Disney Data Dump October 2 2024

You know I love starting with a clever little intro to our weekly foray into all of the Disney data. But this week I want to shout out to everyone impacted by Helene. Travel and homes and lives were all upended, and our thoughts are with all of you as you try to navigate dealing with the aftermath. I hope that a quick read through all of the math about the magic of Disney can provide you with a little respite and escape from reality for a few minutes at least.

Observed Crowd Levels September 24 – 30

Thanks to a hurricane rolling through the southeast, a bunch of vacations were cancelled this week. And that means our steady upward trend in crowd levels took a step back this week. This looks more like an August week than an end-of-September week. Don’t expect this to last long, though. We’re heading into fall break season – and all of those families that don’t want to miss school, but are avoiding the heat of summer are about to head down to Orlando. Disney is extending park hours to accommodate them.

Not too much to point out here that we haven’t already covered in the past couple of weeks. EPCOT continues to be the big overall draw. The closure of Test Track there has had a big impact on the (in)ability of crowds to spread out. That’s not going to change anytime soon. And Magic Kingdom non-party days are back to being very very crowded. That difference between crowd level 6 on the 25th and the crowd level 1 days on either side of it is an additional 4-ish hours of waiting in line for the same attractions throughout the day.

Once nice trend this past week is that Animal Kingdom seems to have calmed down a bit. We’ll see how it can handle increasing crowds over the next couple of weeks.

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. 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 43% of the time. And, 68% of the time Touring Plans predictions were within 2 crowd levels, and that means we only get a D+ for our predictions in the past week. That’s much lower than the past several weeks. On average, you could’ve subtracted two crowd levels from the prediction at any park on any day and been closer to accurate. But a lot of that is due to Helene’s path of destruction. That’s not something we can easily predict. The biggest misses of the week were overpredictions by 6 crowd levels, at Hollywood Studios on September 29th and 30th. On those days, the park was predicted to be a crowd level 7 and was instead … a 1. I am jealous of you if you were at Hollywood Studios on either of those days.

Attraction Downtime September 24 – 30

If we average all of the capacity lost due to unexpected downtime over the past week, it comes out to 3.4% of attractions unexpectedly being down. That’s up from last week, but still lower than our historical average. EPCOT was the park with the most overall downtime issues, coming in at 3.7% overall downtime over the past week. That’s the second week in a row that it’s had the most downtime – but that’s due to the other parks being more reliable than normal. Still, it’s the park that has the hardest time “absorbing” crowds due to any downtime, so that definitely plays into its crowd levels.

The worst day for attraction downtime in the past week was on September 29th. On that day, 4.5% of all capacity at WDW was lost due to unexpected downtime. And the worst park-day of the week was also on September 29th, at Hollywood Studios. On that park day, 7% of the capacity was lost at Hollywood Studios due to unexpected downtime. The park was open for 12 hours on the 29th, so 7% downtime is the equivalent of the whole park being down for 50 minutes.

Attraction Downtime Worst Offenders

Ah, and we’re back. Because of course after I brag about Tiana’s having a reliable September … it has to come cruising back to be the most unreliable attraction of the past week. Also because I still haven’t gotten to ride it, and it’s my number one goal for this upcoming weekend. So it’ll probably have its worst operational weekend of the past several months. This week, Tiana’s Bayou Adventure was unexpectedly down for 14.5% of the week. The worst day for Tiana’s was on September 27th when the ride was down for 40% of the day. That was a party day, and the attraction didn’t even open until after noon. Most of the downtime this week was due to late openings.

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: Tiana’s Bayou Adventure (50%), Winnie the Pooh (15%), Space Mountain (11%)
• EPCOT: Living with the Land (26%), Journey Into Imagination (13%)
• Hollywood Studios: Rock’n’Roller Coaster (21%), Rise of the Resistance (20%), Tower of Terror (14%)
• Animal Kingdom: Dinosaur (15%)

Well, after a spectacular rope drop week last week, we have the return of some issues this week. Besides Tiana’s missing half of its rope drop hours, three popular attractions at Hollywood Studios had problems. Thankfully, EPCOT and Animal Kingdom were pretty reliable.

