Summer Crowds Heating Up at Disney World
The summer season at Walt Disney World is only a couple weeks old, and crowd levels are starting to slowly heat up. This June 2023 wait times report covers ride & daily data for the month so far at Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. Plus, our anecdotal on-the-ground observations and predictions for July and beyond.
Our last few wait times reports covered shoulder season, highlighting the pre-summer slowdown playing out in the parks. That was addressed at length in Slowest Six Week Stretch at Walt Disney World Since 2021, which covered the degree to which wait times and attendance dropped following spring break.
In the end, May ended up being the least-busy month since last September. As the title of the above-referenced crowd report suggests, there was a stretch in April and May when crowds were at their lowest level since the 50th kicked off to surprising low numbers. Whenever crowds drop even a little, Disney fans and critics seize on the trend to validate their preconceived perspectives, and we saw that happen again in the last couple of months.
For some, there’s the hope or belief that boycotts are hurting attendance, causing cancellations, and people to be done with Disney. While it’s true that the Walt Disney Company’s reputation has taken a big hit in the last two-plus years, there’s yet to be any evidence that this is being felt at Walt Disney World.
Same goes with guest satisfaction, consumer-unfriendly practices, and everything else that Walt Disney World is doing to actively alienate fans and casual visitors. Admittedly, we want to see attendance normalize for the long-term health of Walt Disney World–especially its reputation and guest goodwill.
This isn’t to say people aren’t boycotting Walt Disney World or being priced out. We’ve heard from plenty who say they’re done visiting, so we know it’s happening to some degree. It is to say that to whatever extent that’s happening, it’s either a trivial number or offset by new visitors. The point is that attendance ebbs and flows throughout the year–something worth remembering in August and September when crowds next decline–and October through December when they spike again.
For us, the story is and has been one of pent-up demand. For almost a year, we’ve been searching for signs of a slowdown and normalization. This year’s shoulder season seemed to offer that. Not only was May the least-busy month since last September–the true off-season at Walt Disney World–but it was significantly slower than last May, with wait times down by roughly 20% year-over-year.
This was also reinforced by statements and actions from the company itself. Parks Chairman Josh D’Amaro’s warned that Walt Disney World would see a “moderation” in demand this summer, even as he contended that Disneyland will continue to “perform exceptionally well.” This echoed earlier earnings call comments from CFO Christine McCarthy, who braced investors for a slowdown at Walt Disney World due to the end of the 50th Anniversary and exhaustion of pent-up demand.
To combat the end of “revenge travel” and normalization of attendance, Walt Disney World has started pulling “levers” to remedy the issue. Thus far, this has included the resumption of new Annual Pass sales and more being done to show appreciation to fans and locals, including VIPassholder Days featuring a free Figment magnet and lounge for APs.
Discounting has also gotten more aggressive. As we’ve mentioned repeatedly, Walt Disney World already has released over a dozen different discounts for 2023, which is more than were available for the entirety of last year. In addition to those resort-centric offers, last month saw the release of two new ticket deals for this summer, plus an increase in merchandise and dining discounts for Annual Passholders.
So there are clear signs and concessions by the company’s leaders that a slowdown is underway, which is also reinforced by mid-April and May crowd levels. It’s also not entirely straightforward. From the company’s perspective, a slowdown means lower revenue–not necessarily attendance. There can be a pullback in spending as visitors continue coming, but start being more cost-conscious–buying fewer souvenirs, splurging less on table service meals, buying Genie+ less frequently, etc.
Moreover, the idea would be that Walt Disney World pulling the aforementioned “levers” would, at least to some extent, offset the pullback. Between Walt Disney World’s active efforts to entice visitors and the start of summer tourist season, the dynamic is starting to shift as compared to shoulder season. Crowd levels are again on the rise at Walt Disney World–but the parks are still underperforming as compared to this same time last year.
As always, what’s covered in these “crowd” reports is actually posted wait time data that’s pulled from My Disney Experience and compiled into graphs for tracking and comparing various days, weeks, months, and years. A lot can be gleaned from posted wait times, but it’s not necessarily conclusive of in-park congestion or crowds. However, wait times are not the same as “feels like” crowds or congestion.
