Disney Data Dump March 4 2026

Now this is the late winter/early spring that we know and love.

After a couple of weeks of lingering long-weekend chaos, things finally snapped back into something recognizable. Lower waits. Calmer parks. Manageable touring days. And perhaps most importantly, proof that a runDisney weekend is not, in fact, the crowd apocalypse some corners of the internet would have you believe.

That doesn’t mean it was a perfectly quiet week. There were still a few odd spikes, a couple of parks behaving differently than expected, and some very important rope drop trends emerging as we inch closer to Spring Break season. But overall? This was the rest between President’s Day and Spring Break that we’ve all needed.

Let’s take a look at what happened, and what it tells us about where things might be headed in March.

Observed Crowd Levels February 24 – March 2

Now that’s more like it! There is usually a lot of complaining about crowded parks during runDisney race weekends – but these green bars show that it’s really nothing compared to the crowds of President’s Day/Mardi Gras/Ski Week. Things are back to being calm.

The big outlier at the park level is Magic Kingdom on the 6th – with a crowd level double what we saw at all other parks. MK had a bunch of downtime that day, which impacted wait times. We’ve also got “Diet EPCOT” happening, after Festival of the Arts closed on February 23rd and before Flower & Garden Festival opens on March 4th. Race days boosted the EPCOT crowds a little, but the 25th, 26th, and 2nd all look like stereotypical Diet EPCOT. We’ve also got elevated crowd levels at Hollywood Studios over the weekend … which was the last weekend of operations for Rock’n’Roller Coaster featuring Aerosmith. Lots of folks going for one last limo ride.

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 each week we have 28 different crowd level predictions to evaluate. 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 week, Touring Plans predictions were either spot-on or within 1 crowd level 79% of the time, which is one of the highest results we’ve seen in the past year. And then 93% of the time Touring Plans predictions were within 2 crowd levels, so that means we get a rare A for our predictions in the past week! And we’re back to a pie chart with all light colors, which means we had no underpredictions in the past week. The biggest miss of the week was an over prediction by 4 crowd levels at EPCOT on March 2nd. The park was predicted to be a crowd level 6, but only hit a crowd level 2. Very clearly Diet EPCOT wait times.

Attraction Downtime February 24 – March 2

If we average all of the capacity lost due to unexpected downtime over the past week, it comes out to 5.4% of attractions unexpectedly being down. That’s quite a bit above our historical average, and slightly higher than the past couple of weeks. In the past week, EPCOT was once again the park with the most overall downtime, averaging 6.7% of its capacity lost to downtime throughout that period. It was at 7.1% downtime last week, so it continues a high downtime streak.

The worst day for attraction downtime in the past week was on February 27th. On that day, 8% of all capacity at WDW was lost due to unexpected downtime. But the worst park-day of the week happened on February 25th at Hollywood Studios. On that day, 13% of attraction capacity at Hollywood Studios was lost due to unexpected downtime. Studios was open for 12 hours on the 25th, so 13% downtime is the equivalent of the entire park shutting down for almost 94 minutes. 1.5 hours of the entire park opening late or shutting down early or deciding to take a lunch break. That has a big impact on wait times throughout the day!

Attraction Downtime Worst Offender

This week, Space Mountain was the WDW attraction with the worst overall unplanned downtime. It was unexpectedly down for 24% of the past week. Almost a quarter of the week! This also means that Space Mountain has “won” this category 3 out of the past 4 weeks. The worst day at Space Mountain over the last week was clearly on February 28th, when it was down for the whole day. But it had 15% or more downtime on many other days this week too.

Rope Drop Downtime

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

• Magic Kingdom: Monsters Inc Laugh Floor (45%), Country Bear Jamboree (31%), Space Mountain (23%), Hall of Presidents (20%), Enchanted Tiki Room (17%), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (15%), The Haunted Mansion (13%), Pirates of the Caribbean (11%)
• EPCOT: Test Track (38%), Journey Into Imagination (25%), Gran Fiesta Tour (17%), Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure (15%), Frozen Ever After (11%)
• Hollywood Studios: Slinky Dog Dash (52%), Rock’n’Roller Coaster (18%), Runaway Railway (16%), Tower of Terror (10%)
• Animal Kingdom: No rope drop downtime issues!

Gold star for Animal Kingdom this week! Three weeks in a row!

