Memorial Day weekend has long been one of the busiest stretches of the year at Walt Disney World Resort, but something very different happened in Central Florida on Monday.
A Surprisingly Empty Magic Kingdom
The easiest way to gauge crowd levels at Walt Disney World Resort without access to official attendance data is to check the My Disney Experience app. What the app showed on Memorial Day 2026 at Magic Kingdom Park was striking.
TRON Lightcycle / Run was the only attraction to hit a 60-minute wait during peak afternoon hours, and that spike only came when Space Mountain went down temporarily. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, which routinely climbs to two-hour waits on the park’s busiest days, sat at just 45 minutes.
Pirates of the Caribbean, “it’s a small world,” and Mad Tea Party were all listed at five-minute waits — effectively walk-ons for rides that are rarely that accessible on a holiday Monday.
EPCOT Tells a Similar Story
The highest wait time at EPCOT during the afternoon was Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at 55 minutes. That number sounds high in isolation, but for a ride that regularly sees standby queues stretching into triple digits, it represents a remarkably light day. The Anna and Elsa meet-and-greet, Frozen Ever After, and Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure — all of which typically carry waits well over an hour — were also operating far below their usual thresholds.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios Stays Quiet Despite New Experiences
Disney’s Hollywood Studios had the most reason of any park to draw a crowd on Memorial Day. The Walt Disney Studios Lot courtyard recently soft opened, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring the Muppets is in previews, and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run debuted its new Mandalorian & Grogu (2026)-inspired mission just days ago on May 22. Despite all of that, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror peaked at a 20-minute wait in the afternoon, and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run sat at just 15 minutes.
X user @WDWNT captured the empty walkways in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge with a photo posted on the platform formerly known as Twitter:
Where is everybody?
Where is everybody? pic.twitter.com/an0fv4SaYL
— WDW News Today (@WDWNT) May 25, 2026
Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park Nearly Empty
Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park saw perhaps the most surprising numbers of the day. Even with the soft opening of Bluey’s Wild World at Conservation Station generating buzz, popular attractions like Kilimanjaro Safaris and Expedition Everest were close to walk-ons in the mid-afternoon. Avatar Flight of Passage was the sole Walt Disney World Resort attraction to reach a triple-digit wait time across all four parks on Memorial Day 2026 — a distinction that on a typical holiday weekend would belong to a much longer list of rides.
Whether Monday’s light crowds reflect a broader shift in how families are choosing to spend holiday weekends — or simply a one-year anomaly — remains to be seen. But for guests who braved the holiday and showed up anyway, it was one of the easiest days to experience Walt Disney World Resort in recent memory.
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