Is Disney World Crowded on New Year's Day?

We get it — the holiday season in Disney World is special, and a lot of people are willing to brave the crowds to celebrate in the parks.

We also see folks wanting to ring in the New Year on New Year’s Eve in Disney World, as well as spend the first day of the year there — what better way to start off a new year, right? But if you’re planning on visiting Disney World on New Year’s Day, let’s talk about something you may need to think about: crowds.

So how bad will the crowds be on New Year’s Day in Disney World this year? Well, we don’t know for sure, but we can look at one thing that gives us a bit of a clue: park pass reservations. Park pass reservations are required for Disney World visitors who don’t have dated tickets, as well as Annual Passholders.

So one thing we’re seeing for January 1st, 2025, is that park pass reservations are completely gone for Magic Kingdom. This means that Magic Kingdom could be a little busy on that day. However, the other three parks still have reservations available, suggesting they might not be as crowded.

Another thing we can look at is what ride wait times were in previous years. So let’s take a look at January 1st, 2024. Usually, a good indicator is to look at the most popular rides in each park. On New Year’s Day in 2024, the wait time for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train got up to two hours. So, yes, again, it looks like Magic Kingdom will be pretty busy on New Year’s Day if last year is any indication.

EPCOT was pretty crowded last year, too. Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure got up to 150 minutes (2.5 hours) and stayed around there for much of the afternoon on New Year’s Day. So expect to see a lot of people in EPCOT, too.

In Disney’s Animal Kingdom, we saw wait times for Flight of Passage at 125 minutes (a little over 2 hours) at park closing, which was the highest for that ride during the day. However, this ride almost always had a wait time of 100 minutes or more on New Year’s Day.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios had some of the highest wait times of the day. Tower of Terror got up to 140 minutes, but other rides had wait times of 100 minutes or more throughout the day.

Another way to gauge crowds in Disney World is to look at Lightning Lane Multi Pass prices. Lightning Lane Multi Pass is Disney World’s paid skip-the-line service that lets those who pay for it bypass standby lines at rides and use the shorter Lightning Lane. The number of Lightning Lane Multi Passes sold is limited to keep those Lightning Lane lines shorter.

Because Disney uses surge pricing for Lightning Lane Multi Pass, we can get an idea of how crowded Disney World expects its parks to be on that day. Interestingly enough, the price for New Year’s Day is a little lower than the price for New Year’s Eve. So Disney is expecting crowds on January 1st, but not as much as on December 31st. Here are the prices for New Year’s Day compared to New Year’s Eve:

Magic Kingdom: $35 on January 1st, $39 on December 31st
EPCOT: $28 on January 1st, $32 on December 31st
Disney’s Hollywood Studios: $32 on January 1st, $35 on December 31st
Disney’s Animal Kingdom: $25 on January 1st, $29 on December 31st

So looking at all this data, we can guess that New Year’s Day in Disney World will be crowded and that Magic Kingdom might be the most crowded park of the four. However, this also tells us that the crowd levels will be down slightly from New Year’s Eve.

Check back with AllEars again soon for more.