Walt Disney World Powers Strong Q3 as Domestic Park Attendance Grows 3%

6 days ago in "The Walt Disney Company"

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Walt Disney Company headquarters in Burbank, California

Posted: Wednesday August 5, 2026 6:50am ET by WDWMAGIC Staff

Disney released its fiscal third quarter 2026 earnings today, and Walt Disney World had a big part in the results. The Experiences segment, which covers the theme parks, resorts, and Disney Cruise Line, posted double-digit revenue growth for the quarter ended June 27, 2026.

Here's a breakdown of the numbers, with a close look at what happened at the parks.

Walt Disney Company headquarters in Burbank, California

Walt Disney World and the Experiences Segment

Disney called out Walt Disney World specifically as having a standout quarter. The company pointed to healthy attendance from domestic tourists and annual passholders, plus summer promotions and new experiences that added to the growth.

Across the Experiences segment as a whole:

Total revenue: $9.97 billion, up 10% from $9.09 billion a year ago
Operating income: $3.02 billion, up 20% from $2.52 billion
Domestic parks and experiences revenue grew 11%
Global guests (a metric combining park attendance and cruise passenger days) grew 4%
Domestic park attendance grew 3%
Per capita spending at domestic parks grew 4%

Theme park admissions revenue rose 9%, made up of a 5% lift from higher average ticket prices and a 3% increase from more visitors. Resorts and vacations revenue jumped 17%, driven mostly by more cruise days (10%), plus higher hotel rates (2%) and more occupied room nights (2%). Merchandise, food, and beverage revenue at the parks grew 7%, split between more volume (4%) and higher guest spending (3%).

Domestic Parks & Experiences revenue came in at $7.12 billion, up 11% year over year. International parks added $1.79 billion, up 6%. Domestic segment operating income jumped 27% to $2.09 billion, while international operating income dipped 13% to $369 million.

Disney also flagged a roughly $100 million tariff refund this quarter, which added about four points to the Experiences segment's operating income growth. The company said this had no effect on segment revenue, and it doesn't expect future tariff refunds to be significant.

The Experiences segment's operating margin for the nine months through June 27 sat at about 30%.

Disney Cruise Line growth

This was the first full quarter with two new ships, the Disney Destiny and Disney Adventure, in service. Together, they added roughly 50% more stateroom capacity compared to the same quarter last year. Disney said occupancy and forward bookings on the new ships remain strong.

Looking further out, Disney has more ships planned: the Disney Believe in late 2027, "Ship 11" in 2029, an Oriental Land Company ship in 2029, "Ship 12" in late 2029, and "Ship 13" in late 2030.

New attractions and what's next

Disney rolled out its first-ever "day-and-date" attraction update, retheming Millennium Falcon: Smuggler's Run at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge with Mandalorian elements, simultaneously at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

The earnings release also included a look at upcoming additions across Disney's parks. For Walt Disney World, that list includes a Villains-themed area, a Monsters, Inc. area, a Tropical Americas area, and a Cars-themed area. Other properties are getting their own additions too: Disneyland Resort is adding a Coco-themed attraction and expanding Avengers Campus, plus an Avatar experience is planned. Disneyland Paris is adding a Lion King-themed area, Hong Kong Disneyland a Marvel-themed attraction, and Shanghai Disney Resort a Spider-Man-themed land. Disney Vacation Club is building the Disney Lakeshore Lodge, and Disney Abu Dhabi remains in development.

Disney said it expects another quarter of global guest growth in fiscal Q4, excluding the extra 53rd week this fiscal year, even with continued softness in Asia attendance. Forward bookings at Walt Disney World remain strong heading into the next quarter.

Toy Story 5 also had a ripple effect on the parks business. The film passed $1 billion in global box office, bringing the franchise's lifetime box office past $4 billion. Toy Story merchandise sales helped drive the strongest year-over-year Consumer Products revenue growth in 20 quarters. Consumer Products revenue, now reported within Experiences, hit $1.07 billion for the quarter, up 7%, with operating income up 26% to $560 million.

The Rest of the Company

Disney's total revenue for the quarter came in at $25.2 billion, up 7% from $23.7 billion a year ago. Income before income taxes rose 14% to $3.6 billion. Total segment operating income increased 21% to $5.6 billion.

Diluted earnings per share fell to $1.51 from $2.92, mostly due to one-time items in last year's numbers. Adjusted earnings per share, which strips out those items, rose to $2.06 from $1.61, a 28% increase.

Entertainment segment: Revenue grew 6% to $11.3 billion, and operating income jumped 64% to $1.68 billion. Streaming (Disney+, Hulu, and Disney+ Hotstar) subscription revenue grew 15%, and streaming operating income more than doubled to $712 million. Disney credited growth in both subscribers and rates, along with continued declines in churn.