We’ve got two really big problems on this week’s rope drop downtime list. And we’re getting close enough to Spring Break season that you should start paying attention to these trends if you’ve got a trip coming up. Slinky was down for over half of rope drop hours this week. And Test Track was down for over a third of rope drop hours. Those are normally very big rope drop draws, and that amount of downtime means you absolutely need to have a backup plan.

Otherwise, EPCOT and Magic Kingdom continue to disappoint on the whole. Cosmic Rewind continues to be the most reliable rope drop option at EPCOT, and Peter Pan’s Flight or Tron (at regular entry) are good reliable options at Magic Kingdom.

Wait Times February 24 – March 2

Attractions with the Highest Average Posted Wait at Each Park

• Hollywood Studios: Rock’n’Roller Coaster, average posted wait of 71 minutes (was 79 minutes at Slinky Dog Dash last week)
• EPCOT: Cosmic Rewind, average posted wait of 69 minutes (was 90 minutes last week)
• Animal Kingdom: Flight of Passage, average posted wait time of 66 minutes (was 77 minutes last week)
• Magic Kingdom: TRON, average posted wait time of 60 minutes (was 74 minutes last week)

One blip this week – with Rock’n’Roller Coaster posting the highest average waits at Hollywood Studios thanks to its closure for re-theming. Otherwise, Slinky was the highest posted wait at Hollywood Studios, at 65 minutes. That’s more in line with all other parks, where highest average posted waits dropped significantly compared to the previous week. Only six attractions across all four parks had average posted waits of over an hour this week. That points to below-average crowds and wait times, in general.

Parks with the Highest and Lowest Average Wait

• Highest: Hollywood Studios, average park-wide posted wait of 38 minutes (was 44.5 minutes last week)
• Lowest: Magic Kingdom, average park-wide posted wait of 20.5 minutes (was 25.5 minutes last week)

Similar trend here! Park-wide posted waits were all down significantly – by at least 5 minutes per attraction compared to the previous week. That makes a huge impact throughout a full park day. It easily makes time for another 2-4 attractions in your park day, even without a good strategy.

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 71% of what was posted. That’s just about our historical average in the era of Lightning Lanes. Overall, if the posted wait time at a popular attraction was 60 minutes, you could’ve expected to wait less than 43 minutes instead.

But the worst inflation offender for the past week was Meet Mickey at Town Square Theater. At this one attraction, submitted actual wait times were only 38% of posted wait times in the past week. That means that if Mickey had a 30 minute posted wait, you probably would have actually only waited just about 11.5 minutes instead. Almost a third of what was posted! Remember to always check the Lines app for predicted actual waits instead of making decisions based on what is posted.

This Week’s Wait Time Rock Star

Between February 24th and March 2nd, we had just over 800 timed actual waits submitted through the Lines app. The one person who recorded the most actual waits during that time was Button, with 32 overall timed waits – 1 Lightning Lane wait and 31 standby waits. Thanks for all of that timing, Button! It unfortunately does not compete with the the 97 timed waits in a single week from our current timing champion, preef.

Looking Ahead: March 3 – 9

I write this article on Tuesday evenings so that you all have the very freshest of data on Wednesdays. That means the 3rd will already be in the past by the time you’ve read this, so you’ve time-travelled to the future! (Also none of you called me out on “February 30” last week – shame)

We’re currently in the calm before the storm season, if the storm is Spring Break. Not many school districts are off this early in the month, so enjoy early March while you can. Flower & Garden Festival kicks off on March 4th, so you’ll absolutely see higher crowds in EPCOT that day, even if it’s not reflected in wait times. Expect higher crowds over the weekend at EPCOT too, as locals make it out for the first weekend of the festival.

Otherwise, things should remain just-below-average or lower until we hit mid-March. Our next Looking Ahead update will be more interesting!

The next week looks mostly nice and sunny, with highs in the mid-80s! Mornings can still be a little chilly, so be prepared with some layers. And some afternoon storms may roll through too. Check the weather before you head to the park and pack some rain gear so you can stay and play when everyone else runs for transportation back to their resort.

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I made it through the runDisney races! So that’s … something. Several of you said hi in the parks – it was lovely to see you. I walked each of the races, and I’ll be putting out a first-timers review of runDisney here on the blog sometime soon.

Were you in the parks this past week? Or are you headed to Orlando soon? Let me know in the comments below!