The Parks Hollywood Studios had one of those mornings that makes you question the whole concept of a “plan your day” app. Rise of the Resistance didn’t load a single rider until nearly noon. Millennium Falcon sat dark until mid-morning. Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster tripped over itself twice. Normally that kind of pile-up sends crowds crashing into whatever’s still spinning, but Wednesday the park finished two full crowd levels below its own typical baseline anyway, according to Lightning Brain’s daily report. This was a bad day wearing a bad morning’s clothes. Planning your Disney trip? Download Lightning Brain from the App Store or visit lightningbrain.app to optimize every minute of your park day. Against that backdrop, the one piece of good news at Hollywood Studios is almost funny in its modesty: Vacation Fun, the animated short playing in the Mickey Shorts Theater, was supposed to close temporarily on October 28. It didn’t. Walt Disney World’s own website now lists operating hours for the attraction stretching past November, with no clear end date, per Disney Dining and Disney Fanatic. This is an indoor seat during a season when indoor seats at Hollywood Studios are suddenly worth something. Elsewhere on property, the Swan and Dolphin Food & Wine Classic is returning, open to hotel guests, locals, and anyone willing to show up and eat well. And over at Jollywood Nights, which kicks off November 7, TouringPlans has already done the unglamorous work of cataloging what’s new on the snack and drink menus, down to portion sizes precise enough to need a food scale. Some jobs are thankless. Someone has to do them. The Shows Walt Disney Animation Studios took its next release, Hexed, straight into the Dancing with the Stars ballroom this week, with the troupe performing a routine choreographed around the film. It’s a promotional beat, but a well-aimed one: DWTS delivers exactly the broad, family-skewing audience a new animated film needs to introduce itself to before opening weekend. ABC, meanwhile, has locked a date for its annual holiday special, closing out any ambiguity about when the Christmas machine officially starts running on the network. Halloween gets exactly zero extra innings here. The moment the calendar flips to November, Disney’s entertainment calendar flips with it. On the Marvel side, Connor Storrie is reportedly in talks to join Shawn Levy’s Ghost Rider as a villain opposite Ryan Gosling’s Johnny Blaze, according to the Hollywood Reporter via The DisInsider. Early casting news, but significant given how much weight Levy and Gosling are already carrying on this one. The Business The real story this week is who’s left to fix the next ride outage. Disney’s theme parks division is laying off between 100 and 200 people, and the cuts are landing hardest in Imagineering’s Glendale offices, according to Disney Tourist Blog and Mickey Visit. The timing is the part that stings. Disney currently has more parks expansion projects in development or under construction than at any point in company history, backed by a $60 billion investment plan the company has described as “turbocharged.” Trimming the creative organization responsible for actually building that pipeline, while the pipeline is longer than it’s ever been, is the kind of decision that invites a lot of questions nobody at the company is in a hurry to answer yet. Earlier rounds of Disney layoffs largely spared the parks division. This one doesn’t. Storyliving by Disney, the company’s residential arm, pushed out a new update on its Asteria community in North Carolina, continuing the slow expansion of Disney-branded living outside the parks entirely, per Disney Food Blog. And Disney Vacation Club launched a new brand campaign, “Always a Magical Tomorrow,” debuting November 1 and aimed squarely at the membership base the company considers among its most loyal and most profitable. Outside the gates, Pinstripes is reopening in Orlando’s tourist corridor with bowling, games, and dining, giving visitors another reason to spend an evening near the parks without actually being in them, per Attractions Magazine. The Details Walt Disney Archives dug up newly digitized photos of the Orange Bird to mark the character’s 55th anniversary. The Florida citrus mascot was created for Walt Disney World back in 1971, and the Archives’ release is a reminder of how much of the park’s identity was built on characters that never got their own ride, just decades of merchandise and goodwill. Speaking of merchandise: the Small Kingdoms figurine collection, first shown off at D23’s Ultimate Disney Fan Event, has finally landed at Walt Disney World after debuting at the Disney Store, per MickeyBlog. The interconnected figures let fans build miniature versions of the parks at home, which is either the purest expression of Disney fandom or a very specific kind of problem for your shelf space. D23 members get their own moment on November 20, with an invite-only premiere event in Beverly Hills for Disney Shorts, a new collectible line from Mintbrain that reimagines Mickey’s silhouette as a canvas for other characters. Holiday shopping season is also fully underway: Disney Parks Blog rolled out its 2026 Advent calendar gift guide, and MiceChat published a full rundown of Disneyland’s holiday merchandise, including new Starbucks items and a gingerbread collection now hitting shelves alongside the Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh holiday lines. On the licensing front, Mickey & Friends are suiting up in NFL gear as Disney and ESPN build toward Super Bowl LXI in Los Angeles, with new apparel, collectibles, and accessories rolling out across the season, according to The Walt Disney Company’s own newsroom. And if nostalgia is more your speed than football, AllEars flagged a batch of Y2K-styled Disney finds currently available on Amazon, for anyone who wants their Disney merch to look like it time-traveled from a different decade entirely. Keep exploring Catch more Disney Deets coverage or get the Lightning Brain app for real-time wait times and routing. Sources Disney Dining Disney Fanatic Lightning Brain TouringPlans EYNTK Disney Parks Laughing Place Inside the Magic The DisInsider Disney Tourist Blog Mickey Visit Disney Food Blog Disney Experiences Attractions Magazine Chip and Co MickeyBlog D23 Disney Parks Blog MiceChat Walt Disney Company AllEars Designed, trained, and directed by humans. Produced by Lightning Brain’s AI. Learn how we make this: https://lightningbrain.app/how-we-make-this Post navigation QR Codes, Lifted Restrictions, and a Jollywood Holiday Menu Imagineering Cuts Hit as Holiday Season Takes Over the Parks