Surprisingly Swell Debut Day at Hollywood Studios & Epcot
The debut of Epcot’s Flower & Garden Festival, opening of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway at Hollywood Studios (plus an 8 am opening time), and return of 90 degree weather at Walt Disney World, provided the recipe for a chaotic and unpleasant day in the parks. That couldn’t have been further from the truth–it was an amazing, memorable, and uncrowded day at WDW.
I’m already expecting a flurry of comments speculating that coronavirus is taking its toll on attendance, and I want to nip those in the bud. As covered in our Visiting Walt Disney World During the Coronavirus Outbreak, we anticipate that happening and deals popping up as a result. However, it appears to be business as usual right now with most guests enjoying their vacations as normal. Aside from conventions being dropped (look for deals at Coronado Springs in the near future), there will be lag before people cancel trips in significant numbers or don’t book them in the first place due to COVID-19 fears.
Rather, the light attendance we’ve observed and experienced the last several days is better explained by the 2020 Walt Disney World Crowd Calendars. Quite simply, this is a lull between the Presidents’ Day holiday and Spring Break season–and one without any major events to spike crowd levels. It happens every year. Not to pat ourselves on the back too much, but in our Best & Worst Months to Visit Walt Disney World, we did rank this as our #3 week of the year to visit…
Naturally, the morning was quite crowded. If you were going by crowds showing up to Disney’s Hollywood Studios at the crack of dawn, you might’ve expected a busy and chaotic day. However, this always happens when something new debuts. There are a ton of crazy & obsessed Walt Disney World fans living locally who want to be among the first to experience anything new. We’re not knocking them–we were there, too.
We’ve mentioned this regarding the last half-dozen or so new attractions that have debuted, but you are better off showing up shortly after something new opens than you are waiting months. This is not simply my opinion–it’s borne out by data. The best time to experience New Fantasyland, Pandora – World of Avatar, Toy Story Land, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, etc? The couple of weeks to a month after each debuted.
Anyone who showed up for Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance in the early morning hours the couple of weeks after it opened was treated to doing the ride (in some cases, more than once) plus the entire park all before 9 am. Now? Not so much.
All of this is reiterated because, despite having posted this sentiment approximately 785 times by now, we still get comments from readers who are “waiting for the crowds at [insert new attraction/land] to die down.” That simply does not work.
It’s likely people are only looking at rope drop photos of crazy crowds or astronomical posted wait times from the peak of opening morning (like the one above). However, that doesn’t even begin to tell the full story here, which is that the crowds quickly subsided and the afternoon and evening hours were downright pleasant…
After the hoopla of rope dropping Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway (fortunately, that began operating well before official park opening time–as is also normal with new attractions), we had some time to kill before our FastPass+ reservation for the attraction.
Our initial plan was to leave Disney’s Hollywood Studios shortly after 11 am, continuing with Epcot for the remainder of the day. As such, we had no intentions of doing Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance. Nevertheless, I compulsively check boarding group statuses (whether we’re in the parks or not–if someone got ahold of my phone and saw all of the nearly-identical screenshots, they’d think I’m insane).
Shortly before 8:45 am, backup boarding groups were still available. Thinking we might want to return for night photos of the neon marquee of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, we threw up a Hail Mary and snagged boarding group 133.
We figured that if it somehow did get called, we’d end the night at DHS instead of Epcot.
Then it was on to breakfast, with a couple of new options available for choosing. We opted for the shorter walk…plus shade and air-conditioning…and headed to ABC Commissary.
This was shockingly delicious, and served on real plates. We’ll do another meal to “complete” the breakfast menu before publishing a full review, but if you’re heading to Disney’s Hollywood Studios sooner rather than later, we recommend ABC Commissary for breakfast.
After that, we wandered around for a bit and checked out the rest of Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Even at this point, it was noticeably quieter than during our visits the last few couple of months–and this was while Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway was posting wait times of ~180 minutes.
