Hollywood Studios Winter Report: More Crowded, Less Busy
It’s time for another visit to Hollywood Studios! This Walt Disney World park report covers the latest updates, with a focus on crowds and efficiency changes and whether it makes sense to adopt new strategy for DHS during the off-season.
As reported earlier this week, wait times are down 40% or more at Walt Disney World since the holiday season ended. We expect this trend to continue, with exceptions for holidays, through at least early to mid-March 2021. Disney’s Hollywood Studios isn’t seeing as sharp of a drop as the other parks, but it’s still enough to potentially alter strategy.
In addition to that, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance is now processing more boarding groups per day on average–in addition to its two big improvements made to the ride upping its efficiency. The result is many more guests riding per day, and the virtual queue remaining open longer some days. This also raised questions about whether our recommended DHS strategy should change.
By way of recap, our post-reopening 1-Day Disney’s Hollywood Studios Itinerary has recommended you arrive before rope drop and “zig while everyone else is zagging and go right” to do Toy Story Land instead of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge or Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway. The wisdom of that advice has been questioned by some readers, but it has always been objectively good.
Readers who have been following the saga since Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opened have likely encountered our attempts at late arrival strategies. We’ve done several of these, and each have worked for a few days or weeks before Walt Disney World tweaks things again, rendering our advice obsolete. Nevertheless, our goal this week has been to test whether this approach might once again make sense…
We arrived at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at around 12:45 pm, and were far from the only ones entering the park for the second virtual queue entry.
It’s a similar phenomenon that we’ve observed and reported on in the past–a lot of people loitering around waiting for that 1 pm boarding pass drop.
We headed away from the crowds, over to Echo Lake and did quick speed tests and clock synchronization. (see our How to Ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance FAQ & Guide for everything you need to know—like increasing your chances of success.)
As soon as the virtual queue opened, we scored slots before it closed again within a matter of seconds. It was nothing like last week where there were days when it was open for a few hours.
In general, Disney’s Hollywood Studios was more crowded than we’ve observed thus far during the winter off-season.
One big reason for this is that Cast Members blockouts for select weekdays were recently lifted. This marks the first time in over a year that Cast Members have been able to self-admit to Disney’s Hollywood Studios (Main Entrance Passes are still blocked out, meaning they cannot bring family or friends). We spotted a lot of Cast Members, so the lifting of that blockout alone likely explains the spike.
The crowd levels are also undoubtedly impacted by increased efficiency of Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Hence this post’s paradoxical “more crowded, less busy” subtitle.
Walt Disney World has been improving the hourly throughput of many attractions at DHS. That results in shorter wait times, guests finishing the limited ride lineup faster, and then loitering around waiting for their Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance boarding group to be called, Advance Dining Reservations, or whatever else.
It’s counterintuitive, but makes complete sense: when guests are waiting longer in standby lines for rides, they are not congregating in other areas of the park. When they’re waiting less time, they have more time to be other places and do other things.
This is actually somewhat similar to how FastPass+ can lead to congestion and crowding in other areas of the parks by displacing guests from queues. The big difference now is that there are no shows to absorb those guests and round out the middle of their days. So more people are just sort of wandering aimlessly. It’s sort of like World Showcase, except not as interesting and condensed into a much smaller physical area.
Historically, this blog has had no shortage of criticism for Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Here, we want to be abundantly clear that while this situation is not ideal–and could be “fixed” with a large outdoor show or two returning–it’s essentially a good problem to have.
The “crowds” we encountered were not bad at all, just more than the low to moderate wait times might suggest. It was still incredibly easy to navigate the park and enjoy ourselves, and we’ll take the status quo over the circumstances from last January through March, or October through the holiday season. Comparatively, it was a joy.
We had a little over 3 hours before our boarding group was called, and we spent that time wandering around, doing a couple of attractions, and getting awkward PhotoPass shots.
Also, we had an excellent lunch at ABC Commissary, which you can read about in “Another Good New Menu at a Boring Walt Disney World Restaurant.”
We ended up walking over 18,000 steps, which is a decent amount considering the small footprint of Disney’s Hollywood Studios. I also stopped for a lot of photos.
My favorite tree at Disney’s Hollywood Studios has reached peak bloom, which I view as huge breaking news. Not sure why the other blogs are suppressing this colossal story–no wonder people distrust the media! 😉
We even waited around for a couple of the character cavalcades to come down Hollywood Boulevard with the Tabebuia tree in the background.
Definitely not an “efficient” use of time by any objective measure, but we had fun.
It also felt a lot like a winter day in California, and we’re really missing the West Coast right now.
Beyond just the obvious architectural similarities, there are several of these Tabebuia trees in Disneyland and DCA, and the low temperature made it feel like a crisp day in Southern California.
