When the data people start talking about low crowds, we listen. In this post, we dive into a recent report that Disney World is seeing low crowds. We’ll start with some obvious explanations before diving into some more speculative “big picture” topics that seem to keep the wheels of content creation churning. Read on to see what we make of the latest crowd levels at Disney World!

About This Post

I saw this post over on TouringPlans discussing just how low Disney World crowds have been recently. I wanted to cover the topic, but struggled a bit with the angle. From my usually pragmatic perspective, there isn’t much more to say than “if you don’t mind heat and don’t need to wait out upcoming changes, go to Disney World now!”

But this also felt like a good opportunity to dip my toe into some of the other issues I don’t comment much on. I don’t want to bury the lede, but the second half of this post is maybe more interesting, as it’s where I discuss things like the alleged increasing cost and decreasing quality of the Disney vacation.

Reminder: It’s Summer, It’s Hot, Things are Happening Later

Low summer crowds aren’t totally new at Disney World. Last year also had low summer crowds. Spring has historically seen crowds competitive with or higher than June peaks, and in recent years February has joined that party, too. There are plenty of good reasons for this.

For starters, summer is hot, and it’s not appealing to travel to Florida in such heat. Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party doesn’t debut until August, so plenty of guests delay their trips until then. Disney cut June out of the Epcot festival calendar, too. And while two new shows debuted in May, it’s not until July that we’ll see the next two summer highlights—Disney Starlight and the return of Test Track / debut of Test Track 3.0.

While I’d really like to see data on this, I think it’s also plausible American parents have changed their approach to travel since 2020. They may be more willing to take kids out of school for a few days during the school year. If that’s the case, Disney World—in hot Florida—would be the first destination to see crowds shift from the summer travel season to scattered weekends throughout the year. (Maybe school calendars are changing, too.)

But, for the sake of having something interesting to say (or rather, a few semi-interesting things I’ve had on my mind for a while) let’s say that this time really is different. What are some of the reasons crowds might be even lower this year?

The Epic Explanations

We might as well start with the “we all knew this was going to happen” answer—it’s the competition, stupid.

People Are Going to Epic Universe

From within the theme park bubble, this is probably the most obvious explanation for what’s going on—people are going to the hot new thing just down the street. And whatever commentators will say about this, there is at least some truth to it. For example, we personally went to Universal Orlando to kick off our summer, and while I can’t say for certain that came at the loss of a trip to Disney World, it’s at least likely.

After a (deliberately) slow first few days, Epic Universe waits have jumped. The park is obviously quite popular, a stark contrast to what’s going on over at Disney World. There’s also (unsurprisingly) a decoupling of Epic Universe and overall Universal Orlando crowds. The other two Universal parks are not that busy. June 22, 2025 had average waits of 23 minutes at Studios, 27 minutes at Islands, and 50 minutes at Epic, for example.

You might infer from this decoupling that Universal Orlando is not stealing Disney guests. Disney World has, historically, relied more on vacationers while Universal relied more on locals. And if vacationers were going to Epic Universe, they’d also go to the other two parks.

This is true, with two caveats. First, the local vs. vacationer distinction, whether it’s Universal vs. Disney World or Disney World vs. Disneyland is always overstated. All these resorts rely on a mix of locals and vacationers. Second, even vacationers might show up more in Epic Universe data than resort-wide data.

Consider our personal example. We’re vacationers and (relatively) frequent visitors. Our most recent trip structure was one full day at Epic Universe and two days split across the other two parks. We also added an afternoon at Hollywood Studios, FWIW. But we didn’t wait in many long lines at the other two parks because we’re experienced enough with those rides and we just wanted to chill after the long day at Epic. Universal got our hotel money, but we didn’t show up much in the wait time data for the non-Epic parks.

People Aren’t Going to Epic Universe

Of course, you can’t talk about the people going to Epic without talking about the people not going to Epic. People with any modicum of patience are waiting to see how things shape up over the coming weeks and months. Yes, the people who gambled on the launch days wound up winning really short waits, but guests who visited since then had a tougher go of it. Plenty of people are just waiting to plan their next big trip.

And plenty of these guests will also be Disney World guests. A rising tide lifts all boats, but a waning tide lowers all boats. People delaying their trips to Epic are also delaying trips to the greater central Florida theme park area, waiting for the perfect time (and while there’s no perfect time, 2026 certainly has its upsides). Disney is seeing some impact from this, surely.

