The Walt Disney Company reported its third quarter fiscal 2025 earnings, with the company’s Experiences (Parks & Resorts + Consumer Products) reporting $9.1 billion in revenue through June 28. This covers the good & bad of these results as they relate to Walt Disney World & Disneyland, including comments about Epic Universe, park attendance, hotel occupancy and more.
Company-wide, Disney’s beat forecasts on earnings per share of $1.61 adjusted vs. $1.47 expected. Net income for the quarter was $5.26 billion, more than double the $2.62 billion that the company reported for the same period last year. Disney’s overall revenue rose 2% to $23.65 billion, barely missing analyst expectations ($23.73 billion) for the first time since May 2024.
Disney upped its fiscal 2025 guidance on Wednesday and now expects adjusted EPS of $5.85, an increase of 18% from fiscal 2024, after another record-setting quarter. This was a common theme of the earnings call, especially on the Parks & Resorts side, with results that exceeded expectations and causing Disney to revise forward-looking expectations upwards.
Disney’s Experiences division (which includes Parks & Resorts) revenue rose 8% during the quarter to $9.09 billion and operating income increased 13% to $2.5 billion. Domestic theme park revenue rose 10% to $6.4 billion on $1.6 billion income, which is a whopping 22% increase. International park income actually dropped 3%, marking another quarter during which the strength of Walt Disney World and Disneyland picked up the slack for the international parks.
The company attributed the increased operating results at its domestic parks & experiences to growth at Walt Disney World and Disneyland and, to a lesser extent, Disney Cruise Line. This reflected an increase in guest spending due to higher spending at theme parks, plus higher DCL volumes attributable to increases in passenger cruise days and occupied room nights. Additional passenger cruise days reflected the launch of the Disney Treasure in the first quarter of the current year. Costs also increased primarily due to new guest offerings, including the fleet expansion at Disney Cruise Line.
Drilling down a little deeper, Disney’s 10-Q showed that attendance was flat at the domestic theme parks, but resort occupancy increased from 83% to 86% at Walt Disney World and Disneyland. Since there are exponentially more Disney-owned hotels in Florida than California, this is largely a story of Walt Disney World’s strength. Despite other decreases, international occupancy was also up, increasing from 82% to 87%.
Also interesting was the forward outlook for 2025. In the Executive Commentary, the company shared that they are “pleased with these results and encouraged by the continued resiliency of our domestic parks business, particularly at Walt Disney World given the increased competition in the Orlando market.”
Disney further shared that based on what they’re currently seeing across the Experiences segment, the company now expects segment operating income growth of approximately 8% for fiscal 2025 compared to the prior year. As you might recall, Disney had previously reiterated that it expected fiscal 2025 growth for the Experiences segment during the full-year to be 6% to 8% as compared to last year, with growth weighted in the second half of the year.
This is growth now coming in at the higher end of expectations. Just to emphasize, it’s happening despite Universal Orlando opening Epic Universe. And it’s happening at a time when Walt Disney World and Disneyland are picking up the slack for the international parks. Not only that, but it’s largely being fueled largely by higher hotel occupancy–numbers that are necessarily driven by Walt Disney World bookings since that’s where the hotels are (mostly). No matter how you slice it, Walt Disney World performing well. Stronger than expected.
During the earnings call itself, Disney CFO Hugh Johnston expressed enthusiasm for the Experiences segment, indicating it performed better than expected for the fiscal quarter. In response to an analyst question, Johnston revealed that “Walt Disney World just had a record Q3 revenue number…we certainly feel great about that.”
He shared that Disneyland Paris also overperformed, but conceded that was due to “easier overlaps due to the Olympics last year” (last summer was slow due to tourists avoiding Paris during the Olympics). Conversely, he shared that the biggest problem point is China, as the Chinese consumer is “challenged,” resulting in lower per guest spending even as attendance remains strong. This has been a trend over the last couple of calls.
In terms of bookings for the Experiences division in the fourth quarter, right now they are up about 6%. Overall, Disney feels positively about these numbers and the strong outlook for the Parks & Resorts businesses as a whole.
