Spring Crowds Fall at Disney World
We’ve made it to May 2022 at Walt Disney World! With spring break season now officially over, we thought it’d be worthwhile to recap April wait time data in the parks. This report covers daily crowd levels and average attraction wait times for last month at Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom, focusing on the last two weeks while also offering a look forward at what to expect in the month to come month.
You might notice that this is the first Walt Disney World crowd report in a while to have an optimistic title. Most have included phrases like “worst month,” “busiest week,” “spring break peak,” or “not off-season.” These haven’t been hyperbolic, but rather, a reflection of wait time data.
Unfortunately, January was elevated significantly as compared to last year, February was the busiest month in the last two years, and then March managed to top it and be even worse. Those two months had average wait times of 45 and 46 minutes, respectively. For those wanting to put those numbers into historical context, the average wait times for the entirety of 2020 and 2021 were 33 and 32 minutes, respectively.
Unsurprisingly, April 2022 started out with a bang. As indicated in our last crowd report, the month had an average daily wait time across all rides at Walt Disney World of 45 minutes. That was as of the start of Easter week, and our expectation was that it would only get worse from there.
Let’s dig into the data to see where April wait times ended the month. As always, all graphs and wait time stats are courtesy of Thrill-Data.com.
Above is a high level look at monthly wait time averages across the entirety of Walt Disney World.
Our expectation was incorrect. Wait times actually dropped at Walt Disney World in the second half of April. Granted, it was only by 1 minute, but that includes Easter, which is typically one of the year’s worst weeks.
Once we get into individual days, you can see the precise point at which spring break crowds dropped off.
Interestingly, the drop occurred on April 20. That’s the middle of the week after Easter, so it neither coincided with the end of the holiday week nor spring break for the Northeastern and Midwest school districts that still had spring break the following week.
For park by park analysis, we’ll start with Magic Kingdom.
As with Walt Disney World as a whole, Magic Kingdom wait times hit a 9/10 level on April 20 and have been falling since. These days been downright average, with lots of 6/10 or 7/10 crowd level days in the last two weeks. The first day of May 2022 was the lowest level day since early February at 4/10!
Here are the specific averages for April 2022:
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 96 minutes
- Jungle Cruise: 78 minutes
- Peter Pan’s Flight: 74 minutes
- Splash Mountain: 67 minutes
- Space Mountain: 59 minutes
- Meet Mickey at Town Square Theater: 50 minutes
- Meet Cinderella at Princess Fairytale Hall: 50 minutes
- Haunted Mansion: 50 minutes
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad: 48 minutes
Note that two meet & greets made this list, despite not being on it the first half of the month. As predicted, wait times for characters soared once those returned to normal on April 18.
You can actually spot the differential as the attraction names changed from “See [character name]” to “Meet [character name].” Look at how low the former is on the rankings as compared to the latter, and that’s despite the “See” option occurring during peak crowd levels and “Meets” starting during the off-peak dates.
It’s a similar story at Animal Kingdom.
There, wait times also fell considerably from their spring break levels. For the last two weeks, crowd levels were in the 5/10 to 7/10 range. (Technically, there was a spike to 8/10 on both of the last two days. No good explanation for that–it didn’t happen at the other parks.)
Here are the specific averages for April 2022:
- Avatar Flight of Passage: 99 minutes
- Na’vi River Journey: 72 minutes
- Kilimanjaro Safaris: 59 minutes
- Kali River Rapids: 44 minutes
- Expedition Everest: 41 minutes
- Dinosaur: 33 minutes
The few other attractions in Animal Kingdom are all below 20 minutes.
I don’t know about you, but it’s mildly amusing to me that Expedition Everest went from being the park’s second Individual Lightning Lane attraction (never selling well in that spot) to the 5th highest wait time in a park with only 8 measured wait times.
We continue along to Epcot.
Pretty much the exact scenario played out at Epcot. April 20 was a 9/10 crowd level, and every day since has been markedly lower. There have been days as low as 4/10, but the numbers have really been all over the place. With the 2022 Epcot Flower & Garden Festival now being “old news” to most locals, the decision to pepper Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind previews throughout mid-May makes sense. Those dates will help prop up attendance.
As for specific attraction wait times at Epcot, here’s what we have for the first half of April 2022:
- Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure: 87 minutes
- Frozen Ever After: 82 minutes
- Test Track: 66 minutes
- Soarin’ Around the World: 40 minutes
- Mission Space: 35 minutes
- Meet Anna & Elsa at Royal Summerhaus: 32 minutes
Again, there’s a big difference between the “See Anna & Elsa” and “Meet Anna & Elsa” character greetings despite the former occurring while crowd levels were markedly higher.
