A year of Epic Universe: Orlando's tourist tax has set a record every month — but the airport barely noticed

Universal's Epic Universe opened its gates on May 22, 2025, as the biggest bet Orlando's tourism economy had made in a generation — the region's first new major theme park since Islands of Adventure in 1999. Fourteen months later, the clearest scoreboard the public has, Orange County's 6% Tourist Development Tax, says the bet is paying. Collections have now risen year-over-year for fourteen consecutive months, every one of them a record for its month, according to Comptroller Phil Diamond's office. March 2026 brought in $42.9 million, the most the tax has ever collected in a single month.

But the same public record complicates the boosters' version of the story. Passenger traffic at Orlando International Airport — the front door for most long-haul visitors — rose just 0.8% in 2025, to 57.7 million, per the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority and Airports Council International. Hotel rates, meanwhile, have jumped: the average daily rate for a May room is up 17.5% in two years. The money is real. Where it is coming from — more visitors, or the same visitors staying longer and paying more — is the harder question, and the data so far points substantially to the latter.

What the data shows

The break in the line is unmistakable. Through the eighteen months before Epic opened, collections of the 6% levy on hotel rooms and short-term rentals tracked the prior year almost exactly: March 2025's $40.2 million actually came in 0.9% below March 2024, the last year-over-year decline the tax has posted. Then the park opened, and the pattern snapped. June 2025, the first full month, brought in $33.7 million, up 10.3% — the strongest June ever, a result Comptroller Phil Diamond tied directly to the May 22 grand opening. July rose 11.1%, August 10.7%. Fiscal year 2024-25 closed at a record $384.6 million, 7.0% above the prior year's $359.5 million, per the Comptroller's fiscal-year revenue table.

The current fiscal year is running hotter still. Through eight months, collections topped $291 million — a monthly average of $36.4 million and roughly $26 million, or nearly 10%, ahead of the same stretch a year earlier, according to the Comptroller's May 2026 report. March 2026's $42.9 million rewrote the all-time monthly record, and April's $37.7 million and May's $32.8 million were each the best ever for their months. Every month since the opening now sits between 34% and 81% above the fiscal 2019 pre-pandemic average of $23.7 million.

So the cash register is ringing. The natural next question is whether more people are actually coming through the region's front door — and there the answer, from the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority's own traffic counts, is strikingly muted.

MCO handled 57,675,573 passengers in calendar 2025 versus 57,211,628 in 2024 — up 0.8%, per ACI-NA's 2025 traffic report, in a year when North American airport traffic overall fell 0.7%. The airport credits three new transatlantic routes to Munich, Madrid and Paris for much of the gain. But the volume, about 14% above 2019's 50.6 million, has essentially plateaued since 2023. A once-in-a-generation theme park did not produce a once-in-a-generation wave of arrivals.

That mismatch — bed-tax dollars up nearly 10%, bodies through the terminal up less than 1% — is the crux of the redistribution question. It suggests the tax windfall is being driven by visitors staying more nights, paying higher room rates, and by drive-in travelers who never touch the airport, rather than by a surge of net-new flyers.

How we got here

Orange County's tourist tax, enacted in 1978, is the state's largest such levy and the industry's most watched vital sign. Comptroller Diamond — who delivered the quote above when the August report broke another record — has noted that new parks have historically nudged it upward: collections rose about 8% when Disney's Animal Kingdom opened in 1998, about 2% after Islands of Adventure in 1999, and about 4% when the Wizarding World of Harry Potter arrived in 2010. Epic's first-year lift is tracking well above all three.

The tax has also shown how fast it can vanish. When the pandemic closed the parks, April 2020 collections crashed 97% from a year earlier, to $795,700, per the Comptroller's fiscal 2020 revenue table. That collapse is why the county keeps a recommended $300 million reserve — and why the current run, which pushed fiscal 2025 to $384.6 million and has fiscal 2026 pacing above $400 million for the first time, is filling a war chest as fast as it fills hotel rooms. The Comptroller's May 2026 report puts total TDT reserves at $433.6 million, about $133.6 million above the recommended minimum, with $78.2 million of the excess already committed.

The mechanism behind the money shows up most clearly in what a room now costs. Visit Orlando market data, republished monthly in the Comptroller's reports, tracks the average daily rate — and the May snapshot, the month Epic opened, tells the pricing story in three points.

The slope steepens exactly where Epic enters the picture. In the year before the park, the May average rate rose 4.7%, from $189.30 to $198.20; in the year after, it jumped 12.2%, to $222.42 — while May occupancy climbed to 73.4%, up from a year earlier, per Visit Orlando data in the Comptroller's May 2026 report. The same report shows short-term rental demand up 9% year-over-year with average rates up 18%. Fuller rooms at sharply higher prices, times a 6% levy, is arithmetic enough to explain most of the record tax line — without requiring millions of additional arrivals.

What it means

On the assignment's core question — real growth or reshuffled visitors — the honest answer is: real growth in the tourism economy's revenue, with the visitor-count evidence still mixed. The park-by-park split cannot be settled yet; the Themed Entertainment Association's attendance index covering 2025 is not due until this fall, so there is no primary estimate of how much of Epic's gate came at the expense of Disney or the older Universal parks. What the public record does show is that total lodging revenue subject to the tax is up nearly 10% year-over-year, that the gains have persisted through fourteen consecutive months rather than fading after an opening-summer spike, and that they are being generated more by longer, pricier stays than by a boom in airport arrivals. Diamond himself has attributed the run largely to Epic, noting the park gives past visitors a reason to return and to stay longer.

The stakes now shift from measurement to spending. Fiscal 2026 is pacing above $400 million for the first time, and the reserve sits $133.6 million above the county's $300 million recommended floor. Twenty-four organizations applied for a share by the July 16 deadline — requests include $750 million for new Dr. Phillips Center facilities, $523 million for a convention center addition, and a Major League Baseball stadium pitch — and Mayor Jerry Demings' reconvened citizen task force holds its first meeting July 21. Some commissioners have urged the panel to wait until November, when a statewide property-tax-cut vote could reshape county finances. The Comptroller's standing caution applies: this is a revenue stream that once lost 97% of itself in a single month. For now, though, Epic's first year has given Orange County a bigger pile of tourist money than it has ever had — and a new argument about what to do with it.

• Fiscal 2025 TDT collections: $384.6 million, up 7.0% from fiscal 2024's $359.5 million — Orange County Comptroller, FY2025 revenue table, as of Sept. 2025
• Fiscal 2026 through May: more than $291 million, roughly $26 million (nearly 10%) ahead of the prior year's first eight months — Orange County Comptroller, May 2026 report
• March 2026: $42.9 million, the highest single-month collection ever recorded — Orange County Comptroller, released May 2026
• Record streak: 14 consecutive months of record, year-over-year-higher collections, April 2025 through May 2026 — Orange County Comptroller, May 2026 report
• MCO passengers, calendar 2025: 57,675,573, up 0.8% from 2024 — Greater Orlando Aviation Authority / ACI-NA 2025 traffic report, published July 2026
• May 2026 hotel market: 73.4% occupancy, $222.42 average daily rate (+12.2% year-over-year) — Visit Orlando data via Comptroller's May 2026 report
• TDT reserves: $433.6 million, about $133.6 million above the $300 million recommended minimum — Orange County Comptroller, May 2026 report