Daily Park Report: December 16, 2025

Animal Kingdom Recorded Ghost-Town Crowds While Hollywood Studios Held Steady

Animal Kingdom hit 1/10 crowds yesterday—an 11-minute median wait that represents a 43.5% drop from its 30-day average. On a Tuesday in mid-December, with no competing hard-ticket event at the park, guests who chose the Pandora-to-Africa route found walk-on conditions across nearly every attraction. Kilimanjaro Safaris posted 10-minute waits against a typical 30-minute baseline. DINOSAUR dropped to 5 minutes. This wasn't just light—it was empty.

Clear skies and a comfortable 70-degree high made for ideal touring weather, yet the real story was how Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party reshaped traffic across the entire resort. The party's 7 PM start time at Magic Kingdom created a familiar December pattern: guests without party tickets scattered to the other three parks, but this time the redistribution was uneven.

Animal Kingdom: The Overlooked Escape

At 1/10, Animal Kingdom delivered the lightest crowds of any park yesterday. The 11-minute resort-wide median meant headliners were essentially walk-ons all day. Kilimanjaro Safaris at 10 minutes is remarkable—guests typically budget 30+ minutes for the safari, making this a two-thirds reduction in expected wait. Zootopia: Better Zoogether! posted 10-minute waits (half its typical 20), though a 57-minute afternoon closure from 4:16 to 5:13 PM disrupted late-day touring plans for guests headed to the newer attraction.

Kali River Rapids went down for 87 minutes in the morning (9:01-10:28 AM), but with the ride already posting minimal waits, the impact on guest experience was negligible. When your baseline is near walk-on, a closure doesn't create the queue cascades you see at busier parks.

Magic Kingdom: Party Prep Kept Daytime Light

Magic Kingdom's 3/10 crowd level and 10-minute median (30.7% below average) confirms the party-day pattern. Guests without Christmas Party tickets largely avoided the park, knowing they'd be ushered out by early evening. The 5 PM peak hour—unusually late for Magic Kingdom—reflects party guests arriving while day guests departed.

The outlier story here cuts both ways. Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover doubled its typical wait to 10 minutes, suggesting guests gravitated toward low-commitment attractions while killing time before the party. Meanwhile, Tiana's Bayou Adventure posted just 5 minutes (66.7% below its 15-minute baseline)—extraordinary for a headliner that routinely commands hour-plus waits. However, a 93-minute closure from 4:28 to 6:01 PM means that 5-minute average came with a significant asterisk: the ride simply wasn't available during the transition period when party crowds were building.

Fantasyland went quiet across the board. "it's a small world," Dumbo, and Barnstormer all hit 5-minute waits—half their typical loads. Families touring Magic Kingdom during party-day afternoons found conditions they rarely see during Christmas season.

EPCOT: Festival Crowds Stayed Comfortable

Despite the International Festival of the Holidays drawing food-focused guests, EPCOT managed a 4/10 with a 15.8-minute median—21% below its 30-day average. The 11 AM peak suggests festival guests arrived for lunch at the global marketplaces, then dispersed rather than flooding attraction queues.

Spaceship Earth's 156-minute afternoon closure (2:52-5:28 PM) created the day's most significant operational disruption at EPCOT. The park's signature attraction going dark for over two and a half hours during prime touring time left guests seeking alternatives in Future World. The Seas with Nemo and Friends absorbed some of that demand while posting just 5-minute waits—half its typical load—suggesting even the spillover traffic was manageable.

Hollywood Studios: The Moderate Outlier

Hollywood Studios was the only park to exceed its 30-day average, hitting a 5/10 with a 36-minute median (+2.9%). The 1 PM peak hour at 45 minutes indicates classic mid-day congestion, likely driven by guests who skipped Magic Kingdom's party prep but wanted a park with headline attractions.

Star Tours doubled its typical wait to 10 minutes—still trivial, but notable given the attraction's usual walk-on status. The more consequential number: Slinky Dog Dash went down for 69 minutes during the late afternoon (5:01-6:10 PM), and Toy Story Mania added a 16-minute closure of its own (4:46-5:01 PM). Back-to-back Toy Story Land closures during the 5 PM hour forced families to pivot to Galaxy's Edge or Tower of Terror, compressing demand into the park's other headliners.

Downtime Impact

Yesterday's closures clustered in the late afternoon across all four parks. Spaceship Earth's 156-minute outage was the longest, but Tiana's 93-minute closure and Slinky Dog's 69-minute gap created more acute guest frustration—these are headliners where guests specifically plan their touring around availability. The 4-6 PM window saw simultaneous disruptions at Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios, EPCOT, and Animal Kingdom, an unusual convergence that suggests either coincidence or system-wide factors affecting operations.

Today's Outlook: Wednesday, December 17

Tonight's Disney Jollywood Nights at Hollywood Studios creates a different redistribution pattern than last night's Magic Kingdom party. Jollywood Nights draws a more adult-focused crowd, and the hard-ticket event starts later in the evening. Expect Hollywood Studios to run moderate through mid-afternoon, then thin out as day guests exit and event guests trickle in.

The strategic play today: Animal Kingdom. Yesterday's 1/10 conditions suggest guests are overlooking the park during Christmas party season, and there's no indication that changes today. With mostly cloudy skies and a high near 73°F, outdoor attractions like Kilimanjaro Safaris remain comfortable without the direct sun that can make midday queues uncomfortable.

EPCOT's Festival of the Holidays continues, but yesterday's 4/10 demonstrates that festival crowds don't translate to attraction crowds. If you're chasing food booths, go to EPCOT. If you're chasing rides, Animal Kingdom offers the path of least resistance.

Magic Kingdom rebounds to normal operations today with no party scheduled. Expect crowd levels to climb back toward the 5-6/10 range as guests who avoided yesterday return.

Track the Patterns

This split-park dynamic—one park at 1/10 while another holds at 5/10—is exactly what Lightning Brain detects, so you never waste touring hours at the crowded half. App coming soon to iOS at lightningbrain.app.