Finally, there’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
If you’ve visited DHS in the last two weeks, you’ve benefited from a significant reprieve in wait time levels. There’s a good chance you didn’t realize it, as Disney’s Hollywood Studios can be unpleasant during the middle of even a “decent” day, but wait times dropped from a peak of 76 minutes to a range of 45-57 minutes in the last two weeks. When you add it all up, that’s a huge difference.
Here are ride-by-ride wait times for Disney’s Hollywood Studios in April 2022:
- Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance: 128 minutes
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror: 118 minutes
- Slinky Dog Dash: 106 minutes
- Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run: 73 minutes
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster: 71 minutes
- Meet Disney Stars at Red Carpet Dreams: 63 minutes
- Toy Story Mania: 63 minutes
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway: 62 minutes
- Alien Swirling Saucers: 42 minutes
While still very high, keep in mind that these are numbers for the entire month. There’s only so much the last two weeks can do to take down the average after the sky-high start to April. With that said, here are a few notes about DHS wait times:
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is so high because it’s operating at half-capacity due to a “stealth” refurbishment. It’ll likely remain at this level through at least the first half of summer.
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster remained elevated because it was down a lot the second half of the month, so it didn’t benefit from lower daily numbers to drag down its monthly average.
- The (excellent) Red Carpet Dreams featuring Mickey & Minnie takes the cake for the longest meet & greet wait time of the month.
As a reminder, the 8 am official park opening time makes it easier to minimize wait times at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, especially if you’re staying on-site. See our post on Early Entry at Disney’s Hollywood Studios that covers doing both Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway before the park opened to regular guests. (Although now you’d be better suited bouncing from Galaxy’s Edge to Sunset Boulevard rather than Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.)
Additionally or alternatively, there’s Genie+ and Lightning Lanes. Even if you’re only able to knock out 3-4 headliners with the paid FastPass service, Genie+ is arguably worth it at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. We have several recent posts that are helpful on this front, including the following:
- Best Way to Use Genie+ at Hollywood Studios
- Speed Strategy for Genie+ Selections
- DHS Lightning Lane Ride Ranks
- Ride Reservation Refill Rules
- My Day Using Genie+ Lightning Lanes in Peak Crowds at Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Just in case that’s not overwhelming enough, more DHS strategy posts are in the pipeline. I won’t rest until I’ve covered all the ways to conquer crowds at Walt Disney World’s most frustrating park!
…and then I’ll have to redo them all once Fantasmic returns and throws a monkey wrench into things.
Looking forward, you can expect…I’m honestly not sure. We recently updated the May 2022 Crowd Calendar for Walt Disney World based on incredibly limited Disney Park Pass reservation availability. The reasoning for that is relatively straightforward–all dates that run out of reservations should be equally crowded.
As such, we stated the following: “Crowds could still drop in the coming weeks to their normal 6/10 to 7/10 levels, but we’re no longer predicting that given how many dates are already yellow on the Disney Park Pass reservations calendar. To the contrary, our expectation is that remote work and ongoing pent-up demand will keep the month somewhat elevated. Not as bad as spring break, but worse than a normal May.”
The problem with this reasoning is that most of late April was also yellow or grey on the Disney Park Pass reservation calendar. Yet, wait times dropped across the board in a consistent fashion that cannot be explained away by weather, attraction uptime, or anything else. Crowd levels went from 8/10 to 10/10 most days to a range of 5/10 to 7/10 most days.
Now, it’s possible that meet & greets helped better absorb some of the crowds (keep in mind that most characters don’t have posted wait times, so they get ignored by the data). It’s also possible that the longer hours helped better spread out crowds to some degree. Personally, I find this unpersuasive to account for the entirety of the discrepancy. Some of it? Sure. All of it? No way. Attendance had to have been lower for the last couple of weeks.
Ultimately, I cannot explain why or how that would’ve happened given the (lack of) availability on the Disney Park Pass calendars. It’s possible that potential guests made reservations when they saw them starting to book up, but didn’t follow through with trips.
Another theory is that cancellations have already started to pile up due to the rising costs of gas, airfare, and various other reasons–and those cancelled Park Passes aren’t being automatically added back into the inventory for some reason. If either are true, why wouldn’t Walt Disney World manually adjust the Park Pass system to add capacity? It just doesn’t make sense.
Regardless, wait times at Walt Disney World not being as bad as the Park Pass calendar foretold is a good problem to have. It now makes us a bit more optimistic that May 2022 will once again be “shoulder season” with those 6/10 to 7/10 crowd level days.