In short, wait times are an imperfect measure of Walt Disney World’s crowds, especially if you’re comparing current conditions to prior years. Walt Disney World attendance has increased by several million people over the course of the last decade-plus, so the vast majority of days in 2023 will be more crowded than their counterparts in 2015 or 2017.
With that out of the way, 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. With an average wait time of 31 minutes, May ended up being tied with last September as the least-busy month of the last year. Normally, May is slower than spring break and summer, but nowhere near the fall off-season.
Wait times ended up being 9 minutes lower on average in May than in April. In actuality, the slowdown didn’t start in May–it happened in mid-April after Easter. The actual difference between spring break and shoulder seasons was ~15 minutes on average. That’s about an hour saved for every 4 attractions, which is a huge difference.
You can see from the graph above that June 2023 has started to bounce back from last month’s low, which is typical for the start of summer season. However, this month is still much lower than last June, with an average wait of 36 minutes in June 2023 as contrasted with 44 minutes last year.
Above is a look at weekly wait times at Walt Disney World. This shows pretty much exactly what you’d expect, and what we’ve been predicting–a steady and consistent increase since wait times bottomed out in mid-May. The weeks since have been both objectively low and below-trend as compared with shoulder and summer seasons during the prior two years.
With that said, the story becomes much more interesting when we zoom out and look at the resort-wide daily numbers for Walt Disney World thus far in 2023…
Here, it becomes obvious that crowds are up in June 2023, which is mostly ‘yellow’ days with crowd levels of 5/10 to 7/10. That’s a sharp contrast to the deep greens of last month, some of which were the least busy days since October 2021.
However, you’ll also notice two sets of green days in June 2023. There are consecutive 2/10 days followed by consecutive 1/10 days. Those are Saturdays and Sundays, which shouldn’t be a surprise at all to anyone who has been following 2023 crowds–this pattern emerged early on and accelerated during spring break.
When this trend first became apparent, we thought the Florida resident tickets excluding weekends and lack of Annual Passes were key causes. However, things haven’t really changed in a material way since the last promo ended, APs returned, or the new Floridian deal debuted and includes weekends.
Our leading theory now is that higher prices on park tickets, accommodations, and airfare over the weekends have caused many tourists to cut weekends from their trips. That was also a theory before, but we thought the local dynamic was as big of a factor, and it has not proven to be one. One final explanation is that a lot of Pixie Dust APs are in circulation, and those block out weekends.
Regardless of the reason, Saturday and Sunday have become the consistently least-crowded days at Walt Disney World as measured by wait times. In fact, if you remove the two weekends from the equation, the overall crowd level for June 2023 jumps from 2/10 to 5/10. Still below last year, but that’s a pretty significant shift. (Also, the month isn’t over–our expectation is that crowd levels continue to grow throughout this month and into July.)
Based on that, it would seem that Walt Disney World needs to pull one of its “levers” that gets people into the parks on Saturdays and Sundays. There’s only so much there that’s in their control–if more expensive airfare is a key impediment, obviously Disney cannot do anything about that. But there’s also a big difference in ticket and on-site resort prices between weekdays and weekends.
Above is a rate chart for standard rooms at Pop Century this month and next; this chart should look familiar to anyone who read our recent post about 2024 Walt Disney World Resort Price Increases. The difference is just as pronounced for the remainder of this year and all of 2024, so unless Walt Disney World starts releasing better discounts targeted at weekends, this dynamic might not change anytime soon.
(It’s interesting that a similar phenomenon occurred with Disney Vacation Club several years ago. Point charts were incredibly lopsided, requiring nearly double the points for weekends as compared with weeknights to discourage short weekend getaways. The imbalance had the opposite effect–DVC members used points on weekdays and did cash stays over the weekends to conserve points. To remedy that, Disney Vacation Club redistributed points to lessen the disparity and achieve the right balance. That was done over the course of multiple years. If 1/10 and 2/10 crowd levels persist on weekends, we doubt Walt Disney World will act quite that slowly.)
Over at Universal Orlando, the big-picture story is about the same–rising crow levels after a post-spring break slowdown. After seeing a Memorial Day weekend spike that was far sharper than Walt Disney World, weekday crowds are about on par between the two park operators. The big difference now is weekends.
To us, this suggests that airfare is probably not the main factor in explaining lower Saturday and Sunday numbers at Walt Disney World. After all, tourists to both theme park complexes are flying into the same airport. Aside from the weekends, though, there are no material differences in wait time trends at Universal versus Disney.
