Walt Disney World is the heart of its busiest week of 2025, with peak wait times of 2-3 hours at the most popular rides, maximum priced (and sold out) Lightning Lanes, and more. This post covers the colossal crowds and triple-digit wait times in the lead-up to New Year’s Eve, and what to expect in the days to come.
Let’s start by talking crowds. It’s not going to surprise anyone that this has already been a busy week. Crowds always build in mid-December, and the weeks around Christmas and New Year’s Eve are the busiest of the year. This trend will continue into early 2025, with crowds not relenting until Central Florida schools go back into session following their holiday breaks.
This is always the busiest (singular) 3-week stretch of the year at Walt Disney World, and these are also usually the three (individual) busiest weeks of the year. The week of New Year’s Eve is #1 and by a very wide margin. The week of Christmas is typically #3, with the first week or so of January being #2.
The heavy crowds in the first week or so of January often surprises people. It’s due to holiday breaks being ongoing, lower prices (compared to the two weeks before), and Annual Pass blockouts lifting, among other factors. Expect peak holiday crowds to relent on January 5, 2026. Crowd levels won’t drop to low levels immediately, but as contrasted with the previous two weeks, it’ll feel like it!
Crowds don’t truly drop to low or moderate levels until the following week, usually around the Sunday of the Walt Disney World Marathon weekend. That’ll be January 11, 2026. Even so, it’s not uninterrupted stretches of low crowds after, as the start of ticket deals, holiday weekends, runDisney events, Mid-Winter Break, Mardi Gras and more will throw monkey wrenches into Winter 2026 crowd levels.
What might be a surprise is that the days and weekend around Christmas actually were not that bad. Don’t get us wrong–crowds were high, but as a whole, the average wait time for last week was 40 minutes and the crowd level was only 7/10. That’s well below last Christmas, and the first time we’ve seen a crowd level below 9/10 for that particular week during normal times.
In fact, it was the least-busy Christmas week since 2020, which was slower for fairly obvious reasons (I remember having a difficult time obtaining park reservations that week in 2020, so it could have been busier but for the strict attendance caps). Even Christmas 2021, which saw a slowdown starting in late September due to a resurgence of COVID and reinstatement of mask rules, was busier than this past week (as measured by average wait times).
This first caught my attention thanks to social media posts showing an empty Fantasmic seating area for the third performance of the nighttime spectacular (it’s common for low crowds on nights when it’s presented 3 times, but not no crowds), as well as Frontierland having last-minute front row spots for the second Starlight night parade.
There have been other posts along these lines, underscoring just how much the crowds have dropped off in the evenings. If this were happening right now, cold weather would be the obvious explanation–but it was late last week and over the weekend.
This has not meant low daytime waits. My spot-checking of My Disney Experience over the last week-plus has shown 120 minute peaks for headliner attractions in all 4 parks on every single day. It nevertheless does illustrate just how beneficial a ‘fully-loaded’ entertainment slate and longer operating hours can be for managing even above-average crowds.
For reference, Christmas week was still the busiest since Easter and will go down as the 4th worst week of 2025. It just wasn’t nearly as bad as last year or (especially) 2022-2023 or 2019. All of those were high 10/10 weeks; 7/10 is a big drop-off as contrasted with those.
(Note that this is on the thrill-data.com scale. I’d be inclined to argue that if a week is the 4th worst of the year, it’s a 10/10 no matter what the averages. Crowd level measurements should be based on rolling 1-2 year numbers; too long of a time horizon skews things too much.)
It’ll be interesting to see whether this becomes a new trend, following the lead of Thanksgiving (our #1 pick on the list of Least-Bad Weeks to Visit Walt Disney World for Families on School Schedules) or if this year was an anomaly. That’s something we’ll be watching closely out of self-interest.
I’m honestly jealous of anyone who has been (or is currently at) Walt Disney World in the last week. We love this time of year in the parks and don’t mind ridiculously cold weather; as we gear up for yet another atmospheric river and rainout of New Year’s Eve at Disneyland, the weather in Florida is sounding pretty good!
In any case, the moderate-to-high crowds are firmly in the rearview mirror and the peak week New Year’s crowds have now descended upon Walt Disney World…
Although it’s only a couple of days old, the current week has an average wait time of 60 minutes and a crowd level of 10/10. That’s bad enough to make it far and away the busiest week of 2025, worse than the peak week of 2024, and on par with the worst of 2019 and 2022-2023. Of course, there are still several days left to go, so that average could rise or fall as the week wears on.
The worst dates vary from year to year, but what we’ve seen typically in the post-COVID era is wait times peaking in the days before New Year’s Eve, as opposed to on December 31st. It’s thus our expectation that December 29-30 will be the busiest days of this week, with January 1-2, 2026 seeing a resurgence. New Year’s Day is always a wildcard; guests are often late-arriving, which can drag down the daily stats, but they pick up later in the day.
