Winter is here at Walt Disney World, but off-season crowds are nowhere to be found in January 2022. Wait times are up for MLK Day Weekend, and will only likely worsen heading into February and its bevy of holidays. This report shares recent data, thoughts on why this is happening, and why wait times don’t tell the full story of “feels like” crowds in the parks.
Let’s start with the why of this, as we’ve received a ton of reader comments over the last several days using words like “abnormal” and “atypical” to describe the heavy crowds at Walt Disney World right now. While the assessment that current congestion and wait times are bad is accurate, these are not an anomaly.
Martin Luther King Day Weekend is usually busy. It’s like Veterans Day: many (most?) people don’t have it off work, so they assume it won’t be busy–but it’s a holiday for enough people that it absolutely does move the needle on crowds. This weekend is one of several holidays that makes winter a time of ‘peaks and valleys’ at Walt Disney World, and not strictly the off-season.
In our 2022 Walt Disney World Crowd Calendar overview, we took that a step further, warning that this winter “off-season” would catch Walt Disney World visitors by surprise with heavier than normal crowds. (Even before that, back when Festival of the Arts was announced on October 22 of last year, we made this exact same prediction.) In the crowd calendar analysis, we wrote that if omicron weren’t in the mix, our prediction was baseline crowds in the 7/10 range for most dates, hitting 9/10 and higher on holiday weekends.
That prediction was due to postponed trips, pent-up demand for international travel, snowbirds resuming their normal Florida travel plans, the return of runDisney and youth sporting events, and people remembering how low crowds were this year. That confluence of circumstances meant much more demand than normal in early this year. The lack of discounts through March 2022 was also concerning and suggestive of more travel, and my expectation was/is that attendance will follow suit.
That crowd calendar analysis went on to explain that one big reason that attendance was so low last winter was because of the post-holiday surge in cases and resulting travel trepidations. The same thing happened again in August through October, with some cancellations driven by Florida’s delta surge. If history is any indication, there have been cancellations once again due to omicron. The question is not one of “if” but rather “to what degree?”
When this wave first started, our projection based on early and incomplete information was that omicron’s impact on crowds at Walt Disney World would be negligible. Insignificant as compared to last winter’s wave or even the height of delta. This was due to much more fatigue and polls showing that Americans are “done” with disruptions to their plans. People are ready to move on with life, which is pretty obvious even without polling data–just look at Spider-Man’s box office results or TSA traveler numbers for the holidays.
Suffice to say, that’s why Walt Disney World’s current crowds should not be surprising. Don’t expect things to get any better from here, either. With that said, let’s turn to the latest Walt Disney World wait times…
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.)
It’s hard to see specific dates on that condensed graphic, but the highest and reddest lines on the far right are the weeks of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s. After that, there’s a gradual drop-off with the middle of last week having the lowest posted wait times since mid-November. However, that’s not the full story…
Breaking this down by park, where we’ll first look at Magic Kingdom.
Magic Kingdom wait times have been all over the place during the last couple of weeks, but had 9/10 and 10/10 crowd levels on Friday and Saturday. Sunday was only a 5/10, which was almost certainly a result of the stormy weather (there was a tornado warning for Orange County and other areas of Central Florida), which likely cut down on the number of locals in all of the parks. Even without that, Saturday would’ve been much busier than Sunday.
Above is a look at Magic Kingdom average daily wait times by attraction for Saturday.
Here are the specific numbers:
These wait times were worse than many days during the holiday season–bad enough to rank as the 13th busiest day in the last 411 days at Magic Kingdom.
The refurbishment of Splash Mountain almost certainly resulted in higher wait times for Big Thunder Mountain and some other classic attractions. On top of that, it seemed like several attractions were simultaneously down throughout the day, which also would’ve inflated waits elsewhere.
Animal Kingdom wait times tell a very different story, having fallen off significantly since January 9.
With that said, those are still 7/10 and 8/10 crowd levels–just not quite as out of control as during the holiday season when things got really bad.
Over the weekend, Avatar Flight of Passage averaged 91 minutes and Na’vi River Journey averaged 65 minutes, numbers that are still high but down significantly since Christmas. Kilimanjaro Safaris was at 50 minutes, while Dinosaur averaged 35 minutes.
Also relevant here is that Expedition Everest is down for refurbishment until mid-April 2022. In another park, this would displace guests and result in higher waits elsewhere. To some extent, that’s probably happening. However, with so few rides in Animal Kingdom, it’s more likely that people are just finishing the park faster and leaving earlier. That would also explain some of the drop-off in average wait times–as would the return of Kali River Rapids, just in time for the coldest weeks of the year!
Then there’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios. After colossal crowds throughout the holiday season, it’s now “only” averaging 7/10 to 9/10 crowd levels. Downright delightful by comparison!
It’s doubtful that anyone in the park would agree with that assessment. Hollywood Studios is unpleasant when wait times are 8/10–it’s downright miserable at 10/10. DHS simply cannot absorb crowds with its current lineup, and “feels like” crowds are pretty bad once the crowd level is at 6/10 or above.
