A week after we wrote that Walt Disney World had the slowest week of 2021, wait times dropped even further this week as crowds fail to materialize during the waning days of summer. We’ll use data from thrill-data.com to complete our analysis in this article.
At a high level, the average wait time across all attractions at all four Walt Disney World theme parks was just 18 minutes for the week ending August 29th. That beats the 20-minute mark set last week and matches the mark set in the last week of August 2020 when the parks were still struggling to attract guests. Of course, a lot has changed in terms of attraction operations and functional capacity since last year, so we’ll try to only make comparisons to the previous 34 weeks this year.
In terms of 2021, not only was the last week the slowest of the year, but the past two weeks have driven the average wait time for August 2021 to be the slowest month of the year as well. Of course, if you visited during the first two weeks of August, you would’ve actually experienced one of the busiest weeks of the year. Here’s a graph of the weekly average wait times across all four Walt Disney World theme parks. You can see just how much the wait times have dropped off in the past three weeks.
Let’s break it down by park.
Magic Kingdom
Magic Kingdom averaged an 18-minute wait across all of its attractions this week. The top three attractions by average wait this week were Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (50 minutes), Jungle Cruise (40 minutes), and Peter Pan’s Flight (37 minutes). Splash Mountain was knocked from the top three and falls to fifth place with an average wait of 30 minutes.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Disney’s Hollywood Studios averaged a 25-minute wait across all of its attractions this week. The top three attractions by average wait this week were Slinky Dog Dash (54 minutes), Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway (42 minutes), and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run (42 minutes).
EPCOT
EPCOT averaged a 13-minute wait across all of its attractions this week, a mark that hasn’t been hit since late July 2020. The top three attractions by average wait this week were Test Track (34 minutes), Frozen Ever After (29 minutes), and Soarin Around the World (12 minutes).
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Disney’s Animal Kingdom averaged a 14-minute wait across all of its attractions this week. The top three attractions by average wait this week were Flight of Passage (32 minutes), Na’vi River Journey (25 minutes), and Kali River Rapids (11 minutes).
Predictions
We expect that early next week will also be a low wait time week ahead of a bump from Labor Day Weekend, which takes place September 4-6. The Disney Park Pass reservation system has turned into a mere inconvenience instead of a roadblock as all dates are pretty much open for the rest of 2021 with a few expectations for holidays and special events. The days of being forced into a starting theme park that you don’t want to visit seem to be over, and while Park Hopping restrictions remain in place, there really isn’t any difficulty getting into a Disney World theme park right now.
Looking past Labor Day, we expect to see a slow build of crowds up to Walt Disney World’s 50th Anniversary on October 1, 2021. Not only do guests likely want to be in a Disney World theme park that day, but there are also a few new offerings debuting on October 1st like Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure and Disney Enchantment, to name a couple.
While we think that this dip in wait times aligns with normal trends, we also think that a combination of increased face mask rules has kept some guests away, while an increase in COVID-19 cases and prevalence of the Delta variant have kept others away. Whatever the case, it’s clear that guests have experienced some extremely short wait times this week.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!