Daily Park Report: July 24, 2026

Animal Kingdom Ran Two Levels Hot on Friday — and 60-Minute Afternoon Waits Caught the Forecast Off Guard

Animal Kingdom was the park nobody planned for on Friday, July 24. Its median wait landed at 35 minutes, up 75% over its recent 20-minute baseline, pushing it to a 9/10 on the percentile scale — busier than roughly 85% of the last year at that park. That’s a full two crowd levels above its own summer norm, the only park on property that broke from its usual rhythm. If you walked in expecting a mellow safari day, the 3:00 PM peak of 60 minutes said otherwise.

The weather didn’t force anyone indoors, either — it was mostly clear, a hot 96 degrees, no rain on the radar all day. This was pure summer-family demand finding a park that usually flies under the radar. Peak family travel season is doing exactly what it does: filling the parks that most guests treat as half-day stops.

Where the crowds landed

At Animal Kingdom, the afternoon was the whole story. Waits built steadily to that 3:00 PM crest, and Expedition Everest going down from 2:42 to 4:20 PM — right through the peak — pinched an already-tight window. With the park’s mountain coaster offline, demand pressed onto the safari and the two remaining headliners, and even the Wildlife Express Train doubled to a 10-minute wait, which almost never happens. This wasn’t a festival or an event pulling people in; it was just a lot of families discovering the same park on the same afternoon.

Hollywood Studios ran a 6/10 with a 37.7-minute median, a touch above its 35-minute baseline and squarely in normal territory for a summer Friday. The peak came early, at noon, and the reason is no mystery: Rise of the Resistance was a mess all day (more on that below), which bunched guests onto everything else before lunch. EPCOT sat flat at a 5/10, its 15-minute median matching baseline to the minute — Journey Into Imagination With Figment nudged up to 10 minutes, but that’s a rounding blip, not a trend. Magic Kingdom was the calmest relative to itself, a 14.6-minute median actually a hair below its norm despite the 6/10 percentile reading. The 2:00 PM peak of 20 minutes is about as gentle as a July afternoon at the Kingdom gets.

The day belonged to broken rides

Rise of the Resistance defined Hollywood Studios. It opened in fits and starts — down 8:31 to 9:30, back briefly, down again 9:37 to 10:43 — then went offline at 9:30 AM and simply never came back, closed through the 11:45 PM data cutoff. That’s an entire operating day without the park’s marquee attraction, and it’s why Studios crowds crested before noon: guests who couldn’t ride front-loaded everything else. Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway adding a two-hour evening closure only tightened the squeeze.

Magic Kingdom absorbed a rougher-than-usual maintenance day too. Space Mountain lost most of the late morning, Peter Pan’s Flight went down for over an hour and a half through the early afternoon, and Pirates of the Caribbean closed from 6:30 to 8:30 PM during prime evening touring. None of it spiked the park’s overall waits — MK had the headroom to absorb it — but if your afternoon plan hinged on any one of those three, Friday tested your flexibility.

Today’s outlook: Saturday, July 25

Our engine calls Hollywood Studios the park to avoid today — a 7/10 with an expected 41-minute median, riding yesterday’s momentum plus early entry pulling resort guests in at rope drop. Animal Kingdom holds at a 7/10 (about 31 minutes), so Friday’s surge isn’t a one-off; treat mornings there as your only comfortable window and knock out Everest and the safari before 11 AM. Magic Kingdom sits at a 5/10 (21 minutes), the sturdy middle option. EPCOT is the best play at a 4/10 (28 minutes) — the quietest ceiling on property and the smart pick if you want to actually tour rather than wait.

Honesty check: yesterday’s forecast nailed Magic Kingdom and EPCOT to the minute but badly whiffed on Animal Kingdom, calling a 5/10 when it hit a 9. We didn’t see that surge coming, and today’s model has bumped AK up accordingly. Expect a hot one — 93 degrees with only a stray 4% afternoon shower chance — so build in indoor breaks regardless of which park you choose.

Animal Kingdom quietly outrunning its own forecast is exactly the kind of shift that’s invisible until you’re standing in a 60-minute line. Lightning Brain’s event-aware modeling flags where the crowds are actually heading, so you can tour the calm half of the resort while everyone else guesses. Now available at lightningbrain.app and on the App Store!