01Park visits
98,877
devices seen at seven Disney & Universal parks
- Thanksgiving week 2025
- Every park visited, in order
- Hour-by-hour presence
Answers
Which parks, in what order?
The itinerary
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DPAICompetitive
DPAICompetitive
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · Introduction
Competitive Destination Affinity
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DPAIA DPAI Use Case Study
Theme Park & Destination Intelligence · Orlando, FL
Competitive
Destination Affinity
What Florida theme park visitors do next: where they come from, how they arrive, which park they pick after this one, and what they do beyond the gates.
MKMagic KingdomEPEpcotHSHollywood StudiosAKAnimal KingdomUSFUniversal StudiosIOAIslands of AdventureEPICEpic Universe
98,877devices · 7 parks · Thanksgiving week 2025
www.getDPAI.com
DPAIA DPAI Use Case Study
Theme Park & Destination Intelligence · Orlando, FL
Competitive
Destination Affinity
What Florida theme park visitors do next: where they come from, how they arrive, which park they pick after this one, and what they do beyond the gates.
MKMagic KingdomEPEpcotHSHollywood StudiosAKAnimal KingdomUSFUniversal StudiosIOAIslands of AdventureEPICEpic Universe
98,877devices · 7 parks · Thanksgiving week 2025
www.getDPAI.com
Why It Matters
Every park counts its gates. None sees the whole trip.
Turnstiles say how many came in. They can't say where a family flew from, which park they saved for Thursday, or where they slept. Three location signals, joined on the same anonymous devices, can.
02Home & travel
29,318
visitors based outside Florida
- Common evening (home) location
- Home TV market & state
- Florida airport visits
Answers
Where do they come from, and how?
The source market
03Location affinity
625
brands indexed against non-visitors
- Hotels, dining & retail
- Movies & other attractions
- One report per park
Answers
What else do they do?
The competitive set
The question
When a family chooses Orlando, which parks, places and brands are really in the same decision set?
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · Introduction01 · Locals and Visitors
Locals fill the gates. Visitors fill the itinerary.
Seven in ten devices seen at an Orlando park over Thanksgiving week sleep in Florida. The minority who travel in stay longer, visit more parks and shape the trip everyone else competes for.
Who is inside each parkshare of devices by home location
Florida homeOut-of-state & international
Park mix
Universal's two core parks are the most local in the set. Epic Universe, open since May 2025, draws the highest visitor share.
Florida residents
70%
of devices with a known home
Out-of-state visitors
29,318
from across the U.S. and 27 other countries & territories
How each group uses the week
Comparison
Finding
Visitors are 30% of devices but plan the multi-park trips. From here on, the story follows them.
Source: DPAI device panel · seven Disney & Universal parks · Thanksgiving week 2025 · home = common evening location · 753 devices with no home location excluded · Florida homes can include park staff
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 01 · Who Comes01 · Home Markets
Where Orlando's visitors come from.
Each dot is a cluster of visitor homes, sized by volume and shaded by how many of them were also seen at a Florida airport. The Southeast drives in; the Northeast, Midwest and Texas fly.
Share seen at a Florida airport
0% · drove30%+ · flew
Top home marketsvisitors · % seen at airport
Home markets
Finding
Atlanta sends the most visitors, and only 7% were seen at an airport. Dallas sends fewer, and 29% flew.
Source: DPAI device panel · common evening locations of out-of-state devices seen at seven Orlando parks · ~0.5° cells, cells under 3 devices removed · airport = seen at any Florida airport during the week
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 01 · Who Comes02 · How They Arrive
Distance decides how they come. MCO decides where they land.
Only visitors seen at an airport count as flyers here, so shares are a floor, not a census. The pattern still holds: the farther from home, the more likely a visitor was at an airport, and almost every one of them was at Orlando International.
Seen at a Florida airport, by distance from homeshare of out-of-state visitors
Distance bands
Drive markets
Georgia0–%
South Carolina0–%
Alabama0–%
Mississippi0–%
North Carolina0–%
Fly markets
Minnesota0–%
Texas0–%
Colorado0–%
Ohio0–%
Illinois0–%
Seen at an airport
17.4%
of out-of-state visitors
Of them, via MCO
93.4%
Orlando International
Which airport carried themshare of air visitors
Only 54 air visitors touched two Florida airports, so shares total slightly over 100%.
Finding
Gateway choice is settled before park choice begins. The real variable is distance, and it splits the country into drive and fly markets.
Source: DPAI device panel · out-of-state devices seen at seven Orlando parks, Thanksgiving week 2025 · airport = seen at a Florida airport during the week · straight-line distance from home to the parks
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 02 · How They Arrive03 · The Holiday Week
The week peaks before the turkey.
Park visits build from the weekend, crest on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and hold through Black Friday. Inside each day, every park keeps its own clock.
Park visits by day · all seven parks
LocalsVisitors
Visits by day
When each park is fullshare of the park's busiest hour
Hourly presence
Finding
Wed, Nov 26 was the busiest park day of the week, ahead of Thanksgiving itself. Capacity, staffing and campaigns that key on the holiday are a day late.
Source: DPAI device panel · park visits by first visit date at each park (Nov 22 – Dec 1, 2025) · hours = distinct devices per hour from in-park pings, Tue–Fri Nov 25–28, Eastern time
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 03 · The Week04 · Where Trips Start
Magic Kingdom opens the trip.
