Disney Data Dump May 3 2023

In the world of Disney Data, this week was all good news. Wait times were the lowest we’ve seen since mid-September 2022. Posted wait time inflation went down a little bit. Genie+ prices stayed not-quite-as-high, and even had a price in the teens some days. Downtime was amazingly low considering the crowd levels. It was an incredible week to be in Walt Disney World. Let’s look at all of the data to show the rest of us what we’re missing out on!

Observed Crowd Levels 4/25 – 5/1

If you were wondering if the post-Easter crowd slow-downs were very temporary … I’ve got the answer. It’s definitely not just a case of one slow week. In fact, we haven’t seen a two-week stretch with crowds this low since September 2022, in that glorious post-Labor Day season. And on average, crowds in the past two weeks have only been one or two crowd levels higher than mid-September. Mid-September has long been recognized as THE low crowd season, so even being close to that is a big win for anyone that can travel in late April!

Each week, I’m giving you a very transparent look into how our crowd level predictions performed. Each day at each park is one data point, so this week we have 28 different crowd level predictions to evaluate each week. Any time a prediction is within one or two crowd levels, things won’t really “feel” much different than what we predicted. Being off by 3 or more crowd levels is where we’d like to be more accurate because 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 39% of the time. Once again we’re significantly lower than our historical average, which has happened for each of the past 3 weeks. 71% of the time Touring Plans predictions were within 2 crowd levels, and that means we earn a C- for our predictions this past week. Predictions were, again, pretty skewed this week. Rather than having a roughly equal number of over- and under-predictions, almost all predictions were over-predictions. These are the kind that make people happy because the parks are less crowded than they expect, but any skewed results make stats people like me a little sad inside. The biggest miss of the past week over-predicted crowds by a pretty stunning 5 crowd levels. That happened at EPCOT on April 25th, when a crowd level 2 happened on a predicted crowd level 7 day.

Attraction Downtime 4/25 – 5/1

If we average out all of the capacity lost due to unexpected downtime over the past two weeks, it comes out to 2.9% of attractions unexpectedly being down. This is pretty close to an all-time low, and the first time we’ve seen a downtime number this low when crowds weren’t very high. The park with the biggest issues was Magic Kingdom, with 3.3% of its capacity lost due to unexpected downtime.

The worst day for attraction downtime in the past week was on April 25th. On that day, 5% of all capacity at WDW was lost due to unexpected downtime. The worst park-day of the week was at Magic Kingdom on April 25th. On that park day, 7% of the capacity was lost due to unexpected downtime. Magic Kingdom was open for 14 hours on the 25th, so 7% downtime is the equivalent of the whole park being down for almost an hour. This may have had an impact on crowds, because Magic Kingdom on the 25th was one of the very rare underpredictions of the past week. It was predicted to be at crowd level 4, and ended up being a 6.

Attraction Downtime

The worst offender of the past week is the Magic Carpets of Aladdin, which was unexpectedly down for approximately 38% of the past week. After a string of relatively low attraction-level downtime numbers … ouch. That’s a bad one. The worst day for our the Carpets was on April 29th, when it was unexpectedly down all day. And this was closely followed by April 30th, when stayed down for another 71% of the day. Thankfully, everything seems to be back up and running just fine. And there are other spinners to choose from if the Carpets won’t fly.

Rope Drop Downtime

Here are this week’s problematic offenders:

• Magic Kingdom: Magic Carpets of Aladdin (unavailable for 28% of its first hour of the day), Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin (unavailable for 15% of its first hour of the day), Seven Dwarfs Mine Train (unavailable for 14% of its first hour of the day)
• EPCOT: Spaceship Earth (unavailable for 29% of its first hour of the day), Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind (unavailable for 18% of its first hour of the day)
• Hollywood Studios: No rope drop downtime issues this week
• Animal Kingdom: No rope drop downtime issues this week

For the second week in row we have no significant rope drop downtime issues at Hollywood Studios! This is incredibly rare, and makes a big positive difference in how efficiently you’re able to tour Hollywood Studios. With no downtime, you could feasibly finish Rise of the Resistance and Slinky Dog Dash before the park even opens, and then have the rest of the park day to hit everything else. The only other thing of note this week is that this is the first time we’ve seen Cosmic Rewind appear on any sort of downtime list. Very rare for what is usually an incredibly reliable new-ish attraction.

Wait Times 4/25 – 5/1

Attractions with the Highest Average Posted Wait at each park

• Hollywood Studios: Slinky Dog Dash, average posted wait of 74 minutes (81 minutes last week)
• Animal Kingdom: Flight of Passage, average posted wait time of 75 minutes (81 minutes last week)
• EPCOT: Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, average posted wait time of 58 minutes (62 minutes last week)
• Magic Kingdom: Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, average posted wait time of 72 minutes (72 minutes last week)

Average posted wait times continue to decrease, and we’ve even got Remy with its average posted wait time under an hour. Wait times at Slinky Dog Dash and Flight of Passage even decreased almost 10% further than than already decently-low average posted wait times. Keep in mind that actual wait times are likely much lower than these posted times too!

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 33 minutes (34.5 minutes last week)
• Lowest: EPCOT, average park-wide posted wait of 23.5 minutes (23 minutes last week)

Hollywood Studios is continuing to have lower and lower average waits. Anything helps at this wait-heavy park, especially the lack of rope drop downtime issues. Enjoy it while it lasts!

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 63% of what was posted. This is still slightly lower than our historical average, which means posted wait times are more inflated than normal. If the posted wait time was 60 minutes, you could’ve expected to wait under 38 minutes instead.

But the worst offender for the past week is Toy Story Mania. Yet another first time winner! At this one attraction, submitted actual wait times were 49% of posted wait times in the past week. That means that if Toy Story Mania had a 60 minute posted wait, you probably would’ve waited just under 30 minutes. Less than half of what was posted. Remember to always check the Lines app for predicted actual waits instead of believing what is posted.

Actual Wait Time Rock Star

The Actual Wait Time Rock Star for the past week was … thompsonp, who submitted 25 actual wait times through the Lines App over the last 7 days! This includes 20 Lightning Lane waits and 5 Standby waits. Thank you for all of that timing, thompsonp! But you didn’t claim the all-time record, which is still held by shop.kgb, with 50 recorded wait times in a single week.

In the upcoming week, wait times within the first 15 minutes of early entry opening are the most important to us!

Looking Ahead: May 2nd through May 8th

Other than May the 4th potentially leading to a small spike in crowds at Hollywood Studios, enjoying their time on Batuu, no major events are on the calendar at Walt Disney World this week. Flower and Garden Festival is still trucking right along. Normal Extended Evening Theme Park Hours will continue, and park hours are generally normal.

All of this should add up to mean continued low crowds until some school districts begin their summer breaks. Between now and the middle of May look like they’ll still be golden! The weather looks bright and sunny and … warm. But not oppressive just yet. If you’ve got a flexible schedule, get you down to Orlando.