Slinky Dog Dash Reopens Again After 4-Day Unplanned Ride Closure (Minus 30 Minutes)

After being closed for over four days (minus 30 minutes of Early Entry uptime), Slinky Dog Dash has reopened from its unscheduled closure and is once again dashing as of September 4, 2026. Here’s the latest on the downtime roller coaster at the Toy Story Land headliner, how we’d strategize if visiting Walt Disney World soon, and the potential for ongoing reliability woes or a scheduled refurbishment.

Let’s start with a recap of what has happened to date. The attraction’s problems began last month, with downtime nearly every day starting August 19th. This accelerated at the end of the month, when Slinky Dog Dash was down for 4 hours on August 28th and nearly 9 hours on August 29th.

The attraction broke down around 6 pm on August 30, 2026, meaning it actually closed that evening as opposed to simply not opening with the park the following morning. Then the multi-day closure began in earnest on August 31st, when Slinky Dog Dash was closed for the entirety of the day.

On both September 1st and 2nd, Slinky Dog Dash once again did not operate at all. It was closed from Early Entry all the way through After Hours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. A brutal blow to those who spent hundreds of dollars on special event tickets promising low wait times during what was the off-season, anyway.

On September 3, 2026, the E-Ticket opened for Early Entry at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Unsurprisingly, Slinky Dog Dash had the highest wait time at 40 minutes during Early Entry. That reflects a bit of localized pent-up demand, but is mostly just reflective of the attraction’s status as the #1 Early Entry priority.

The uptime didn’t last long. Slinky Dog Dash closed minutes before rope drop, at around 8:58 am. It was closed for the remainder of the day yesterday. For those keeping score at home, that means the attraction was not open at all during regular operating hours at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for over 4 full days.

Slinky Dog Dash Reopens (Take 2)

After being down during Early Entry and at regular rope drop, Slinky Dog Dash reopened as of approximately 11:20 a.m. on Friday, September 4, 2026. It’s still open as of the moment I’m hitting “publish” on this piece, but given its track record over the last week (and even the month before that), there are no guarantees about the minutes or hours after this.

Upon reopening, Slinky Dog Dash was posting a 30 minute wait. Within 5 minutes of that, it spiked to 50 minutes, and then 60 minutes. Thirty minutes later, it’s up to 120 minutes! Assuming Slinky Dog continues dashing all day, wait times are likely to worsen. Slinky Dog Dash is likely to peak around 3 hours, whereas almost all other attractions, even headliners, will struggle to crack one (1) hour.

This roller coaster of downtime pretty much answers our question about whether the underlying issue was resolved or if maintenance employed a duct tape solution. It also reinforces our previous sentiment the reliability woes, and not over-relying on Slinky Dog Dash being operational when strategizing.

We’re not going to provide updates every single time Slinky Dog Dash is up or down going forward, as that would get tedious and there’s only so much that can be said.

Walt Disney World hasn’t comment on the cause of the closure, which is about par for the course with unscheduled downtime. Both times it closed, we received reports that one of the ride vehicles was stuck at the second launch. We heard reports from readers who also saw maintenance teams active around the attraction. Given that, we assume there are specific issues with that launch, but that’s purely speculative.

What follows is additional commentary from the article concerning the closure of Slinky Dog Dash, which remains relevant in the bigger picture (and possibly with Slinky Dog Dash, specifically)…

Strategizing Around Slinky Dog Dash’s Reliability Woes

In addition to this, Lightning Lane inventory was quietly pulled for Slinky Dog Dash through September 13, 2026.

This may not seem especially notable since it is one of the most popular Lightning Lane Multi-Pass rides in all of Walt Disney World. However, almost every other attraction had same-day or next day LLMP inventory.

If you want a Lightning Lane at Slinky Dog Dash, we’d recommend monitoring closely. Assuming all goes well (knock on wood), there likely will be same-day ride reservation refills over the weekend and beyond as Walt Disney World becomes confident the ride is running without issue. (If that happens.)

If I were seeing this news while in another park, I would not Park Hop over to DHS for SDD. Part of that is the high likelihood that it posts the highest wait time at Walt Disney World today, and by a wide margin.

The reason for that is simple. Guests in other parks who visited Disney’s Hollywood Studios earlier in their trips who had Slinky Dog Dash as a must-ride will see that it has reopened, and Park Hop to DHS.

Many of them will have been given ‘anytime’ Lightning Lanes for Slinky Dog Dash. So even beyond the Lightning Lanes already distributed for today, there will be a backlog to process from previous days. And on top of that, pent-up demand for standby.

The other part is that it could break down again at any time, and be offline for hours yet again. Just because it’s back up and running doesn’t mean it’s fully fixed. The attraction has had a rough month, with lots of starts and stops. Park Hopping for one ride is risky, especially when that ride has both high demand and low reliability.

We also remain reluctant to prioritize Toy Story Land (and by extension, Slinky Dog Dash) during Early Entry going forward. Even though the ride has reopened, the nature of the reliability woes and the fix are both unclear. Without knowing more, I’m inclined to believe problems will persist.

Hopefully, the logic of this was underscored with the false start of Slinky Dog Dash reopening for 30 minutes on September 3rd, and then closing for the remainder of the day. Maybe it’ll be smooth sailing going forward, but it hasn’t just been an up and down week for the roller coaster; it’s been a rough month.

Even before the recent run of downtime, Slinky Dog Dash had a troublesome August. When I visited earlier in the month, the attraction experienced multiple hours of downtime on the evening of August 6th. It was again down the entire morning of August 7th, not opening until afternoon.