Among visitors who toured more than one park, the first park reveals the anchor of the plan. The most common itineraries are short, and almost all of them stay inside one company's gates.
First park vs. overall reach
First park of a multi-park tripVisited at any point
First parks
Most common itinerariesmulti-park visitors
Itineraries
Finding
Magic Kingdom starts 1 in 4 multi-park trips. Universal's two parks are booked as a pair, in either order.
Source: DPAI device panel · out-of-state devices seen at two or more of seven Orlando parks, Thanksgiving week 2025 · parks ordered by first visit time
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 04 · What They Do Next04 · The Next Park
After every park, the next stop is a sibling.
Read each row as a visitor leaving that park: where did they go next? Nine in ten Disney moves stay at Disney. Universal moves are more likely to cross, and far more likely to happen on the same day.
Next park, as a share of moves out of each parkselect a row
Next-park matrix
After Magic Kingdom1 moves
Hatched = same-day hop.
Stay in brand
0%
of moves out of MK
Same-day hop
0%
next park on the same day
Finding
Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure trade visitors on the same day seven times in ten. At Disney, the next park is usually tomorrow's.
Source: DPAI device panel · consecutive park visits of out-of-state devices, ordered by first visit time at each park · Thanksgiving week 2025 · same day = both visits on one calendar day
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 04 · What They Do Next04 · Movement Between Parks
Most visitors stay within brand ecosystems.
Bubbles are sized by each park's share of out-of-state visitors; threads are weighted by visitors seen at both parks. The densest threads stay inside one company's network, and the thin grey ones are the cross-shoppers.
Loyal circuits
85.4%
of multi-park visitors stayed inside one brand: 66.9% only Disney, 18.5% only Universal
Multi-park itineraries
43.2%
of out-of-state visitors toured two or more parks
Cross-camp trips
14.6%
of multi-park visitors crossed between the two companies
Reading the map
Disney ↔ Disney
Universal ↔ Universal
Cross-camp
Bubble = share of visitors · hover a thread
Source: DPAI device panel · out-of-state devices, seven Disney & Universal parks · Thanksgiving week 2025 · bubbles = share of visitors reached · threads = devices seen at both parks
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 04 · What They Do Next05 · The New Entrant
Epic Universe: new demand or a new stop?
Six months after opening, Universal's third park is the Tulum question in Orlando: does it pull new visitors into the market, or reshuffle days that were already planned?
How Epic Universe fits the trip897 devices
Epic Universe
Visitor share at Epic
43%
out-of-state, vs. 31% at the other six parks
Combined with Universal
76%
of Epic trips that include another park
Reading the signal
- New demand: Epic skews to out-of-state visitors, and most of its devices visited no other park that week.
- Reallocation: when Epic shares a trip, it shares it with Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure, more than twice as often as with any Disney park.
- Caveat: Epic's geofence captured 897 devices, far below its sister parks. Treat the mix as directional.
Finding
Epic looks like a destination in its own right for visitors, and a third Universal day, not a stolen Disney day, for everyone else.
Source: DPAI device panel · devices seen at Epic Universe (opened May 2025), Thanksgiving week 2025 · all home locations · small panel: read the mix, not the volume
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 05 · The New Entrant06 · Beyond the Gates
Disney sells the vacation. Universal sells the experience.
Each cell shows how much more (or less) likely a park's visitors were to visit a category than non-visitors. Hospitality and dining look alike across the resort. The split is in what fills the rest of the trip.
Affinity index by park
0.4×3×+1.0× = same rate as non-visitors
Affinity index
Movie theaters · Universal visitors
3.1×
vs. 1.6× for Disney visitors. The experience guest keeps seeking entertainment.
Apparel · Disney visitors
1.35×
vs. 1.04× for Universal. Disney visitors keep shopping after the park.
Finding
Universal visitors also lean on car rental and vacation rentals: an off-property guest assembling their own trip. Disney visitors buy the packaged vacation.
Source: DPAI location affinity reports · seven Disney & Universal parks · Orlando DMA · Thanksgiving week 2025 · park visitors vs. non-visitors, visit-rate ratio by category
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 06 · Beyond the Gates06 · Where They Sleep
Where they sleep follows where they play.
The same index, applied to hotel brands. Each brand's guests concentrate at one or two parks, so a hotel's affinity profile doubles as a list of the parks worth packaging with it.
Hotel brand affinity by park
0.4×8×+1.0× = same rate as non-visitors
Hotel affinity
Disney visitors stay with brands on the Disney side of the resort; Universal visitors with extended-stay and suite brands near their parks.
Westin · Animal Kingdom
17.5×
more likely than non-visitors to visit a Westin
Homewood Suites · Islands of Adventure
10.1×
the strongest Universal-side hotel signal
Finding
Hotel affinity sorts by park, not by operator alone. A hotel that knows which park its guests chose knows which ticket, shuttle and dining offer to put in front of them.
Source: DPAI location affinity reports · seven Disney & Universal parks · Orlando DMA · Thanksgiving week 2025 · hotel brands with a measurable share of visitors at six or more parks
DPAICompetitive Destination Affinity · 06 · Beyond the GatesSelected slide
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