On a different note, Genie+ prices have been interesting. Since the start of June 2023, Genie+ has been priced at $20, $21, $22, $23, $24, and $25. Some of those amounts are new, as Walt Disney World seems to be getting more granular with pricing. (In the past, increments of at least $2 were the norm, with $5 swings occurring when entering peak season.)
Our guess is that this is some sort of test to assess demand…or something, as there’s often a disconnect between crowd levels and Genie+ pricing. Another possibility is that Walt Disney World’s internal attendance projections are missing the mark.
I spent every day at Walt Disney World for a week in June 2023 and my anecdotal experiences more or less align with the wait time data. It was noticeably less busy on the weekends as compared with the weekdays, and Sunday versus Monday at Magic Kingdom was a night and day difference. Ditto Saturday versus Tuesday at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
Even EPCOT felt less busy on the weekends once getting past the line outside Creations Shop for the Figment magnet and the AP “lounge” in Sunshine Seasons. World Showcase would normally be the disproportionately crowded portion of the park on weekends, and ‘feels like’ crowds there were about on par with what wait times would suggest.
My personal guess is that locals have gotten their fill of the 2023 EPCOT Flower & Garden Festival, which is now in its fourth month. (I’d be willing to bet it’s shortened next year.) I only spent a single day in Animal Kingdom, so can’t really comment on crowd dynamics there; it felt fine, though.
Rain and heat were definitely factors, with frequent afternoon showers (or the threat of them) and feels like temperatures in triple digit territory every day. This might’ve kept some locals at home, but it’s a non-factor for tourists. People are not cancelling trips at the last-minute due to 95-degree heat, and a brief afternoon monsoon doesn’t really push people to the exits. Those are known quantities for summers in Central Florida, anyway.
The biggest issue for me was ride breakdowns. This started with After Hours at EPCOT and continued…pretty much every single day! It was especially brutal when testing Early Entry and rope drop strategies, but served as a great and important reminder that downtime can throw a colossal monkey wrench into park plans. (Frustrating as it was, this was a “positive” for me as it broke a long string of good luck and brought my expectations for Early Entry and rope drop back to reality.)
Ride breakdowns impact anecdotal perceptions of crowds and fuel frustrations on an individual level, and I’m certainly not immune to that. This also served as a good reminder that a few unlucky breaks can dramatically dampen an experience. Conversely, a few lucky breaks move the needle in the other direction. In other words, luck matters a lot–and helps explain the wide range of opinions from guests who visit Walt Disney World around the same time.
On a positive note, I was pleasantly surprised by Happily Ever After crowds. Or rather, lack thereof. I watched the fireworks from Main Street on 2/10, 1/10, and 6/10 crowd days. Every single time, I staked out my spot under 20 minutes in advance and had room to set up my tripod.
Granted, I was closer to the Train Station than Cinderella Castle each of these times–and saw tons of people claiming spots over an hour in advance–but this was more reminiscent of the fall off-season with Disney Enchantment than summer with Happily Ever After. Although marked off, none of the overflow viewing areas were in use, either.
(To be very clear, Happily Ever After still draws colossal crowds and there’s a mass exodus after. All of that is still “bad” by historical standards–it’s just not nearly as bad as it was a year ago. In any case, this caught me by surprise, especially since the fan-favorite Happily Ever After has only been back for about 2 months at this point.)
Turning to forward-looking crowd forecast, we really don’t have anything to add or modify as compared to our 2023 Walt Disney World Crowd Calendars or predictions in the last couple of crowd reports. (If you’ve already read those, you might as well skip this as it’s all rehashed.)
This coming week should be when we start to see tourists arrive in full force, whatever that means for Summer 2023. Even though attendance has been trending upwards, mid-June is normally when summer season really starts to begin. Crowds tend not to get bad until around the halfway point in June for a number of relatively simple and straightforward reasons.
For one, not every school district is out of session by Memorial Day. For another thing, families like to spread out their trips and don’t usually travel immediately after the school year ends or right before the next one begins. This is why crowds usually crest around Independence Day, building gradually up until early to mid-July, and declining steadily after that.
Ultimately, it’s difficult to make accurate numerical crowd level predictions for the remainder of June and July. Walt Disney World hasn’t experienced a “normal” summer in several years–since 2018. Last year, the second week of June ended up being the peak, which was due to rising oil/gas prices.