Sports segment: Revenue grew 4% to $4.5 billion, but operating income fell 17% to $858 million. Disney pointed to four-game sweeps in the early rounds of the NBA Playoffs and a network carriage dispute as factors. On the plus side, ESPN had its most-watched fiscal Q3 since 2016, with the NBA and NHL playoffs finishing as the most-viewed ever on Disney's networks. ESPN also had a record month for digital reach in June, hitting nearly 230 million unique fans.

Other business notes:

Disney agreed to sell its 50% stake in A+E Global Media to an affiliate of Hearst Corporation for about $1.2 billion in cash, expected to close by the end of fiscal 2026
Disney now targets at least $9 billion in share repurchases for fiscal 2026, up from prior guidance, partly funded by the A+E sale proceeds
Starting in fiscal 2027, Disney plans to shift much of its Consumer Products business from the Experiences segment into the Entertainment segment
Cash from operations for the nine-month period was $12.5 billion, down from $13.6 billion a year ago, mainly due to higher tax payments

Looking Ahead

Disney reiterated its outlook for fiscal 2026, expecting adjusted EPS growth of about 12% excluding the extra 53rd week, or about 16% including it. The company expects Q4 total segment operating income of about $4.9 billion, with the 53rd week adding roughly $600 million spread across segments.

For Experiences specifically, Disney now expects full-year segment operating income growth to land at the high end of its prior high-single-digit guidance, excluding the 53rd week impact.

Disney's Form 10-Q and full earnings details are available at disney.com/investors.

Discuss on the Forums

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SamusAranX1 day ago

It also pains me that modern day TDO fails to realize just how iconic certain attractions / original lands (if well done) became to the point they became their own IP. Pirates most notably. They take a life of their own and while I don’t have access to numbers, I am sure they move merch. Heck they spawn films more than just PoTC. Jungle cruise had the unfortunate fate and timing of the pandemic, but there obviously was something that Disney saw that got it green lighted. I’m not against it completely; I love attractions like TSMM, GoTG:CR, and more; I just miss the mix of diversity they used to give us. Unfortunately the bottle was uncorked and synergy will continue to rule the day

Sir_Cliff1 day ago

This is very much my impression and makes me throw up my hands a little at the IP invasion. I've mentioned this before, but being at Disneyland with someone who seemed perplexed at the end of Great Moments with Mr Lincoln because they were expecting something more "Disney" was a bit of a watershed for me. I think particularly not respecting or trusting their audience a little more is part of what is going on with the lack of attractions not based around existing IPs. For example, I'm sure a marketing push similar to the one they did for Expedition Everest would still work today for a strong original concept and I think Disney is a company with enough resources and ability to do that and the parks will ultimately be more appealing. As with endless sequels and remakes, though, sometimes I look at what audiences seem to respond to and find it hard to blame the company for leaning into the easy money.

Chi841 day ago

They better hurry up and figure it out before we run out of patience - or time.

HauntedPirate1 day ago

Aka. Management that does not understand and has not understood theme parks or themed entertainment for the better part of 2 decades.

Animaniac93-982 days ago

This would also explain why those adults who only recently started visiting the parks and participating in their creative process were so perplexed by what was actually in them. Those who did visit the parks with any regularity as children pre-2000 were probably a relatively small group restricted by family finances and geography. Now these Disney adults are in lockstep with the company's philosophy about reshaping everything in the parks and resorts to just be about the IP they are immediately familiar with. But this is also Disney's fault for creating an expectation gap in their marketing, failing to educate their fans about why the parks were built that way and not respecting or trusting their audience to enjoy themed entertainment on its merits.

Chi842 days ago

Thanks for posting this. I hope everyone watches these and makes their own judgment. There’s a well-known saying that familiarity breeds contempt. Maybe some people need to take a step back so they can look at Disney from a fresh perspective. There’s nothing like Disney.

BrianLo2 days ago

Definitely this. Josh presented D+ as the front door on the call and I think that’s accurate. There’s a whole Generation Alpha raised on Bluey, Frozen and Moana on repeat. I don’t think the kids of millennials are anything we need to worry about. If anything, today’s kids are better connected to the brand than Gen Z were. As long as the parks stay fresh and are not seen as a stagnant, rotting product, Experiences should still be safe for another generation. Opinions will delineate on that, but I’d argue whether ‘we’ like what they are doing or not, the product has at least been less stagnant from ~2016 onward than it was for the childhood of Gen Z. I see that in the investment numbers, too.

