The Walt Disney Company reported its first quarter fiscal 2026 results this morning with CEO Bob Iger and CFO Hugh Johnston highlighting the company’s successes, while acknowledging challenges ahead. This covers the good & bad of these results as they relate to Walt Disney World & Disneyland, including commentary about international headwinds, park attendance, hotel occupancy & more.
Company-wide, Disney’s beat forecasts on earnings per share of $1.63 adjusted vs. $1.57 expected, as well as on revenue, with $25.98 billion vs. $25.74 billion expected. Net income for the quarter was $2.48 billion, down from $2.64 billion in the same period a year earlier. Overall revenue for Disney’s fiscal first quarter was roughly $26 billion, up 5% year over year.
In Disney’s outlook for fiscal year 2026, the company said it’s on track to repurchase $7 billion stock. It also expects double-digit growth in adjusted earnings per share and $19 billion in cash provided by operations. Shortly after reporting these results, and amid swirling succession rumors, Disney’s stock was down slightly in after hours trading.
“We are pleased with the start to our fiscal year, and our achievements reflect the tremendous progress we’ve made,” said Robert A. Iger, Chief Executive Officer, The Walt Disney Company. “We delivered strong box office performance in calendar year 2025 with billion-dollar hits like Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash, franchises that generate value across many of our businesses. As we continue to manage our company for the future, I am incredibly proud of all that we’ve accomplished over the past three years.”
Streaming was once again a bright spot in the business as consumers continued to turn away from the pay TV bundle. Unfortunately, last quarter was the final time that Disney reported subscriber stats–in a move that followed industry leader Netflix–but the streaming unit did record $500 million in operating income, an increase of roughly $200 million year over year.
Unsurprisingly, the theme parks are once again a bright spot–and the focus on this website–so let’s turn to that segment…
Disney’s Experiences segment (including Parks & Resorts) delivered record revenue for the quarter, breaking the $10 billion barrier for the first time ever.
Disney’s domestic theme parks recorded $6.91 billion in revenue, with the international parks reporting $1.75 billion in revenue. (The balance of the $10 billion came from consumer products, which is part of the segment.) That was an increase of 7% year over year for both. Walt Disney World and Disneyland reported attendance increases, while “international visitation was softer,” CFO Hugh Johnston said.
In its second quarter outlook, Disney warned of only modest operating income growth due to a combination of factors, including international visitation headwinds at Walt Disney World & Disneyland, pre-launch costs for the Disney Adventure at Disney Cruise Line and pre-opening costs for World of Frozen at Disneyland Paris.
Drilling down a little deeper, Disney’s 10-Q showed that attendance was up 1% year over year in the first quarter at the domestic theme parks. This contrasts both the same quarter last year (relative to 2024), when attendance was down 2%, and the last full fiscal year, when attendance was down 1%.
The background here is Hurricanes Helene and Milton in 2024, the latter of which caused the parks to close and had a long tail of lower crowds due to cancellations in the days and weeks afterwards. The adverse impact of the hurricanes was $120 million on operating income, and Disney also attributed the 2% quarterly decrease to these hurricanes.
In short, the hurricanes made for an easier comparison to lap. And if anything, being up only 1% in the absence of any hurricanes this quarter, means Walt Disney World and Disneyland are still down 1% below the baseline that we should’ve expected to see in a normal environment if attendance were actually holding steady. It should be interesting to see what happens with attendance next quarter.
In far less surprising news, domestic parks reported an increase in per guest spending of 4%, which is fairly significant but also pretty much par for the course at this point. The last full fiscal year had 5% growth, and most quarters have been in the 3% to 6% range.
Disney doesn’t specifically say what drove higher per guest spending. Our best guess is higher prices on tickets, food, and pretty much everything else. Lightning Lane prices are also up across the board, and then there’s the new-ish Premier Pass.
Not coincidentally, price increases hit at the start of the new fiscal year, with pretty much across-the-board increases by about 3-6%. What we’ve seen lately with price increases is more modest ones keeping pace with inflation, and the increase in per guest spending could largely be an outgrowth of that.
During the Q&A, Johnston was asked about the trajectory of Walt Disney World, and the supposed bounceback in attendance for the quarter.
Johnston acknowledged that Walt Disney World benefited from the comparison to the hurricanes, but said that the domestic parks were up independently of that. He offered no explanation as to how, but again, we’d point out that Disney previously attributed the 2% decline entirely to the hurricanes. By our math, being up 1% up after 2% down is still down overall.
Johnston also shared that forward bookings are up 5% for the full year, but weighted for the back half (the next fiscal year starts on October 1, 2026, so the back half of the fiscal year presumably means roughly June through September). He shared that bookings are trending positively, and that there’s no update to guidance.
In this case, there’s every reason to take Johnston’s word about bookings at face value. He made similar comments during earnings calls last year, which fans doubted due to Epic Universe, and in fact, occupancy for the full year was up.
Walt Disney World has already released a flurry of deals for the first half of 2026, including some unprecedented ones. While some might construe these as a warning sign of a looming slowdown, our view is that Walt Disney World is trying to capture more bookings earlier in the year.
There are likely several reasons for this, from economic uncertainty and consumer confidence to the international headwinds (discussed below). Regardless, it’s a savvy strategy to lock-in bookings further in advance. And bookings being up 5% year over year is positive news, especially since bookings were also strong at this same point last year; it’s not simply an easy comparison.
We’ve seen that over the last couple of years with the best special offers released far earlier than normal (by historical standards), and often only available for a limited time. Then there have been more aggressive that roll out at the last-minute, with more mediocre/normal deals in between.