Our boarding group was called at 4:10 pm, and we returned to Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at around 4:45 pm. We were initially a bit nervous as the line was backed up outside the attraction entrance, but that quickly dissipated once we were scanned in to enter the queue.
In fact, the attraction was virtually a walk-on, with our total wait being 8 minutes. That’s about how long it takes just to walk through the queue (it’s a long one). The pacing of the experience was perfect, with complete flow and no backups after that. Only one effect was motionless, right before the last major AA, which was working.
You may find it silly that we’re still being vague with ride details and avoiding photo spoilers even over a year after Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opened. I’m cognizant that the vast majority of you don’t care. However, we care. We wouldn’t want the experience spoiled for us, and think those who have yet to ride deserve the same to the greatest extent possible. Due to the weird year that has caused many to postpone visits (and since Disneyland’s version of the ride has only operated for ~2 months), we’re going to continue avoiding spoilers for this attraction indefinitely.
As usual, Disney’s Hollywood Studios starts to clear out in the late afternoon on weekdays. This has been relatively unchanged by the introduction of Park Hopping.
To the contrary, fewer guests arrive and more people leave DHS during Park Hopping hours. This is the opposite of what happens at EPCOT, and makes perfect sense. Why would guests come to the park that closes earlier and that doesn’t allow access to its headliner for late arrivals? Nevertheless, those who do will be rewarded with very low actual wait times in the last couple hours of the day. That makes it a good option for repeat visitors who have already knocked out Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and aren’t interested in re-riding.
Ultimately, we cannot recommend a late arrival strategy for most tourists doing a single day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It might work for you, as it did for us, but it’s a gamble. Unless you’re particularly averse to getting up early or calling the “EPCOT audible” it’s simply not as good of an approach. For those planning multi-day trips to Walt Disney World that encompasses a weekend, stick with our advice of doing DHS on a Saturday or Sunday (or Friday, since Cast Members are blocked out then).
There’s also the practical reality that, as has been the case multiple times previously, Walt Disney World will tweak things yet again. In the span of just a couple weeks, we’ve already seen the viability of arriving for the 1 pm virtual queue dramatically decrease. It’s unlikely we’ll see it improve with any degree of consistency going forward, but it certainly could get worse–especially if attendance picks up heading into February and March. Hard to complain too much, though; right now is pretty much the best possible experience you can have at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, so long as you don’t mind missing the shows.
Planning a Walt Disney World trip? Learn about hotels on our Walt Disney World Hotels Reviews page. For where to eat, read our Walt Disney World Restaurant Reviews. To save money on tickets or determine which type to buy, read our Tips for Saving Money on Walt Disney World Tickets post. Our What to Pack for Disney Trips post takes a unique look at clever items to take. For what to do and when to do it, our Walt Disney World Ride Guides will help. For comprehensive advice, the best place to start is our Walt Disney World Trip Planning Guide for everything you need to know!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you visited Disney’s Hollywood Studios since the start of the winter off-season? If so, what was your experience with crowds and wait times? Thoughts on crowds v. wait times? Late arrival v. rope dope? Recent feedback on the 7 am or 1 pm Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance virtual queue release? Thoughts about anything else covered here? Do you plan on visiting Walt Disney World this Christmas, or are you sitting this year out? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Any chance you can get a reservation to Oga’s if you check directly with them early in the day? all the reservations are gone for the day we are visiting, i just wonder if you’ve had any luck with walkup
thanks!
Oga’s does not have a walk up wait list. Keep checking for reservations though, especially week of as people change plans.
Wow, just getting on to comment about Ogas. We were unsuccessful in Oct. as walk ups after giving up on reservations.
We head down in spring with two of the kids. We have tried everything to get in for quick drink. I called , on hold for 33 min, told they re only doing 45 percent capacity.
We are trying so hard to keep positive and not cancel the trip. Its for 10 days. But still such challenge.
We will keep trying each day hoping someone cancels.
Thank you DTB, your updates have become gospel for us, so appreciated!
Mary V
Tom,
Love your articles and your enthusiasm for all things Disney as well as nature.
Have a bit of a conundrum and I was hoping you might help. We have HS scheduled for Feb 12th. My sister and brother- in- law are with us for their first trip in many years. This is the only day we are doing any parks with them so they have a one day hopper that I am attempting to maximize. We are staying at the Riviera with a rental car and debating the best way to hit the park early. Would you recommend driving or taking a Lyft to the Swan and walking? I have heard the parking lots have not been opening as early as the walking path.
Thank you.
Thanks for no spoilers a year later. We just got on (using tips from this blog) and it was awesome all I knew about it was that there was a room of storm troopers.
But omg is it not an efficient ride. I was alone in one vehicle even though it had a divider. We had rider swap so then my spouse rode and the same thing happened.