Before that, the resumption of normalcy followed by the COVID-comeback threw a monkey wrench into late summer crowds. Then there was the closure in 2020 and the pre-Star Wars slump in 2019. Almost all of those variables, with the possible exception of gas prices and the broader economy, will be nonfactors in Summer 2023 at Walt Disney World.
Given how many years it’s been since Walt Disney World has had an average summer, it’s exceedingly difficult to quantify what “normal” means on the 2023 crowd calendar. Our expectation is that most days in mid-June through July 2023, Walt Disney World does not get above 6/10 as a whole, with the peak being around 7/10. Maybe 8/10. It’s really hard to say, and there’s a wide range of possibilities given the circumstances.
If anything, predicting 6/10 average crowds for the bulk of Summer 2023 feels like erring on the side of higher predictions than what’ll happen, and most weeks actually won’t break 5/10 for the next two months. I’d rather prepare you for the worst and be pleasantly surprised than the other way around. Underpromise and overdeliver…except that isn’t really possible here, since some Walt Disney World fans seem to expect that “average” crowds means it’ll be possible to hula hoop on Main Street during Happily Ever After!
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YOUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on crowds in June 2023 thus far? Predictions on crowds for July or the duration of Summer 2023? Expecting crowds to continue growing in June and until the week of July 4th? 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!
Unplanned, but my July trip happens to hit the donut hole in between festivals at Epcot, so I’m hoping that will mean a drop in crowds. What do you think of the prospect that a lack of an Epcot festival will somewhat keep the weekday crowds away?
Hello Tom,
I am heading to WDW next week (arriving the 18th). I currently have reserved MK for the Monday and AK for the Tuesday. Based on the information you provided, do you think that I should switch those days around?
Thank you as always!
Left WDW yesterday. I was very concerned about using all of the new tech features as I have not visited since before the pandemic. Followed this blog and did my research. I did buy Genie Plus for Saturday June 10 but I didn’t really need it. Saved us time for Peter Pan and Big Thunder at night. Rope Dropped Tomorrowland headed to Adventureland and did Space Mountain, Pirates, Buzz, Jungle Cruise and Haunted Mansion before 11:30. Stayed in the park because we were boarding croup 55 for Tron. This is where the trouble started over an hour and a half wait because Tron broke down. Stuck in one room with what seemed like forever listening to the same message. Pretty much everything we rode broke down at Magic Kingdom. For the first visit ever I felt the park is showing its age in a bad way. Our Epcot day we followed the strategy of rope dropping the front and doing Remy between 12:15 and 12:30- 45 minute wait was really 30 minutes. We should have gone back to the hotel but someone in our party insisted on staying. It was surface of the sun hot. Good luck all and thanks Tom!
I’m curious to see how Juneteenth affects the crowds next week. That’s still a new federal holiday, and like you said, there hasn’t been a normal summer for several years now, pre-dating it becoming an official holiday. So I wonder if there will be more people taking advantage of only needing to take four days off work as with the other federal holidays. You’re already predicting that mid-June bump, so I’m just wondering if it’ll be an even sharper bump before a potentially less drastic drop as the summer guests really start rolling in.
Normally, I’d flag that as a holiday weekend with the potential to be a big Friday to Sunday draw, with crowds actually leveling off a bit on Monday as those with the weekend off starting to head home on Monday. I’m betting that’s not the case with the dynamic we’ve seen emerge with slower weekends this year, though.
Instead, I’ll bet there’s more of a spike on Monday itself, and that’s due largely to locals with Juneteenth off. (I guess I’ll also go with higher crowd levels as compared to last weekend, but hardly a bold call given we’re up against 1/10 levels.)
Right now, there’s the internal belief at Walt Disney World that numbers will pick up around the beginning of July. I’m less confident in that than they are.
We’re heading down for 4 days the last week of the month. 6/26-29. Our lineup is Animal Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom. Hoping that Monday through Thursday schedule will work out for us. We’ve literally only been during Spring Break and Christmas Break over the last 10 years, so I’m hopeful for slightly smaller crowds!
