, and I’m not going through that ever again.
Maybe I’m just pessimistic, but I wouldn’t expect it to be materially better. Other than Indy reopening, 4 ILL attractions moving down to Genie+, and more Early Entry–nothing big has changed.
No matter how this week goes, it won’t necessarily be indicative of how things will go, for better or worse, during spring break next year. Really depends on when all those returning shows actually come back, whether park hours are extended more between now and then, further tweaks to Genie+, attendance caps/demand, etc.
I’m curious – does the thrill-list data take into account the often-inflated wait times Disney publishes? (I’m not sure if that’s even possible, it’s just that it might influence our understanding of the wait time data trends.)
No. The simply scrape posted wait times from My Disney Experience and compile those in a database.
With that said, wait times are inflated fairly consistently. There are certainly anomalies (like when RotR has downtime), but if you were to do the same attraction over and over again at the same time of day on different dates, you’d likely find relatively comparable inflation as a percentage above actual waits.