Our trip starts in 2 days!!
The crowd calendar for June 28-30 has dropped to 1’s and 2’s in most parks.
Starting July 1 crowds are back up into the 7+ range. (holiday and fireworks)
But when I look into Hollywood Studio attraction wait times for June 28 vs July 2 I’m not seeing any differences. That surprises me.
So should I expect waits to be shorter on 6/28 than the predictions say?
Or should I expect waits to be longer on 7/2 than the predictions say?
Or is there Disney line magic that will keep the wait times about the same whether there are level 1 crowds or level 7 crowds?
I create step-by-step touring plans, but with the unknowns due to RotR and the fact that my group of 10 veterans doesn’t have much else on their HAVE TO DO list, I just wanted to create a table that shows the typical wait times and the predicted best times to ride some of the rides we might want to do if the waits aren’t too long. Mostly we plan to walk and gawk and eat.
It sounds like your best bet is to just use the recently updated TP Lines app in the park. It will recommend when to ride a certain attraction, or ride now.
Good point, I can certainly use Lines while in the park, but with a group of 10 that doesn’t always stick together, I like to provide guidance in advance as much as possible.
Looking at how peak wait times usually correspond to crowd levels, my guess is the predicted attraction wait times for July 2 are currently a bit too low. Hollywood Studios Crowd Levels
Hey - maybe we’ll get a boarding group on 6/28 and then anything on 7/2 is gravy anyway.
That’s great that you have 2 days at HS. Important thing is to rope drop 1 or 2 of the headliners or just wait til evening for them. And get as many in your party attempting for a BG as you can. Hopefully get a low boarding group number so you can go to Rise in the AM when other lines are long. Have fun!
My 18 year old nephew is in charge of orchestrating our BG attempts. He scored virtual tickets to Hagrid’s ride at Universal over spring break multiple times, and he knows all about synching clocks and when to refresh. Hopefully with 5+ of the 10 of us with MDE accounts and apps one of us will get through! (I’m reading up on all the Touring Plan tips as well just in case I learn something he doesn’t already know.)
One thing to keep in mind (not exactly answering your question, but related) is that Crowd Level is based on historical average wait times. A crowd level 1 is the lowest 10% of waits compared to average (mostly based on pre-pandemic data). Waits during the pandemic have mostly been lower than before, even on the busiest days, because of capped capacity and lack of FastPass.
This Twitter thread does a good job of illustrating the difference in wait times in June 2021 (when there have effectively been no caps, I might add - mostly Fastpass impact) vs. June 2019. All selected attraction waits were much higher in 2019. So it may be the same number of people in the parks, but much lower wait times.
BUT, you can’t skip the lines with fastpass, so you personally may end up waiting longer than you did in 2019, if you were a savvy user of FPP.
Cool analysis. Thanks! I last visited in 2018; so it was all about FP and touring plans. This new world without FP is taking some time to figure out. And things change so much, notes I took just 2 months ago are not very useful anymore.
OH My! I just found your epic trip report. What an adventure. I’m amazed you had any energy after all that to actually type up everything you typed up. Thank you so much for sharing so much.