The real problem is that we don’t really have any solid foundation for making that prediction aside from past precedent, which has been repeatedly wrong thus far in 2022. Nevertheless, I’m going to roll with it. My prediction is that May 2022 won’t be nearly as bad as the last 3, and could end up being one of the better months of the year when all is said and done. We’ll report back on how things are going at Walt Disney World in a week or two.
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
Thoughts on crowds in the second half of April 2022? Predictions on crowds for May 2022? Think that this month will end up being significantly less busy than February through April, or are the moderate crowds of the last couple weeks a red herring? If you’ve visited within the last month, what did you think of crowds and 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!
The drop in attendance could be fallout from local families due to the dispute between Florida’s governor and Disney over Disney’s involvement with local school politics.
Me and my three sons and their families (we were 11 total – from 2 years old – 69) visited from April 17th – April 23. We were off property. I usually am the planner for our trips but this time I let the boys do it all and I had them get on your blog well before the trip to understand Genie+ and ILL. We had 4 day passes with Genie+. Easter was HS, 4/19 Epcot, 4/21 MK and 4/23 AK. What was a big help is the parks had very early opening times which made those on-property even earlier. Staying off property we were only able to purchase ILL once for AK’s Avatar Flight of Passage…….all other parks they were gone before we got into the parks. They tried many times and looked all the time for dumps……..which they saw but was never able to secure……..wondering if 9 was too big a number……..But we used your strategy of going at the end of the day……..Rise of the Resistance was 35 min. near closing…….As was Remmy. We actually had a great week! Road almost all the headliners……..waited 20 – 30 min. at most……made good use of our Genie +……..3 at HS, 4 at Epcot, 4 or 5 at MK and I think 5 at AK. After reading some of your blogs my boys said we were definitely in the 1% of those who knew what they were doing!! LOL We did not crisscross the parks, had time to eat, relax and enjoy walking through the areas. I actually think the worst ended up being MK……..way too much to do…….we did a lot of the rides but weren’t able to enjoy some of the shows or just walk around a bit. It was also a very HOT day! The park was packed. At the end of the day the little ones were exhausted and sleeping and they had to decide Space Mountain or Mine ride and they chose Space. So we didn’t get to the mine ride. Something to do next time. Interesting you talk about how things were less at the end of that week. Probably why we were able to grab a ILL purchase for Avatar at AK……we did absolutely everything in that park by 6 pm…… which was great as we were all leaving the next morning. The Genie + worked very well for us. Thanks for all the info!
Thanks Tom. Sure hope mid May continues with this latest downward trend. Not counting on it, but will be pleasantly surprised if it does
Just got back from a quick 4 day trip May 2-5. May 2, magic kingdom was pretty much crazy owing to it closing at 4:30 on May 3 and cheerleaders packing the parks with their families after Summit. Epcot was very very light all week (lightest I’ve ever seen it really). I easily walked up to any festival booth to order and all waits were under an hour. AK and HS also weren’t bad. We used Genie and on our AK morning we stacked 5 rides at HS. Rode them all between 5:30 and 8pm and left to get Beaches and Cream since we were done. We were actually wondering if Disney did not refill the park availability like they did for spring break. I think that the park availability is not equal on different weeks. There is absolutely no way that the park was “sold out” the same way it was “sold out “ on winter or spring break.. I don’t know whether they were giving some people days off or what. We also ran into a ton of cast members who hadn’t been able to get days in parks in forever and were finally able to get into the parks. I’m sure it must be frustrating for them not to be able to have the perk that they expected for CMs of going to the parks a lot in the past year. We were able to ride every single ride that we wanted including all of the headliners by utilizing Genie and park hopping this week. and that included 4 to 5 hour breaks in the middle of the day because it was crazy hot! We actually plan to stay for the extended hours that Magic Kingdom but since the park was open till 11 we actually were able to get everything done before the park even closed, and we left at 10:30. We noticed that the make up of the crowd is mostly families with preschoolers single adults and groups of friends. And couples. There were a lot of honeymooners. there were not a lot of families with elementary through high school kids except for that one day when the cheerleaders were visiting the parks after the cheerleading competition. We also really enjoyed hearing a lot of accents and foreign languages around the park. We met some people from the UK and really enjoy chatting with people from around the world again. as soon as the international college program kids are back it will be even better! Disney felt so, so normal this week and it was amazing.
Hello. We are planning a trip next year and are torn on what month to go. Our choices are the 1st week of Feb. 2nd or 3rd week of March or the 3rd week of April. We are trying to avoid spring break, easter and the events like the races, cheerleader events etc. Any tips will be much appreciated.
