The only constant is change — and that’s especially true at Disney World.
Magic Kingdom
Walt Disney believed that the parks would never truly be finished, and we’ve seen that firsthand lately with new rides, restaurants, and even massive transformations like we saw at EPCOT. But, Disney isn’t showing any signs of slowing down at all and we’re predicting three huge changes for Disney World in 2025. Let’s get into it.
Disney World is going through some major changes — and we’re predicting even more for 2025!
Impacted Crowds
In case you haven’t heard, a brand new theme park is coming to Universal Orlando Resort in 2025! Epic Universe will be a third gate featuring lands like Celestial Park, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, SUPER NINTENDO WORLD, How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk, and Dark Universe. And, because this brand new park is opening in 2025 — we have a hunch that Disney World crowds could be impacted.
Aerial overview of Epic Universe via bioreconstruct
We could see things going two different ways. On the one hand, it’s possible that folks will be forced to decide between a vacation to Disney World or a vacation to Epic Universe, which could lead to fewer crowds at Disney World if people ultimately decide to go to Epic Universe.
©Universal
On the other hand, though, people could just choose to combine vacations and tack on days at both Disney World and Epic Universe, which could lead to even more crowds at the Most Magical Place on Earth. Disney World also has quite a few new expansions and new lands in the works, but most of which aren’t set to open until after 2025. That doesn’t mean we won’t start seeing changes though!
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Construction Everywhere
Speaking of those changes coming to Disney World… remember all those walls all around EPCOT we all just recently got over putting up with for years? Well, get ready because construction walls will no doubt be back in 2025 — and they will be everywhere! The Cars Land retheme and Villains Land expansion at Magic Kingdom will no doubt bring quite a bit of construction to the park, along with the new Monsters Inc. Land wreaking havoc at Hollywood Studios.
Construction walls up
And, of course — there’s the massive Tropical Americas retheme of DinoLand, U.S.A. at Animal Kingdom we’ll have to deal with. It’s unclear just how all of this construction will impact the parks, but you can likely expect to have to find some alternate routes on your 2025 visits — along with all those lovely, temporary construction walls.
No More Virtual Queues
Okay — hear us out. We know this one is kind of wild, but it’s quite possible that we could see no virtual queues at Disney World in 2025! Right now, there are only two virtual queues at Disney World: Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at Magic Kingdom and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at EPCOT. TRON also debuted with a virtual queue, but the ride officially switched to standby on September 9th, 2024.
Cosmic Rewind
Disney typically uses a virtual queue system when a new ride opens in an effort to manage capacity. But, after a while, the virtual queue usually goes away once the initial hype for a ride has died down. TRON didn’t have a VQ for nearly as long as other rides have, like Cosmic Rewind for example, which has had one of the longest-running VQs since opening.
Depending on the demand for Cosmic Rewind and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, we could see those rides switch to standby before too long, meaning we could see a Disney World with no virtual queues at all.
Tiana’s Bayou Adventure in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom
As of now, no new Disney World rides are slated to open in 2025 — except for the newly reimagined Test Track at EPCOT. It’s certainly possible that Disney could opt to use a virtual queue for Test Track when it opens, but as of now, we don’t have any official word on that. Cosmic Rewind could hang onto its VQ for a while as it is an incredibly popular EPCOT ride, but Disney did previously indicate that Tiana’s would switch to standby not too long after opening.
But, we don’t claim to know the future — so we’ll have to wait until 2025 to see if we’re right about that!
TRON Lightcycle / Run
One thing is for sure, we’ll be on the lookout for the latest updates from Disney World and more, so stay tuned to the Disney Food Blog if you don’t want to miss a thing!
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We were just in Disney 8.28 thru 9.2….and the VQ for Tron was a joke. My daughter make the reservation at 6am…and guess what they waited inline for 70 minutes. We’ve been going to Disney since 1977, my husband since 1971…this is ridiculous.
This time we only did 3-day hopper tickets and enjoyed places near and around Orlando that we never have.
Keep your money – the Mouse has enough!
My husband and I are definitely considering a switch to Universal. We’ve been coming to Disney World since they opened in 1971, and never thought we would feel this way. We did not renew our annual passes this year and are seriously considering selling our DVC membership. Why? Because Disney’s DAS system used to stand for Disability Access System. Now it stands for “Discriminatory Access System “, acknowledging only one particular disability (ADD/ADHD) and denying all others, regardless of the severity. It is absolutely unconscionable that they turn away my husband in his 70’s with IBS and my permanently disabled son in a wheelchair. Walt must be turning in his grave! Shame on you Disney World! Do better!
Unless Disney offers massive discounts, I can’t see anyone choosing a tired old park filled with construction over a brand new park with state of the art attractions. I think Disney will has priced themselves out of business next year.
Thank you for your excellent ongoing information and updates! We have plans to visit the last week of January 2025. We used to be AP holders for many years and visited two to three three times a year (our first visit was August 1980)…it has been several years now and I am overwhelmed by the changes and ongoing changes. The necessity of using an app all day, trying to purchase Lightening Lane (not a clue how it works) etc. it sounds awful. I will be 77 when we go and feeling beyond overwhelmed. Going from being an expert to being clueless is draining. No matter how much I read, things change and I am beginning to dread our trip. It’s supposed to be grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter birthday celebration, but it is feeling anything but special. How do guests navigate the constantly changing information and being able to enjoy the parks. We are early morning park goers, take a mid day break then back for a few hours in the evening at the same, or often different park. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
I won’t be too sad if everyone heads over to Universal in 2025 while I’m enjoying my Disney trip 🤷♀️
Our last few trips have been very crowded, so I think we’re due for a low crowd trip!
Hopefully the (Epic) universe is feeling me on this one 🤣
I am also not a fan of all the techy changes and the up charges to avoid long llines when ticket prices are already steep!….THAT SAID, I was just there for a six day trip, and my daughter and I accepted that we would just wait in lines, we did go to a Halloween party, to be sure to ride Tiana, and we got Lightening Lane multi pass for one day at HS, because we wanted to be sure to ride a few things there, and that park is small. By doing this, we could avoid tech quite a bit, and we used the rain to our advantage-sporting ponchos unapologetically!
As for virtual queues, we had luck at 7am and usually at 1, which required a lot of park hopping, but we did it….The only thing that really was a downer was the DAS/cast member stuff! I am disabled and did the interview , not expecting to get the DAS, but wanted to understand how to navigate since I have severed tendons in my knee at present?…I was told to let cast members know that I had to avoid stairs at necessary rides, and got various solutions even at the same ride, and often snide and rude cast members (ironically, the worst was when I wanted to walk up the ramp up to the MK railroad.) …The tech takes away the sweet interaction and human recognition with cast members, so it was very antisocial.