Slinky Dog Dash Reopens at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

After over three full days of downtime, Slinky Dog Dash has sprung back to life and reopened from its unscheduled refurbishment. Here’s the latest on the headliner attraction in Toy Story Land at Hollywood Studios, and how we’d recommend strategizing around the roller coaster and (potential) ongoing reliability woes if visiting Walt Disney World soon.

Let’s start with a recap of what happened. The attraction’s problems accelerated in the second half of August, with an hour or more of daily downtime nearly every day starting August 19th. Then Slinky Dog Dash was down for 4 hours on August 28th and nearly 9 hours on August 29th.

Based on a review of the data, the attraction broke down around 6 pm on August 30, 2026, meaning it actually went down 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 September 1, 2026, Slinky Dog Dash once again did not operate at all. The attraction also did not operate yesterday, September 2, 2026. 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.

Walt Disney World did not comment on the cause of the closure, but the attraction was not calendared as having a refurbishment. There were reports on social media that one of the ride vehicles is stuck at the second launch and an electrical panel was open nearby. We heard reports from readers who also saw maintenance teams active around the attraction.

In addition to this, Lightning Lane inventory was quietly pulled for Slinky Dog Dash through September 12, 2026. Here’s a look courtesy of Thrill-Data.com:

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. It is likely there will be a lot of same-day ride reservation refills as Walt Disney World becomes confident the ride is running without issue. (If that happens.)

Given all of the above, we were concerned that this might be a lengthy closure for Slinky Dog Dash. And in fairness to those on vacation right now who missed it, 3.5 days of downtime is a long time by unscheduled closure standards.

The good news is that the E-Ticket opened for Early Entry at Disney’s Hollywood Studios this morning! Here are a look at wait times from the start of the on-site perk on September 3, 2026:

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.

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at only 25 minutes should underscore that it’s going to be another slow day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Nothing else above 20 minutes further reinforces this.

If you’re at Disney’s Hollywood Studios today and somehow reading this in the park, our advice would be to do Slinky Dog Dash ASAP. Wait times are only likely to worsen as the day goes on, and more so than normal. Slinky Dog Dash is likely to peak in the triple-digits today, whereas almost all other attractions, even headliners, will struggle to crack an hour.

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.

If I were seeing this news while in another park, I would actually be reluctant to Park Hop over to DHS. Part of that is the high likelihood that Slinky Dog Dash posts the highest wait time at Walt Disney World today, and by leaps and bounds.

The other part is that it could break down again at any time, and be offline for hours. 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.

Although Early Entry on September 3rd doesn’t help make our point, we 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. But more on this in a minute.

The good news is that the parks are slow right now. Here’s a look at Disney’s Hollywood Studios wait times from yesterday, which reflects low wait times even without Slinky Dog Dash:

The silver lining is that the indefinite closure of Slinky Dog Dash couldn’t have come at a better time. The last three days have been incredibly slow, with average wait times under 20 minutes across all of Walt Disney World. You’d have to go back to last September to find a similarly slow stretch, and this is even less busy than that.

Normally, Slinky Dog Dash being offline would spike wait times at other attractions. That undoubtedly happened here to some extent, but ignoring the anomaly of a 55 minute wait for Alien Swirling Saucers (the obvious consolation prize for Slinky Dog Dash), the wait times yesterday were still way below normal. Fifteen minutes for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at 3:30 pm, and nothing over a half-hour…are you kidding me?!

Suffice to say, the ultra-low crowds across Walt Disney World masked the impact of this closure, as there was still plenty of bandwidth at Disney’s Hollywood Studios to absorb displaced guests. Obviously, this didn’t help anyone experience Slinky Dog Dash, but it’s a better consolation prize than riding A.S.S. If this downtime were in mid-October, or during peak holiday weeks, it’d make DHS a nightmare.

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. Because of these issues, I actually called an audible and opted against prioritizing it for Early Entry the following week (unnecessarily, as it did open on time then).

Here’s data from the last 30 days via ThemeParkIQ:

This is not completely surprising. Slinky Dog Dash has been one of the downtime-prone attractions at Walt Disney World for years, rivaling Test Track for unreliability.

We will be visiting again around Labor Day, and even with Slinky Dog Dash now up and running, we likely will avoid it for Early Entry. The reason for this is simply because it’s not clear whether maintenance was able to resolve the underlying issues that made Slinky Dog Dash so unreliable 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!

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

For years, we’ve cautioned against the dreaded delayed openings at Slinky Dog Dash when weighing Early Entry priorities at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

It is very risky to walk all the way back to Toy Story Land only to find Slinky Dog Dash won’t be ready to roll on time, and it’s a tough pivot from there to the other headliners. You’re basically locked into throwing good time after bad, hoping for the best, or throwing in the towel and doing Toy Story Mania.

Part of the problem with Slinky Dog Dash is simply seasonality. During the summer (so pretty much half the year in Central Florida), 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%.

Ironically, this comes hot on the heels of us discussing the (great) news of the first-ever refurbishment to Tiana’s Bayou Adventure, during which that similarly unreliable attraction should finally receive overdue TLC.

We also 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, but the last week with Slinky Dog Dash underscores the reality that we’re not back to 2019 normal. (That’s probably still years away.) So even as the trajectory as a whole is positive, there are still going to be bumps along the way.

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.

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!

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YOUR THOUGHTS

Thoughts on Slinky Dog Dash downtime and reopening? Were you impacted by the 3-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!