Disney Data Dump September 4 2024

Dearest gentle readers, prepare yourselves for an entrancing dive into the enigmatic world of Disney as we unravel the captivating tapestry of numbers and stats woven into the very fabric of this magical House of Mouse. Together we will reveal some hidden truths and tantalizing tidbits that even the most discerning of society’s aficionados will find utterly bewitching. So, fasten your seatbelts and ready your curiosities, for an enlightening journey through the enchanted corridors of data awaits!

Observed Crowd Levels August 27 – September 2

If the week leading up to last week’s post was the start of the Lovely Labor Day Lull, things really kicked into gear this past week! I called out that week’s low average crowd level (3.4) and then this past week blew right past it to an average crowd level of 2.7. The weather is still hot, but not nearly as hot as it was in early- and mid-August. And now you don’t even have to contend with as many humans in the parks as you did then. We saw a little bit of a bump over the weekend, but not even to moderate crowd levels. Thanks, Pirate Pass blockouts!

Just like last week, we’ve got easy-to-spot party days at the Magic Kingdom – on the 27th, 30th, and 2nd. All with crowd level 1. But even non-party days are “only” bouncing up to a 3 or a 4. I will add one caveat here. Crowd levels have everything to do with mid-day waits. But non-party evenings at the Magic Kingdom will feel much worse than what the crowd level implies. Main Street is filling up early for Happily Ever After on those nights, and wait times are proportionally higher in the evening than what you would expect based on daytime waits. People are “flooding” into Magic Kingdom at night when it’s not closed for a party.

We’re also seeing the impact of Food & Wine season at EPCOT with its higher crowd levels than any other park since the festival opened on August 29th. Some of this is thanks to festival-goers, but even more of it is due to the lower number of rides available to absorb those higher crowds thanks to the refurbishment of Test Track and other reliability issues.

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 week, Touring Plans predictions were either spot-on or within 1 crowd level 54% of the time. And, 72% 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 – back below the stellar performance last week. We’re still seeing a skew toward overpredictions – not a single park-day was underpredicted at all for the past week. The biggest miss of the week was at Hollywood Studios – on August 27th when TP predicted a 6 and the actual crowd level was a 1. What a win for anyone at the Studios that day!

Attraction Downtime August 27 – September 2

If we average all of the capacity lost due to unexpected downtime over the past two weeks, it comes out to 5.3% of attractions unexpectedly being down. That’s still trending higher than it has been for the end of summer, and it’s not all due to weather-related downtime. Unfortunately, Animal Kingdom is back on top as the park with the most overall downtime issues, coming in at 7% overall downtime over the past week. Thankfully it didn’t seem to impact overall wait times very much.

The worst day for attraction downtime in the past week was on August 28th. On that day, 7.5% of all capacity at WDW was lost due to unexpected downtime. And the worst park-day of the week is once again a handy combination of the worst day of the week and the worst park of the week – August 28th at Animal Kingdom. On that park day, a disappointing 18% of the capacity was lost at Animal Kingdom due to unexpected downtime. Animal Kingdom was open for 10 hours on the 28th, so 18% downtime is the equivalent of the whole park being down for 108 minutes that day. Almost 2 out of the 10 hours!

Attraction Downtime Worst Offenders

For the third week in a row (and with no prospect for getting knocked off its pedestal any time soon), the worst offender of the past week was Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, which was unexpectedly down for an astounding 41% of the week – its worst week since we starting tracking it. The worst day for Tiana’s was clearly on August 27th, when the ride was down for 82% of the day. But it was also down for more than half of the day on August 28th. On average, Tiana’s didn’t open until 11:15 am this week. But on two different days it was down until significantly into the afternoon.

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 (71%), Winnie the Pooh (18%), The Barnstormer (14%), The Haunted Mansion (11%)
• EPCOT: Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure (15%), The Seas with Nemo (14%), Living with the Land (14%), Spaceship Earth (11%), Frozen Ever After (10%)
• Hollywood Studios: Slinky Dog Dash (25%), Rock’n’Roller Coaster (24%), Rise of the Resistance (22%)
• Animal Kingdom: No rope drop downtime issues!

This week’s rope drop problem child was definitely EPCOT, with some degree of downtime at many headliners and secondary options. Hollywood Studios had a rough week too thanks to Slinky Dog Dash, Rock’n’Roller Coaster and Rise of the Resistance all being down at least a fifth of the time. For once, Magic Kingdom isn’t on the naughty list thanks to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Space Mountain playing nicely at rope drop this week.

Wait Times August 27 – September 2

Attractions with the Highest Average Posted Wait at each park

• Hollywood Studios: Slinky Dog Dash, average posted wait of 60 minutes (64 minutes last week)
• Animal Kingdom: Flight of Passage, average posted wait time of 59 minutes (74 minutes last week)
• EPCOT: Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure, average posted wait time of 47 minutes (54 minutes last week)
• Magic Kingdom: Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, average posted wait time of 47 minutes (52 minutes last week)

Impressively, Slinky Dog Dash is the only attraction with an average posted wait of an hour or more in the past week! Everything else had incredibly reasonable posted wait times. If we exclude the long weekend, the numbers get even more remarkable – 51 minutes at Slinky, 49 minutes at Flight of Passage, 45 minutes at Seven Dwarfs, and just 40 minutes at Remy.

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 25.5 minutes (33 minutes last week)
• Lowest: Magic Kingdom, average park-wide posted wait of 19 minutes (22 minutes last week)

I hypothesized last week that Hollywood Studios might drop below an overall average posted wait time of 30 minutes for the week – which is exceedingly rare. I never though that it would go as low as 25 minutes! That’s crazy. And if we exclude the holiday weekend, the overall average was just 22 minutes. During crowded weeks of the year we’ll see that park average spike to something over an hour. An average posted wait of 25 minutes at a park that is full of high-wait attractions is crazy.

And at Magic Kingdom, if we narrow to party days, that average posted wait time drops to just 16 minutes. You could accomplish so much at Magic Kingdom with those low wait times, even on shorter party days!

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 64% of what was posted. This is pretty much in line with our historical average. But it means that if the posted wait time at a popular attraction was 60 minutes, you could’ve expected to wait just over 38 minutes instead.

But the worst offender for the past week is it’s a small world! 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 a 20 minute posted wait, you probably would have actually only waited 8 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 August 27th and September 2nd, we had almost 1500 timed actual waits submitted through the Lines app. The one person who recorded the most actual waits during that time was ThomFoolery, with 52 overall timed waits – all in the standby line. Challenge mode! Thanks for all of that timing, ThomFoolery! It unfortunately does not compete with the the 97 timed waits in a single week from our current timing champion, preef.

Looking Ahead: September 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 when you read this post. Welcome back to the future.

A shift in the Magic Kingdom party schedule means that there are only two parties in the coming week – on September 6th and 8th. This should lead to a slight bump in crowds at Magic Kingdom on the 7th, but nothing too crazy unless you’re hoping to catch the fireworks that night.

Otherwise, we can expect a nice post-Labor Day relaxation of wait times. I expect most of the days to have crowds in the level 2 or 3 range. Afternoon rain storms will certainly still be a thing – so get those outdoor attractions done in the morning while the weather is still cooperative.