For what it’s worth, I don’t believe the posted wait time for the ride was ever even remotely accurate. It’s so hard to estimate these opening day lines, so Walt Disney World typically takes an “aim high” approach. From what we heard, even guests who got in line when the posted wait time was 300 minutes waited two hours or less.
Following that, we used our FastPass+ reservation for Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway. That was incredibly smooth–I think we ended up waiting around 10 minutes. In case you missed it, we posted full thoughts on the new attraction in our Spoiler-Free Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway Review.
Suffice to say, this was our most highly-anticipated new attraction of the next two years at Walt Disney World. Although Runaway Railway didn’t quite live up to our hype, we’re mostly pleased with the addition. (Now, we await the start of the 50th Anniversary!)
Our afternoon was spent at Epcot sampling food from the Outdoor Kitchens at Flower & Garden Festival.
We’ve been looking forward to this event, and optimistic that it’d bring some much-needed beauty to Epcot. It didn’t disappoint in that regard, but the weather sure did.
The past two weeks here have been delightful. Overnight lows in the 40s and 50s (perfect for sleeping with the windows open!), and daytime highs in the 60s and low 70s.
Like clockwork, opening day of Epcot’s Flower & Garden Festival rolls around, and the temperature hits 90 degrees. There’s little sense in complaining about this–we are in Florida, after all–but it was pretty jarring after a long streak of great weather.
After slacking during the last two Epcot festivals and not doing new reviews of the food booths, I decided I better resume for Flower & Garden. Readers seem to like these, but I find them incredibly tedious and difficult to write.
So…stay tuned for that, I guess. In the meantime, we enjoyed almost everything we tried. Even Italy had a standout item that we’d eagerly purchase again!
Our Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance boarding group was called much earlier than anticipated–we had only finished about half of the Outdoor Kitchens. We debated whether to keep going around World Showcase, but we also really wanted to do Rise of the Resistance again.
After weighing our options, we decided to finish up in France and call that “good enough” for day one.
It had been over two months since we’ve done Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance at Walt Disney World, so we were curious how things were going. Were all of the effects working? How efficient was the attraction? What had they done to breeze through boarding groups after so many hiccups last week?
Our fear was that’d we’d arrive to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, find an extended queue spilling back into Grand Avenue, and be stuck in a multi-hour line with a potential breakdown. Boy were we wrong!
There was no line at the entrance, and no one in the outdoor queue. My initial reaction to Sarah regarding this was a simple, “wow, there’s no one back here.”
As we progressed through the line, I uttered that same line at least 4-7 more times. We walked on to literally every phase of the experience. It’s not just that there were no backups, there was no line period. The attraction wasn’t operating at 100% capacity, but not because of problems…because not enough guests were returning to ride it.
I can’t even begin to explain this. My best guess is that this was a one-off fluke, caused by people like us who showed up for the opening of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway. Guests probably snagged backup boarding groups later in the morning upon noticing they were still available because “why not?” but then ended up leaving.
I don’t think there’s any relevant takeaway from our experience Rise of the Resistance yesterday. It had to have been a total fluke (but one for which we’re grateful!). For what it’s worth, the attraction beyond that was flawless. Every effect was working and the First Order CMs were on point. (Seriously, they just keep getting better–evolving their intensity and adding to their dialogue.)
Above is a look at the longest wait times at Disney’s Hollywood Studios after we exited Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.
(Tower of Terror is an error–we walked over there a few minutes later and the posted wait was 13 minutes, with the line also looking a lot shorter for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster. Sunset Boulevard and Echo Lake were looking great around sunset.
Toy Story Land and Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge were also delightful. The posted wait time for Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run was 35 minutes, and I’m guessing the actual wait was shorter than that. As we’ve noted several times, the lines really die down for this attraction in the evening.
Shortly after this, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway broke down for around 30 minutes, causing the wait time for that to spike for the rest of the night.
