Walt Disney World is now over one month into the off-season, and crowds have dropped to their lowest level of 2025. This wait times report covers data for Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom. It also covers how our predictions performed, forward-looking forecast for Fall 2025, and why this weekend was probably a turning point.
To quickly recap, Walt Disney World has not been busy for the last few months. It was a slow summer at Orlando’s theme parks, for reasons discussed in Why Summer is the New Low Crowds Season at Disney World. That also discusses why this shouldn’t be a huge shock, as this was a trend first observed in 2016-2018; it’s just become more pronounced in the last two years.
August and September have been even less busy than May through July. This is neither surprising nor unexpected. Summer has become like a prolonged shoulder season, with only a few slight spikes into moderate territory before school goes back into session and the real off-season arrives. As a result, average wait times have fallen to their lowest levels of the year, surpassing even Fourth of July and other low points of the summer season.
Attendance has been mostly unchanged year-over-year at Walt Disney World according to the company on the most recent earnings call, which encompassed the first half of summer. More importantly to the company (but not to us), guest spending and hotel occupancy are both up, and Walt Disney World just reported record quarterly revenue. So it’s not exactly as if the parks are hurting for business!
As we frequently point out, what’s covered in these “crowd” reports is actually posted wait time data that’s pulled from My Disney Experience and compiled into graphs. It’s valuable for tracking and comparing wait times across days, weeks, months, and years. A lot can be gleaned from posted wait times, but they’re not necessarily conclusive of in-park congestion or crowds.
Posted wait times offer insight into how busy Walt Disney World is, but they are an imperfect measure. They’re almost always inflated, some lines don’t post wait times, they don’t account for Lightning Lane changes, EPCOT festivals, etc. Nevertheless, wait times are the only objective measure of crowds that we have. On-the-ground observations can be useful, but they also have shortcomings.
Suffice to say, attendance being flat year-over-year while wait times are down–two things that can be true at the same time–should underscore the above caveat. As for the why or how of this, we strongly suspect it’s a matter of Lightning Lane utilization. For a full explanation of this trend, see Is Lightning Lane Multi Pass Still “Worth It” at Disney World?
The CliffNotes version is that standby lines are shorter and faster moving because they’re being prioritized more (versus Lightning Lanes), leading to lower wait times. Even if attendance is exactly the same, crowd levels would be lower given this dynamic. Almost across the board, wait times are down by a few minutes year-over-year, which means crowds are 1-2 levels below comparable dates last year.
With that background out of the way, let’s take a look at crowd levels for August through the first half of September 2025. As always, all graphs and wait time stats are courtesy of Thrill-Data.com:
We’ll start with the monthly numbers for Walt Disney World as a whole, dating all the way back to 2019.
Monthly crowd levels climbed from last October through this March, and then have been on a steady decline since. This is consistent with last year, and comparable to most other years. The most notable change is that May was busier than June or July, when it used to be the shoulder season slowdown. May is still a slower month relative to spring break, but then crowds just kept dropping post-Memorial Day.
August has been the slowest full month of 2025 to date, with a 28 minute average wait time and 1/10 crowd level. Those numbers are actually identical with last August, so in this case, flat attendance does correspond with flat wait times. Prior to that, July was the second slowest month of 2025, with an average wait time of 30 minutes and 2/10 crowd level. The third-slowest full month of the year was June…and so on and so forth.
Halfway through the month, September 2025 is poised to take the “crown” from August. This month is currently sitting at an average wait time of 24 minutes, which is also a 1/10 crowd level. Just a lower one. If this trend holds, September 2025 would be the slowest month since September 2021. That was back before the 50th Anniversary, amidst COVID cancellations due to the Delta wave and reinstated mask rules.
September will likely end up being the slowest month of 2025. It’s already got a 4 minute “lead” on August, which is a lot to overcome halfway through. The bigger question is whether it’ll surpass last September and October, which bottomed out at 26 minute averages.
It’s going to be a really close call. The second half of September is almost always busier than the first half, and we expect an uptick in crowds for the next couple of weeks for a variety of reasons discussed below. My bet is that September ends up coming within one minute of last September and October.
August was on par with July for wait times through the middle of the month. As expected, the last few weeks went downhill fast once more schools started going back into session.
The last week of August, heading into Labor Day weekend, had an average wait time of 25 minutes. Coming out of the holiday, the first week of September was even lower at 23 minutes. Suffice to say, there’s a reason why we wrote about this being One of the Best Weeks at Walt Disney World and called it to your attention late last year. And why we’ve been pointing out for a while that Labor Day Weekend Isn’t Busy at Disney.
This past week, crowds ticked up a bit to an average wait time of 26 minutes. That’s still a 1/10 crowd level and better than any week during the heart of summer season, save for Fourth of July. But as you’ll see when we delve into daily data, it was really a “tale of two weeks” in terms of wait times.
Looking at the daily data for the last year, it should be fairly easy to spot two lulls around mid-June and the Independence Day holiday weekend, plus spikes in both late June and late July through early August.
