It takes real skill to drive this many customers away.
The July 4th weekend was a 10-year-low for the massive company's Disney World amusement park in Orlando, but all the parks have been suffering recently.
More from The Wall Street Journal:
Park visitors in recent weeks have had significantly lower wait times to get on rides, according to data from Touring Plans, a company that tracks wait times at major amusement parks, including Disney World and Disneyland in California. Industry analysts say shorter wait times generally correlate with smaller crowds.
The average posted wait time at the Magic Kingdom park in Florida — which has a special fireworks display on July 4 — was 27 minutes this year for the holiday, down from 31 minutes in 2022 and 47 minutes in 2019, the Touring Plans analysis shows.
"It's something that nobody would have predicted — just unfathomable," says Len Testa, a computer scientist who runs Touring Plans. Testa says wait times rose in the following days.
The Journal offers an assortment of potential reasons for the lull: Cruises and European vacations are back after the pandemic, Disney isn't offering much new, and Disney wants to slim down the crowds for richer guests anyway.
But unlike the journalist class, most of America understands the two primary reasons:
- Your wallet is hurting
- Disney went woke
