Physical phenomena and natural disasters, such as tsunamis and floods, are caused due to dispersive water waves and shallow waves caused by earthquakes. In order to analyze and minimize damaging effects of such situations, mathematical models are presented by different researchers. The Wu–Zhang (WZ) system is one such model that describes long dispersive waves. In this regard, the current study focuses on a non-linear (2 + 1)-dimensional time-fractional Wu–Zhang (WZ) system due to its importance in capturing long dispersive gravity water waves in the ocean. A Caputo fractional derivative in the WZ system is considered in this study. For solution purposes, modification of the homotopy perturbation method (HPM) along with the Laplace transform is used to provide improved results in terms of accuracy. For validity and convergence, obtained results are compared with the fractional differential transform method (FDTM), modified variational iteration method (mVIM), and modified Adomian decomposition method (mADM). Analysis of results indicates the effectiveness of the proposed methodology. Furthermore, the effect of fractional parameters on the given model is analyzed numerically and graphically at both integral and fractional orders. Moreover, Caputo, Caputo–Fabrizio, and Atangana–Baleanu approaches of fractional derivatives are applied and compared graphically in the current study. Analysis affirms that the proposed algorithm is a reliable tool and can be used in higher dimensional fractional systems in science and engineering.