The Disney Explanations

Now I want to dive into some topics that are a little more complex on the Disney side of things. I’ll put “?” on these because it’ll always be somewhat ambiguous which are the key factors, but I still wanted to step outside my box and do a little speculative discussion…

The Cost of a Disney World Trip is Out of Control?

For some time, I had one of the most-cited posts around the blogosphere for the cost of a Disney vacation. Despite that, I actually don’t really buy the explanation that the cost of a Disney World trip is a big part of the problem. (That TouringPlans post backs me up a bit on this, to an extent: “[C]osts are back down to 2017-ish levels.”)

We’ve traveled a lot as a family. Around 20 states, 20 countries, and a dozen National Parks. And I’ve priced out more trips than one could reasonably take in a lifetime. While a Disney World trip certainly is expensive, Disney is not relatively exorbitant when it comes to family travel.

I hope to have a full post on this at some point. The way people approach this problem reminds me of something people say about running: “all you need is shoes, shorts, and a shirt!” Most serious runners would dispute both that (1) that’s all you need and (2) that those things are not at all complicated. Travel is the same way—the back-of-the-napkin math winds up only telling half the story. (Again, I hope to do this full post soon.)

All that said, I think there’s a separate argument that “the cost of travel” is out of control. Perhaps the industry as a whole has yet to reset from the post-COVID boom years. Economic uncertainty doesn’t make such a reset easy. But I think people who complain about the cost are sort of confusing “you can take a YOLO trip to Europe for the price of a Disney World trip!” (fiction) with “you can have just as much fun spending a weekend in your local state parks for way less than a Disney World trip!” (closer to fact). Even if we disagree about the cost of a Disney World trip, I’m happy to concede that perhaps people are getting wise on the cost of travel overall. (And maybe other costs are playing a role, too.)

Disney’s Incessant Futurism Is Catching Up to Them?

I saw a joke once on social media, commenting on how it felt like Universal built Velocicoaster overnight while Disney took four years just to re-theme Splash Mountain to Princess and the Frog. Like a lot of good jokes, it was funny because it felt more true than it actually was. Everyone is trying to build things as efficiently as possible, but Disney leans into the hype machine much more than other destinations.

Creators definitely agree there’s an appetite for this content, too. Even a casual Disney news follower will regularly see articles that talk about permitting for Villains land (est. date of completion…2030 maybe?) or how the future Monsters Inc. land is impacting Cast Member parking at Hollywood Studios.

I’m lucky to still be able to run this website, because I certainly haven’t fit into the ethos that’s predominated for the last decade in Disney parks coverage. I’ve only recently ventured into the topic of “future” projects, and prior to this year you would have struggled to find a piece of concept art in over 600 posts I’d written. The reason for this is simple enough—I’m very much into helping people make sense of planning Disney World trips, and a drawing of a ride that won’t be around for 5+ years doesn’t have much to do with that.

I don’t think it’s bad or wrong to cover this stuff (and I recently have made efforts to do so), it just doesn’t usually interest me or fit into my way of thinking about the parks. I understand the appeal, though. Concept art and visions of the future have entertainment value. They also have the virtue of removing people from a present moment they might not be enjoying very much. All of this hype keeps people engaged with the Disney brand, which serves Disney well to some extent.

One risk of this approach to marketing, though, is that people fixated on the 5-year plan stop caring about the now. I don’t think Disney’s plan is ever that all these people delay their trips for 1, 3, 5 years. Every person who follows the social media and blogging circus because they want to read about things down the road becomes a potential immediate customer—that’s what the ads are for. But maybe some people are more patient than Disney expected.

Take a hype machine that’s always talking about how good tomorrow will be, sprinkle in some economic anxiety about today, and you’ll inevitably wind up with plenty of people who just say “see you in Tomorrowland.” (As an aside, I think there’s a bigger version of this story where maybe the public personality who gave Disney fans hope in the early 2020s isn’t necessarily the best personality to lead the corporation qua corporation, but that’s oversimplifying and not worth a digression here.)

The Disney Experience Isn’t What It Used To Be?

