Rides Down, Parties Sold Out, and Disney Cuts $1B Loose

The Parks

Thursday, July 30 was not a good day to be a headliner at Magic Kingdom. Space Mountain broke down three separate times, including a two-and-a-half-hour outage that started after 8 PM. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure barely operated at all, dark most of the morning and again through the evening. Haunted Mansion didn’t open until noon. Three of the park’s biggest draws were either down or delayed on the same day, yet the median wait across Magic Kingdom held at 15.8 minutes. Read that twice. The mountains blinked out and the park absorbed it anyway, which says more about crowd distribution than ride reliability.

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Reliability aside, Disney is still tinkering with how guests get into these parks in the first place. Magic Kingdom is testing a second rope drop each day, layering an additional entry moment on top of the existing Early Entry rope drop for resort guests. If that sticks, it changes the calculus for anyone building a touring plan around being first in line.

Over at Animal Kingdom, the guest list got a new member: a gorilla has arrived, joining the park’s roster of residents. No fanfare needed there, just one more reason to swing by Pandora’s neighbors on your next loop through the park.

Safety protocol got tested again at Disney Springs, which was evacuated on the night of July 29. Disney’s operating philosophy puts Safety first among its “Five Keys,” ahead of Courtesy, Inclusion, Show, and Efficiency, and that hierarchy has been visible in a string of recent incidents. Evacuations aren’t rare events anymore this summer; they are becoming a pattern worth watching.

Out west, Knott’s Soak City is ripping out six individual thrill slides to make room for two new family raft rides, Coral Craze and Kelp Kraze, arriving in 2027 with ProSlide configurations new to the West Coast. It’s a bet that group rafting beats solo speed for capacity’s sake.

And in Tokyo, the free ride is ending. Priority Pass, the last remaining free line-skipping system at any Disney park worldwide, is being phased out at Tokyo Disneyland and DisneySea. It’s being replaced by expanded Premier Access, Tokyo’s version of Lightning Lane Single Pass. When it’s gone, every Disney park on Earth will charge for a shortcut. This is a significant marker to cross.

The Shows

Disney is walking back one of Disney+’s founding promises. Since the platform launched in 2019, Marvel and Star Wars originals arrived like clockwork, with The Mandalorian, WandaVision, Loki, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier keeping both franchises in constant rotation. Now Disney has reportedly decided there will be no more Marvel or Star Wars series on the platform after 2027. This is a real shift in strategy rather than a scheduling gap, and it comes after other recent moves like axing the greenlit Wonder Man series. The pipeline that defined Disney+’s early identity is being shut off.

Meanwhile, nostalgia is doing the heavy lifting on the content side. Disney+ and Hulu are running a bigger sequel to last year’s Throwbacks push, spotlighting 90s and 2000s favorites through curated collections and returning classics all summer. It’s a cheap, effective way to fill a slate while the pricier originals get rationed.

On the feature side, Disney is marking the long life of Alice in Wonderland, tracing the character’s roots back to the Alice Comedies of the 1920s and Walt Disney’s own early fascination with her story. Production designer Michael Giaimo calls it a film that “has withstood the test of time.” Coming right as Disney tightens its streaming output elsewhere, the timing of a legacy retrospective feels like a reminder of what the company can lean on when new content slows down.

The Business

Disney has closed the book on A+E Global Media, officially selling its 50% stake in the joint venture with Hearst for more than $1 billion. A+E owns History, FYI, Lifetime, Vice TV, and A&E, a stable of linear cable networks that no longer fits where Disney wants to spend its attention. The two companies had been exploring options with Wells Fargo’s help for roughly a year before this sale closed. It’s another data point in Disney trimming legacy linear assets while it reallocates toward streaming and parks.

In Anaheim, the city council rejected a proposed 10% tax on Uber and Lyft rides to Disneyland, the Honda Center, and Angel Stadium before it could reach the November ballot. City staff estimated the tax would have averaged about $2 per ride across an estimated 240,000 trips to the Platinum Triangle. The council killed it outright rather than let voters weigh in, a clear signal about where local government stands on taxing tourism traffic.

Disney Cruise Line’s expansion into Japan is coming into sharper focus. Oriental Land Co. published its Q1 fiscal 2027 results and included a forecast on the future of Oriental Land Cruise, the entity behind Disney Cruise Line Japan. The slide laid out strategic plans tied to future ships, giving the clearest look yet at how OLC intends to build out this arm of the business.

And Spider-Man is doing double duty for the company right now. Disney Consumer Products has rolled out a wide-ranging collection tied to the character, spanning toys, apparel, home décor, books, games, and Disney+ tie-ins. That merchandise wave lines up with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the fourth Tom Holland-led film, which is tracking for an opening between $180 million and higher according to early projections reported by Deadline. When the box office numbers look that strong before release, the toy aisle gets stocked accordingly.

The Details

Halloween ticket demand isn’t slowing down anywhere. At Walt Disney World, Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party has now sold out its seventh date of the 2026 season, with October 9th joining Halloween night and October 13th on the sold-out list. Combined with earlier August sellouts, the calendar is filling in fast, and anyone still planning a party visit should stop waiting.

Disneyland’s fall calendar is following the same trajectory. Oogie Boogie Bash at Disney California Adventure has now sold out nine dates, with Sunday, September 13th the latest to go. After-hours Halloween events are the hottest ticket in the resort right now across both parks and coasts.

The food side of the party is getting its due too. Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party runs from August 7 through October 31, and this year’s menu is bigger than last year’s, with some treats exclusive to party nights and others available during regular park hours without a ticket. Disney Parks Blog is also running an ongoing Halloween merchandise guide, tracking new Disney Store collections and seasonal finds as they roll out.

And for anyone chasing a specific snack, there’s a cheaper way into a Disney Cruise Line favorite. The Mickey-shaped Churro Waffle, normally tied to the $54 all-you-care-to-enjoy Crystal Palace breakfast buffet, has reportedly been found available on its own for around $8, according to Disney foodie account WrightDownMainStreet. This is a real win if you’ve been eyeing that waffle without wanting the full buffet price tag attached to it.

Sources

• Lightning Brain
• MickeyBlog
• AllEars
• D23
• BlogMickey
• Attractions Magazine
• Disney Tourist Blog
• TouringPlans
• DCL Blog
• Walt Disney Company
• Disney Experiences
• Inside the Magic
• Disney Parks Blog
• WDW Prep School
• EYNTK Disney Parks
• The DisInsider

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