Daily Park Report: October 28, 2026

Hollywood Studios Ran Light All Day — After a Morning That Tested Everyone’s Patience

Three of Hollywood Studios’ marquee rides sat offline through the first hours Wednesday, and yet the park still finished two full levels below its own normal. Rise of the Resistance didn’t take a single rider until nearly noon. Millennium Falcon was out until mid-morning. Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster stumbled twice. On most days that combination builds a wall of guests at whatever’s running — but Wednesday, the crowds simply weren’t there to form one. A 22-minute median at the resort’s busiest park is the kind of number you usually only see in a September lull.

Weather wasn’t the reason. It was a mild, mostly cloudy day topping out around 80°F with barely a trace of rain. The quiet was about the calendar: Disney flagged Wednesday as a Good-To-Go Day, actively nudging local pass holders to come, which tends to signal a soft midweek. Pair that with Magic Kingdom’s party night pulling day planners elsewhere, and all four parks drifted toward the low end.

Park by Park

Hollywood Studios is the story. At a 1/10 crowd level on our percentile scale and a 22-minute median — down more than a third from its 30-day average — this was about as thin as the park gets. The morning outages did leave one sharp mark: when Rise of the Resistance finally came back, its wait jumped to a 75-minute average as everyone who’d been waiting all morning piled in at once. That’s why the park “peaked” at 11 AM. It wasn’t a crowd surge; it was pent-up demand releasing the moment the ride reopened. Star Tours, usually a 5-minute walk-on, doubled to around 10 — a small sign of guests reshuffling toward whatever was reliably operating.

Magic Kingdom ran a 2/10 with an 11-minute median, roughly a quarter below its norm. The noon peak hit 20 minutes, which for MK is a perfectly pleasant touring day. Pirates of the Caribbean sat at 5 minutes, a third of its usual — an easy grab for anyone who walked in.

EPCOT held exactly at its baseline, a 15-minute median and a 1/10 level, with the morning its busiest stretch before Food & Wine foot traffic pulled guests toward the booths. Spaceship Earth and Soarin’ both ran at half their typical waits. Animal Kingdom was the quietest corner of the resort at a 1/10 and under 11 minutes. Flight of Passage at 20 minutes and Kilimanjaro Safaris at 15 are genuinely rare numbers — on a normal day those are 45 and 35.

The Downtime Report

Wednesday’s pain was concentrated in two windows. Hollywood Studios opened rough: Rise of the Resistance was unavailable from 8:30 AM until nearly noon, Millennium Falcon through 10 AM, and Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster offline twice. For early guests hoping to rope-drop Galaxy’s Edge, that meant a long wait for the park’s two biggest draws — and when Rise returned, the queue swelled fast.

EPCOT’s trouble came in the evening. Between roughly 4:30 and 8 PM, Test Track, Spaceship Earth, Figment, Frozen Ever After and others each took extended breaks, thinning the back half of the day on World Celebration and Future World. Over at Magic Kingdom, a cluster of Fantasyland classics — Peter Pan’s Flight, “it’s a small world,” PhilharMagic and the Carrousel — all went offline together just after 8 PM for about 80 minutes, a tight evening window that pushed late-night Fantasyland guests toward the mountains.

Today’s Prediction — Thursday, October 29

Our engine nailed Wednesday: all four parks landed exactly where we called them, best-park and avoid-park included. For Thursday it reads another soft day. Magic Kingdom is the best play at a 1/10 and a 14-minute expected median — just know the park closes early to day guests tonight for Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, so front-load your morning and plan to be out by late afternoon. Animal Kingdom matches at a 1/10 and about 15 minutes, a terrific day for Flight of Passage and the Safari.

Hollywood Studios is the one to approach carefully — a 2/10 and a 31-minute median make it the busiest of the four, and Wednesday proved its headliners can go offline for hours. EPCOT sits at a 1/10 around 23 minutes, with Food & Wine adding booth traffic more than queue pressure. Early entry is available at all four parks for eligible resort guests.

Want the moment your rope-drop ride comes back online — before the whole park rushes it? Lightning Brain buzzes you the instant a down ride reopens and when waits move on the attractions you actually care about, so a morning like Wednesday’s at Galaxy’s Edge never catches you flat-footed. Now available at lightningbrain.app and on the App Store!