2024 Awards: Best of Disney World Attractions

As 2024 draws to a close, we have lots of data to review, and lots of recommendations to make for those of you considering 2025 Walt Disney World vacations. Over the past few days, I’ve been reviewing results from our post-visit surveys that we received this year, and helping you interpret what they should mean for your next vacation. Today we’re going over all of the satisfaction data from our attraction surveys. Which park has the highest-scoring attractions? Which attractions are the best overall? Or with a specific age group?

This serves as your obligatory reminder that the accuracy of these results fully depends on the number of people that are willing to fill out post-visit surveys after their Walt Disney World vacations. Make sure to submit your thoughts after your WDW vacations so that we can continue providing meaningful insights!

Overall Attraction Satisfaction

Which attractions have the highest satisfaction overall, across all parks and age categories? We have almost 200,000 unique attraction ratings to work with, so we can get a pretty good idea. Each of these responses rates an attraction on a scale from 1 (very dissatisfied) to 5 (very satisfied). I can average all of the responses to get an overall rating for each attraction. Using that methodology, the winners for 2023 are:

1. Avatar Flight of Passage – 4.79
2. Kilimanjaro Safaris – 4.76
3. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind – 4.75
4. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – 4.73
5. Expedition Everest – 4.72

Our top 5 includes five attractions, which is quite different than last year (list found here). I’m personally glad to see Cosmic Rewind on this list. Flight of Passage, Kilimanjaro Safaris and Rise of the Resistance are expected, but Cosmic Rewind has more detractors (I get it, it’s difficult for those that struggle with motion sickness). In my opinion it’s more repeatable thanks to the changing soundtracks, and it’s just a lot of fun. It’s one attraction that I seek out frequently – even when I’m mostly in different parks for the day. I’ve popped over to EPCOT for just this attraction multiple times.

But there’s another big new theme for this year. 3 out of the top 5 are all in Animal Kingdom. Anecdotally, when visiting families have to pick a single park to skip, they usually choose to miss Animal Kingdom. Maybe it’s because Animal Kingdom is my favorite park, but I’m very glad to see such a strong showing here.

Parks with Highest Attraction Satisfaction

1. Hollywood Studios – 4.42 (4.34 last year)
2. Animal Kingdom – 4.33 (4.23 last year)
3. Magic Kingdom – 4.23 (4.12 last year)
4. EPCOT – 4.16 (4.04 last year)

If we take all of the surveys from each park and average them all together, we can get idea of just how impressive the attraction slate is for each park as a whole. And we have SO many surveys that none of the confidence intervals overlap for any of these parks. This is statistically a reliable ranking.

Hollywood Studios should be no surprise in the top spot. It’s got 1 out of the top 5 attractions, and many other popular and high-satisfaction attractions too. But you’ll “pay” for that popularity with high wait times unless you go into your Studios day with a solid strategy.

Animal Kingdom may come as a surprise in 2nd place, but its satisfaction scores have been buoyed by the closure of low-rating attractions like Primeval Whirl and KiteTails (RIP). For the low-rated attractions that do still exist (looking at you, TriceraTop Spin) … their time is coming to a close. Then you’ve got attractions like Flight of Passage, Expedition Everest, and Kilimanjaro Safaris that are the big draws and are at the very top of the satisfaction rankings.

Magic Kingdom and EPCOT fall to the bottom of our list, mostly due to a significant number of attractions that haven’t seen any love in a while (Imagination Pavilion) or have wait times that are too long for what you get (Barnstormer, Magic Carpets).

Full Rankings For Each Park

If you want to plan your upcoming WDW vacation around attractions that rate highly overall, here are the full results for each of the four theme parks. Remember that you can click on any image to open it in full size.

Hollywood Studios

I don’t think that there are any major surprises here. The obvious “loser” was Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy, but it has since closed so I took it off the graph. Then you’ve got Alien Swirling Saucers, and Star Wars Launch Bay … which is mostly an empty building. Character meet and greets fall in the middle of the pack, other than Chewbacca who rises (with the Resistance?) above the rest. Can I also mention how Fantasmic scores so highly? It’s my favorite nighttime spectacular, and I’m glad it showed up well this year.

Animal Kingdom

There are very clearly three big winners at Animal Kingdom – and they’re three of the best attractions in all of WDW. But just below them are some of the stellar entertainment options that the park offers. Interestingly, if you’re just interested in trying attractions that rate 4 (out of 5) or higher, you have 23 options at Animal Kingdom including a lot of live entertainment. That’s almost as many 4-or-higher options as you’ll find at Hollywood Studios (which has 26). Narrow that to scores of 4.5-or-higher, and Animal Kingdom (9) actually beats Hollywood Studios (8).