To illustrate, above are the average wait times by attraction. At first blush, those yellows and greens look pretty good, right?! Look closer at the scale, because Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is really skewing it!
That’s an average 213 minute wait time for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance (we saw it get up to 285 minutes!), along with Slinky Dog Dash at 93 minutes, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster averaged 79 minutes, Toy Story Mania averaged 71 minutes, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway averaged 69 minutes, Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run at 69 minutes, and Twilight Zone Tower of Terror hit 56 minutes.
The total average time it would take to do all 7 of those rides is exactly 650 minutes–or almost 11 hours. Despite a lower crowd level, this is actually more time than the same 7 headliners would’ve taken on most days during Christmas week. The difference is that more wait times have been added for things that don’t draw lines, like Celebrity Spotlight.
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). From our perspective, spending $16 per person to save 3+ hours on vacation is worth it.
Follow our Speed Strategy for Genie+ Selections and DHS Lightning Lane Ride Ranks to max out your Genie+ count at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. For comprehensive advice for all parks, see our Guide to Genie+ at Walt Disney World.
Continuing to Epcot, where attendance once again spiked over the weekend and hit 8/10 on the crowd calendar after several weekdays of 2/10 and 3/10s.
As always, “feels like” crowds at Epcot–especially in World Showcase–are always worse on weekends and evenings. We spend a ton of time at Epcot and we are almost at the point where we’d recommend disregarding crowd calendars entirely for this park as they’re practically useless. 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.
Exacerbating this discrepancy (for now) is that Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure doesn’t appear in the data for some reason. I assume this is because it just switched over from a virtual queue to a standby line and the team at Thrill-Data didn’t capture that change.
Previously, Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure virtual queue waits were being tracked, so there has always been something funky going on with that attraction. Setting that aside, average waits for headliners are still high: Frozen Ever After is averaging a 76 minute wait, Test Track is at 61 minutes, and Soarin’ Around the World is at 44 minutes. 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.
In addition to omitting Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, which (conservatively) would’ve averaged at least an hour wait, that data misses the festival crowds and food booth lines.
That includes the line for the Figment popcorn bucket, which was the longest of this year (or last) at Walt Disney World on Friday, but “only” a couple of hours most of the day on Saturday and Sunday.
With the start of the 2022 Epcot Festival of the Arts, many locals, snowbirds, and other Walt Disney World regulars are visiting the park without rides as their focus.
We aren’t fully representative of this demographic, but we spent almost two full days at Epcot over the weekend without doing a single ride. While many locals will do some attractions, their average daily ride count will be far lower than tourists.
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.
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.
With that said, 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 often, and I could easily identify the difference between a 5/10 and 10/10 day from 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. Now more than ever, it’s important to know that many guests aren’t visiting Epcot for attractions, that the front of the park empties out in the evening (and wait times plummet), and weekends are subjectively much worse than weekdays (they’re also objectively worse).
In a nutshell, this is why we share these crowd reports and add our own on-the-ground commentary to fill in some of the gaps and explain when, to us, the situation is better or worse than the wait time data suggests.
MLK Day Weekend has been one of those times when the actual on-the-ground situation is worse than the wait time data suggests. This is likely compounded for anyone who visited at this same time last year and found it delightfully uncrowded, as the circumstances are very different thus far this winter.
Looking forward, you can expect high crowd levels throughout much of this winter “off-season” (air quotes) at Walt Disney World. On the plus side, it’s still likely that the days and weeks between holiday weekends won’t be bad, and there will be some relative lulls in the crowds. Check out our January 2022 Crowd Calendar and February 2022 Crowd Calendar for more forward-looking predictions on that. With that said, even the “quiet” days this winter are going to be nothing like last year. That was an anomaly unlikely to be repeated–heavier winter crowds are likely to be a fixture going forward in 2023 and beyond. If you want off-season crowds, stick with September.
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!
If you visited Walt Disney World for MLK Day Weekend or during the week before it, what was your experience with wait times and crowds? Predictions on crowds for the rest of this month and February 2022? Thoughts on our forecast, analysis, or anything else? Agree or disagree with our take on “feels like” crowds v. 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!
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I have been visiting Walt Disney world since the age of 5 and I have visited during many different periods of the year including holidays such as Christmas and Veterans Day 2006! Never during this period have I seen massive crowds of people like this weekend over Martin Luther king weekend!! The wait times were not accurate at all. I brought my family down to enjoy a good weekend since it has been over 4 years. Not only did I have to worry about keeping up with my family at the park during walking but we have to reschedule dinners and plans for the wait times. I would think the wait time was accurate but I had to end up adding 30 to 45 minutes on to each ride. I had a wonderful time and spent time with amazing staff but the wait times and crowds were horrible. Next time I come down I will make sure to plan on long lines and massive amounts of people.