During the Q&A, an analyst asked about the mix of attendance at the domestic parks of local, out-of-state, and international tourists, and whether there any diversions from normal trends given the “noise” around the opening of Epic Universe and inbound international visitors to the United States? (Presumably for the reasons discussed in Canadians Are Canceling Walt Disney World Vacations.)
Johnston responded that “nothing material” is going on with the attendance mix. “Overall we feel good, certainly with the per caps, but we also feel good about the attendance as well. In light of the fact that there is a competitive offering in the marketplace, the fact that attendance came in as well as it did is something that we feel terrific about.”
This isn’t a huge surprise. In Why Summer is the New Low Crowds Season at Disney World, we offered several explanations for the lower wait times, and international visitation was not a significant driver. It has accounted for a 1 to 1.5% pullback, per Disney’s previous earnings call. Subsequently, we’ve theorized that an increase in South American tourists could be offsetting decreases from Canada and Europe, but there’s no support for that beyond our anecdotal observations. In any case, it would seem that the worst of the international decline is already over.
Orlando International Airport (MCO) just released its visitor volumes for June, and those numbers corroborate what Johnston said about nothing material happening with foreign visitors to the domestic parks. International MCO passenger traffic was up 5.0% for the month, while domestic passenger traffic was down 2.0% for a combined decrease of 1.1%. The rolling 12-month total stands at 56.5 million annual passengers. Despite the overall decrease in passenger traffic for the month, Orlando remains the busiest airport in Florida for the 12-months ended June 2025.
It’s also interesting that per guest spending numbers are up for the first half of summer. This is probably mostly a hotel occupancy story, as going from 83% to 86% is a material improvement and resorts are one of the biggest guest expenses. Even with flat attendance, shifting stays from off-site to on-site is huge. That’s doubly true when Universal Orlando just opened 3 new resorts, and countless other hotels have debuted recently in Central Florida.
The company did not break numbers down on the earnings call, but higher per guest spending was likely further boosted by higher base ticket prices (2025 saw the first increase since December 2022), as well as higher Lightning Lane costs (and the introduction of Premier Pass), as well as food & beverage and a range of other price increases that occurred at the start of the fiscal year back in October.
But it’s also worth acknowledging that this higher per guest spending number came in the face of special offers for admission and room rates that were better than last year. As we’ve pointed out, Summer 2025 had the most aggressive discounts we’ve seen in a long time. By carefully taking advantage of the latest wave of discounts for this summer on tickets & resorts, we’re seeing the lowest prices for Walt Disney World vacations in over 6 years. (See How to Get the Cheapest Walt Disney World Trip Since 2019.)
It’s likely that Disney captured many guests at higher prices, before the aforementioned discounts were rolled out. Honestly, this is a blind spot for us–and probably many other fans. We all see special offers and assume that rational guests are booking–or rebooking–those. In all likelihood, there’s a high percentage of guests who price out and book trips once. Whatever rate they got back in late December or January on summer travel, discounted or otherwise, is the price they’re paying.
The aggressive discounting would nevertheless help explain the increase in occupancy, and there was certainly extra bandwidth last summer in that regard. What’s also interesting here is that attendance was mostly flat year-over-year. It’s not as if last summer was particularly strong, crowd-wise, but we’ve nevertheless seen wait times trend downwards over the last three months.
This means that there’s a non-attendance explanation for the decrease. Here was our big theory covered in a recent crowd report: “We’ve written a lot about the impact of the DAS changes on wait times at Walt Disney World. Most recently just last month in Is Lightning Lane Multi Pass Still “Worth It” at Disney World?” One of our main points with this has been that standby lines are shorter and faster moving, with wait times being lower year-over-year as a direct result of the DAS crackdown. Even if attendance is exactly the same, crowd levels (as reflected in wait times) would be lower than the same dates last year as a result.”
