PwC has scrapped its Disney World internship finale, cancelling the multi-day trip to Orlando that had served as the centrepiece of its summer programme for all but five of the past 20 years, according to three PwC interns who spoke to Business Insider.
The event, known internally as Impact, was typically held in mid-August for interns who received full-time job offers. It featured keynote speeches, career-development panels, free food and accommodation, and access to Disney World Resort. In its place, one tax intern said they had been told their internship would end with a team dinner at an Italian restaurant.
PwC Disney World Internship: What Replaced It
A PwC spokesperson confirmed the cancellation, saying the firm was making ‘significant investments’ in its early-talent programmes and was ‘intentionally focusing our programs on experiences that provide more time with colleagues, greater exposure to clients, and stronger opportunities to build relationships within the offices and teams where interns begin their careers.’
The firm still runs other Orlando-based events. Destination CPA, a three-day networking programme for incoming accounting interns, takes place in Orlando and includes Disney World access. PwC has also maintained other talent initiatives that the spokesperson said were increasingly focused on building connections within individual teams.
Intern reactions were divided. One described the substitution as ‘nothing compared to what Impact would have been,’ while another was unbothered, pointing out that many current interns had already visited Disney World during Destination CPA and would again when they joined as full-time associates.
Cost Pressures and a Slowdown in Growth
The cancellation sits within a broader pattern of belt-tightening at the Big Four firm. PwC’s net revenue growth has slowed for three consecutive years, falling from 9.9% in its 2023 financial year to 3.7% in 2024, and to 2.9% in its 2025 financial year, when net revenues reached $54.5 billion, according to PwC’s own 2025 Global Annual Review. That pace placed PwC behind several of its Big Four peers, with EY advancing approximately 4.0% to roughly $53.2 billion in the same period, Business Insider reported.
The firm also cut its global headcount by 5,600 during its 2025 financial year, reversing a push to expand its workforce. CFO Brew reported that the contraction was PwC’s first since 2010, and that the cuts left the firm far short of a 2021 pledge to add 100,000 employees by mid-2026.
Entry-level recruitment is being pared back sharply. Business Insider reported that PwC’s hiring goals for junior tax and assurance associates are set to fall from 3,242 in the financial year ended June 2025 to a projected 2,197 in its 2028 financial year, a drop of 32%. In audit, the cut is steeper: PwC plans to hire 661 fewer entry-level auditors in its 2028 financial year than the 1,676 it took on in 2025, a 39% reduction. Going Concern confirmed the overall campus recruiting reduction amounts to roughly one-third of prior baseline hiring.
An internal presentation linked the hiring pullback to ‘transformation efforts, the impact of AI, and further AC integration.’ Since autumn 2025, PwC has also reduced the number of locations where entry-level consultants can begin their careers, from 13 to 7, to cluster junior staff together in their first years.
Big Four Intern Perks in an AI Era
Elaborate intern experiences remain a recruitment tool across the Big Four, helping firms build loyalty and nudge promising candidates towards accepting full-time offers. The PwC Disney World internship trip sat in that tradition, alongside KPMG’s campus at its $450 million Lakehouse facility in Orlando, which can house 800 guests and is occupied almost year-round. Deloitte operates a comparable facility in Texas called Deloitte University.
KPMG’s Lakehouse, which opened in January 2020, has taken on a new purpose in recent years. Fortune reported that KPMG leadership now describes the facility as a strategic accelerant for the firm’s AI pivot, with generative AI training becoming a core element of what happens there.
That shift reflects a wider rethink at the professional-services firms. KPMG US has already reoriented its audit intern training away from technical tasks and towards critical thinking and data analysis. As AI absorbs more of the routine, data-heavy work traditionally handled by junior hires, the firms are reconsidering both what they teach new recruits and how many they need.
For PwC’s 2026 intern class, the answer to that last question is playing out in the most tangible way possible: the summer ends with dinner, not Disney.