Wait Times September 24 – 30

Attractions with the Highest Average Posted Wait at each park

• Hollywood Studios: Slinky Dog Dash, average posted wait of 56 minutes (62 minutes last week)
• Animal Kingdom: Flight of Passage, average posted wait time of 50 minutes (71 minutes last week)
• EPCOT: Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, average posted wait time of 54 minutes (58 minutes last week)
• Magic Kingdom: TRON, average posted wait time of 65 minutes (78 minutes last week)

Lots and lots of decreasing wait times this week! For the first time in forever, Tron has the highest wait time of any attraction in any park – which is impressive given all of the party days on Magic Kingdom’s schedule. These average wait times should bounce right back up next week.

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 28 minutes (30 minutes last week)
• Lowest: Animal Kingdom, average park-wide posted wait of 19 minutes (21 minutes at Magic Kingdom last week)

What a topsy-turvy week in wait times! Hollywood Studios unexpectedly dropped back below its 30-minute mark for very very low crowds, and Animal Kingdom snuck right in to steal the very steady party season low-wait crown from Magic Kingdom (which had an average 20 minute wait this week).

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 68% of what was posted. This is actually a little higher than our historical average. Which means that for the past week, posted wait times were ever-so-slightly more accurate than normal. This is a little-bit expected for early fall when overall crowd levels are low. It means that if the posted wait time at a popular attraction was 50 minutes, you could’ve expected to wait only 34 minutes instead.

But the worst offender for the past week is … for the second week in a row, TRON. At this one attraction, submitted actual wait times were only 47% of posted wait times in the past week. That means that if the attraction had a 60 minute posted wait, you probably would have actually only waited something like 28 minutes instead. Less than half of what was posted. This could still be Disney trying to figure out what to post for TRON (and erring on the side of caution), or it could be deliberate crowd management – hoping you’ll bail out and go ride something else instead. 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 September 24th and 30th, we had almost 1200 timed actual waits submitted through the Lines app. The one person who recorded the most actual waits during that time was thefarah5, with 33 overall timed waits – 31 standby waits and 2 virtual queue waits. Thanks for all of that timing, thefarah5! And way to go, avoiding paying for LLMP and LLSP. It unfortunately does not compete with the the 97 timed waits in a single week from our current timing champion, preef.

Looking Ahead: October 1 – 7

I write this article on Tuesday evenings so that you all have the very freshest of data on Wednesdays. That means the 1st will already be in the past when you read this post. Time travel is possible.

This week we’ve got 4 Halloween parties at Magic Kingdom, on the 1st, 3rd, 4th and 6th. That means crowds are going to be much higher at Magic Kingdom on the 2nd and 5th, but quite pleasant on the other days. My family will be in Magic Kingdom on the 6th – so stop us if you say hello. Even better, we’re having a “MAD Tea Party” meet up at the Cheshire Cat statue at 11 am that day. Show up, grab a sticker, and then we’ll all get in line to ride the teacups … while being as angry as possible.

If you want to follow along with our other WDW adventures this weekend, head over to my Instagram account @raisingminniemes. We’ve got lots planned, including our first-ever RV stay at Fort Wilderness (and all of the activities they have to offer there), Animal Kingdom and Magic Kingdom time, several good meals, and more.

The rain is back in force for Orlando this weekend. Be prepared with park breaks, plans to spend time indoors, and all of your rain gear.

Even though the past few days have been very light on crowds, several school districts have fall breaks this weekend and next week. Disney is preparing for that with extended park hours, but expect to see higher wait times than we’ve had all summer and early fall.

Were you in the parks this past week, or are you headed there soon? Let me know in the comments below!