Our extensive experiences in the parks over the last year have all reinforced this. If you’re wondering why the Lightning Lane field testing posts have dried up, it’s because I don’t really see the point. Line-skipping is less necessary and less useful than ever, which is a rare win for the base, non-monetized guest experience. For all of the complaining there has been about upcharges and other guest unfriendly changes, Walt Disney World quietly made one of the biggest improvements to the guest experience in ages, and it’s gone almost unnoticed by the fandom. We’ve done our part with multiple articles on the topic, but it’s still oddly under-discussed.
Although the next month-plus is typically the slowest stretch of the entire year at Walt Disney World, and October has been showing signs of softness in the last few years due to the loss of convention business, there’s no reason to expect anything different from the current quarter.
For one thing, because Disney reiterated its previous guidance for the domestic parks & resorts, and indicated they’d be at the higher end of the spectrum. There were also new openings in this quarter that could help buoy attendance, including Disney Starlight Night Parade at Magic Kingdom and Test Track in EPCOT. Not to mention the normal seasonal stuff that happens annually.
For another thing, because we’ve seen no signs of further slowdown in August through October. We expected to see aggressive discounts on par with the Disney+ deal for summer, but that never happened. There was a Priceline promo over Prime Day that had some great rates, but it was largely hit or miss; it’s hard to believe that moved the needle much.
Otherwise, discounts are completely in line with historical norms for the next couple of months. So even if they were up for July (the first month of the current quarter), that may not make much difference. Especially since that aggressive deal was a targeted one. Beyond that, Walt Disney World “benefits” from an easier comparison last year, when there were hurricane scares that resulted in a deluge of cancellations and hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Looking forward even further, it’s our expectation that October through December is actually up year-over-year. For one, those aforementioned hurricanes also adversely impacted October. For another thing, we saw materially weaker general public discounts in the latest round of special offers, with most resorts offering significantly lower percentage savings (e.g. 10% off this year vs. 20% off last year).
Not only that, but there’s limited availability for some resort/room/date combos. That’s fairly common with the October through December promos, as it’s a fan-favorite time to visit. It’s difficult to complain that this discount isn’t that good on the one hand, and then turn around and also complain that availability isn’t that good. The latter complaint is precisely why Disney isn’t offering particularly stellar savings. They don’t need to.
The final few months of the year are very different from the summer. Even during lower attendance dates from October through December, hotel occupancy (which is not indicative of crowds since most guests come from off-site) is high. It certainly appears that the end of the calendar year–or start of the next fiscal year–is going to be a strong one for Walt Disney World. Honestly, that’s probably less impressive than the strength of this summer given the surrounding circumstances.
Ultimately, it was a strong quarter for the company as a whole, but especially the Disney Experiences division and the domestic Parks & Resorts, in particular. Walt Disney World and Disneyland, as well as Disney Cruise Line were real bright spots. Hopefully that reinforces the company’s bullishness in the business, and investing in Parks & Resorts over the next decade.
Walt Disney World’s record quarter despite the opening of Epic Universe should not be overlooked. While Comcast’s recent earnings call expressed excitement and optimism for that new park’s opening, it also hinted at some of the same issues (capacity and reliability) that we’ve been discussing for a while (see Why You Should Skip Epic Universe Until 2026). Some fans so badly want to see Disney taken down a peg or go back to how things were in the ‘good ole days’ that they are willfully ignoring the weaknesses of Epic Universe, or at least the challenges presented by a new theme park.
As should be painfully obvious by now, Universal is not going to eat Disney’s lunch and Epic Universe isn’t hurting Walt Disney World. To be sure, Epic Universe is a great theme park that will be a formidable force over time. Honestly, I still don’t think the “rising tides” thesis is correct; Epic Universe is still scaling up and the park’s demand and capacity normalizing over time will likely give Universal Orlando a hotel occupancy boost. But nothing we’re seeing right now offers any support to claims that Epic Universe is negatively impacting Walt Disney World in any way, shape or form.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on the Walt Disney Company’s Q3FY25 earnings? Thoughts on the growth of the domestic parks versus the underperformance of the international parks (namely China)? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any other thoughts or commentary to add? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
