Walt Disney World attendance barely moved in 2025, the year Universal Epic Universe opened in Orlando, according to the 2025 TEA Global Experience Index. Magic Kingdom stayed the most visited theme park in the world with 17.8 million guests, and Disney World’s four theme parks drew about 49 million visits combined, down just 0.2% from 2024, while Epic Universe welcomed 4 million guests in its partial first year.
Before Epic Universe opened on May 22, 2025, a lot of fans predicted Universal’s new park would pull guests away from Disney World and maybe even outdraw it. The first attendance numbers that include Epic show something different. Epic added millions of visits to Orlando, and Disney World held its ground.
We covered the opening and the months after it in our Epic Universe coverage, and the new numbers line up with what we have seen in the parks.
How Each Disney World Park Did in 2025
Magic Kingdom welcomed 17.8 million guests in 2025 and kept the top spot worldwide for another year. EPCOT ranked eighth in the world with 12.1 million visits. Disney’s Hollywood Studios came in 10th with 10.3 million, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom ranked 15th with 8.8 million.
| Park | World rank | 2025 visits | 2024 visits | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Magic Kingdom | 1 | 17,800,000 | 17,836,000 | -0.2% |
| EPCOT | 8 | 12,109,000 | 12,133,000 | -0.2% |
| Disney’s Hollywood Studios | 10 | 10,312,000 | 10,333,000 | -0.2% |
| Disney’s Animal Kingdom | 15 | 8,782,000 | 8,800,000 | -0.2% |
| Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon | 6 among water parks | 1,762,000 | 1,817,000 | -3.0% |
| Disney’s Blizzard Beach | 13 among water parks | 1,350,000 | 897,000 | +50.5% |
All four theme parks slipped by the same 0.2%. Together they went from 49.1 million visits in 2024 to 49.0 million in 2025, a drop of about 99,000 across an entire year. Spread over 365 days, that works out to roughly 270 fewer guests a day across all four parks, or fewer than 70 per park. You would never notice that from a bench on Main Street.
The water parks tell the more interesting story. Disney’s Blizzard Beach jumped 50.5% to 1.35 million guests and returned to the world’s top 20 water parks. The report credits the first summer since 2019 that Disney World ran both of its water parks at the same time. Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon dipped 3.0% to 1.76 million but stayed the most visited water park in North America. Count those two parks with the four theme parks and Disney World’s total gated attendance actually grew, from about 51.8 million visits in 2024 to 52.1 million in 2025.
What Epic Universe Did to Orlando
Epic Universe was the first major theme park built in Orlando in more than 25 years. It opened with five lands, including Celestial Park, Super Nintendo World, Dark Universe, a How to Train Your Dragon land and a new Wizarding World of Harry Potter area. Its 4 million visits came in just over seven months and ranked it 13th in North America.
Universal Studios Florida drew 9.3 million guests, down 2.1%, and Islands of Adventure drew 9.2 million, down 2.6%. Even with those dips, Universal Orlando’s three parks added about 3.5 million visits over 2024.
The report found that all seven established Orlando theme parks on its list slipped slightly. That group includes the four Disney World parks, the two original Universal parks and SeaWorld Orlando. Central Florida’s leading parks still grew 4.3% combined, which beat the 1.8% growth in tourists that Visit Orlando reported for 2025. That means Epic brought new visits to Orlando far more than it pulled guests away from Disney. The report also points to a sharp drop in travel from Canada, tied to tariff and trade tensions and a weaker Canadian dollar, as a drag on parks across North America.
At the company level, Disney Experiences stayed the world’s largest theme park operator with 146.8 million visits, up 1.1%. Universal grew 5.4%, the biggest gain among the top 10 operators, and passed Merlin Entertainments for third place. The report expects that from here on, every park in North America’s top 10 will belong to either Disney or Universal.
Our Take: Epic Universe Is a Great Park, Not a Disney Killer
We are in the parks daily, and these numbers match what we saw. Summer 2025 felt lighter than a normal Disney World summer. Other stretches of the year were packed. Even on the busiest days, the parks never got so full that you couldn’t find something to do or get away from the rush.
We love Epic Universe. We enjoy going, and it is a beautiful park. But it is not the Disney killer some fans promised before it opened. Its biggest problem is ride capacity. The park feels packed even though it is not running at full attendance yet, and wait times can get long. Epic is a beautiful addition to Orlando and the whole Florida market, and the numbers back that up. It grew the pie for Central Florida instead of taking a slice from Disney.
What This Means for Your Next Orlando Trip
Flat numbers are good news for planners. Disney World crowds in 2025 landed close to 2024 levels, so there is no sign Epic made Disney busier, and no sign Disney emptied out either. If you are adding Epic Universe to a Disney trip, give it a full day and plan for long waits on its biggest rides.
Disney is building too. New lands on the way include Piston Peak National Park in Frontierland and Villains Land at Magic Kingdom, along with Monstropolis at Hollywood Studios and Tropical Americas at Animal Kingdom. You can follow our Piston Peak National Park construction updates and our Villains Land coverage as those projects take shape.
One note on the numbers. The TEA Global Experience Index comes from the Themed Entertainment Association with research partners Entertainment + Culture Advisors and The Park Database. It uses figures from operators when companies share them and research estimates when they do not, so a 0.2% swing is best read as a direction rather than an exact head count. You can read the full report on the TEA website.
