Disney Data Dump August 7 2024

Welcome back to a super-sized edition of the Disney Data Dump! Last week my family and I were learning about all kinds of fun STEM skills up in the Wisconsin Dells. We stayed at the Kalahari Resort there – which is a totally weird knock-off Animal Kingdom Lodge vibe if you’re a Disney fan. This upcoming week, though, is even more exciting. Because my big kid and I are headed to Orlando! We’ve got two full days and two half days in the parks, so you know I selfishly want to check out all of the Disney data and see what’s in store for us as we head to vacation.

Observed Crowd Levels July 23 – August 5

Since we’re cruising through two weeks today, let’s talk about each separately. First, July 23rd through 29th was ever-so-slightly more crowded than the previous two weeks. The average crowd level was still below a 5, so don’t go freaking out about the parks getting more crowded (yet). But as predicted, more families were trying to squeeze in those last-minute summer vacations.

Then, we get to July 20th through August 5th. There are a couple of things happening here. First, some schools across the country have already started back up (as a parent … wow). And then came Debby, cancelling a bunch of flights and shutting down some outdoor attractions on the 4th and 5th. I think outdoor attractions mostly having to remain closed plus people opting to stay out of the torrential downpours mostly evened out, but surely crowd level 3 on both of those days shows that the weather artificially depressed crowds at the parks on those days. But it already would have been a less crowded week than the week before.

Other than the Debby-impacted days, Animal Kingdom is still the most steady and reliable park. Once again, let’s point out that Animal Kingdom should be your “filler” day when planning any upcoming Disney vacations. Other parks wobble around, but which day you pick to visit Animal Kingdom shouldn’t make too big of a difference.

We’re also still seeing Magic Kingdom less crowded on the weekends. This trend is fun for now, but will quickly become less important as we enter party season – when weekends won’t matter as much as party days and non-party days.

Performance of Crowd Level Predictions

Each week, I give you a very transparent look into how the TouringPlans crowd level predictions performed. Each day at each park is one data point, so we have 28 different crowd level predictions to evaluate each week (and therefore 56 predictions to evaluate this week). Any time a prediction is within one or two crowd levels, things won’t really “feel” much different than what was predicted. Being off by 3 or more crowd levels is where you might feel that difference in wait times throughout the day.

In the past two weeks, Touring Plans predictions were either spot-on or within 1 crowd level 29% of the time. That’s slightly better than the past two weeks individually, but still well below our historical average. 75% of the time Touring Plans predictions were within 2 crowd levels, and that means we achieve a C for our predictions in the past week. That’s identical to our performance two weeks ago when we last checked. And for the overall 5th week in a row, all misses were skewed to overpredictions. This is good for people who like to be pleasantly surprised by low crowds, but bad for advance planning based on real crowd conditions. It’s still a safe bet that crowds are going to be two or more levels below what is showing in the calendar this summer. The biggest miss of the week was at Hollywood Studios on July 30th, when the crowd level was predicted to be a 8 and it ended up being a 3. Big congrats to anyone in Hollywood Studios on that day!

Attraction Downtime July 23 – August 5

If we average all of the capacity lost due to unexpected downtime over the past two weeks, it comes out to 5.6% of attractions unexpectedly being down. That’s above average, even for summertime with its regular afternoon storms that impact outdoor attractions. Some of that is due to Debby rolling through, but not all of it. And for the first time since we started tracking again this summer, Magic Kingdom was the park with the most overall downtime issues, coming in at 7.2% overall downtime over the past two weeks. We’ll get more into the reasons behind that when we look at individual attractions.

The worst day for attraction downtime in the past week was on August 1st (for the record, not a Debby-impacted day). On that day, 10% of all capacity at WDW was lost due to unexpected downtime. And the worst park-day was at Animal Kingdom on Monday, August 5th (which was definitely a Debby-impacted day. On that park day, 20% of the capacity was lost at Animal Kingdom due to unexpected downtime. Animal Kingdom was open for 10 hours on the 5th, so 20% downtime is the equivalent of the whole park being down for 120 minutes. Thankfully, almost no one was excited about being in Animal Kingdom on a monsoon day anyway, so the crowd level still was only a 2 (predicted to be a 6).

Attraction Downtime Worst Offenders

The worst offender of the past two weeks was TTA PeopleMover, which was unexpectedly down for over 22% of that time. The worst day for PeopleMover was clearly on July 23rd, when the ride was down for the entire day. But there were plenty of other days with significant downtime too. Perhaps even more importantly, all of the top three attractions for downtime these past two weeks were at Magic Kingdom. Beyond PeopleMover, Tiana’s had 18.5% downtime and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train had 17% downtime. That’s a lot of overall downtime at several big attractions at the same park.

