It’s Presidents Day weekend, the weather is near perfect in Orlando, and Disney is calling your name. Sounds like a great time to pop into the parks, right?
That’s what we thought! And so did approximately a million other people, apparently. Check out the BIG holiday weekend crowds in Disney World today!
Our first clue that today was going to be majorly crowded was the traffic at the parking entrance to Disney’s Hollywood Studios and EPCOT.
We took a look at the Park Pass Reservation calendar on Disney’s website to see how many parks still had availability for the holiday weekend. All four days of Presidents Day weekend (February 18th through the 21st) were completely booked for all four parks! The parks are full to capacity for guests with regular theme park tickets…
…guests staying at Disney World hotels…
…and even Annual Passholders.
When we checked the calendar, we saw that Disney World is not selling tickets for this weekend, which makes sense because the Park Passes are sold out. Remember that you have to have a Park Pass Reservation in order to enter any Disney World theme park, even if you already have a ticket. This is how Disney controls capacity and keeps track of the crowds.
Sure enough, we were joined by a BIG crowd at the Transportation and Ticket Center on our way to Magic Kingdom.
Oddly enough, the crowds at the actual entrance to Magic Kingdom weren’t too bad. This might be because we were entering the park about a half-hour after rope-drop (the park’s opening time).
But once we got inside, we found the people again!
The big crowds reflected in the ride wait times as well. Space Mountain’s queue extended way past the ride’s entrance.
We’re used to seeing longer lines for the popular attractions like roller coasters and Fantasyland rides, but some smaller rides were getting long wait times as well. There was an extended queue for the PeopleMover in Tomorrowland…
…and one of the longest lines we’ve seen recently at Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor!
The other Disney World parks have been equally crowded. This is the queue for guests hoping to buy tickets at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
But the queue for the actual entrance to the park was much bigger!
This entrance often looks very crowded, since it sort of bottlenecks guests before opening up into the park again.
But even once we made it onto Hollywood Boulevard, the crowds continued.
The popular rides in this park were hopping as well. Rockin’ Roller Coaster had a 90-minute wait when we stopped by…
…and the Tower of Terror wait time was on the rise, jumping from 110 minutes to 120 just in the time that we were taking photos.
Over in EPCOT, even Journey Into Imagination with Figment (which usually has a pretty short line) had a queue that extended out of the ride’s entrance.
Part of the reason that the parks are so crowded today is definitely that it’s a holiday weekend. Many people will have Presidents Day (February 21st) off from work or school, so it’s a good time to take a quick Disney trip. In addition, ESPN announced that there is a soccer tournament taking place this weekend at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex on Disney World property.
Score BIG this weekend! Good luck to all teams competing in the Disney Presidents Day Soccer Tournament at #ESPNatDisney! âš½ pic.twitter.com/rlYiMfwtF6
— ESPN Wide World of Sports (@ESPNWWOS) February 18, 2022
Some of our readers have said that they were waiting for this change before they returned to the Disney parks. It’s possible that, now that the change has happened, more people are ready to visit Disney World.
With such big crowds over the next few days, make sure you’re prepared to be patient if you’re visiting Disney World. You may want to consider buying Genie+ in order to get on more attractions and avoid those long wait times.
And be sure to take advantage of other time-saving tricks like using Mobile Order to get food!
We’re always keeping an eye on the latest updates from Disney World, so stay tuned with AllEars.
Click here to see 6 days you may not be expecting crowds in Disney World.
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Click here to subscribe Have you been to Disney World when it’s super crowded like this? Let us know in the comments.
A comment and a couple questions. I remember telling friends to not go to WDW during school vacation weeks which this is one. The better plan is to take their young kids out of school to avoid the crowds. Sure doesn’t seem to matter anymore. My questions are twofold: Are the crowds larger than in the past? From what I read it would appear so. There is no way to compare attendance from pre Covid to now because Disney doesn’t release attendance figures, I don’t believe. The other question is what is the point of limiting park reservations? I thought the genius behind that decision was to have control over crowd size. Well if the crowds are so large you can’t do ANYTHING without extremely long lines, then something is wrong. Either the limitation of reservations is a ruse to get you to THINK the crowds are being controlled when they are not. Or Disney doesn’t care at all about it’s guests. But as long as people go to the parks no matter how many people are there or how unsafe it might be, then Disney gets the last laugh. If Disney actually cared, they would do something. And watch all the smiles and back slapping as they announce the stock share price. Share price guests helped create with their misery.
I was at magic kingdom today it was horrible. Adults running over little kids. Hot, crowded, ridiculous lines, lack of AC spots to cool down. Even with my paid lunch reservation. I left and even am ditching my coveted be our guest reservation. Literally I will never come back, this place has gone way down hill. With kids it’s horrible. Maybe with adults it is bearable. But if you come solo for a day with little kids be prepared to fend for your kids lives. Even was cut off by 20 something kids who divided on the tea cup ride which was 20 minutes at 9 am, was there at rope drop got a coffee chilled with my two girls prepared for best day of their lives, spent 6 hours in misery rode 3 rides and truly pray that most of humanity is kinder than the people we encountered today. Moms and dads running to lines at 8:30 am. Really? What has the world come to. The magic is leaving, reduce crowds, look around a bit and get rid of an app that has me and everyone paying 3x what we used to stare at our phones as the battery drains to book next Disney genie lightning lane and forget to take pictures of our kids.
Good luck with the useless Genie+. You will need it! Another 15 bucks vanishing into the Disney coffers.