Capacity

In a recent interview with CNBC, Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Chapek mentioned that the Walt Disney World theme park capacity is currently 25%. He also stated that the number will stay the same until the CDC guidelines change. You can watch part of the interview here, but in order to watch the whole thing you need to be a CNBC Pro subscriber. You can also learn the basics of the interview from WDWNT here.

There are a couple of things that I want to say about capacity. First, even though it has now been said that the parks are at 25% capacity, we still don’t have a real number. The number of guests for full capacity has never been released. If you have seen numbers, they are all guesswork. Some of those numbers are probably close to being accurate, but that doesn’t make them official.

The other thing that I want to mention is exactly what capacity means. Many people claim that Disney has increased capacity of late, because the parks are more crowded. They have not increased capacity, it is that more people are visiting. The number of people allowed in the parks has not changed, it’s just that more people are taking advantage of the fact that the four theme parks are open.

One number that is often cited as full capacity at the Magic Kingdom is 100,000 people. Again, that’s not official, but it does make for easy math. On days such as Christmas Day and the Fourth of July, the Magic Kingdom does reach capacity. If you’ve ever been there on one of those days you know how packed it is! At 25% capacity, that would be 25,000 people. That’s still a pretty large number. With some experiences and restaurants closed, 25,000 people will feel like a lot of people. That’s why many people are claiming that the parks are packed, when in fact they are still operating at a much reduced number.

This is why events such as Disney After Hours are so popular. The unofficial number of guests at these is 3,000. I’ve been to the event at the Magic Kingdom, Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios. At Studios, it felt like more people, just because that park is so much smaller than the other two. Some claimed that more tickets were sold, but that was not the case.

I have noticed that there are more people in the parks these days than there were back in July. It’s just because more people are coming. Travel has picked up a bit, and more people are returning to Central Florida. That said, the parks are still doable. I have been able to do everything that I want to do each time that I have been at a theme park.

If you’re headed to Walt Disney World soon, keep your expectations in check. Things aren’t like they were when the theme parks reopened, when you could walk onto Flight of Passage. Still, a 60 minute wait is better than the 240 minute wait from before the pandemic. Also, from my recent experience, a 60 minute wait is often half that, especially in the middle of the day. There might be more people visiting the parks right now, but capacity has not been increased, and it will not be increased for a while. If you visit, you will still experience shorter lines, and you will have a magical time.