Slinky Dog Dash has been one of the downtime-prone attractions at Walt Disney World for years, rivaling Test Track for unreliability. This has made me reluctant to rope drop the ride, as it’s a tough pivot if you get back there and Slinky Dog is dashless.

It’s also not clear whether maintenance was able to resolve the underlying issues that has made Slinky Dog Dash so unreliable over the last month, or if this is a band-aid quick-fix to get the attraction online in some capacity until an actual refurbishment can be scheduled.

My fear is that it’s the latter, and that Slinky Dog Dash will continue to be plagued by a greater frequency of delayed openings and breakdowns until Disney can ascertain the underlying issues, what’s needed for a proper repair, and then calendar a multi-day refurbishment.

That process isn’t a speedy one, and on top of that, there’s often reluctance by Walt Disney World to spring a last minute scheduled closure on guests. Even though, as demonstrated above by wait times, right now is the window of opportunity to take Slinky Dog Dash offline with minimal guest impact.

Personally, I will always take scheduled refurbishments over gambling with surprise closures. I can plan around the former, but not the latter. I know most guests don’t think this way, though.

If such a calendared closure doesn’t happen this month, it probably won’t until 2027. That is, of course, assuming that this is a duct tape fix and Slinky Dog Dash still needs further TLC. That assumption could be completely wrong; Slinky Dog Dash could run without incident going forward. Only time will tell!

Part of the problem with Slinky Dog Dash is simply seasonality.

During the summer, afternoon thunderstorms force outdoor attractions to close. Consequently, even in an average August, Slinky Dog Dash can lose an hour each midday due to weather–and this year has been especially stormy.

However, it seems that the problem has worsened post-COVID and is more than just weather. Slinky Dog Dash routinely comes up as one of the attractions with the most delayed openings, and those are largely not due to weather. It likewise loses a lot of time in the evening, which is especially troubling for strategists like us who like to save it for late nights.

My experience with attraction availability is anecdotal, based on what I experience during field testing and see in the My Disney Experience app. However, I’d note that TouringPlans did data analysis last year and reinforced this pre-COVID vs. post-reopening dynamic.

Before March 2020, Slinky Dog Dash was unavailable around 3% of the time, with a summer peak of 7-9% and winter lows close to 0%. Post reopening, downtime was around 6%, with summer peaks of 9-11% (spiking to 18% at its worst in 2020-2021) and winter lows never getting much below 2%.

This has increased measurably over the last month, even before the multi-day September 2026 closure.

We recently discussed the ways, both big and small, that the parks are starting to turn a corner in Wait Times Are Down, But Attendance Is Up at Walt Disney World. Here’s How Both Can Be True. Among other things, that covered improved attraction efficiency thanks to steady increases to institutional knowledge at Walt Disney World.

As evidenced by the spike in Slinky Dog Dash downtime in 2020-2021, routine preventative upkeep got bad post-COVID. The big driver was the loss of institutional knowledge with the furloughs and layoffs back in 2020.

Maintenance departments were decimated, and are still recovering. Even so, they now have far fewer years of tenure. The increased daily downtime, breakdowns, non-working effects, and lower show quality standards in the post-reopening era were the most immediate way the lost institutional knowledge was felt at Walt Disney World.

Disney already confirmed to us that this has happened in the California parks, with Disneyland having 1.5 million more rides or ‘guests carried’ during the last fiscal year due to increased attraction availability.

One of many interesting areas of discussion during that, which might be relevant to Slinky Dog Dash, is how Disneyland’s engineering services team changed its approach to parts management systems due to the ‘new normal’ of ongoing supply chain disruptions.

They now use a bifurcated approach, with auto ordering of parts based on existing inventory, with plenty of lead time to account for delays now built-in. (This makes me curious as to whether Walt Disney World has similarly changed its approach, or if Slinky Dog Dash is being held hostage by a single obscure screw.)

As with Disneyland, we fully believe that things are getting better at Walt Disney World when it comes to maintenance.

One attraction going down, even a headliner that’s a must-ride for a lot of guests, does not change the overall trajectory of maintenance. Statistically speaking, the uptime data is trending in the right direction.

Nevertheless, the last month with Slinky Dog Dash underscores the reality that we’re not back to 2019 normal. (That’s probably still years away.) Even as the trajectory as a whole is positive, there are still going to be bumps along the way. And even if maintenance were flawless, stuff like this still happens. It’s unavoidable with complex, modern attractions.

It also underscores the fact that Slinky Dog Dash is now 8 years old and has never had a routine refurbishment. My understanding is that roller coasters don’t age like fine wine. (Yes, I’ve made this joke before and no, it’s still not funny. Give it a few more years to age and it’ll get there.)

Ultimately, we just wanted to bring the Slinky Dog Dash reliability woes to your attention as something to be aware of both in the near-term and potentially the longer-term. Suffice to say, even with the multi-day closure “resolved,” I am still reluctant to roll the dice on Slinky Dog Dash at Early Entry. I would also not save it until the very end of the evening for the same reason.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Slinky Dog Dash next. The best case scenario is that the increased unavailability over the last month was resolved overnight. The worst case is nagging unscheduled downtime and delays persist in the months to come, including once the parks get busier over peak holiday dates. DHS has the bandwidth to absorb displaced crowds during the September off-season. It’s a different story in late December.

The middle ground is probably what many Walt Disney World planners perceive of as the worst case: a scheduled multi-day refurbishment. If that does happen, Walt Disney World kicking the can down the road until early 2027 to give plenty of advance notice would be optimal. We’ll keep you posted!

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

Thoughts on Slinky Dog Dash downtime and reopening? Were you impacted by the 4-day unscheduled closure? Would you like to see the roller coaster receive a brief scheduled refurbishment to improve regular reliability? Do you agree or disagree with our assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!