The Shocking Truth About Crowds in the NEW Moana Attraction at EPCOT

Are you ready? Are you excited? Journey of Water, Inspired by Moana just took a HUGE step!

The attraction has officially soft opened ahead of its opening day on October 16th and we’re there checking it out. We already gave you a Virtual Queue update and showed you a surprise visit from Moana herself, but now it’s time to talk about the CROWDS.

Disney made the announcement for this soft opening on the evening of October 5th — yep, that’s the night before! But it looks like many people were prepared to run to EPCOT and experience the first day of its soft opening.

Here’s a peek at crowds for ‘Journey of Water, Inspired by Moana’ this morning in EPCOT! ?? pic.twitter.com/MV8d2Q6o8Y

— AllEars.Net (@AllEarsNet) October 6, 2023

Disney is currently using a Virtual Queue as needed for this attraction, so we hopped into the My Disney Experience app and got in line. The virtual queue wait time was posted at 40 minutes in the app when we joined at 9:15AM.

Screenshot from My Disney Experience app

Once our Virtual Queue spot was called, we got in line. It’s long but moved pretty quickly!

So the BIG question people continue to ask is “How bad are the crowds inside the attraction?” Some are worried it will create a traffic jam in the park or that the inside is packed leaving you unable to move. We’re happy to report that this is not the case.

We aren’t saying that it will NEVER feel like this, but based on our experience at the soft opening, you don’t have much to worry about when it comes to crowds. Overall, we think Disney is doing a great job of controlling how many people are let in at one time.

Lots of people showed up for the soft opening!

The crowds are manageable and you are able to move through the attraction pretty easily. In our experience, people were also aware of “taking turns” by not sitting in front of one of the features for too long.

There are places that bottleneck, but you can get through and spread out again fairly quickly. We noticed the biggest crowds near the PhotoPass photographers in the attraction.