The Best Day to Visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios

We’re back this week answering the question “What’s the best day of the week to visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios?” Our previous posts on the best days of the week to visit the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and EPCOT. Our approach for the Studios uses the same data and statistical tests we’re doing to have confidence in our results:

• Using 480,000 wait times from popular attractions, because One Man’s Dream constant 0-minute wait doesn’t tell us anything about crowds
• During the busiest time of the day since that’s when crowds are highest
• After Disney changed its DAS eligibility rules in mid-2024, since that changed Lightning Lane and posted wait times
• Taking into account the effects of Magic Kingdom’s Halloween and Christmas parties on crowds at other parks

The Studios hosts its own Jollywood Nights holiday party in November and December, so we’ll also check if that event influences crowds.

Keep in mind that the best way to avoid long lines is to have a touring plan, especially for the first few attractions of the day. Our crowd calendar also has specific recommendations on which park to visit each day of the year.

Best days of the week to visit Hollywood Studios throughout the year

Let’s start with a full-year look at the best days of the week to visit the Studios, with and without its own special events and those at the Magic Kingdom. We’ve got over 480,000 wait times from EPCOT to analyze. Here’s the chart of average posted wait times by weekday:

And here’s the matrix that compares each day of the week with every other day:

Here are the results:

• Wednesday looks like the day of the week with the lowest average posted wait times
• Thursday is the next best day
• Friday and Saturday are tied for the days with the highest average waits

We saw something similar with Wednesday being the best day to visit Disney’s Animal Kingdom and EPCOT, but not the Magic Kingdom. My hypothesis here is that Wednesday’s the one day of the week that you can’t make into a four-day long weekend using just two vacation days from work, so people save Animal Kingdom, EPCOT, and the Studios for other days of the week. But the Magic Kingdom is the world’s most popular theme park and operates by its own rules.

The difference in posted wait times between the best and worst days at Hollywood Studios looks to be about 8 minutes per attraction during the peak part of the day. The Studios currently has 9 major rides with posted waits, so 8 minutes per attraction is 72 minutes over the course of a day.

Sitting at my desk and typing this, those 72 minutes feels like enough of a difference that I’d change my day to visit to save that time. But if you asked me the same question from the comfort of my own bed while I’m debating whether to get up for Early Entry and I might have a different answer. Let’s see if we can find any more motivation in the data.

Hollywood Studios’ best day of week: January through July

The Magic Kingdom’s Halloween and Christmas party schedule might affect the Studios’ crowds. We know from past analysis that those parties significantly alter crowd flow at the Magic Kingdom. Our assumption is that when guests are in Walt Disney World but not visiting the Magic Kingdom, they’re visiting other parks.

Here’s the graph for January through July at DHS:

And here’s the matrix:

We get an interesting result right off the bat: Sunday and Wednesday become tied for the best day of the week to visit the Studios. Also, Tuesday looks better than Thursday, though by less than a minute or so.

Seeing Wednesday there isn’t a surprise based on what we’ve seen in the other parks. Sunday’s moderately interesting because as we’ve noted earlier, it’s not a common travel day for families. We didn’t see Sunday as one of the top two days to visit Animal Kingdom from January through July, nor did we see it at EPCOT. So this effect seems specific to Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Hollywood Studios’ best day of week: August through December when the Magic Kingdom has parties

Here’s the chart showing the best days of the week to visit Hollywood Studios from the months of August through December. These are the months when the Magic Kingdom has its Halloween and Christmas holiday parties:

And here’s the matrix:

Wednesday remains the best day to visit Hollywood Studios, but Sunday’s wait times are substantially higher now, and Friday’s the day of the week with the longest wait times. In fact, there’s a 10-minute difference in wait times between Wednesday and Friday. Saving 90 minutes in line, especially when it’s still hot in August and September (and October. And parts of November. Plus sometimes in December.) would probably convince me to change my schedule.

It’s interesting to note that some of the busiest days of the week at Hollywood Studios from August through December come the day after the busiest days at the Magic Kingdom. Saturday’s the busiest day of the week at the Magic Kingdom when it’s running special events, and Sunday’s the second-busiest day of the week at the Studios. Also, Friday, the day before, is the busiest day of the week at the Studios. So it could be the case that guests are scheduling their Hollywood Studios visits around the Magic Kingdom’s parties from August through December.

We’ll wrap up this analysis by looking at the wait times for November and December, when the Studios runs its Jollywood Nights events, to see if there’s any impact to wait times from those. My hypothesis is that there’s not, since the Jollywood Nights events start later than the Magic Kingdom events.

Best days to visit Hollywood Studios in months with Jollywood Nights

The Studios hosted 26 Jollywood Nights events in 2024 and 2025. All of them have happened on the same three days of the week:

• Saturday (14 events)
• Monday (7 events)
• Wednesday (5 events)

If the Studios follows the same pattern as the Magic Kingdom, those days should have relatively low waits and the days between them should have higher crowds.

The days between Jollywood Nights events are Sunday (between the Saturday and Monday events) and Tuesday (between the Monday and Wednesday events).

Here’s the chart of Hollywood Studios’ best days to visit in November and December when the park is running Jollywood Nights:

And here’s the matrix:

As we suspected, you’ll see longer waits at Hollywood Studios on Sunday and Tuesday, the days between two Jollywood Nights events. That’s good to know for folks scheduling trips for later this year.

Wrapping Up: Wednesday’s a good day to visit Hollywood Studios

No matter how we slice the data, Wednesday seems to be a good day to visit the Studios all year long. We said that might be due to the fact that you can’t make a four-day weekend out of two vacation days and Wednesday (but you can with Monday/Tuesday and Thursday/Friday). And that rule seems to hold true for EPCOT and Animal Kingdom as well.

Here’s a handy graphic that summarizes our findings for the best days of the week to visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios:

The days of the week to avoid Disney’s Hollywood Studios depends on whether the park is hosting Jollywood Nights events in November and December. When those events run, Thursday and Saturday are good days to visit the Studios. That makes sense since Jollywood Nights’ seasonal schedule overlaps with the Magic Kingdom’s Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, which almost never happens on Saturdays. So the Magic Kingdom is busy on Saturdays in late fall, while the Studios is comparatively less busy.

This wraps up our look at all four Walt Disney World parks. We’ll show Disneyland and Disney California Adventure next week, then Universal Orlando’s three parks. In the meantime, drop a comment below if there’s anything else you’d like to see in those posts.