Then there’s resort occupancy, which increased from 85% to 87% at Walt Disney World and Disneyland during the first quarter. Since there are exponentially more Disney-owned hotels in Florida than California, this is largely a story of Walt Disney World’s strength.
This is exactly where things stood as of the end of the last fiscal year, with 87% being a historically-high number. It appears Disney contained that momentum in the first quarter.
International occupancy was also up, increasing from 86% to 87%. It’s a similar story with international occupancy, which was up 5% in the last full fiscal year, and maintains that elevated level in the first quarter of 2026.
Higher occupancy could also be driving higher per guest spending. Hotel costs are a big component of vacation expenses, so shifting off-site stays to on-site doesn’t just boost occupancy. It improves per guest spending numbers, too.
During the Q&A, Johnston was once again asked to offer more commentary about how the domestic parks have seen a hit to international visitation (presumably for the reasons discussed in Canadians Are Canceling Walt Disney World Vacations).
Johnston shared that the company didn’t have as much advance visibility into international trends because a disproportionate number of those guests stay off-site (presumably in vacation home rentals since they largely stay longer).
He indicated that they were able to forecast this from other sources, though, which revealed a looming slowdown–explaining the reference to international visitation headwinds in the forward guidance. As a result of this, Walt Disney World pivoted its marketing and sales efforts to focus on more of a domestic audience in order to keep attendance and occupancy rates high. Johnston did not share specifics or numbers about the decrease in international visitors.
This had been been addressed on a couple of previous calls last year, at which point Johnston said Walt Disney World and Disneyland had “seen a bit of an impact” of roughly 1% to 1.5% in an international downtrend. At the time, what Disney expected going forward was similar to that, pointing out that they were “more than making up for it with domestic attendance–attendance at the parks has been terrific.”
We recently theorized that the slowdown among international attendees might hit Walt Disney World harder in 2026 than last year, due to the lag between booking and traveling. The best international promos are released a full year in advance and were locked-in long before the international tensions emerged, and visitors are less likely to cancel an existing trip that’s on the books than they are to not book a future one. Based on both Johnston’s comments and the forward guidance, it appears this lagged international slowdown thesis was/is correct.
Interestingly, Orlando International Airport recently released its airline activity report for November, revealing that international passenger traffic increased by 2.7%, continuing the impressive run of 56 consecutive months of growth. We would note that this rate of growth has decelerated, but it is still growth.
The bottom line is that the first quarter of fiscal 2026 is yet another of growth for Parks & Resorts. And it’s happening, once again, despite Universal Orlando opening Epic Universe. Not only that, but it’s being fueled in large part by historically-high hotel occupancy. These numbers are necessarily driven by Walt Disney World bookings since that’s where the hotels are (mostly) located.
Even though it’s ostensibly up 1% year-over-year, we remain concerned about attendance given the easy comparison due to the hurricanes in the previous fiscal year making for an easy comparison. I’d be interested in knowing the breakdown between Walt Disney World and Disneyland on that.
Conversely, the increase in occupancy is impressive–as are bookings being up 5% for the remainder of the 2026 fiscal year. Even with flat attendance, shifting stays from off-site to on-site is huge. That’s doubly true when Universal Orlando opened 3 new resorts within the last year, and countless other hotels have debuted recently in Central Florida.
It’s also worth acknowledging that this higher occupancy is likely directly attributable to better special offers. As we pointed out above, Walt Disney World continues to offer aggressive–and sometimes unprecedented–discounts for 2026.
Those have not yet reached the same high-highs as last summer, when you could strategically take advantage of discounts on tickets & resorts to score the lowest prices for Walt Disney World vacations in over 6 years. However, most of those special offers were relatively last-minute, released in late spring as opposed to at the beginning of the year.
The discounts in 2026 are already trending better as of this point in the year than they were last year at the same time. Lower prices on resorts paired with higher occupancy resulted in higher per room guest spending, which strikes us as a rare win-win for guests and Disney. This is hugely positive.
Our view is that the Walt Disney World parks have excess bandwidth most of the year in terms of what’s comfortable crowd-wise, so we’d like to see an increase there with greater affordability. Hopefully that’s precisely the goal with more aggressive ticket deals (already) for 2026 and the recent survey hinting of AP deals on the horizon.
Ultimately, it was once again a strong first quarter for the Disney Experiences division and the domestic Parks & Resorts, in particular. Challenges do lie ahead with softer international visitation numbers, which explains the aggressive discounting we’ve seen already in 2026, but it appears from forward bookings that those headwinds are being offset by the domestic audience.
Walt Disney World has now reported record results in the last three quarters despite the opening of Epic Universe. That should not be overlooked, even though it probably will be. While Comcast’s recent earnings call expressed excitement and optimism for that new park’s opening, they’ve 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).
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. Epic Universe is a great theme park that will be a formidable force over time. But right now, it’s still scaling up and isn’t expected to be at full capacity until the end of 2026. Maybe that will give Universal Orlando a hotel occupancy boost, especially if word of mouth turns positive on the new park.
The “rising tides” thesis might very well be correct, at least for the two big players in Central Florida. The true casualties are probably the downmarket offerings, which are feeling the squeeze in Orlando and beyond (as discussed in Rich Rescue Walt Disney World from Spending Slump), especially as more price-sensitive consumers scale back on spending.
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 first quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings? How would you explain the increases in per guest spending or occupancy growth at WDW and beyond? What about the attendance “increase” in light of the hurricane closure comparison? Thoughts on the international visitation slowdown or headwinds ahead? 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!