The weekend is likewise less predictable. Tourists start heading home to go back to school and work, but that’s offset by locals with AP blockouts lifting. It’s usually only partially offset. Suffice to say, it’s possible we’ve already seen the worst of the NYE wait times–or will today. Speaking of which, here’s a look at the peak times from yesterday afternoon through this morning:
From my perspective, the most interesting set of wait times is the last one–captured at 8:55 am this morning. That’s during Early Entry or shortly after rope drop, and even so, wait times are over an hour (or two!) for several attractions. This is quite the contrast to those mornings earlier in the holiday season when I was able to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, TRON Lightcycle Run, Slinky Dog Dash, etc., all as walk-ons during Early Entry (and in a couple of cases, post rope drop!).
You might see the above wait times and think that the wait time average must be even worse than “only” 60 minutes. That’s a reasonable assessment. If you polled guests currently in the parks about their perceptions of wait times, the consensus average would likely be a much higher number. But averages take the entire day and the entire attraction roster into account.
In particular, these attractions are responsible for dragging down the overall average:
Obviously, the day is still young and it’s entirely possible this ends up being the busiest day of the week. Or even tomorrow! Although NYE is usually not the worst day for wait times, Monday through Wednesday are typically the high water marks.
The last couple of weeks have already contained some surprises, so perhaps that’ll continue with worsening crowds through Friday. The bottom line is that every day for the rest of this week/year and into the first few days of January has a chance of being the busiest of the week, and even the entirety of 2025 or 2026, as the case may be.
Another surprise is that Lightning Lane Multi-Pass is sold out at two parks today:
As you can see from the above screenshot, LLMP is listed as unavailable for Magic Kingdom and EPCOT. To the best of my recollection, this is the first time Lightning Lane Multi Pass has sold out in a while. Single Pass sells out most of the time (so often that it’s not even noteworthy), and Premier Pass does some of the time.
It’s been a while since we discussed Lightning Lane pricing–not since the price increase around the start of the new fiscal year. For reference, here are the peak prices for Lightning Lane Multi-Pass:
Magic Kingdom: $45 per person
Disney’s Hollywood Studios: $39 per person
EPCOT: $37 per person
Disney’s Animal Kingdom: $35 per person
These are unchanged since October. At the time, we speculated that Walt Disney World was simply resetting the ceiling at the start of the fiscal year as opposed to waiting until the heart of the holiday season–so that all of the price increase headlines would be lumped together. That proved to be correct. Bad news for anyone who visited on that random slower weekday in October with peak season pricing, but good news for everyone else.
Interestingly, today did not have peak pricing for Lightning Lane Multi-Pass. It was (or is) a tick below the maximums, for reasons unknown. Past dates and future ones revert to the maxes, with prices gradually falling over the weekend until they hit off-season levels starting January 8, 2026.
It’s potentially also worth mentioning that Lightning Lane Premier Pass does have peak season pricing today:
Magic Kingdom: $449
Disney’s Hollywood Studios: $349
EPCOT: $249
Disney’s Animal Kingdom: $199 per person
These prices did not increase at the start of the fiscal year, which caught us by surprise. They did go up at Disneyland, but not Walt Disney World…despite LLP selling pretty well.
To that point, Lightning Lane Premier Pass sell outs actually started on Christmas Eve Eve (aka Festivus, or December 23rd) and extend through early January 2026. By the time all is said and done, Magic Kingdom and DHS will have sold out for a roughly two-week stretch, which makes me wonder why Walt Disney World didn’t raise the maximum.
Suffice to say, you should expect peak season crowd levels for the next several days, with the possibility of 10+/10 crowd levels, for lack of a better term. That may not make complete sense, but last year’s peak week is a good illustration.
December 30th was the worst day of last year, with a 10/10 crowd level but an average wait time of 65 minutes. Two days later–January 2, 2025–was also a 10/10 crowd level with an average wait time of 54 minutes–that was only one minute higher than a 9/10 crowd level.
That’s an 11 minute spread–which is absolutely massive–but the exact same crowd level. Nowhere else on the scale (except, I guess, 1/10 since it could theoretically start at 0 minutes–but that never happens in practice) has that range. Usually a crowd level has a range of a couple minutes before it moves up or down. Not 10/10. It can be 54 minutes, 67 minutes, 80 minutes, etc. Hence the 10+/10 crowd level.
Hope that makes sense. Even if not, the salient point is that there are varying degrees of ‘bad’ crowds and that 10/10 isn’t a static level of awfulness. Yesterday was 10+/10, and the same is likely for today and tomorrow. January 1-4, 2026 should be slower, but still with the potential for 9/10 or 10/10 crowds.
On the plus side, the parks will be operating in ‘maximum efficiency’ mode, which presents more opportunities for beating the crowds if you’re willing to work a bit. Good luck to anyone visiting Walt Disney World right now or recently–we’d love to hear your experience, whether you encountered lower than expected crowds over Christmas or are there right now in the belly of the beast!
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
What do you think of the current wait times at Walt Disney World? Thoughts on the parks not seeing 10/10 level crowds the week of Christmas? If you’re visiting during the last few weeks, what’s been your impression of wait times, congestion, etc? Do you agree or disagree with my assessment? 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!
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