Hi Tom,
This blog is super helpful for planning; I’ve been a longtime reader/lurker 🙂
We’re planning a trip this weekend and I’m curious if your recommendation is still to avoid Saturdays at Magic Kingdom, even with the new weekend dip patterns. Our current plan is:
Friday, Magic Kingdom
Saturday, Animal Kingdom
Sunday, pool day then maybe Hollywood Studios in the evening
Monday, TBD (thinking either Epcot or a loop back to MK or AK depending on what my niece would like) leaving earlier
Looking at the trends above though, I’m wondering if we should swap and do Animal Kingdom on Friday and Magic Kingdom on Saturday. I would love to know your thoughts on this!
I’d swap Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. Normally, your approach would be spot-on, but right now all signs point to Saturdays being slower in MK.
(Note for anyone else reading–this recommendation stops applying August 12. I really need to update the day of week recommendations between now and then, though.)
Bob Chapek is a convenient fallguy! Bob Iger is to blame for Disney’s downfall.
Another very good and helpful article. I’m curious about the impact of the highly publicized family fights and the cumulative impact on guests’ perceptions. Summers at WDW used to be known as miserably hot, crowded and packed to max. Look, these fights are rare considering the large number of guests in the parks on any given day. Fights and aggression can and do easily break out at sports events and concerts and it’s not really a unique WDW problem. But perception is everything. And perception is truly everything for parents and protective grandparents with children in tow preparing to drop upward of $10K on very expensive family vacations. If the perception is that summers are always packed wall to wall with hot and tired stressed out adults worried about how much they’ve spent to be there and mad as heck they aren’t getting the magical vacation the ads promised, then why drag the family into that hot mess. Add booze in the parks, guests who forgot to pack their brains, nationally and internationally publicized fights and threatening behaviour to the fire, and you’ve got a real turn off destination on your hands. A handful of bad actors shouldn’t make a difference, but I’m starting to suspect the headlines are making an impact. If parents and grandparents are shelling out the bucks to relive their safe and fun family memories with the little ones, and they read those headlines, then it’s no longer perceived to be a happy and safe place to take small children. That’s not the reality. But it may be the growing perception. Add in political wranglings both local and national, faith issues and basically every other real world stressor to the pot, then WDW is no longer the carefree escape we’re paying for. I’m still very surprised that WDW hasn’t placed greater value on escapism and nostalgia. It’s like they just assume it will always be there on tap to drive numbers and revenue. Like all good things, it doesn’t last forever and can’t be taken for granted. Most guests want to leave the real world at the park gates. That’s the point of a family vacation. When there’s no perceived break from everyday life, then what’s the point of that pricey vacation.
The few times I’ve been to WDW is the summer, I’ve been tempted to equate dragging small children through the heat, humidity and crowds with child abuse. When our kids were young, we took them out of school, after, of course, notifying the administrators, to visit when temperatures and crowds were moderate. Their educations did not suffer and neither did they. We continued the practice with our grandchildren, more times than not accompanied by their parents.
“Look, these fights are rare considering the large number of guests in the parks on any given day.”
You’re correct about this and also, sadly, that perception is reality.
It bothers me that other sites fixate on these fights and those stories often go viral on social media. Same goes for the crime blotter stories. A place like Walt Disney World that employs tens of thousands of people and that over one-hundred thousand people visit on a daily basis is going to have some bad apples and incidents. Statistically speaking, it’s an inevitability.
I don’t doubt that fights happen more frequently now as the stakes (vacation cost) are higher and so too are societal tensions, so that’s definitely unfortunate. Nevertheless, the chances of ever personally seeing a physical altercation at Walt Disney World–much less being “unsafe” as a result of one–is so low it shouldn’t be on anyone’s mind.
I agree 100% with all this. I know it’s an unpopular statement, but adding hard liquor to the parks was not a good idea IMO. It used to be you had to go to a restaurant and get a drink with your meal. Now it is available at all times at all parks, and I think it makes a difference. Not everyone can have a drink or two and Not be affected negatively by it.
I know we won’t be back until things get back to being customer centered, if ever, and the negative changes go away. But I know I am dreaming and we are very happy with Universal and other destinations:)
I was at Magic Kingdom on Sat and crowds seemed relatively high but not unbearable. What was an issue was that 4 rides were down at the same time. Pirates, Peter Pan, Haunted Mansion, and Small World we’re all temp unavailable at one point in the afternoon. Not good. Only 1!came back up by the time we were done but it caused us to leave early.