Post summer, August 10th was the day with the big drop-off. Since then, the dailies have been up and down, with spikes over the weekends–especially on Saturdays–whereas weekdays have been consistently low. This is actually an atypical dynamic. For most of the last few years, weekends have had lower wait times (but often not lower “feels like” crowds or attendance).
Even so, we’re looking at spikes to crowd levels of 3/10 to 5/10. These haven’t exactly been peak season numbers, but it nevertheless can be quite jarring–especially for visitors going from (quite literally) the slowest days of the entire year from Wednesdays through Fridays to moderate numbers (plus even higher “feels like” crowds).
The difference in wait times from this past Wednesday to Saturday was +12 minutes. That’s a huge jump, especially for this time of year.
And that could be even worse depending on the park, misfortune with maintenance & breakdowns, and so forth. It’s thus easy to see why various Walt Disney World visitors report dramatically different experiences with crowds.
I speak from firsthand experience here. I was in the parks on a daily basis in the lead-up to Labor Day when several dates had an average wait time of 20-22 minutes. When you’re looking at resort-wide numbers for a multi-day stretch, those are insanely low. Several attractions bottom out at 10 minute wait times even when they’re walk ons.
For the stats to be this low, that means the headliners also had to have far lower wait times than normal. And they did! It was incredible. I finally saw the elusive 7 minute posted wait time for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train!
I was not in the parks as much over the holiday weekend until the afternoons and evenings (due to Destination D23), but what I did see was noticeably busier. Still not even remotely bad as compared to Spring Break or even a couple months ago, but if your frame of reference is the off-season low points, it’s quite the contrast.
As always, all of these numbers are averages, which still means that hour-plus waits are possible for the headliners at peak times. They’re just offset by 5-10 minute waits for lower profile attractions, or popular rides at the beginning of the morning and end of evening. I also saw 70+ minute waits for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train during the same span.
For park by park analysis, we’ll start with Magic Kingdom.
Magic Kingdom has already started its “porcupine pattern” of crowds for Party Season, with full operating days being noticeably busier than days of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. This is reflected in the wait time data, and it’s even more evident from the in-park experience.
On the days when the park closes at 6 pm Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, it’s been nothing but 1/10 days at Magic Kingdom. This is something we’ve discussed at length, most notably in Best & Worst 2025 Crowd Days at Magic Kingdom. Suffice to say, those predictions have proven true thus far and all of Magic Kingdom’s slowest days of the year have come since the start of August.
The flip side has also been accurate when it comes to congestion on non-party nights, which is not measured by the above graph (again, it’s exclusively ride wait times). I can speak to this from personal experience, as there’s been a noticeable uptick for Starlight and Happily Ever After, which makes sense given that there are fewer nights per week to experience both.
We expect this to get worse in the second half of September and beyond. Thus far, non-party dates haven’t been that bad at Magic Kingdom. They will be deeper into Party Season, especially as the weekly number of events increases and around peak weeks.
Animal Kingdom has seen its crowd levels all over the place this month. The low was 11 minutes on September 3rd, with a high of 36 minutes on September 13th. That’s a huge spread–an over three-fold increase–and one without an obvious explanation.
Clearly, avoiding weekends right now is the key. That’s true with every park, and will be for pretty much the rest of the month. If you’re able to visit only on weekdays, you’ll be ahead of the curve.
If that’s not possible, the good news is that, as always, early mornings and late afternoons remain undefeated at DAK and actual wait times are minimal during those timeframes even on a busier day.
Over at EPCOT, wait times are starting to show signs of life after a slow summer.
EPCOT is always a wildcard, but I’ll admit that this one caught me by surprise. We always point out that EPCOT is the locals’ park, and Floridians are more likely to visit for festivals and atmosphere than rides. This summer was Diet EPCOT, explaining the lower crowds once Flower & Garden ended.
However, the 2025 EPCOT Food & Wine Festival is now underway. In looking at the data, you might be inclined to believe this is the cause of higher crowd levels on weekends. I’m not so sure about that. Food & Wine is definitely spiking weekend attendance. But normally, that does not translate to higher posted wait times or crowd levels. It’s like a mirage in the data. But for the last 3 weeks, it seemingly has been reflected in the numbers. More on this in a minute.
Finally, there’s Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
As always, this is the park with the highest average wait times in all of Walt Disney World, owing to its disproportionate number of headliners. Disney’s Hollywood Studios didn’t see much of a summer slowdown, likely due to Little Mermaid ~ A Musical Adventure and Disney Villains Unfairly Ever After. A surprisingly strong showing for Cool Kid Summer might’ve helped, too.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios has nevertheless seen a September slowdown, but not as pronounced as the other parks. And it’s seen the same weekend uptick as the other parks over the last couple weekends. Once again, we’ll point out that Disney’s Hollywood Studios is the #1 park for Lightning Lane Multi-Pass. If you’re going to buy LLMP anywhere, make it DHS.
Our Prediction Performance
In the last crowd report and crowd calendars, we shared that our expectation was that “September 2-12, 2025 would see the lowest crowds of the month, entire year, and quite possibly the lowest levels in several years.” We pointed out that this same adjusted timeframe has seen the lowest average posted wait times since October 2021 in each of the last two years.
