An economic pinch on the middle class, the cost of theme park experiences and the lure of fresh travel destinations elsewhere contributed to fewer hotel visitors in Central Florida and sluggish attendance at Orlando’s theme parks this summer, experts say.

For the past couple of months, Central Florida’s attractions have been jammed on some days but uncharacteristically uncrowded on other days.

“It’s very mixed, depending on the week,” said Ethan Hershaft, who frequents the parks regularly as the owner of the Orlando Tourist channel on YouTube. “July wasn’t as busy as last year. In my opinion, nothing felt like ‘OK, this is peak season.’ I didn’t really get that feeling this summer.”

Florida resorts, in general, saw attendance surge coming out of the pandemic era, but area hotels’ occupancy rates have dipped every month of 2024 compared with a year ago, according STR’s Destination Report, which monitors U.S. markets.

“Now the market is normalizing, going back to more sustainable, typical rate growth,” said Michael Stathokostopoulos, senior director of hospitality analytics at CoStar Group.

While hotel occupancy is on the uptick in urban centers such as New York, Boston and Washington, the type of hotels that dominate Central Florida are weathering challenges, he said. In Orlando, June 2024 occupancy was down 2% compared with a year earlier. In July, it was a 3.1% decrease.

Middle class feeling pinched

“There seems to be some weakening in domestic leisure because of what’s happening with the high prices, and it started affecting people, especially the middle-income and budget-conscious travelers,” Stathokostopoulous said.

Those consumers are feeling economic pinches, agreed Jaime Noble, an independent travel agent based in Sanford.

“People are not spending like they were. It’s an election year, so, no matter how you feel about that, it definitely affects the economy. People kind of are waiting to see what’s going to happen,” Noble said.

“Interest rates have skyrocketed. The cost of milk is super high. So, in general, we’re definitely spending more just for living right now,” she said.

Pricing is an issue across the attractions industry, said Dennis Speigel, CEO of International Theme Park Services.

He traced the increase in cost awareness to Bob Chapek’s tenure as CEO of Walt Disney Co. from 2020 to 2022.  Some Disney fans thought Chapek pushed for the company’s financial gains at the expensive of its creative focus.

“All of that started churning and burning. That not only affected Disney … but it affected the whole industry,” Speigel said. “There was a trickle-down effect on that, and people began either understanding/believing it is expensive to go to theme parks. So there has to be a correction.”

Walt Disney World has a reputation as “a complicated and expensive vacation,” said Len Testa, who owns Touring Plans, a vacation-planning website.

Some Disney tickets require specific park reservations, and the use of a smartphone app to schedule ride times is an irritant for some customers, Testa said. These developments arrived during pandemic, but when they continued some visitors found them inconvenient and a deterrent to spontaneity and that could be a factor in vacation decision-making, he said.

In late June, Disney loosened its reservations rules and streamlined its shorter-queue Lightning Lane options, which now allows visitors to pay to lock down plans further in advance.

“Some of that they’ve changed recently, but that’s going to take several months to percolate through, for word of mouth to get back to people, saying ‘Oh no, it was fine,” Testa said. “It’s good that they started now, though.”

Highs and lows

This season has been a reminder about the ebb and flow of Florida tourism, he said.

“A period like 2016 to 2019, it was just constant growth. We didn’t really have much downtime,” Testa said. “But this, this is the natural cycle.”

Visit Florida announced that 34.2 million visitors came to Florida in the second quarter of this year, or from April to June, a 1.7% increase over the same period in 2023.

Attendance for theme parks is not made public.

In Disney’s most recent quarterly earnings report, revenue from its parks division rose 2% worldwide, which CEO Robert Iger called “a bit of a slowdown.”

Revenue was down almost 11% at Universal’s theme parks, according to Comcast Corp.’s quarterly report released in July.

“I think that the trends that we are experiencing likely continue until we get to Epic opening up sometime next year,” said Michael Cavanagh, president of Comcast, parent company of NBCUniversal, when the report was released.

Epic is under construction near Orange County Convention Center and will be the first theme park to open in Orlando since Islands of Adventure in 1999.

United Parks, the Orlando-based company that operates SeaWorld parks and other attractions, reported a 0.3% revenue increase for its third fiscal quarter, running from May through July.

The parks have added attractions this summer. Universal Studios opened DreamWorks Land, a revamped kids are; Magic Kingdom introduced Tiana’s Bayou Adventure ride; and SeaWorld Orlando debuted its Penguin Trek roller coaster.

The companies also put out hotel specials, introduced Florida resident deals and ticket offers and increased annual passholder benefits. SeaWorld has offered free guest tickets to its passholders, Hershaft said.

“They’ve done it the last three months in a row. So you could tell that they’re definitely hurting for attendance,” he said. “I feel like that’s been helping them.”

New and next

Crowds still have gathered, particularly for new park offerings.

Universal Studios visitors have camped out for viewing spots at the “CineSational” end-of-day show and jammed the sidewalks for the Mega Movie Parade, Hershaft said. Trollercoaster, a kiddie ride in its DreamWorks Land, has had waits of 40 minutes to an hour. The lines have been similar for Penguin Trek, he said.

A drone show called “Disney Dreams That Soar” has drawn consistent crowds nightly at Disney Springs, Hershaft said. That production’s run ends at the shopping and entertainment complex Monday.

 

But the new attractions aren’t as widely anticipated as Epic Universe.

“I believe people were and are waiting for Epic Universe, and they’re going to see a big uptick next year when that opens,” Speigel said.

A precise opening date has not been announced. Two of the three Universal hotels near Epic are slated to open in January and February.

Folks who came to Florida as the pandemic eased may be seeking other vacation options now, said Noble, the travel agent.

“Maybe they’ve been there, done that with Disney. They’re waiting for the new things. Or, hey, now’s a good time to go to Europe or travel around America and see other spots,” she said. “Millennials, they love cruising. … And so the cruise industry is skyrocketing.”

Despite the perception of a not-so-hot summer, Noble, an annual passholder at Disney World and Universal Orlando, said the parks have been “pretty busy” whenever she’s visited.

“I mean, nobody’s going broke,” she said.

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