I can tell you that Typhoon Lagoon was ultra busy Sunday. I guess everybody wanted to be in the cool water rather than the hot parks.
Most of the wait times this past week were around the 60 minute mark…..but we welcomed those in wait times with air conditioned lines! It is hot! And you are right about the ride break downs. We were stuck on several, most notable was on Pirates where (after 45 min) we had to be evacuated by the fire department.
I like that you have crowd reports with the weekend information updates. I have always gone M-F. If the weekends continue to be slower I will adjust our days to Thursday to Tuesday or Wednesday for our trip next year.
I wouldn’t go to Disney in the summer if everything was free and you paid me! Went to a July wedding there many years ago. Once was enough!
I’m definitely one of those people who are taking five day/four night trips (M-F) during the week and avoiding weekends. This is solely due to the premium charged for weekend resort stays; we used to go for 6 days/5 nights or 7 days/6 nights. I have an AP so ticket prices are not a factor. I’ve been three times since last September, going again this upcoming last week of August, and all trips have been like this.
Last trip was 5/15 – 5/19 and crowds were fine. Ride breakdowns were an issue; I was foiled twice with ROTR being down during Early Entry, as was Slinky Dog (one day) and Runaway Railway (the other day). Hope things improve as crowds get heavier!
It’s gotta be people like you, at least in part. I think the only other strong possibility at this point is a disproportionate number of Pixie Dust APs, which also seems plausible given that those never paused.
I really wonder what Walt Disney World will do to remedy this and how long it’ll take. They are typically slow to react to evolving crowd dynamics, and I think we just witnessed that yet again with the 2024 resort rate charts.
My husband & daughter went to Epcot on 6/10. He reported that the wait times were listed as 60 min for nearly every ride but that they practically walked on to everything. We still haven’t paid foe Genie+, or lightening lane, & it hasn’t kept us from being able to ride a thing. One thing I have noted, the food is just terrible now. The crab rangoon in China was just lightly crab flavored cream cheese. We ended up throwing it away. Rose & Crown was always our go to for lunch. It’s now closed during lunch. The menu is extremely pared down & what they do have is overly breaded. My vegetarian daughter said that everything she tried from the booths wasn’t worth eating. We’ll give it another go during Food & Wine, but I don’t see us returning. It really feels like the Magic is gone.
“He reported that the wait times were listed as 60 min for nearly every ride but that they practically walked on to everything.”
Oh wow. Even Frozen Ever After and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure? I could tell those times were inflated just judging by crowd flow to/from the attraction and their lack of overflow queues, but I figured they were still about 50% of posted wait times when I was there. Anything under 30 minute actual waits for either is a pretty good result.
I was just at EPCOT last Thursday, and the food was excellent, certainly up to the last few years of improvements. Having gone to EPCOT since the early 1980s, it’s not an exaggeration to say the food has never been better.
For lunch, I had a Ghost Mary and the Barbecued Seared Pork Tenderloin with summer succotash, herb butter, and grapefruit vinaigrette at the Farmer’s Feast. The tapas-sized portion was perfect for a hot, humid day in Florida, and the Ghost Mary was something I’m definitely going to try and make at home.
I love the small portions since it allows me to try two dishes without getting over-full, and the next meal was the Boneless Impossible™ Korean Short Rib with Cilantro-Lime Rice, Danmuji Slaw, and Kimchee Mayonnaise from the Trowel and Trellis booth. It went perfectly with a Parish Brewing Co Bloom Hazy IPA. I’m not vegetarian or vegan, but the dish was really enjoyable, and I hope to have it again next year.
Sorry you didn’t like the crab Rangoons in the Chinese pavilion. It may seem odd, but in forty years of going to EPCOT I’ve only tried the food in China once.