Magic Kingdom

There are a clear top three at Magic Kingdom – the castle itself (hard to miss if you just walk into the park, so that’s good), the nighttime fireworks, and Big Thunder Mountain. I’m very pleased to see the PeopleMover coming in at a surprisingly high 5th place. More love for the PeopleMover! The Dapper Dans also saw an increase in their score this year. But otherwise, 2024 was the year for attraction scores to go above character meets and other entertainment options.

Things start falling pretty rapidly once you get below a 4.0 rating. If you knew absolutely nothing about the Magic Kingdom, you could plan your day just by starting with everything above that rating!

EPCOT

Last year I predicted that when the walls came down, EPCOT’s scores would go up because at least everything wouldn’t be so dang difficult to walk to. But … I was wrong. Still, EPCOT isn’t all about the rides. And you do yourself a disservice if you avoid all of the other exploring and entertainment. Of the top 20 attractions here, only 5 are rides. Make sure you take your time to enjoy the atmosphere at EPCOT and learn a few things while you’re there.

Best Attractions by Age Group

The makeup of your travelling party heavily impacts what your group will enjoy, and so it’s more important to understand what specific age groups enjoy than to just go with overall winners! As a note – these lists specifically avoid seasonal offerings so that they’re easier to digest and apply for everyone.

Preschool

1. Tie! The Boneyard and Meet Olaf at Celebrity Spotlight – 4.76
2. Tie! Journey of Water, Kilimanjaro Safaris, and Meet Princess Tiana – 4.75

Lots of shifts for preschoolers this year compared to last. Still filled with characters at the top. But The Boneyard (RIP) takes the top spot, and Safaris makes a comeback. This is also the first appearance for Journey of Water. Even more interesting, the top 5 here all have very similar ratings. Last year there were clear winners.

Grade School

1. Flight of Passage – 4.83
2. Droid Depot – 4.78
3. Toy Story Mania – 4.77
4. Kilimanjaro Safaris – 4.75
5. Fantasmic – 4.73

A bunch of shake-ups for the grade schoolers this year. Only two repeats in the top 5 – Droid Depot and Fantasmic. Flight of Passage, Toy Story Mania, and Kilimanjaro Safaris are new. Maybe this is the year of the resurgence of Animal Kingdom, at least for the youngest visitors. Don’t skip Animal Kingdom with your kids!

Teenage

1. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind – 4.90
2. Expedition Everest – 4.89
3. Avatar Flight of Passage – 4.85
4. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – 4.76
5. Tower of Terror – 4.71

Overall, teens get a bad rap for being hard to please. But they know what they like, and will rate it accordingly. Of course, there are a lot of attractions that they love to hate too. Teenagers see the least year-over-year turnover of the non-adult crowd, since 4 out of their top 5 are repeats from last year. Savi’s Workshop is the only one to drop out, and Tower of Terror earns a spot instead.

Young Adult

1. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind – 4.91
2. Avatar Flight of Passage – 4.87
3. Expedition Everest – 4.86
4. Kilimanjaro Safaris – 4.81
5. Tower of Terror – 4.78

Young adults fall between those teen years and the ripe old age of 30 (she says sarcastically, feeling like a pretty young adult still). No love for Star Wars this year, with Savi’s Workshop and Rise of the Resistance both falling out of the top 5. In their place? Kilimanjaro Safaris and Tower of Terror. Which means that once again, Animal Kingdom gets three out of the top five for this age group.

Over Thirty

1. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind – 4.84
2. Avatar Flight of Passage – 4.81
3. Kilimanjaro Safaris – 4.78
4. Expedition Everest – 4.77
5. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – 4.76

To be fair, the over-thirties already had three Animal Kingdom attractions in the top 5 last year. And they remain there this year. In fact, all of the top 5 are the same. They’ve just shifted around a bit.

Over 65

1. Festival of the Lion King – 4.76
2. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – 4.75
3. TIE! Kilimanjaro Safaris and Toy Story Mania and Soarin’ – 4.74

There is an interesting shift for the over-65 crowd this year. Last year was much more focused on entertainment. And while a show does take a top spot overall, the next 4 are attractions.

What Does This Mean For You?

1. Everyone has different opinions and preferences. My favorite attractions won’t be the same as yours, but breaking things down into age groups gets us a little closer.
2. When planning your WDW vacation, use things like attractions lists and satisfaction scores to help you decide how much time to spend in each park so that you give your party the best chance to have an enjoyable trip.
3. If we want to generalize, prioritize characters for preschoolers, thrill for teens, and relaxing journeys for seniors. And if you’re a party of just adults, go for the headliners.

Did any of the 2024 winners surprise you? Would you have ranked anything differently? Is there an attraction you’re most looking forward to experiencing in 2025? Let me know in the comments!