Walt Disney World Wait Times for New Year’s Week 2025/2026
Well, that’s it. The calendar states that 2025 is over.
We’re in 2026 now, so we might as well make the best of it.
Before we’re ready to move on to exciting new adventures, we should take a look back, though.
Walt Disney World just finished its busiest two weeks on the annual calendar.
Hollywood Studios
Fans always want to spend the holidays at Disney whenever possible. So, they did!
How were the crowds last week? The word “outrageous” springs to mind.
Here are Walt Disney World’s wait times for the end of 2025.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Photo:visitorlando.com
Among Disney World’s four theme parks, Animal Kingdom is impacted the least by New Year’s events.
This park closes too early for fireworks events at the stroke of midnight.
Tree of Life at Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Even so, the wait times should be massive due to the reality of the situation.
The sheer volume of people at the parks means that they all have to go somewhere.
Photo: Disney
Was that the case at Animal Kingdom? Here are the park’s average wait times last week:
- Avatar Flight of Passage – 127 minutes, up 19
- Na’vi River Journey – 71 minutes, up 9
- Kilimanjaro Safaris – 67 minutes, up 18
- Expedition Everest – 62 minutes, up 13
- DINOSAUR – 49 minutes, up 15
- Adventurers Outpost – 44 minutes, up 6
- Zootopia: Better Zoogether! – 37 minutes, up 13
- Kali River Rapids – 22 minutes, down 23
Kali River Rapids
Okay, Kali River Rapids obviously messes with the results a lot due to the Central Florida cold spell.
Even so, the average Animal Kingdom attraction required a wait of 60 minutes.
Disney
Yes, people waited an hour per attraction at the park last week, which is nine minutes more than last time.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
New Year’s Eve
We had reporters at Hollywood Studios on New Year’s Eve.
Let’s just say that it was a giant wall of people, and there was little room to move.
That’s just Disney at the holidays, especially the week after Christmas.
While I often refer to the Twelve Days of Christmas, even that’s a bit of a misnomer.
People tend to show up in droves just before or even after Christmas Day.
Then, they spend the time through New Year’s at the parks.
Generally, this pattern doesn’t end until the Sunday after New Year’s, which was January 4th this time.
So, we’ll even see some spillover into next week’s wait times discussion.
A week from now, all four parks will become a comparative ghost town.
Even that behavior isn’t quite as ironclad as it once was, though.
2026 Festival of the Arts
The ascension of the EPCOT International Festival of the Arts has vastly improved late January attendance.
Buckle up, folks. It’s gonna be a bumpy January!
Photo: Disney
Here are the average wait times at Hollywood Studios last week:
- Slinky Dog Dash – 121 minutes, up 37
- Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – 111 minutes, up 35
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith – 100 minutes, up 34
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror – 93 minutes, up 26
- Toy Story Mania! – 77 minutes, up 15
- Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run – 76 minutes, up 19
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway – 75 minutes, up 18
- Alien Swirling Saucers – 52 minutes, up 13
- Red Carpet Dreams – 45 minutes, up 5
- Star Tours – The Adventures Continue! – 36 minutes, up 15
- Celebrity Spotlight – 25 minutes, up 6
Photo: Disney
Overall, guests stood in line for an average of 74 minutes per attraction.
You heard me. People waited for almost an hour and 15 minutes per attraction.
That’s 21 minutes more than last time, and yes, four attractions had waits of 90+ minutes.
EPCOT
We are currently in one of those weird spots on the annual calendar.
No, I’m not talking about the holiday season but rather an EPCOT oddity.
2024 EPCOT Festival of the Holidays
Right now, the park isn’t hosting a festival, which is a rarity these days.
The EPCOT International Festival of the Holidays ended before 2025 did.
Meanwhile, the Festival of the Arts doesn’t start until January 16th.
So, we have another ten-day respite before the fun begins anew.
2026 Festival of the Arts
This is when I remind you that MickeyBlog will publish full coverage of Festival of the Arts.
Our ace reporters always try everything and post pictures and videos of the whole thing.
Photo: Disney
You can look forward to that at the end of next week! Until then, here are the park’s average wait times:
- Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind – 134 minutes, up 42
- Test Track – 127 minutes, up 30
- Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure – 96 minutes, up 29
- Frozen Ever After – 82 minutes, up 18
- Soarin’ Around the World – 76 minutes, up 28
- Royal Sommerhus – 51 minutes, up 1
- Mission: SPACE – 43 minutes, up 16
- Spaceship Earth – 39 minutes, up 10
- The Seas with Nemo & Friends – 37 minutes, up 9
- Meet Mickey & Friends – 33 minutes, up 6
- Journey into Imagination with Figment – 27 minutes, up 12
- Living with the Land – 27 minutes, up 9
- Turtle Talk with Crush – 21 minutes, up 2
- Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros – 19 minutes, up 7
Soarin’ Over California
Overall, EPCOT guests spent an average of 58 minutes per attraction.
That’s 16 minutes per attraction, yet it feels reasonable compared to the first two parks.
Magic Kingdom
Photo: Disney
Finally, here are last week’s average wait times at Magic Kingdom:
- TRON Lightcycle / Run – 111 minutes, up 22
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train – 88 minutes, up 13
- Jingle Cruise – 73 minutes, up 8
- Peter Pan’s Flight – 72 minutes, up 7
- Space Mountain – 70 minutes, up 11
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh – 56 minutes, up 9
- Tiana’s Bayou Adventure – 55 minutes, down 8
- Haunted Mansion – 53 minutes, up 6
- Pete’s Silly Sideshow – 44 minutes, up 2
- Pirates of the Caribbean – 43 minutes, up 8
- Princess Fairytale Hall – 41 minutes, up 3
- The Barnstormer – 41 minutes, up 4
- Ariel’s Grotto – 40 minutes, up 3
- It’s a Small World – 40 minutes, up 4
- Under the Sea ~ Journey of the Little Mermaid – 40 minutes, up 5
- Astro Orbiter – 39 minutes, up 2
- Dumbo the Flying Elephant – 38 minutes, up 3
- Town Square Theater – 38 minutes, no change
- The Magic Carpets of Aladdin – 34 minutes, up 3
- Enchanted Tales with Belle – 33 minutes, up 6
- Tomorrowland Speedway – 33 minutes, up 1
- Mad Tea Party – 27 minutes, up 2
- Walt Disney World Railroad – 23 minutes, down 4
- Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover – 21 minutes, up 4
- Mickey’s PhilharMagic – 19 minutes, up 2
- Prince Charming Regal Carrousel – 19 minutes, up 3
- Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor – 18 minutes, no change
- Country Bear Musical Jamboree – 14 minutes, up 1
- Walt Disney’s Carrousel of Progress – 5 minutes, no change
Final Thoughts
Overall, Magic Kingdom guests waited for an average of 42 minutes per attraction.
That’s four minutes more than last time and one of the highest totals I’ve ever tracked here.
Ordinarily, the number of Magic Kingdom attractions guarantees that people rarely wait for long.
During this past week, that premise was overwhelmed by the massive number of guests at the park.
To a larger point, the four parks averaged a wait of almost exactly one hour per attraction.
So, yeah, Disney World was crowded during New Year’s Week.
Photo: MickeyBlog
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Feature Photo: Disney