Based upon our observations (we were literally just making loops of the park at this point), pretty much “everyone” in Disney’s Hollywood Studios was up by Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
Towards the end of the night, the rest of the park felt like off-season. Wait times were under 30 minutes for every single other attraction by 7:30 pm (an hour before park close). Not bad for the opening day of a new headliner attraction!
Aside from walking around soaking up the pleasant atmosphere, we didn’t end up doing a whole lot.
We did check out the new Mickey Shorts Theater and watched the “Vacation Fun” short. Neither of us had ever seen “Potatoland” until then, so that segment of the montage helped clear up some things for us. (All in all, the cartoon and accompanying photo ops are solid additions to DHS–exactly what the park needs.)
Overall, it was a great day at Walt Disney World. We know this could feed into a variety of narratives, but we’d caution against extrapolating too much from all of this. It doesn’t mean that Runaway Railway is a flop, that the new attraction is pulling crowds away from other attractions, that chaos around Rise of the Resistance is magically resolved, or anything else.
Again, this is a time that’s normally slower for Walt Disney World, and that proved true at both parks we visited yesterday. If there is one takeaway from all of this, it’s that now is a fairly ideal time to visit Walt Disney World from the perspective of crowds. Weekends are a wildcard as those will likely draw more locals, but weekdays between now and mid-March should be excellent.
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Your Thoughts
Were you at Disney’s Hollywood Studios or Epcot yesterday? What was your experience like? Have you noticed lower crowds at Walt Disney World this week? 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!
We had a similar ROTR experience this morning. We walked into the park at 8:56 am (on a Saturday!) and casually checked the app to snag boarding group 135. We were called at 5:45 and both on/off within an hour (did rider swap). Multiple ride vehicles were empty! It felt very much like a fluke and a lull in the busy times, because last week backup boarding groups were going within a minute of park opening! It’s been a great week to be at WDW.
Thanks for this post, it’s helpful to know that evenings tend to quiet down at the parks. Now that you’ve ridden Runaway Railway, what do you think the best rope drop choice is a DHS? Slinky Dog, Runaway Railway, or Smugglers Run?
We were also at DHS on opening day for Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway. The crowds were low for almost everything, so we decided to take advantage of that for other rides and jump in line at the end of the night right before the park closed for M&MRR. We got there at 8:15 and they had already closed the line. We spoke with a cast member and they said they will always close it early because of the fireworks that happen in that area. I didn’t see any of that mentioned on Disney World’s website, so that was disappointing. But we woke up early the next morning and did it at rope drop.
Wow, I just want to drool vicariously over your awesome day. I can’t think of the last time I was at disney world with light crowds, but boy was it nice when that happened. Thanks for letting me dream a little.
Of course, we’re going in May, which previously seemed like a good bet crowd-wise but now is looking like it will be doomsday level crowds with everyone pushing back their March and April vacations to wait out coronavirus….
We really benefited from your reviews of the Food and Wine Festival the last time we went, and wished we had had similar reviews 2 years ago when we went to the Flower and Garden festival. We will be at Epcot this Tuesday so if you do have a chance to give even a list of things you tried and enjoyed, we’d greatly appreciate it. As you’ve commented, the kiosks aren’t cheap, so it’s nice to be able to avoid the Duds. I sure wish they’d have a chocolate Studio kiosk at this Festival. We loved the Liquid Nitro chocolate thingy.
Do you live in Orlando or LA? Or both? I find it fascinating that y’all are able to spend so much time at Disneyworld!
I got a PIN code (a unique offer code) this week for All Star hotels for selected dates at the end of April and early and mid-May. I got a similar code this past fall.
Are you a repeat Disney guest?
Tom would you now rank this early march period as a better time to go than the late jan – early feb period? i usually tend to book for the arts festival, but i might book a vacation during this new springtime to check it out esp during the 50th.
It’s a close call, but yes.
For the last three years, January and February crowds have been increasing (and somewhat unpredictable), whereas this stretch between late February and mid-March has been consistently good. The biggest downside is weather, which is typically less desirable right now than in Jan/Feb (but even that’s unpredictable).