You thank Tom for no spoilers, then include a spoiler lol
I think it was in November or December, you suggested planning for MMRR OR SDD, but probably not both. I was trying to plan and scheme to get both in, but wasn’t sure if it’d work for me or not. I think the 7am boarding group drop probably made it easier, but I’m happy to report that I was able to do, in order of arrival – MMRR, SDD, TSM, AS2, RotR and droid Depot all before our noon ADR. I couldn’t talk my 6 yo into doing MFSR.
As we were walking down the main street in DHS, I could see people walking straight into the MMRR building, so I said, you know what, lets go for it, and we walked basically all the way to the ride. SDD had about a 15 minute wait for us, then TSM and AS2 were both near walk-ons. Out of those rides, I had only ridden on AS2 before, so it was a pretty incredible 40th Birthday morning for myself to be able to experience so much, as well as build a couple droids with my daughter then still have time to relax and have fun. haha.
Anyway, thanks for all your planning tools. I used quite a few for our stay again. Always good to be prepared for the trip and use our money wisely.
Thank you so much for keeping things spoiler-free on RotR. I can’t wait to enjoy it once Disneyland reopens and we are able to go.
PS. GO DODGERS!
Tabebuias all over Central Florida are in bloom now! Epcot has a few too.
“Definitely not an “efficient” use of time by any objective measure, but we had fun.” We have always been the “planner” types who have the majority of days and rides planned ahead of our trip, with some time built into each day to be spontaneous and do whatever we want. That can become exhausting. “Efficiency” can sometimes become synonymous with “sticking to a fixed schedule”. Some of the best days we had at WDW were days when we had nothing planned and just did whatever we wanted. That approach is definitely not “efficient”, but it is low stress and fun nonetheless. At the end of the day, being in WDW is fun no matter how you do it. I don’t recall ever having a bad day in the bubble of WDW (except for the time I got a wicked cold a few years back). We definitely build much more free/spontaneous time into our WDW vacations now.
We were at Hollywood Studios for a full day on Tuesday, and although the park felt _much_ more crowded than it did when we visited in September, we flew through lines and accomplished everything we wanted to in about half the time. We did 26,00 steps (with two toddlers!), and since we stayed until just after 6, we were able to repeat ride just about anything we wanted to, as many times as we wanted to.
I normally follow your touring suggestions (or a custom Touring Plan) religiously, but when the skyliner was down Tuesday morning and we were in the first 5 rows at the parking gate when it opened, I did something very unlike me and called an audible. We walked onto Runway Railway, followed by walking into Millennium Falcon (plus a rider swap), and still made it to toy story land before “park opening” at 9! It made all the difference.
I did notice a lot of cast members, but what stood out to me even more was the number of plaids touring groups around. I’ll maybe see one or two a trip, but this time we saw them with different groups at almost every ride and meal. Wondering if this was something you had also noticed.
Another appreciative note for “no spoilers”. Thank you for all that you do. Love the magic shots in addition to all your other wonderful photography.
“You may find it silly that we’re still being vague with ride details and avoiding photo spoilers even over a year after Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opened.”
I, for one, appreciate this. Adding details is of little or no value for those that have ridden, but would spoil my next visit. If I want to preview it, I’ll find a POV on YouTube. It’s great that I don’t have to be on alert when reading your articles. Even cryptic references could spoil it, in the same way someone might say “Make sure you watch all the way to the end” when you have recorded last night’s big game, intending to watch it the next morning. They don’t think they’re spoiling it, but you just end up thinking you might as well skip straight to the 4th quarter to find out what was so good about the end.
Being from Australia, I can only visit infrequently (and not at all at present) so I might not be able to ride a new attraction for 2-3 years. A ride might not be “new” to a local after 6 months, but it’s “new” to visitors that haven’t been there since it opened. I wouldn’t dream of saying “It was the butler” to someone queuing to watch an Agatha Christie movie, even if it was a re-release.
Good on you, Tom, for holding firm!
Yup, I appreciate it too! Don’t know when we’ll get there again, as the border restrictions are getting tougher now, so my hopes of late this year are waning a little, but fingers crossed. I appreciate your consideration in the mean time. Thanks Tom!
What would be awsome DHS Star Wars – a photo pass shot with The Child lined up just right with your outreached finger
That would be cool–they’ve already added some good ones, so maybe we’ll get something like that in the future.
“We spotted a lot of Cast Members…“. How do you pick-out cast members in the crowd? Are they familiar to you from your frequent visits, or do they wear some sort of identifying sigil?
Right now, the tell-tale sign is the Mickey pixie dust constellation face masks and/or ID tag holders. There are often other giveaways–in the past, the Monsters U hats were a big one, but those have faded away.
It’s one of those things that you may not notice…until you do. And then you start spotting them everywhere. Plainclothes security is the same way.
Watch their hands. Cast Members gesture in certain ways that are habit forming and hard to break, even when off the lock. Source: Am former cast member who Disney Pointed for years after leaving.
