Normal Crowd Trends May FINALLY Have Returned to Disney World

It’s no secret that Disney World has been crowded recently. And by recently, we mean for the past several MONTHS.

More people have been traveling this summer than in recent years, and that’s been evident with tons of airline cancellations and delays, resulting from the travel industry’s inability to cope with the surge in demand. But now that the summer is coming to an end, what are the crowds looking like? Are the Disney World parks still crowded, or are things calming down? Let’s investigate!

This summer saw an unprecedented amount of travel, a phenomenon that has been coined “revenge travel” due to many individuals hitting the road — and the skies — after two years of not being able to do much traveling because of the global COVID-19 pandemic. This new soaring demand, coupled with the effects of inflation, made for high travel costs on things from airfare to gasoline.

The effects of revenge travel were seen in Disney World, with crowds flocking to the parks this summer. We saw incredibly high wait times, a limited supply of Park Passes (the reservation system that requires you to have a Park Pass in order to visit a Disney World theme park), and more.

But summer is quickly coming to an end and fall is on its way, meaning that kids are back in school and we’re heading into a slower travel season. So, what do the Disney World parks look like right now? It would seem that, at least for now, crowd levels have really dropped off, with the parks feeling and looking much emptier than they did even a few weeks ago and wait times unusually low.

Recently, we’ve seen wait times as low as 5 minutes for some of Disney World’s most popular rides, like Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Magic Kingdom.

Another day recently saw INCREDIBLY low wait times at Disney’s Animal Kingdom with the super popular Flight of Passage (known to draw wait times of over two hours on busy days) at a shocking low of only 10 minutes. In fact, at that time, the highest wait time in the entire park was 20 minutes to meet Mickey and Minnie at Adventurers Outpost.

This is one of the first times we’ve seen Disney World crowds follow their normal trend since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lately, even the “slow” season has been incredibly busy as travelers rush to get in their vacations that were pushed off due to the pandemic. Now, however, it looks like we could be back to the normal trend of high and low crowd times in the parks.

But will this last? Flight tracking app Hopper says not to count on it. Almost every year, the travel industry gets a break to catch its breath after having a high volume of travelers over the summer. Flight prices are on the decline now (which means that the demand has decreased) and are expected to remain relatively low throughout September, but with the holiday season just around the corner, this dip in price isn’t likely to last long.

Flights are expected to increase in price come October, November, and December, and fill up quickly, too. Flights around this time also see lots of cancellations and delays due to winter weather and a surge in demand.

Disney World is not immune to these trends either. For example, for the month of September, Park Passes are wide open for every single ticket type (with the exception of Disney World Annual Passes that have blockout dates throughout the month).

However, October is already starting to fill up with some parks completely unavailable on multiple days.

So what’s the takeaway? It seems as though the end of August and into September may be the best time to visit Disney World if you’re looking to avoid the crowds. And if you’re hoping to travel this holiday season, start planning your travel now to avoid getting hit with high prices and potentially not being able to take the trip you want to.

If you’re heading to Disney World this fall, there’s a lot to see and do! Halloween has arrived in the parks with decorations up and down Main Street, U.S.A. at Magic Kingdom, and, of course, the long-awaited return of Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, as well.

And over at EPCOT, you can enjoy the International Food and Wine Festival and, if you’ll be visiting in October, Pluto’s Pumpkin Pursuit, a Halloween-themed scavenger hunt all around World Showcase. We’ll be keeping an eye on the travel situation along with crowd levels in the parks, so be sure to stay tuned to AllEars for the latest updates!

Click here to see our favorite hide-outs when Disney World is crowded!

Did you travel this summer? Let us know in the comments!

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