Sir_Cliff2 days ago

That is a very good point; with attendance gains, it at least seems likely that there are more children in raw numbers visiting the parks now than were visiting in the generations that created the "Disney adults". It would indeed be nice to know how or if the guest mix has actually changed over time, though. Indeed. My understanding of the adults of today who have nostalgia for Disney and the specific phenomenon of the "Disney adult" is that this nostalgia is connected more to growing up with "Disney" than with the theme parks themselves. That's at least why I thought a lot of people connected the phenomenon to an attachment to IPs and "the brand." If that is the case, as mentioned before, Disney seems as present in the lives of today's children as it likely ever was, if not more so. I think Disney+ by itself is probably playing the role of the old VHS titles but turbocharged in bringing their content into family homes.

BrianLo2 days ago

For this to also be true, I’d expect some evidence on the ground. I wish we had proper demographic parks data. While I’m sure there is less kids in the attendance mix due to smaller family sizes, I’m not sure if there are less children in raw numbers than the 90’s (when today’s disney adults first visited) due to broad based attendance gains. This seems more of a theoretical issue that might impact generation Charlie or Delta when they shift into adulthood, than something currently underway. The last factor is there is a whole slew of “Disney adults” whom never visited the parks as children. Particularly so in Shanghai, but it’s in the states. As you say, it’s all the more debatable when the competitor has been reluctant to ever appeal to this demo for the last 25 years anyways. If anyone knows how to build a theme park product for all, Disney isn’t the problem.

monothingie3 days ago

I thought it was fantastic, since it’s not just strictly a firework show I didn’t compare it to HEA or Wishes. But I feel it is much better than Luminous. The pyro and the water effects objectively are much better. While it’s not as long in length, Luminous just tends to drag while this moves on at a good pace.

Touchdown3 days ago

Celestial Goodnight is a very nice show, and extremely welcome at Epic, but it’s not HEA, or Luminous, heck it’s not Cinesational either. CG uses a slightly extended soundtrack the fountain show uses, it doesn’t stir your emotions or really have much of a plot, it’s just a big boom (not that there’s anything wrong with that.) It’s better than Mickeys Mix Magic, Believe in Holiday Magic, and Ignite. It needs more emotion to get into the upper echelons.

Sir_Cliff3 days ago

I'm kind of curious to know in what way you think Celestial Goodnight "kicks the crap out of any Disney night time entertainment past or present." Is it in storytelling, spectacle, or some other level? To refresh your memory and to give context to your opinions on what constitutes top quality theme park entertainment, here are Celestial Goodnight and two nighttime offerings currently running at WDW that you are suggesting it kicks the crap out of:

Sir_Cliff3 days ago

We may be talking at cross purposes here, but the one thing I would say is that this seems like a structural issue beyond Disney's control (if it indeed turns out to be true) rather than one of their own making. My main point here is that, if any theme park company looks well placed to ride out such structural changes in the economy and society, it's Disney. I am not a fan of a lot of changes in recent decades, including the IP invasion and uncharges. I look at results like this last quarter's, though, and feel like I have to hand it to them in that no company seems as able to ride through turbulence and come out relatively unscathed in the theme park industry as well as Disney. In terms of all of things you're mentioning, I also don't really see why they wouldn't be able to adapt to capture the theme park market that still exists better than anyone else in the industry.

Mr. Sullivan3 days ago

I don’t disagree with you to be clear. I love Universal, love their parks, and have been so happy to see their successes. But as a fan I also think their issues are quite visible. And to their utmost credit they ARE figuring them out and closing that gap. I just think that gap is still a bit larger than some would like to think it is. Universal has had amazing growth and created amazing offerings. They are in my eyes a perfectly doable alternative to a week at Disney. I just don’t think most guests are totally sold on all of that yet, and that’s something Universal has to figure out. They haven’t successfully put the bug in enough people’s ear that they are a true Disney alternative, even if they have a lot of amazing things to show for it. The cannibalization argument some have made I think rings true. Universal and Disney have both gotten big enough that it’s becoming a one or the other situation rather than a dabble of both. They’re both sucking up so much air that people can’t really do both in totality like they could have awhile ago. And right now I think Universal’s kind of losing that battle. Universal’s consistent issue, at least in my eyes, is not their offerings but rather how they sell them. They have done a great job of selling why Universal is fun to visit, but have not done a good job of selling why someone should just visit them instead of doing a Universal segment of their Disney vacation. And as such, now that Universal is a bigger bite to chew, people are gonna be a bit more selective with how they do their Universal segment. I’d love to see some hard data on how much or little growth Universal has seen in the on property vacation package sector but I’d have to imagine the guest percentage (as in the amount of guests in the park each day there on a vacation package vs a day ticket) is still smaller than Disney’s. I’m also just generally concerned about what happens from here (as in once all in progress projects are complete) given the recent news that Comcast-Universal is splitting and the parks are gonna be on the less favorable side of it.