I’m so pleased you are avoiding spoilers on your blog. I think people will appreciate it!!
I have been lucky enough to ride ROTR pre-pandemic, but I am irrationally angry at people who have been spoiling Runaway Railway on social media! That ride was only open for like a month (or less) pre-pandemic and most of us have not travelled since the pandemic started!
I agree! My trip was cancelled and now I won’t be able to get there until April 2022 so I appreciate the lack of spoilers.
“I am irrationally angry at people who have been spoiling Runaway Railway on social media!”
We don’t often post photos of MMRR, but I don’t think it’s susceptible to spoilers in the same way as RotR.
Thanks for providing this update! If you don’t get a boarding pass at 7 am, are you able to change your park reservation for a different day?
As you were talking about a crisp Disneyland morning and then posted the photo of Carthay Circle, I definitely got confused for a second looking at the picture as I too was mentally enjoying a nice morning in DCA. But very excited to get my WDW fill next week!
I got a boarding pass at 7:00 am and again at 2:00 pm. I use an iPhone X and with that fast phone it’s easier to get a pass.
Yes Carly, you can change your park pass for that day if you miss out on the boarding pass!
Carly, you can change your park pass reservation up until you scan into the park for the day BUT if the day you want to change to is fully booked, there’s no work around. Per Tom, since Hollywood Studios is fully booked most often, I would book multiple days there and then plan on switching to Animal Kingdom or Epcot if you don’t get a group (since those parks are much more likely to have same day availability). If you do get on Rise your first day, then just modify the other Hollywood Studios park pass to wherever you want to go instead.
I totally appreciate your spoiler-free ROTR posts as due to the pandemic, we’ve been unable to visit and ride it!
Agreed! Thank you.
Your favorite tree is beautiful! And I appreciate the continued vagueness about ROTR and Runaway Railroad (Railway?). I’m in southern CA and sort of feel like I’ll never have the opportunity to ride either of those rides… but hopefully that won’t actually be the case. Here’s to 2022 & beyond, ha, ha.
I glad for the mini Rise of the Resistance ride report, when you first posted about them improving efficiency a couple weeks ago my immediate fear is they cut an effect because they just couldn’t figure it out. So glad that doesn’t seem to have happened yet. If you hear through the grapevine that the same effect that was out for you is consistently out over several days, please let us know!
At first I thought you were doing photographic trickery with the Child and Tie Fighters so I was worried you also photo shopped pics of food by having them have more meat in them which would be so wrong.
Really appreciate the continued no spoiler for RotR. We haven’t experience that nor Mickeys Runaway Railway so greatly appreciate no spoilers. I prefer to have pleasant surprises in life.
Whenever you do get on Rise it is awesome! Agreed, experiencing it with no spoilers is 100% the way to go. Honestly the most impressive theme park attraction I have ever been on; I could not stop smiling the entire time!
I swear every time I plan a vacation they undo cast-member block-out dates right before it. This happened in Summer too, so we ended up at Epcot on the one July day that looked like a mid-December day. It’s nice that the lines aren’t any more crowded, but we like hanging around and enjoying the ambiance so…sounds like we should park hop TO Hollywood and enjoy the low evening crowds instead.
In related news, I feel like they really need to tweak the park-hopping 2pm time. Since Animal Kingdom closes at 5pm, there’s virtually no value to park-hopping there…and it’s where I most like to spend my evenings. Clearly they just need to keep it open later…
We’re in MK today. It’s more crowded than I anticipated. I wonder if it’s more cast members? The worst part is that the park opened with several attractions down, making it impossible to get in headliners before the crowds arrived at 10:30. The week until today has been amazing.
Wondering if there is anywhere online you can find out about the cast member block-outs being lifted? We are able to visit on a weekday with a fairly flexible schedule, but would hate to have a more crowded day because of that..I’m happy the cast members get to have some fun though!
This is the calendar: https://blockoutdates.disney.com/en/calendar
I agree with you Ana, I’d love to plan that too. Seems Friday is a good day if those are blocked?
Also I amazingly just got my wish and they extended Animal Kingdom Hours on the Saturday I’m there! Park hopper tickets were totally worth it now!
Why are you wearing those LA Dodgers caps? :-). I don’t recall that area with the Child? Where is that in Hollywood Studios?
I absolutely love reading your posts. The blooming tree bit is awesome and I’ll take your news over other news outlets any day. I am cautiously optimistic for parks to not be jam packed when we travel to Disney in 4 weeks. Heading with three kids and older grandparents who would have normally loved the shoes but oh well. Slinky dog dash will keep them happy!
That tree reminds me of Disneyland! But really what are you missing on the West coast right now? Very cold, lots of rain and not much including Disneyland open! But I do like your Dodger hats!!!