We have always gone the first week in February…crowds are managable
It really depends on when Easter is. when Easter is earlier in the month the crowds at the end of April aren’t that bad. Just keep in mind there are huge cheerleading competitions the last week of April and the first weekend of May. I think the first week of February as long as there’s not a run Disney, and as long as there’s not a festival starting, it’s technically lighter, but the weather can be very unpredictable so if you want sunny weather and pool days I would go at the end of April.
We went April 25-28 and lines at Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios were both ridiculous. Spring Break was over but there were dance competitions and sports groups that kept the crowd levels high. We did not purchase the Genie+ except the day we visited HS and we couldn’t even get a time for any of the big rides we waited 55 minutes for Mickey & Minnie’s runaway railway. Kids waited 4 hours for Rise of the Resistance, which was also down for several hours. Rock n Roller Coaster was down most of the day too. Tower of Terror was 125 minute wait. Slinky Dog was over 2 hours. We used our Genie+ on Toy Story Mania then went to Epcot to use the other on Soarin. Epcot was less busy after 5pm and was enjoyable. Magic Kingdom had a 95 minute wait for Seven Dwarfs, 65 minutes for Splash Mountain, and the other popular rides were about an hour wait. Animal Kingdom seemed to have the lowest wait times. The safari ride was down for an hour or two. It seems like the wait times wouldn’t be as bad if Disney could keep their rides operational. We won’t go back until they fix the fast pass system. We were back at our hotel by 4pm all but 1 day because waiting on those lines and being elbow to elbow with people was not enjoyable. We spent our final day of vacation at Sea World and got on more rides there than we did all 4 days at Disney and paid half the price of a Disney day. Disney for us was definitely not worth the money this time.
Maybe im slow witted, what is the reference of 7/10, 8/10 or 9/10. I don’t see any ledger or explanation for references
My family was there April 21-27, 2022. We were first timers so I don’t have any frame of reference. With older kids we didn’t do character meets. We did everything we could to minimize wait times – stayed on property and used park entry, bought Genie+ and ILL. Went back to the hotel for lunch and siesta from 1-4 daily then returned to a park for dinner and stayed to close down the park. The only lines we waited on was to get coffee/iced tea at the kiosks (which were long and moved at a snails pace) otherwise we walked on everywhere. We had 6 park days with hopper and had the best vacation. We were quite pleasantly surprised. Thank you for all of the tips and tricks!
We just got back from a trip the last week of April 25-30. We were so surprised that wait times were down from what we had experienced in February. Thank you for some hypotheses about why that might be.
My husband & adult daughter went to Disney World in March, & most of the lines for the popular rides was 3 hrs. long!! I don’t know where some of this Info. is coming from. It was very hot & exhausting.
We were there from Apr 9-13, and Tuesday in MK was very busy! It was my first trip, so I have no basis for comparison, but Barnstormer and the Tea Cups had a 60+ min wait for the entire day, which seems unlikely to be a normal day. Even the Saturday was less busy, but attribute that in part to flight delays and cancellations.
We went to HS on that Sunday, and it was also very busy—I don’t think any of the rides had wait times of less than an hour (although the spiny toy story ride was completely inaccurate—it said an hour, but we were in and out in 20 min).
My family and I were at Disney World Apr. 16-23/22, sadly it was a really disappointing experience. We got to Magic Kingdom and the Hollywood Park right when they opened respectively, our first ride at MK was 45m long, within a very short time the crowds were overwhelming, the wait times were then 45-60m+, we walked around, had lunch and left the park. We did wait in line 45m for another ride, when we saw there was at least another 30m to wait, we left. At Hollywood we went on 1 ride, Slinky Dog roller coaster, waited 1h40m, when we got off the wait time was 2h and we were elbow to elbow with people so we left the park. We did go to the Typhoon Wave pool, that was very enjoyable, also went to Epcot one evening which was very nice but ended up coming home a day early, a very disappointing trip for the cost. I can honestly say I will never visit DW again.
At the risk of being a downer, April was still an 8 out of 10. Based on the significant differences in the Genie+ data for seeing characters rather than meeting them, the kind of a drop within the month could be seen to be a result of greater capacity from that (and added hours) *if* there was evidence of a widespread character resurgence across WDW.
Imagine the shorter lines elsewhere if you could meet two, or even three Caballeros at once!
We just returned after a trip from 4/22 to 5/2. According to the park calendar, each park (except Epcot sometimes, and AK once) was sold out. Yet when I went to redo a park reservation from AK to Epcot two different times, all parks were available for booking. As for crowds, our last visit was Dec 3-10 2019 and while it felt busier this time around, it didn’t feel ‘sold out’ busier.
