Hollywood Studios has been the most interesting park to strategize for months now, and the temporarily closure and reopening of the park has done little to change that. In this post, we look back at the first week of wait times at Hollywood Studios and suggest some touring strategies you might consider in light of this data!

Source Data And Reminders

This post is based on wait time data collected at Thrill-Data.com. I highly encourage you to use their data in putting together your own analysis, particularly if I’m too lazy—er, busy—to keep putting up these posts.

This isn’t big data analysis, and it isn’t any sort of serious statistical project. I try to be straightforward about why I chose the data points I chose and their limitations. I hope it’s helpful, but if you want to do a more serious analysis, go ahead.

Wait time analysis in general is imperfect. Posted wait times are inaccurate, and the realities of visiting a park often differ from the conclusions we see in the numbers.

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance

Hollywood Studios is a weird park right now because of the unique issues posed by Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance uses a virtual queue (“boarding groups”) instead of a regular queue. Guests can join the virtual queue at 10AM, 1PM, and 4PM.

The park opens at 10AM, and everyone wants to join a boarding group at 10AM in case they wind up not being able to release much space at 1PM and 4PM. As a result, the park is incredibly crowded at 10AM.

Huge crowds for awesome new rides are nothing new. What is new, because of the virtual queue, is that almost none of these guests are actually going to Rise of the Resistance at 10AM. Even if they get a boarding group at 10AM, they’ll still be called in batches throughout the rest of the day.

So, the boarding group system brings peak crowds into the park when it opens, and those guests are all in line for the other eight rides at the park.

Even before the parks closed, this meant “rope drop” as a strategy wasn’t too useful at Hollywood Studios. You could (and can) arrive early and get near the front of the line for one ride. Once you’re off that ride, though, you’ll encounter high (relatively speaking) waits everywhere else.

The opposite happens at 4PM, too. Once people try and fail to get boarding groups at 4PM, they leave the park. By then, most guests have ridden everything they needed to ride, and without a chance at Rise of the Resistance, they’ll leave.

Keep those trends in mind throughout this analysis. Also, keep in mind that we won’t be addressing Rise of the Resistance in this post.

We have a separate post discussing Rise of the Resistance boarding groups, but the short of it is to use the app to try to get a group at 10AM, 1PM and 4PM. Then, when your group gets called, you go to the ride (you have an hour window). There’s no ifs/ands/buts. Doesn’t matter if you’re in line for another ride. You go to Rise during your hour.

Hollywood Studios Wait Time Scorecard

Here’s a look back at one week of wait times at Hollywood Studios, in four parts:

The above table shows the average waits for rides (for the entire week) and a chart with how those wait times changed throughout the day, on average. As discussed above, waits at Hollywood Studios start high or peak early before dropping throughout the day.

Otherwise, the above table gives a basic priority ranking for rides at Hollywood Studios:

Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway
Slinky Dog Dash
Tower of Terror
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run
Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster
Toy Story Mania
Star Tours
Alien Swirling Saucers

We’ll talk more in the next section about how to put that ranking into action. Now, part two of the scorecard:

The above table shows the lowest wait between 12PM and 5PM for each ride. Why 12PM to 5PM? Because if you skip something in the morning, you’re probably going to want to ride it between 12PM and 5PM. Waiting until after 5PM is fine, but you’re starting to get close to closing time, which isn’t always the best idea (what if the ride breaks down).

Usually, 12PM to 5PM is a busy time for theme parks. For the reasons we already discussed, Hollywood Studios sees higher crowds in the morning.

Using a single lowest wait time isn’t a perfect story. It might be at that time for just a few minutes before it spikes up. But you can see the trends—besides Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway and Slinky Dog Dash, low waits happen regularly in the afternoon.

Maximum wait time is another fun one. Hollywood Studios still has a few non-ride things to do (Muppet Vision 3D, Mickey Shorts Theater, the new cavalcades), but if you stack up all the maximum waits, every day is less than 8 hours, and four days are under 6.5 hours.

Under no circumstances should you wait in the maximum waits for every single ride. And most days it’s probably impossible since those maximum waits will occur around the same time. But if the park is open 10 hours and the maximum waits total 8 hours, the absolute worst case is you have two hours for time on rides, Rise of the Resistance, meals, and anything else in the park.

Again, that’s just for emphasis. Because most of the time, waits aren’t anywhere near those peaks:

This is my favorite table of the moment. It shows what % of the week rides spent at or under given wait times. You can see every ride spent most of the week with waits ar or under 60 minutes, and 7 of 8 rides spent most of the week with waits at or under 30 minutes.

Hollywood Studios Strategy Thoughts

With these tables in place, let’s talk strategy.

Rise of the Resistance and Everything Else

This post is focused only on rides. I’ll eventually get to a more complete discussion of the park, but right now just remember:

non-ride things (like Muppet Vision 3D or Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy) are worth doing!!
non-ride things often operated on more limited hours than the park (check the app, don’t push them too late)
non-ride things are good when no wait times are particularly appealing
non-ride things (particularly shows) can take a lot of time, so don’t save them all for late

As we already stated, you need to get a boarding group for Rise of the Resistance at 10AM, 1PM, or 4PM and go during the hour your group is called.

Four Low-Priority Rides

I’m going to do the rest of this analysis backwards, from lowest priority rides to highest priority rides.

Right off the bat, I want to narrow down the discussion a bit. Four rides—Alien Swirling Saucers, Toy Story Mania, Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster, and Star Tours—average under 20-minute waits, hit 5 or 10 minutes at some point in the afternoon almost every day, and spent most of the week with waits under 15 minutes.

