In years past, the Tuesday following Labor Day would bring with it a collective sigh of relief from cast members and elite lifestyle bloggers alike as a busy summer season was finally over, cool weather was on the horizon, and with the first Halloween Party already behind us, Christmas basically just around the corner. This year has been quite different with what is easily the lowest attendance that I’ve seen between June and August in the six years that I’ve been doing this. If you were to show me pictures of crowds and wait times in mid-July of this year and ask me to guess when they were taken, I would have likely said something like September 2012 or late January 2013. Virtually every one of the last 12 weeks has been less crowded than at least 70% of the weeks over the last three years.

That’s pretty mind boggling considering Disney had notched quarter after quarter of increased attendance and this was supposed to be the summer of openings – Frozen Ever After, Soarin’ Around the World, Rivers of Light, Star Wars Galactic Spectacular, and virtually all of New Downtown Disney. But with South America in the toilet due to economic and political turmoil, some concerns over the health and safety of domestic travel and perhaps Orlando in particular, and the fact that everybody and their mother has been telling everyone they know to avoid Walt Disney World in July for years, the summer crowds never materialized.

Looking towards fall, there are some mixed signals on what we can expect. On one hand, the Disney-owned resorts will be operating at near capacity for the next eight weeks. But as we know, overall crowds are driven largely by the number of off-site guests that are visiting. Disney will figure out a way to fill their rooms. But by all accounts, while the usual discounts were offered, there was far less availability than there would have been three or four years ago, which seems to signal elevated demand. On the other hand, fall theme park hours have been cut and nighttime entertainment reduced. The Star Wars fireworks will only be offered on four nights a week in October and a second Fantasmic is never scheduled on the same night. From mid-June through September, Star Wars fireworks were scheduled every night with a second Fantasmic often added on days that were expected to be busier. Main Street Electrical Parade’s final performance is October 9th with no replacement. The Parade had been offered almost every night most of the year. Disney neglected to extend Jungle Book at Animal Kingdom and the Park will close at least two hours earlier than it did through September 5th, which means about one less hour of darkness each night.

But at least for now, it’s good news as attendance and wait times have fallen even further. You might have seen me tweeting from Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom, and Disney Springs earlier in the day:

While attendance was down dramatically, so was staffing for much of the season. But even that wasn’t causing an increase in wait times with so few people in the Park. And the weather was as nice as it’s been since early May. I’ll have a full rundown in the coming days.

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I’m not sure how waits could be any shorter given a 0% chance of precipitation and sun virtually all day. Everest doesn’t even hit 10 minutes until 11am and is never above 15. Safaris is 10 minutes virtually all day. Primeval Whirl never hits anything above 10. And that’s all with DINOSAUR down for refurbishment, which reduces capacity by about 1,500 riders an hour.

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With the evening Extra Magic Hours attracting resort guests and three rides that typically see 60+ minute peak waits, Epcot is slightly rougher. But 19 minutes is the shortest overall average that we’ve seen since Frozen opened. This is about as good as it gets.

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I think we’d have to go all the way back to the tornado warnings of January to find a shorter overall average posted wait. And actual waits were considerably shorter than the posted waits. I walked onto Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster with a wait under 10 minutes in standby just before noon. Toy Story was under 15 minutes for much of the morning. Tower of Terror is 10 minutes almost all day as is Star Tours. Great Movie Ride’s 13-minute average should be the lowest since very early 2016.

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With a close that’s two or three hours earlier than much of June-August, we don’t enjoy the big, sustained drop in wait times that we would have in July. One positive of the summer is that we see longer hours and plentiful nighttime entertainment. With the dramatic drop off in attendance we saw this year, it will be interesting to see if Disney ends up shortening hours and reducing entertainment next year and instead extends the hours later in the fall. That will likely depend on what we see over the next 8-10 weeks. Otherwise, wait times are rougher at Magic Kingdom and will continue to be as maximum FastPass+ utilization continues to push up wait times as little capacity is given to standby. Shorter hours also means far fewer FP+ experiences available over the course of the day, which typically means more capacity is given to FP+ as more FP+ are being used at attractions that historically didn’t offer it. But even then, these are some of the shortest afternoon peak waits than we’ve seen in the last several months. But that includes waits that are longer than any of us would like at rides like Haunted Mansion with its 32-minute average.

The next couple of weeks should hopefully remain quiet before things pick up a bit heading into the end of the month. October is going to be interesting.