Per capita guest spending rose 4% alongside expanded discounts
Walt Disney Co. ran against the theme-park industry’s broader summer slump, drawing 3% more visitors to its U.S. parks in the most recent quarter than a year earlier — its largest quarterly attendance gain since 2023, when the parks’ initial post-pandemic boom subsided.
The result stood in contrast to peers such as Comcast-owned Universal Orlando Resort and SeaWorld parent United Parks & Resorts, both of which have projected softer demand through the end of 2026. Disney Chief Financial Officer Hugh Johnston said the company had pivoted to focus on drawing more U.S. visitors to American theme parks by lowering prices and creating more deals. Disney’s per capita guest spending still rose 4% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, even with those price discounts.
The promotional stack ran several layers deep. Disney cut hotel rates at its Florida properties and offered discounts to holders of the Disney-branded Visa credit card. At Disneyland Resort in California, it introduced free park-hopping privileges between its two theme parks for children ages three through nine. At Walt Disney World, it rolled out a year-round promotion allowing younger children to eat for free when other members of their party booked a room at a Disney-owned hotel and purchased dining plans.
Those offers landed with families weighing a long-postponed trip. Doug Heyden Jr., a 35-year-old father from Rochester, N.Y., brought his family to Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom for the first time this summer after factoring in the special hotel pricing and the Visa-card discounts. During an evening parade, the character Tinkerbell singled out his infant twins and sprinkled them with pixie dust, he said. “Out of all these people, this one character just happens to pick them out in the dark,” Heyden said. “My wife was in tears.”
Josh Zickafoose, a 36-year-old transportation engineer from Ohio, said he and his wife booked a June trip when they learned about the hotel discounts and free meals for their kids. Their son turns 10 next year, at which point Walt Disney World’s ticketing rules treat him as an adult. “It was kind of perfect timing, what with the offers that they had and the age of our kids,” Zickafoose said. “It really made it a lot more affordable than when we had looked at going there in other years.”
Travel agents said the booking acceleration was visible early in the year. “I thought, ‘Maybe it’s a fluke, who knows what’s going on,’ but it’s really kept up month after month after month, even going into this fall and into next year,” said Jonathan de Araujo, owner of The Vacationeer Travel Agency, which handles between $70 million and $80 million in Disney bookings annually.
Even though kids are out of school for summer, the season can be a challenge for theme parks in warmer destinations like Florida that often deal with extreme heat.
The appetite has spilled beyond the summer window. Greg Antonelle, co-owner of the Florida-based agency MickeyTravels, said rising numbers of home-schooled and hybrid-schooled children, along with parents willing to pull their kids out of school for a trip, have pushed travel timing into the shoulder months. Seasonal events, including Halloween parties and the resort’s food-and-wine festivals, have reinforced that pattern, he said.
Walt Disney World has tailored its programming to the shift. The resort expanded its Cool Kids’ Summer program to include indoor activities — children’s dance parties and character meet-and-greets at certain Disney-owned hotels — running from late May through early September, said Chelsea Filley, the resort’s senior vice president for commercial strategy.
Universal’s parent Comcast has read conditions differently. “High gas prices and airfares have cooled demand for Universal theme park visitors,” Comcast Chief Financial Officer Jason Armstrong told investors earlier this month. He also noted that last year’s opening of the company’s Epic Universe park in Florida may have prompted some people to make their trips in 2025 instead of this year.
SeaWorld’s parent, United Parks & Resorts, has likewise projected softer results. The company said bad weather in July affected attendance, and the parks continue to see a decline in international visitors to the United States.
Disney has said the demand strength is durable. Based on the volume of forward bookings already in hand, the company is projecting the higher-traffic trend to continue, setting it up for what it has described as a bumper year in 2027 — one in which it plans to begin opening attractions tied to a multibillion-dollar slate of investments in its Experiences division, including rides based on the “Monsters, Inc.,” “Indiana Jones,” and “Cars” film franchises.