How is DHS in the evenings? Does it clear out a bit even when it’s busy during the day, or do the lines get long and stay long?
I’m hoping that for our March trip, we can hit 3-4 rides in an evening, and then another 3-4 rides by going for early entry later in the week.
I guess if we don’t make it to all of them, we’ll just enjoy the ones we do get to experience.
My family and I were there the week leading up to MLK weekend with Friday being our last full day in MK. The park was extremely crowded, so much so that we cancelled our reservation at Be our Guest and headed out of the park early. I’ve been 8 times mostly during the first quarter of the year and never seen it that bad. If we didn’t use genie + it would’ve been miserable as ride wait times were mostly all about an hour and beyond.
I spent dec 21- Jan 2 in WDW with the Mrs and 5 “kids” ages 17-22 and Was back with just the Mrs this weekend. We both though the Epcot crowds Sat night and Sun afternoon rivaled what we experienced on New Years eve at Epcot. DHS on the other hand seemed less crowded for the rides and more crowded for food kiosks. (Every popcorn kiosk was at least a 20 min wait). Slinky dog on Sat around 230pm was a posted 90 min wait. With the line extended to about the Toy story land sign as you enter from the One Mans Dream side, but during Christmas week that same posted 90 min wait had the line extended all the way out to One Mans dream. We have been enough that it doesn’t matter if we do any rides or all of them, but for a first time visitor they are doing to need multiple days at each park ( excluding AK) to experience most of what Disney has to offer.
FWIW, more anecdote: we have a few close friends at Disney this week. Both families are very Covid-cautious, and both families decided to go ahead with their trips after a lot of agonizing. I hope they are enjoying their trips despite the crowds (they are Disney newbies!).
This past weekend was very busy at EPCOT and Magic Kingdom right in line with what you said. This is our first year here as a local and it is nice to be able to stroll EPCOT and not have to go on anything. We are going to stop by EPCOT again tonight to check out more of the arts festival and engage with some of the Artists. This festival is definitely in my wheel house.
Tom, I assume it follows that Disney Springs has also been massively crowded. I’m bracing myself of my 5-day trip kicking off in 2-days. Any insights on how it works trying to snag outdoor seating when you have ADRs at the DS restaurants? Thanks!!
Aside from a quick in-out weeknight stop at a store, we haven’t been to Disney Springs in the last couple of weeks. It wasn’t busy when we went, but we also purposefully timed our visit to when we knew it was unlikely to be busy.
Not having AMC A-List has decreased our Disney Springs visits dramatically. Probably should rectify that!
These posts about crowds this winter are scaring me off our early feb “in-between” week day trip. Considering switching to last week of April/first week of may (love flower & garden at Epcot) but worried about pent up demand returning?? What would you do Tom??
Love reading all of your posts..
That’s a really tough call. For what it’s worth, I don’t think February is going to be busy across-the-board. If you’ve chosen non-holiday weekdays, you are probably fine. Likewise, I think you’d probably be fine with early May.
That doesn’t mean things will play out that way, but looking at the available evidence and trends today, it’s impossible to say one of those options is objectively better than the other.
(Another wildcard: it’s vaguely possible Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind will have AP/DVC/etc. previews throughout May. Definitely not a guarantee, but if you’re an AP/DVC and are on the fence about one set of dates or the other, it’s something to consider.)
@Josh – They do it to discourage people from jumping in line right before the park closes. If they post 20 minutes at SDMT, there will be a rush of people who run to it before they leave. If they post 90 minutes? It’s likely a large portion of those people will say its not worth it and just head home.
Jeff hit the nail on the head. This has been a common practice for as long as I can remember for that exact reason.
Last week at WDW, I noted several instances of massively inflated wait times posted near park closing. For example, when we joined the standby line for Seven Dwarves Mine Train about 10 minutes before closing at Magic Kingdom last Tuesday, the posted wait was 90 minutes. I asked a cast member if they thought that was a pretty solid estimate and they indicated that, yes, it would really be 90 minutes. Our actual wait was 27 minutes. Similarly, a cast member insisted to me that 95 minutes was truly their “best estimate” when we entered the queue for Na’vi River Journey about 15 minutes before closing last Thursday. Our actual wait was 32 minutes. These are just a couple of examples.
I can’t believe that their estimates are that far off, so I can only conclude this is deliberate. The question is, why do they do this?
Hi Tom. Why do you think heavier winter crowds will continue into 2023 and beyond?
Because it’s an attractive time to visit for a lot of different demographics, the weather is generally pleasant, and Disney is adding events to help draw additional crowds. We started to see this “new normal” play out in early 2020 (and to a lesser degree, the year before that)–see this post: https://www.disneytouristblog.com/peak-crowds-winter-off-season-disney-world/
I think it would’ve only accelerated if last year were a normal year. Could be totally wrong, but that’s my expectation. Disney has gotten really good about drawing crowds to previously less busy times of year. The only exception at this point is mid-August and all of September, but that’s a non-starter for so many people–I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
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