Walt Disney World Wait Times for New Year’s Week 2024
Did you know that 2024 has arrived? I ask because Walt Disney World crowds definitely acted as if the holidays never ended.
Vacationers packed the parks at unprecedented levels at the start of the new year. Disney Genie+ sold out a LOT this week.
So, you can expect the Walt Disney World wait times for New Year’s Week 2024 to be outrageously high.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
We knew we were through the looking glass during Christmas Week when Disney’s Animal Kingdom sold out on multiple dates.
Even so, we don’t track three-hour waits for attractions often.
Generally, when that happens, a ride is brand new. And most of the E-ticket rides start with virtual queues these days anyway.
So, this kind of behavior pretty much never happens, but it did at Animal Kingdom last week.
Avatar Flight of Passage averaged a wait of 202 minutes.
This week’s update is marginally better, but it’s STILL a three-hour wait.
During New Year’s Week, Avatar Flight of Passage averaged a wait of 183 minutes.
That’s a decrease of 19 minutes, but the word decrease is doing a lot of work there. It was still one of the longest wait times I’ve ever tracked.
How were the other attractions at Animal Kingdom? I mean, they were better…
- Na’vi River Journey – 68 minutes, down 49
- Adventurers Outpost – 48 minutes, down 19
- Expedition Everest – 38 minutes, down 39
- Kilimanjaro Safaris – 33 minutes, down 56
- DINOSAUR – 32 minutes, down 36
- It’s Tough to Be a Bug! – 15 minutes, down 5
- TriceraTop Spin – 8 minutes, down 16
- Kali River Rapids – 7 minutes, down 19
Overall, save that one gigantic exception, Animal Kingdom improved significantly.
Guests stood in line for an average of 48 minutes, which is way high for this part. However, it’s 30 minutes less than last time.
So, I guess the glass was half-full? Kinda?
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Hoo boy, be ready for anything. Last week’s Hollywood Studios numbers were the longest I’d tracked since before the pandemic.
I have legitimate concerns about the past week, as Disney Genie+ sold out here a couple of times.
Here are the average waits at Hollywood Studios:
- Slinky Dog Dash – 133 minutes, down 11
- Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – 130 minutes, down 9
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith – 116 minutes, down 3
- Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run – 105 minutes, down 7
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror – 97 minutes, down 12
- Toy Story Mania! – 86 minutes, down 14
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway – 82 minutes, down 8
- Alien Swirling Saucers – 49 minutes, down 11
- Red Carpet Dreams – 47 minutes, down 6
- Star Tours – The Adventures Continue! – 36 minutes, down 10
- Celebrity Spotlight – 27 minutes, down 5
- Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy – 15 minutes, no change
- Muppet*Vision 3D – 10 minutes, down 5
Overall, guests at Hollywood Studios waited for an average of 65 minutes per attraction, which is 14 minutes less than last time…but still more than an hour per experience.
Longtime readers know that I evaluate the crowds at this park by how many attractions require hour-long waits.
Seven attractions with that kind of wait signifies a busy time.
During the first week of 2024, seven attractions required a wait of 82 (!) minutes or longer.
This place was mobbed, although it was down nearly 18 percent from Christmas Week. Yay?
EPCOT
You get the point, so let’s just skip straight to the numbers. Here are EPCOT’s average wait times:
- Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure – 112 minutes, down 24
- Frozen Ever After – 93 minutes, down 21
- Test Track – 91 minutes, down 27
- Soarin’ Over California – 67 minutes, down 28
- Mission: SPACE – 44 minutes, down 30
- Royal Sommerhus – 39 minutes, down 9
- Spaceship Earth – 31 minutes, down 22
- The Seas with Nemo & Friends – 22 minutes, down 18
- Journey into Imagination with Figment – 21 minutes, down 11
- Turtle Talk with Crush – 21 minutes, down 8
- Living with the Land – 17 minutes, down 12
- Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros – 15 minutes, down 11
Overall, guests at EPCOT spent 47 minutes in line per attraction, which is down 19 minutes from the previous week.
So, the trendline here is quite clear. New Year’s Week wasn’t as crowded as Christmas Week, but it was ridiculously busy by any reasonable standard.
Magic Kingdom
Presumably, the same statement will apply to Magic Kingdom. Here are the park’s average wait times:
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train – 113 minutes, down 31
- Space Mountain – 92 minutes, down 5
- Peter Pan’s Flight – 89 minutes, down 13
- Jungle Cruise – 71 minutes, down 11
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad – 68 minutes, down 9
- Haunted Mansion – 63 minutes, down 10
- Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin – 57 minutes, down 5
- Town Square Theater – 50 minutes, down 4
- Princess Fairytale Hall – 49 minutes, down 8
- Pirates of the Caribbean – 48 minutes, down 10
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh – 46 minutes, down 4
- Ariel’s Grotto – 45 minutes, down 7
- Astro Orbiter – 44 minutes, down 6
- The Barnstormer – 41 minutes, down 3
- Enchanted Tales with Belle – 41 minutes, down 4
- Pete’s Silly Sideshow – 39 minutes, down 3
- It’s a Small World – 38 minutes, down 10
- Under the Sea ~ Journey of the Little Mermaid – 38 minutes, down 7
- Dumbo the Flying Elephant – 37 minutes, down 6
- Tomorrowland Speedway – 34 minutes, down 5
- The Magic Carpets of Aladdin – 33 minutes, down 4
- Walt Disney World Railroad – 29 minutes, up 5
- Mad Tea Party – 26 minutes, down 3
- Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover – 23 minutes, down 4
- Mickey’s PhilharMagic – 21 minutes, up 2
- Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor – 20 minutes, down 2
- Prince Charming Regal Carrousel – 19 minutes, down 1
- Country Bear Jamboree – 18 minutes, up 2
- Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress – 5 minutes, no change
Final Thoughts
Obviously, only a handful of attractions increased their wait times from Christmas because that was nigh-impossible to do.
In math nerd terms, infinity plus infinity equals more infinity.
At Magic Kingdom, the average attraction averaged a wait of 42 minutes, which is seven minutes less Christmas Week but still quite high.
Typically, we’ve reached the time of the year when crowds diminish at the parks.
This past week’s wait times were inflated by a secondary influx of traffic.
Participants at runDisney swarmed the parks over the weekend, joining forces with the New Year’s Week crowd.
So, we had a lot of factors leading to longer wait times.
Those vacationers should largely vanish this week as we enter the slow season.
However, the wait times might not drop as much as normal.
I say this because the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts begins on January 12th, and it’s grown into a highly successful event.
Based on this fact, I’m expecting next week’s wait times to drop but not bottom out.
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Feature Photo: Disney