With a little patience, we could book any ride we wanted with Genie+ with the exception of SDD at DHS during the day. While I was able to pick up SDD midday once, the second day I attempted I was unable to get a reasonable return time (I define reasonable as within an hour of when I’m trying to book). Having this patience allowed us to tour the parks in a logical (geographically speaking) manner with minimal crisscrossing and backtracking. Simply sitting and having a snack as a family while I refreshed the app for a few minutes would get us our next reservation (i.e. we rode Splash Mountain, then sat with Mickey Bars while I refreshed to get Big Thunder Mountain with a return time 15 minutes later). We would plan for shows via standby during the busiest midday times to help fill in until more rides in the later afternoon / early evening.
Between Genie+ and standby, we never waited more than 20 minutes for any ride, and we rode everything except Rock and Roll Coaster in all 4 parks. We did purchase individual lighting lanes when not doing early entry or extended evening hours for some of the eligible rides (namely ROTR and 7DMT).
I am eagerly awaiting your upcoming October post titled “Fall Crowds Spring at Disney World”.
I will absolutely use that headline if appropriate in October.
(Last year, I went with “Fall Crowds Fall Further at Disney World.”)
Comparing Disney wait times to 2020 and 2021 when most of the world was still in Covid mandates/lockdowns, etc., and people were staying home is not really indicative of it being so much busier now. We went to Disney world when my oldest was 7 and again this year, same weekend in February, she is 14 now. The wait times were nearly exactly the same both weekends 7 years apart for the most popular attractions. Now, It was definitely busier than expected this year, the less popular rides were longer. but not insane or the worst ever as far as Disney goes. We weee still able to ride/do everything we wanted at each park in 1 day each. And we went during the weekend. But I plan what we are doing based on popularity and wait times to maximize what we can do as well.
Every place lately has been much busier as well. My theory is everyone has FOMO. This is based on my family’s experience going anywhere recently. We are season pass holders since my oldest was 4 of our local amusement park and last year it was at capacity with insane wait times every single day, even usually notoriously slow days. And it was like that wherever we went to do something fun, just abnormally insanely busy. We spent nearly a year, some two years, unable to do much and now everyone is doing everything they can as much as they can trying to make up for lost time and afraid of missing out in case things get bad again.
That is very strange about the sold out days that ended up having shorter wait times though! I agree it makes no sense. My advice would be to just plan ahead and assume it will be crazy crowded!
“Comparing Disney wait times to 2020 and 2021 when most of the world was still in Covid mandates/lockdowns, etc., and people were staying home is not really indicative of it being so much busier now.”
That’s why we don’t do that.
Comparisons to the baseline refer to 2019 and earlier. Comparisons to 2020 were only made for January and February, because those were normal months.
We are planning a little visit from May 13-16. When we looked at the park reservation calendar, we grew concerned, but after purchasing our tickets, parks that were blocked out on the calendar were available for reservations. Make of that what you may.
That’s very interesting–thanks for that info.
It has always been the case that the actual reservation system and the Park Pass calendar don’t match perfectly–if someone cancels a reservation, it immediately goes into the actual system, but doesn’t show up on the calendar. I wonder if that has gotten worse.
Pondering about Hollywood Studios – when I think back to earlier visits – major shows like Lights, Camera, Action, soaked up a great many people at each show. Now all these people are out there trying to get on the headliner rides. I wonder if Disney ever give this any thought when they are thinking of ways to reduce crowds in line. Take the big shows away – and it’s always going to be a problem.
A big problem is that the DHS attraction lineup is too top heavy–meaning a lot of attractions that draw crowds, but not enough that soak them up.
We covered this a couple of years ago here: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/hollywood-studios-disney-worlds-best-rides-most-frustrating-park/
Does Disney impose any penalty on people who book a Park Pass and do not actually go?
We have booked a pass for every day of our 2 weeks but will probably cancel some once we have seen the reality of what can be acheived with early entry.
I actually scoured the internet regarding this last night because we missed a park day. Best as I can tell, Disneyland does impose a penalty (after missing so many, they will lock you out of making new reservations for a set amount of time) but Disney World had no mention of any penalties… Yet…
So what I’m seeing is that the top 4 “franchises” at the Magic Kingdom are Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Jungle Cruise, Peter Pan, and Song of the South and yet 3 of these 4 are the characters and themes management (er…” leadership”) most wants to phase out of the “brand.” Tell me what is wrong with this picture?