Daily Park Report: October 22, 2026

Slinky Was Parked All Morning — and the Rest of Walt Disney World Was a Walk-On Anyway

Toy Story Land’s headliner never got going Thursday. Slinky Dog Dash sat offline from 8:31 AM until 11:49 AM — the entire rope-drop window and then some — meaning the single ride most Hollywood Studios guests sprint for at open simply wasn’t an option until nearly lunch. On most days that’s a crisis. Thursday, it barely mattered, because the whole resort was running light enough that you could have walked onto almost anything else.

This was a genuinely quiet Thursday across all four parks, helped along by a crisp, cloudless day: high near 80, a cool 60-degree morning, and not a drop of rain. Comfortable touring weather, and the queues reflected a park-going crowd that was thin to begin with.

Park by Park

Magic Kingdom is the one worth flagging. At a 9.1-minute median, it landed a full two crowd levels below its own 30-day norm — a 2/10 where it usually sits around a 4. The cause isn’t a mystery: Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party took over the park, closing it to day guests at 6:00 PM. When a park sheds its evening, fewer people buy day tickets for it, and the ones who do find Fantasyland classics at rock bottom. Pirates of the Caribbean, “it’s a small world,” Dumbo, Barnstormer, and Astro Orbiter all sat at a flat 5 minutes. Space Mountain ran 10. The one upward blip — a 6:00 PM peak at 15 minutes — is just party guests flooding in as day visitors clear out.

Hollywood Studios carried the highest waits of the day, but “highest” is relative: a 29.6-minute median is a 2/10 for a park that normally runs 35-plus. With Slinky down through the morning, the 11:00 AM peak of 40 minutes came entirely from guests redistributing onto Rise of the Resistance, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, and the rest of the lineup. Even so, those are manageable numbers.

EPCOT and Animal Kingdom both bottomed out at 1/10. EPCOT held a 15-minute median despite Food & Wine Festival running — more evidence that festival guests come for booths, not boarding groups. Spaceship Earth, Living with the Land, and Nemo all idled at 5 minutes. Animal Kingdom was quieter still, and Kilimanjaro Safaris at a 15-minute wait was less than half its usual pull. Its 8:00 AM peak tells you the smart move: the park emptied out as the morning went on.

Downtime Report

Beyond Slinky’s long morning, the day had scattered disruptions rather than one big event. At Animal Kingdom, Expedition Everest was down from 1:42 to 3:54 PM — over two hours in the heart of the afternoon, pushing those guests toward the Safari and the park’s indoor options. Magic Kingdom guests at the party lost Big Thunder Mountain from 7:42 PM onward, trimming the Frontierland lineup during the event itself. EPCOT had an afternoon cluster — Guardians of the Galaxy, Figment, and Turtle Talk each going down for roughly an hour between 4:00 and 7:00 PM — though with waits this low, displaced guests had easy fallbacks. None of these produced real pain; on a busier day, the Everest and Slinky closures would have stung considerably more.

Today’s Forecast — Friday, October 23

The engine expects a noticeably busier day, and the split is sharp. Here’s the call:

• EPCOT — 6/10, about 30 minutes. The avoid park today. Food & Wine plus early entry push it up hard from yesterday’s 1/10.
• Animal Kingdom — 5/10, about 25 minutes. A real jump off yesterday’s walk-on floor.
• Hollywood Studios — 4/10, about 36 minutes. Roughly its normal self.
• Magic Kingdom — 2/10, about 17 minutes. The best park today — another Not-So-Scary party night keeps the daytime light and the gates close early to day guests.

Honest scorecard: yesterday’s forecast nailed Magic Kingdom but overshot everywhere else, missing EPCOT by three levels when the whole resort came in quieter than modeled. So treat today’s higher numbers as a direction, not gospel. The play is clear regardless — if you want elbow room, Magic Kingdom’s daytime is the value, and steer clear of EPCOT at midday. If you’re doing the party tonight, arrive early and ride Fantasyland before the costumes take over.

When the parks split this cleanly — one park busy, another wide open — knowing which way to hop is the whole game. Lightning Brain’s free Park Hop Advisor shows how busy all four parks are right now at a single glance, so you’re never stuck at the crowded half while Magic Kingdom sits quiet. Now available at lightningbrain.app and on the App Store!