Daily Park Report: July 5, 2026

The Day-After Slump: Hollywood Studios Ran Nearly Empty While a Storm Reshuffled the Afternoon

Hollywood Studios posted a 1/10 on Sunday, July 5 — a 19.8-minute median wait, more than 40 percent under its own summer baseline. That is the park sitting three full crowd levels below normal, and it flipped the resort’s usual pecking order upside down. On a typical day Studios leads the pack; yesterday it trailed all four gates. The morning after Independence Day did exactly what departure days do: guests who packed the parks Saturday were checking out, driving home, or sleeping in. Add a mid-afternoon thunderstorm that shut down a dozen outdoor rides at once, and you get one of the softer boards of the summer.

Park by Park

Start with the Studios, because it’s the outlier that matters. A 1/10 with Tower of Terror at 15 minutes and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run also at 15 is the kind of walk-on morning that almost never happens in July. The peak came early — 11 AM at a 30-minute median — then the board sagged all afternoon as the crowd never materialized. If you had a day-after park-hopper plan, this was the place to be.

EPCOT quietly led the resort at 3/10, though “led” overstates it — a flat 15-minute median, dead-on its 30-day norm. It was the only park that didn’t fade, likely because festival-and-World-Showcase touring holds up better on a recovery day than thrill-heavy parks do. Spaceship Earth and Living with the Land were both walk-ons at 5 minutes.

Magic Kingdom ran a 3/10 at a 10.2-minute median, about a third below its baseline. Peak hit 11 AM before the afternoon storm gutted the second half of the day. The standout was Pirates of the Caribbean at a 5-minute average — three-quarters below its typical wait — and Tiana’s Bayou Adventure at 20, half its norm. Even a tired holiday-weekend crowd usually keeps Pirates busier than that.

Animal Kingdom rounded things out at 2/10, a 12.7-minute median. Kilimanjaro Safaris and Kali River Rapids both sat at 10 minutes — though Kali had operational problems of its own that skewed its numbers, more on that below. Noon was the high point at 22.5 minutes, which for this park barely registers as busy.

The Afternoon Storm

Between 3:20 and 4:54 PM, a rain band triggered weather-protocol closures across twelve outdoor attractions simultaneously — Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, Big Thunder, Expedition Everest, Slinky Dog Dash, Jungle Cruise, Tiana’s, the Barnstormer, both Walt Disney World Railroad stations and more. This wasn’t a string of mechanical failures; it was one weather event closing everything exposed at the same moment. Guests caught in it piled into indoor rides, and the covered options absorbed the overflow for that 90-minute window before rides began cycling back around 4:40.

Two closures stood apart from the storm. Test Track at EPCOT was down twice — a long morning outage from 9:36 AM to 12:22 PM, then again for over an hour and a half in the afternoon — so anyone counting on it faced a frustrating day of checking back. Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom was offline nearly three hours (2:58 to 5:52 PM) on top of an earlier hour-long stoppage, which is why its posted wait looked so low: the ride simply wasn’t running for much of the afternoon. Slinky Dog Dash also lost more than two and a half hours before lunch, pushing Toy Story Land guests toward Alien Swirling Saucers and the Runaway Railway.

Today’s Outlook — Monday, July 6

Don’t read yesterday’s softness as the new normal. This is still peak summer vacation season, and the day-after-holiday dip typically resolves by Monday as fresh arrivals check in. With that in mind, expect the board to firm back up: Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios in the 5-7/10 range, EPCOT and Animal Kingdom around 5-6/10. The Ripken Experience baseball tournament brings athlete families into the resort, which tends to load evening park visits.

Weather is the wildcard again — forecasts show roughly a 50 percent rain chance from late morning through the afternoon, with a high near 90. Plan your outdoor headliners early. Rope-drop Slinky Dog Dash, Everest, or Seven Dwarfs before noon, and keep an indoor backup list ready for the 2-to-5 PM window when storms are most likely to force another round of outdoor closures.

Yesterday’s storm closed nearly every outdoor attraction at Walt Disney World simultaneously. Lightning Brain’s predictive weather alerts put you ahead of events like this — giving you time to shift indoors, grab a meal, or reposition entirely before the closures hit. The rain chart then shows you when each wave clears so you’re first back in line when rides reopen. Now available at lightningbrain.app and on the App Store!