Now watch…you’ll change your travel dates to this early March period, and next year Walt Disney World will book the biggest cheerleading competition ever for early March, causing unprecedented crowds and spiking prices. 😉
My daughter and I were at Epcot on opening day of the F&GF — totally different experience. The line for the Passholder Magnet was very long. The line inside Mouse Gear for purchases circumnavigated the store. Test Track was closed in the morning. When we returned early afternoon, closed again. The CM said it was open in between for a couple of hours. Space Ship Earth was evacuated while we were getting ready to board (I think it was late morning). When we returned in the afternoon, it was closed again. Same story — it was open a couple of hours in between. We really wanted to experience it before it closed. Epcot seems to be having a lot of troubles. On Monday (03/02/20), The Land was not running in the morning, and shortly thereafter the Garden Grill was shut down. Oh well, after all, tomorrow is another day.
Have you done opening day for merchandise or magnets during an Epcot festival before? It’s always pretty bonkers for both, even when the rest of the park is fairly mild. (That’ll be the case again this weekend when more locals start showing up for the same purposes.)
In observing crowds and wait times yesterday, it was a pretty mild day at Epcot–relative to opening day for other festivals. Same thing today–right now, mid-tier attractions have 5-15 minute waits, Soarin is at 25 minutes, Test Track at 40, and Frozen Ever After at 55. That’s pretty quiet as compared to how things have been.
Tom when did you write your review of Mickey and Minnie’s railway? At ABC commissary? Can we switch lives? I’m sure sometimes it’s a grind but I think I’d prefer your lifestyle. Keep up the good work!
Your Coronado Springs prediction was spot on. I just received an e-mail from Disney with an offer to upgrade from Pop Century to Coronado Springs for my trip at the end of April. Personally, proximity to the Skyliner is worth more to me than the room upgrade.
Interesting. I’ve been looking into adding 2 extra nights before our current Coronado booking and all they have is tower rooms which are more than double the cost we paid for our standard view rooms. But it is also Spring Break. You’re talking end of April.
Thanks for the heads up on that, DisneyMom! I haven’t personally received any offers, but I know there have already been event cancellations, so it’s only a matter of time.
montREALady – There’s a decent chance Coronado wouldn’t be booking conventions for Spring Break, as the resort would already have sufficient occupancy without hosting events. As of right now, conferences are the main cancellations. (I suspect ESPN WWoS has also taken a hit, but I cannot confirm that.)
@Tom I can’t complain, our room was less than $250/night (standard view). Only did 2 nights post Carnival cruise but with all this Coronavirus stuff we were looking at our options and possibly postponing the cruise and just adding more days at Disney.
I just wanted to let you know that as of noon today there are still boarding groups available for rise of the resistance in California! I guess the Coronavirus hysteria has reached Disneyland! I can’t wait to take advantage next week!
A huge conference at the ACC cancelled this weekend. That event had previously made hotel rooms in Anaheim very difficult to book, essentially blocking tourists from booking rooms in the area. (Check out hotels.com now–much easier and some great deals to be found.)
It’ll be interesting to see whether it’s still just as busy this weekend with the local audience, or if concerns push people away.
Very interesting! I arrive Sunday so I guess time will tell! Thanks Tom! Love your Blog!
These are the types of anecdotal reports I love on the blog. Do you often do full park days still, or are those more few and far between? Maybe you could consolidate your Epcot booth reviews into a “best-of” post. I find those much easier to navigate when looking for quick info on what the best items are.
We’ve been doing more full days recently because we’re testing out some new itineraries (stay tuned), and full days are necessary for those.
Otherwise, not so much. Usually mornings (almost all of which have been at DHS) and evenings.
Wow that’s awesome re the backup boarding group! And you’re right about judging crowds by the wrong photo. It happened to me, I thought a rope drop pic was the actual crowd in the park.
We went to Epcot last night (Weds) and it seemed incredibly busy!