Even though they have low waits, these rides might fit into an earlier part of your touring strategy. I pretty much always ride Rock ‘n’ Roller together before or after Tower of Terror. And it will usually makes sense to pop into Toy Story Mania while the wait is 5 minutes if you’re passing by.

Hollywood Studios doesn’t have a ton to do, though, so personally I’d hold onto these rides for those times when nothing else is particularly appealing (based on the tips we give in this post). You’re basically using these rides and the non-ride activities to fill gaps in your day. Keep busy, and keep an eye on wait times for the other four rides (unless you already visited them).

Tower of Terror and Millennium Falcon

Tower of Terror and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run are a bit tougher to pin down. Both have busy mornings with lots of variance, with waits usually falling around midday (which is about 3PM in Hollywood Studios).

Both were under 30 minutes most of the week, and both hit sub-15 minute waits every day between 12PM and 5PM. Definitely nothing to stress about.

One interesting thing about Tower of Terror is that it often uses a “spooky” 13-minute posted wait. Sometimes that’s closer to 15, but often it’s closer to 5. When we’re working with such a small set of relatively small numbers, the difference between 5 and 13 is pretty significant, so the Tower of Terror trends are a bit skewed.

It’s unlikely you’re going to start your day with Tower of Terror. And its waits already spike by 10:20AM, so it’s unlikely you’re going to visit in the morning. Let’s look at the afternoon.

For the first seven days the park has been reopened, Tower of Terror has closed the day with a wait under 30 minutes. In fact, you would have found only waits under 30 minutes if you visited at or after: 6:30, 7:10, 5:00, 4:25, 4:05, 2:55, 2:40 on the first seven days the park was reopened.

Those first two days saw increased crowds because the park had just reopened. Since then, waits drop in the early afternoon and then more so once 4PM hits and the last guests trying to ride Rise of the Resistance miss out on boarding groups.

Smugglers Run is similar. You might rush there from your first ride to find a short wait, but more likely you’ll see high wait times by the time you exit. So, afternoon? You would have seen only under 30-minute waits at or after: 3:25, 2:45, 2:40, 4:40, 1:30, 3:40, and 2:25.

Tower of Terror and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run are both best visited after about 3PM. If you see an appealing wait earlier should you visit? Absolutely! You never want to push a ride too late because you run the risk it’ll break down for the day and not reopen. Plus, maybe you love it and want to ride it twice.

This leaves us the two major rides to sort out…

Runaway Railway and Slinky Dog Dash

If you look at Slinky Dog Dash and Runaway Railway waits side by side, it’s pretty clear which one you need to be more concerned about:

Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway (the top, blue line) is the wait time queen of Walt Disney World right now. Posted wait times at or under 15 minutes are nearly unheard of, and waits at or under 30 minutes are rare (13% of the week). Even waits at or under 45 minutes are the minority—only 30% of the week.

I should add I’ve seen one report that a posted 90-minute wait was actually only 35 minutes. This sort of thing isn’t unheard of in theme parks, but that huge a gap is pretty rare. Either way, you’ll probably be making decisions based on posted waits. Don’t get in line at 7PM with a 90-minute posted wait and expect to have time for another ride if the park closes at 8PM.

Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway is the newest ride in the park. Particularly in a time when locals (who have ridden everything else a dozen times) are a significant portion of guests, Runaway Railway gets a lot of attention early on.

In the first seven days of the reopening, Runaway Railway opened with posted waits of: 120 minutes, 130 minutes, 70 minutes, 105 minutes, 100 minutes, 100 minutes, 90 minutes.

You can beat these waits by arriving early enough, but that has problems too. In particular, some people—me included—have really bad cell reception inside the Runaway Railway building (wifi doesn’t help). This means if you’re in the building at 10AM, you run the risk of missing out on a boarding group (which happened to me).

With groups being added at 1PM and 4PM, this isn’t the huge problem it once was. But it’s enough for me to stay away from that building in the morning. Hollywood Studios is an easy enough park to visit that you can afford to avoid Runaway Railway at rope drop.

When should you ride Railway? I’d say “not first, but as soon as the waits are below your cutoff.” And where should your cutoff be?

Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway spent 97% of the week at or under 90 minute waits. It spent 66% of the week at or under 60 minutes. Somewhere in there is where I’d get in line.

At 60 minutes, you’re definitely not wasting time, and you should get in line. At 90 minutes, you can probably do better…but it’s not going to ruin your day to get in line.

If you’ve been waiting a while, done a lot of other things, and it’s still at 100+, maybe just get in line. Part of this is because I suspect (based on following social media all week) its waits are often inflated in order to deflect guests elsewhere. With social distancing, the queue quickly pours out into the hub of the park, which is a nuisance.

So where do we recommend you start? The only other obvious option—Slinky Dog Dash. Slinky Dog Dash is a quick ride that positions you pretty well for picking your second ride. Smugglers Run, Runaway Railway, and Toy Story Mania are all viable options.

If you arrive about 30 minutes before the park opens, you’ll have a pretty short wait for Slinky Dog Dash. In most cases, I’d probably head to Runaway Railway immediately, as that will take me roughly to lunch, when I can put together a plan for the afternoon that doesn’t require the two busiest rides in the park.

Conclusions

Week one of reopened Hollywood Studios showed us the park is still a pretty big stressor. I think Magic Kingdom is the more challenging park to completely visit at the moment, but you’re comparing a park with 20 rides to a park with 8.

Hollywood Studios is stressful just because your morning will probably have you in line for while, unless you want to do the “risky” thing and push the four most popular rides later in the day, hoping to catch low waits.

But in total, the park remains very doable. One of the last days before the parks closed, I got in a posted 120-minute line for Slinky Dog Dash. My day was still great, and the park was much more challenging then than now. No one who’s gotten to this point in the post should worry at all about their upcoming visit.

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