Rope Drop Downtime

Here are problematic offenders from the past two weeks, with the percentage of downtime during the first hour of the day in parentheses:

• Magic Kingdom: Tiana’s Bayou Adventure (53%), TTA PeopleMover (38%), Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (29%), Space Mountain (18%), Winnie the Pooh (17%), Mickey’s PhilharMagic (14%), Tomorrowland Speedway (11%)
• EPCOT: No rope drop issues the past two weeks
• Hollywood Studios: Rock’n’Roller Coaster (33%), Slinky Dog Dash (19%), Rise of the Resistance (15%), Runaway Railway (11%)
• Animal Kingdom: No rope drop issues the past two weeks

Let’s get the good news out of the way first – rope dropping at EPCOT and Animal Kingdom this week was a breeze.

But as someone visiting the parks with my 8-year-old this upcoming weekend, a small-ish human that wants to do ALL of the thrill rides, I have big concerns about our ability to be efficient at Hollywood Studios. Those numbers for Rock’n’Roller Coaster, Slinky, and Rise are not good. And Runaway Railway is usually my bail-out backup and it snuck onto the issues list too! It just goes to show that you need to have a Plan B (and C and D and E) for rope drop at Hollywood Studios, because you never know what’s going to be up or down.

Wait Times July 23 – August 5

Attractions with the Highest Average Posted Wait at each park

• Hollywood Studios: Slinky Dog Dash, average posted wait of 67 minutes (two weeks ago was 64 minutes)
• Animal Kingdom: Flight of Passage, average posted wait time of 78 minutes (two weeks ago was 87 minutes)
• EPCOT: Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, average posted wait time of 55 minutes (two weeks ago was 52 minutes)
• Magic Kingdom: Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, average posted wait time of 61 minutes (two weeks ago was 60 minutes)

It’s a mixed bag with highest posted waits these past two weeks. Slinky, Remy, and Seven Dwarfs all went slightly up, but Flight of Passage saw a bigger dip – it was more than 10% lower than it was two weeks ago.

Parks with the Highest and Lowest Average Wait

These parks likely won’t change week-to-week unless something ridiculous happens, but these data points will give us a high-level view of how wait times are trending from week to week.

• Highest: Hollywood Studios, average park-wide posted wait of 34 minutes (the same as two weeks ago)
• Lowest: EPCOT, average park-wide posted wait of 22 minutes (also the same as two weeks ago)

This should be the last week that we see EPCOT continue its reign as the park with the lowest wait time, since Magic Kingdom will have three party days in our next data set. But the overall steady park-wide averages go to show what a predictably slow summer it is at Walt Disney World. Bonus info for those who have asked about such things and pay attention to details – it’s a slow summer overall for Orlando. Universal Orlando has seen big drops too.

Most Inflated Posted Wait Times

We all know that Disney inflates their posted wait times on purpose. They have many reasons for doing this. Some are totally understandable, and some are potentially more problematic. We can figure out how much posted wait times are being inflated by comparing submitted actual wait times from the Lines App and the posted wait time when the person timing their wait entered the line.

Over the past week, actual wait times in the Lines App averaged 65% of what was posted. This is ever so slightly above our historical average. If the posted wait time was 60 minutes, you could’ve expected to wait just 39 minutes instead.

But the worst offender for the past week is Spaceship Earth! At this one attraction, submitted actual wait times were 40% of posted wait times in the past week. That means that if the attraction had an 30 minute posted wait, you probably would have actually only waited 12 minutes instead. Less than half of what was posted. Remember to always check the Lines app for predicted actual waits instead of believing what is posted.

This Week’s Wait Time Rock Star

Between July 23rd and August 5th, we had just over 2100 timed actual waits submitted through the Lines app. The one person who recorded the most actual waits during that time was gmcc, with 56 overall timed waits – 33 Lightning Lane waits, 18 standby waits, 1 single rider wait, and 4 virtual queue waits. Thanks for all of that timing, gmcc! Unfortunately, those timed waits technically span two different weeks, so TheFugitiveGuy still holds our weekly record, with 52 timed waits in a week.

Looking Ahead: August 6 – 19

I write this article on Tuesday evenings so that you all have the very freshest of data on Wednesdays. Next Tuesday, I’ll be doing Dolphins in Depth with my big kid and then flying back home to the Midwest, which is going to be an incredible day … with no time to write up all of this data. So we’ll take next week off, and look ahead for two weeks in case you’ve got a trip planned in that time.

I’m personally predicting August 10-13 to be exceptionally great days. If you see me in the parks, be sure to say hello. We’re also in the winding down period of summer as more and more schools across the country are starting their school years each day this month. Our already-empty summer should get even more empty at least until we head into October.

But perhaps more importantly, we’re already hitting party season at Magic Kingdom, with Halloween Parties on August 9th, 13th, and 16th. Magic Kingdom has already been remarkably uncrowded this summer, so I expect plenty of glorious emptiness on those days. If fireworks aren’t important to you, those are certainly the days I’d recommend heading to Magic Kingdom and flying through the park with minimal waits.

We’re still in afternoon thunderstorm season – and, as Debby has proven, tropical weather season too. Make sure you have your rainy-day preparations and plans in place.

Were you in the parks in the last two weeks? Or are you looking forward to a trip in the near future? Let me know in the comments!