Disney World Is the Most Popular U.S. Travel Destination, Survey Finds

More than 100 million Americans are expected to travel during this end-of-year holiday period, according to AAA. And a lot of that travel will be the semi-obligatory kind. You know, the trips where you go over the river and through the woods, straight to grandmother’s house you go. But, when you’re ready for a real vacation just for you, maybe plan one that allows you to check off one of these “must-see” spots around America. 

In November, Radical Storage, a luggage storage company with locations around the globe, revealed the results of its survey, which polled more than 2,000 Americans on their vacation plans for 2024. The results showed that Americans are pretty closely split on what’s better, a domestic staycation (44.4 percent) or an international journey (55.6 percent). However, a much larger majority (78.9 percent) of respondents replied that they are “considering a staycation in winter 2023 or early 2024,” and a whopping 83.1 percent said they would be joining the earlier group in “planning a staycation in spring/summer 2024.”

But where, exactly, are people vacationing? The Happiest Place on Earth, that’s where.

According to the survey’s results, Disney World Resort in Orlando is the number one most visited landmark in America, with 37.1 percent of respondents saying they’ve visited at least once. Its counterpart, Disneyland in Anaheim, California, came in third place, with 29.1 percent of respondents saying they’d been once before. 

Sandwiched between the two Disneys in second place was the Las Vegas Strip in Nevada, which just eked out the win over Disneyland, with 29.2 percent of respondents reporting they’d visited before. Rounding out the top five spots is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, with 28.5 percent of people saying they’ve seen it, and the Washington Monument in Washington DC, with 27.7 percent reporting a visit. 

There was also one more survey finding that caught our eye, and that was the most wish-listed domestic landmark, Niagra Falls.

“A quarter (24.9 percent) of people said that visiting Niagara Falls is on their bucket list of U.S. landmarks they’d like to visit,” the team shared in the findings. Another natural landmark came in a close second, the Grand Canyon, which the findings said is on 23.6 of people’s must-see lists.

And if all this has you feeling inspired, we’ve got more good news. According to Kayak’s travel trend predictions for 2024, domestic travel is about to get a whole lot cheaper. So go ahead and splurge on that post-holiday vacation. After all that family time, you deserve it.

See all of the findings at radicalstorage.com.