In actuality, September 1-11, 2025 saw the lowest crowds of 2025, and tied the same timeframe last year along with the hurricane scare in October (although that’s an outlier because it would have been much busier but for the hurricane) as the slowest stretch since October 2021. August 24-29 was not far behind, and that entire week currently ranks as the second-slowest of 2025.
We also said that “turning point” for higher crowds would be Saturday, September 13, 2025. It looks like that’ll be accurate, although we’d expect more midweek lulls, just not with the same low lows as over the last 3 weeks.
Note that the September 1-11, 2025 stretch was low in spite of September 6th “spiking” to a high 2/10 crowd level. Frankly, I’m glad I don’t do daily predictions, as I would’ve missed the mark on that one. (This is part of the reason why we like to zoom out a bit when making predictions. It’s easier to be accurate when looking at wider windows, but whereas one-off anomalies happen all the time!)
Late August and the first half-ish of September 2025 still weren’t even close to being as slow as August and September 2021. That stretch still holds the crown for the lowest crowds in the last 5 years. That was such a unique set of circumstances that it’ll probably take a hurricane scare during the off-season to ever beat that month-plus stretch. And even as much as I like low crowds, I frankly do not want to see that happen. Trust me–there’s such a thing as too low of crowds.
Fall 2025 Crowd Predictions
As we’ve been stressing on this site for over a decade, September is the best month of the year to visit from a wait times perspective. With only a couple of exceptions, the entire month sees below average attendance. Those exceptions are fast-arriving.
As discussed in the latest update to the September 2025 Crowd Calendar, the reason why weekends are busier in September is the multi-month Florida resident ticket deal is winding down. These are “use it or lose it” tickets, and they expire on September 27, 2025. Locals tend to work on weekdays, so the last couple weekends of validity tend to spike as a result. That means the trend of busier weekends is only going to accelerate, and we’re also going to see this bleed into some weekdays (especially Fridays and Mondays), too.
This isn’t the only ticket deal winding down in September. There’s also the Kids 50% Off and 3-Park Magic Ticket, which end on September 20th and 22nd. These are aimed at a different audience, so they don’t have the same impact on crowds. But the point remains that crowds spike in late September 2025 as people rush to use ticket deals before they end.
Nevertheless, there’s no “bad” time to visit in September, save for upcoming Saturdays and Sundays. What caught me by surprise is not that weekends spiked in September–we predicted it would–but that it started earlier than usual. Normally, the last minute “use it or lose it” rush is really evident 2 weeks before the deal ends.
This is also why we’re not confident September 2025 will end up being the slowest month since October 2021 once the dust settles. With a 4 minute lead halfway through the month, it’s likely cemented victory over August 2025. But only 2 minutes versus last September and October isn’t insurmountable, especially if crowds increase from the last couple of weekends, which is what we’re expecting. If that happens, September 2025 could be busier than September 2024. However, “busier” is a relative term, as both months should be really light compared to the entirety of October 2025 (which will almost certainly beat October 2024 absent another hurricane scare).
Regardless, mid-August through mid-September remains the last bastion of the off-season at Walt Disney World. This has been consistently true even as attendance has spiked during other previously off-season months. Whereas other off-season months have gotten busier, September has stayed the same–and (knock on wood) always should remain that way due to school schedules and less desirable weather. Even if Disney gets aggressive with pulling more “levers” in the future to entice demand, there’s only so much they can do; we saw this back in 2019 when not even the launch of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Extra, Extra Magic Hours could overcome the off-season slowdown.
If you’re looking forward to 2026, 2027, etc., you can safely book a trip during this stretch and expect low crowds. This applies to both the week before Labor Day, two weeks after, and even the holiday itself. Whether avoiding weekends will be advisable depends entirely about when the Florida resident ticket deal ends. There was nothing surprising or unprecedented about the last few weeks, even if they were the slowest of 2025 and among the lowest since October 2021.
Looking forward past the expiration of the outgoing ticket deals, the big question marks are group events and convention crowds. There’s an outside chance that the last week of September sees an outsized spike due the arrival of these, plus early fall breaks for various school districts around the country. But for the most part, it should still be too early for all of that to meaningfully impact crowds.
Our expectation is that the arrival of fall crowds in “full force” coincides with Columbus Day weekend. It likely won’t let up much after that. Another big question mark is future ticket deals. Disney has been getting more aggressive in trying to put excess bandwidth in the parks to use, and we’re getting to the point that we’re kind of expecting a ticket deal for mid-October through mid-December 2025. That would also boost crowd levels in the final few months of the year.
Even absent such a ticket deal, signs already point to the last three months of the year being busy. If you only care about numbers–and not weather or Christmas–the next few weeks followed by the late October lull is the time to visit Walt Disney World. If you do care about those things, there are a handful of other slow windows amidst the peak weeks–all of which are flagged in Best & Worst Weeks to Visit Disney World in 2025, 2026 & 2027.
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!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on off-season crowds at Walt Disney World? Predictions for the rest of the month or October? Think September will end up being the slowest month since Fall 2021? If you’ve visited within the last month, what did you think of wait times? Have you done Magic Kingdom during the day of a MNSSHP night? 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!
