Same-Day Lightning Lane Drop Times
Lightning Lanes are an important and expensive part of most Disney World vacations. There are two booking windows:
- Disney Resort Guests
- 7:00am Eastern Time, 7 days before the first day of your Resort stay
- Guests with Date-Based tickets and Annual Passholders
- 7:00am Eastern Time, 3 days before your park visit
Sometimes, however, you aren’t able to secure the attractions or times you want. That’s when being fast of finger in the parks can help lock in the big rides you’re missing.
You can find same-day Lightning Lane reservation drop times on the TouringPlans website. We’ve been tracking when new Lightning Lane reservations are available, or “drop”, for certain attractions. This means that if an attraction is showing no Lightning Lanes available on the day you’re in a park, check again during one of the listed drop times since Disney usually releases additional times.
For example, the image above comes from the attraction pages on our website:
- Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run Drop Times: 10:47am and 3:47pm
- Tower of Terror and Slinky Dog Dash Drop Times: 1:17pm and 3:47pm
This means that if you’re in Hollywood Studios today and you weren’t able to secure a Tower of Terror Lightning Lane during your original booking, check the My Disney Experience app again at 1:17pm. This is when new times may be released.
Test Track has been offering new Lightning Lane availability at 8:47am, 12:47pm, 2:47pm, and 5:47pm. As of the date of this article, we have been unable to identify consistent drop times for Guardians of the Galaxy.
Crowd Level Dependent Drops
We’ve (we = Len, David, Becky, Brad, and team) been tracking drop times by crowd level, too. For example, Flight of Passage, a Lightning Lane Single Pass attraction in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, does not show new, or dropped, same-day Lightning Lane times when the park is at a Crowd Level 1, 2, or 3.
When Crowd Levels are at a 4 or above, the same-day Lightning Lane drop times for Flight of Passage are frequent~ hourly drops, 10 in total.
You can check our Crowd Calendar for Crowd Levels. TouringPlans Subscribers (Liners) have access to our 365-day rolling Crowd Calendar.
- The Flight of Passage page on our website shows same-day drop times
- This is the Lines app landing page that shows a 10-day Crowd Calendar view
- Liner Crowd Calendar view for December 28, 2026. Animal Kingdom is forecasted to be a Crowd Level 10 that day, so hourly Flight of Passage Lightning Lane Single Pass drops are expected same-day.
Other helpful Lightning Lane links:
Lightning Lane Priorities at Magic Kingdom
Lightning Lane Priorities at Hollywood Studios
Lightning Lane Priorities at EPCOT
Lightning Lane Priorities at Disney’s Animal Kingdom
TouringPlans 21-Day Lightning Lane Availability
You May Also Like...
-
Len & team have added Lightning Lane return time charts to our website for Walt Disney World and Disneyland. We'll look…
-
Beginning tomorrow (February 25, 2025), Disneyland will allow guests to purchase the Lightning Lane Premier Pass up to seven days in…
You say that Guests with Date-Based tickets (and Annual Passholders) can book their lightning lanes at “7:00am Eastern Time, 3 days before your park visit.” Those with date-based tickets who are not staying at Disney resorts can book their lightning lanes three days before the first day of their ticket, for the total number of valid admission days on their ticket. Since the first day of their ticket may be before their first park visit day, and will be more than three days before subsequent park visit days on a multi-day ticket, this will often mean they can book more than three days before the days of their park visits.