Heather,
We were last at WDW in early May which, weather-wise turned out to be a mistake. 90s every day! Went to Rose and Crown. Scotch Eggs were delicious as usual. Fish and chips were, well, fish and chips. Bangers and Mash spot on. Salad fine. Service was fine too. Server was Todd as I remember. Getting married soon. Great guy! No problems at all. Also did Narcoosees. New decor is terrible. Food, wine and service fine as usual. Yachtsman Steakhouse fine. SciFi Cafe portions were huge and good, but ya gotta remember where you’re eating too. Prime Time Cafe hasn’t been fun since the staff stopped hassling the diners but the Pot Roast was the same, good as usual. Sanaa was the same. Bread service appy and Pomegranate Iced Tea the usual. In fact, the only real problem we had during the entire visit was with the unusually hot weather. In short, We didn’t see any of the problems you encountered. We’re going back for the third time this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Love that week! Weather will be better. Not worried about crowds. We’ve been to Disney so many times that the rides just don’t matter that much any more so if we dont get to do ome, there’s always next time. We actually go more for the food. We’ll probably do Vickie and Al’s, STK, although the loud music is a turn-off, Yachtsman, Narcosees, Derby and Flying Fish. We’ve had some bad meals of course. Not everyone can be “On” all the time and that includes chefs and staff. Just remember we’ve been going to Disney since there was one, count ’em one park so we’ve seen it all! It was kind of fun this Valentines Day at the Chef’s Table in Vickie and Al’s, telling Chef Tom more about some things at the Floridian and Vickie and Als than he knew, such as the kitchen herb garden that used to be outside the main entrance. We rode out one rough period at Disney about 20 years ago. This one too, shall pass! Meantime we’re not going to let the juvenile posturings going on for the monent ruin our fun! Hope you have a better experience next time. Just roll with it! Accentuate the Positive as the old song goes! Life’s too short!
Jack,
I too have been a long time visitor, since 1971, and I remember when the food went from awful to outstanding. Trust me, I do continue to visit hoping every time things will be different. It’s not just the food that has lost it’s magic, it’s the overall vibe. Something is really missing with everything. We are passholders, so we have to go at least once a month to justify the cost. I do hope things will change before it comes time to renew. I’m just not one to hang on to something just for nostalgia, not in these times when fiduciary responsibility is a must. I’m very glad the parks still hold value for you.
Heather,
One other thing. If you’re looking to try the Skipper’s Canteen Jungle Navigation Company for lunch, we found it dissapointing. Not that there was anything really wrong with it, but after all the great things we read about it we were expecting something more unique all around. It wasn’t!
Ugh! We loved that restaurant pre-pandemic!
I was also in Magic Kingdom last week, and took three octogenarians to Skipper Canteen for dinner since there simply are not that many dinner options in the Magic Kingdom. The canteen was the same as the last two visits, although the server was much better at the jokes. She started strong and kept ’em coming. I had the soup of the day and the hanger steak, and both were good values for a theme-park restaurant known more for its bad jokes. Its my go-to spot for a nice, air conditioned sit-down dinner in the Magic Kingdom that’s not outrageously expensive.
We found none of that there Mike. Possibly a bad day. It happens. We’ll give it another try. We give everything at least two chances.
Strange, I’d always thought weekends were more crowded, but I just spent yesterday (Sunday) at Hollywood Studios, and it was lightly attended. You could walk right in to Baseline Tap House and get a beer and a free table with no waiting, or get a walkup table at the Brown Derby Lounge at 6PM.
On the ride front, I did Rise of the Resistance four times, and bunch of others twice. Granted, I did buy Genie+, but many of those were either single rider or standby.
“Strange, I’d always thought weekends were more crowded…”
They always were. We’ve seen some odd dynamics emerge with weekends in the post-reopening era, but all of those were (previously) a result of reservations and Walt Disney World manipulating attendance.
This is something new and unprecedented, and it’s happening with consistency. I wouldn’t count on this being the case at Magic Kingdom for August through December, as Saturday is usually the worst day–by far–during party season, but who knows.
I’ll keep visiting Walt Disney World and spending all I can as long as they keep providing the Magic for my family and keep fighting against oppression and bigotry.
Hi Tom!
Been following your blog and find it super interesting. Will be visiting from sep5th to 7th, doing Epcot, Mk and studios.
What are your thoughts? My reasoning, pretty much every single family from the USA with school aged kids/teens will be home. From past experience these dates are pretty low key. You agree?
Lastly but also important all happiness to you and yours with the baby 🙂
Definitely agree. Check out this list: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/best-worst-weeks-disney-world-crowd-calendar/
If you read the text of the “Mid-September” recommendation, you’ll see that your dates actually fall during what’s likely to be the best stretch of the entire year from a data-driven perspective. Have fun! 🙂