It’s easy enough to wave off all this crowd discussion. You can pixie dust most anything Disney does. Maybe the humans MBAs in the Experiences division really are playing 6-dimensional chess. Under this thesis low crowds are always good because you don’t want people constantly scared by high crowds. And high crowds are also always good because money.

I can’t dispute this fanciful reasoning directly. What I’d say is that insofar as low crowds are good becuz publicity, crowds this low are only necessary for publicity if the operation is otherwise poorly run. I actually think Disney World is a fine destination in all but levels 9- and 10-out-of-10 crowds. I’m an expert at park touring, and maybe part of the problem is that people have to be experts to enjoy the parks at levels 4 through 8. If you need level 3 crowds to show people a good time, something has gone very wrong.

This speaks to one common attack on Disney World—it just isn’t as fun as it used to be. In particular, it’s too complicated. You have to learn about Lightning Lanes (which also cost money). There might be virtual queues (which are in the app but free and different from Lightning Lanes). And if you want to just “show up early” you’ll still have to read 5000 words by multiple bloggers just to get a grip on “rope drop.”

But in case you missed it, plenty of National Parks require significant advanced planning these days, too. Since 2020, advance reservations have become the norm at many tourist destinations. It’s June, and I just booked an October reservation for us to visit the Statue of Liberty!

On the other hand, I don’t like the amount of time I spend looking at my phone in Disney World. I have to actively combat an addiction to modifying Lightning Lanes while I’m in the parks. That’s not good, and it’s never the type of trip I want to have with my family.

On balance, I think the “bad experience” criticism is misplaced. Unlike the cost complaints—which I think the data support me on—I can’t really back up my hunch on this one, but I doubt other side can either.

Maybe there’s survey data that would be useful, but even if it showed decline in satisfaction, you’d still have to draw a line from some small increase in bad experiences by past guests to a decrease in future bookings by future guests (some repeat guests will return less if they have bad experiences, I admit).

But I think attacks on the Disney World experience are mostly a product of larger cultural issues. Everywhere has too many influencers for some people. Everywhere is better the way it used to be for some people. Everywhere is too escapist in the most critical moment in human history for some people. Every second of screen time is too much for some people.

This isn’t to say the Disney experience couldn’t be improved. Of course it could. But I don’t think many people are actively shunning Disney because of their shortcomings in building the perfect travel experience.

A lot of the complaints that people bring to Disney are just the complaints they bring to the rest of the world. People hope that Disney—Disney, the most magical of all corporations—will offer them an escape from *waves hands wildly*. Disney World has to offer something of an escape, sure, that’s core to its value proposition. But as the quote attributed to Socrates goes, “How can you wonder your travels do you no good, when you carry yourself around with you.”

And the bottom line to all of this is that Disney offers something powerfully unique. You don’t go to Disney World just because you want a vacation. You go to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance or to see your grandkids’ faces light up when they meet Mickey Mouse. From what I’ve seen, the experience—whatever its shortcomings—still delivers on those basic promises.

All Your Other Disney World Planning Questions Answered

Don't be overwhelmed by Disney World planning! Take a second to check out our most important content and you'll not only be an expert, but you'll save big $$$ along the way.

Just starting out? Check out our Walt Disney World planning guide! If you're still picking dates, we've got everything you need to know about Disney World crowd calendars. For picking your hotel, check out our Walt Disney World hotels guide.

When it comes time to book we’ll help you find discount Disney World tickets. Decide whether you need a dining plan in our Complete Guide to Disney World Dining Plans! And don't forget to book those Disney World Advance Dining Reservations!

Don't forget to master your Disney World Lightning Lane Guide and Strategy a few months in advance. We'll keep you out of long lines so you can maximize the magical time in the parks! We've got park-specific guides as well: Magic Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, Epcot Lightning Lane Strategy, Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane Strategy, and Hollywood Studios Lightning Lane Strategy.

Know what to ride with our guides to: Magic Kingdom rides, Hollywood Studios rides, Epcot rides, and Animal Kingdom rides! Plus learn about the water parks with our guide to Blizzard Beach and our guide to Typhoon Lagoon! And for some some fun prep, check out our Ranking of Every Ride at Walt Disney World.

Finally, before you head out, be sure to check out our to-the-point packing list, 10 essentials you forget to pack for every Disney trip. And if you're interested in saving, there's no better list than our 53 Ways to Save on your Disney trip from start to finish.