This week we talk about a huge surge in Splash Mountain wait times, a small surge in other waits, and a change to our recommended rope drop strategy. Let’s chat about the Magic Kingdom wait times for the week ending August 2!
ABOUT + RELATED POSTS
If you’re new to the wait time scorecards, check out our post explaining our Disney World Wait Time Scorecards. That post explains the different numbers you’ll see here including why they’re imperfect. Our wait time scorecards are based on the last week of data from Thrill-Data.com.
Here are the most recent looks at wait times across the four parks:
Magic Kingdom Wait Times (Aug. 2) (you are here)
For upcoming trips, you’ll also want to consult our masterpost on the reopening of Disney World.
This post works in tandem with our Magic Kingdom Rope Drop Strategy post, which addresses things like how to get to the park and what time to arrive. If you’re new to Disney World planning, you might also want to read our Guide to Rides and Entertainment at Magic Kingdom, which includes descriptions of the rides.
As a reminder, we only cover 10 Magic Kingdom rides in this post. The remaining tend to have shorter waits and thus should just be fit in whenever they’re convenient.
Bottom Line + Random Walks
A few rides at Magic Kingdom saw large increases in wait times this week, headlined by a 15 minute spike for Splash Mountain partly driven by the ride having excessive downtime.
We’ve changed our strategy. After recommending Peter Pan’s Flight be squeezed in after Seven Dwarfs Mine Train but before the Frontierland ride, we’re reverting and suggesting Peter Pan’s Flight be delayed until you’ve done a few rides in Adventureland/Frontierland. Now we recommend Seven Dwarfs, Big Thunder, Splash Mountain, Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean to start.
I ran 50,000 random walk simulations using Saturday’s wait times on three strategies:
a fully random strategy (all 19 rides)
a strategy that starts with Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, Big Thunder, Splash Mountain, Jungle Cruise (and then goes random for remaining 14 rides)
a strategy that starts with Seven Dwarfs, Big Thunder, Splash Mountain, Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean (and then goes random for remaining 14 rides)
The third strategy is the second strategy minus Peter Pan’s Flight and with Pirates of the Caribbean added to the end. Here’s how these simulations compared:
Data Source: Thrill-Data.com
On average, you’re looking somewhere around 5 hours spent waiting in line for the 19 rides at Magic Kingdom. Both rope drop strategies did better than a random strategy (or “no strategy”), but skipping Peter Pan’s Flight paid off best. Notice that even picking a random order, you still got on every ride 94% of the time on this relatively busy Saturday
I also looked at August 3, 2019 for kicks. I found that even with the longer park hours, you only had a 31% chance of getting on every ride with a random strategy, and you wound up waiting an average of about 10 hours in line.
Anyways, back to this year (and last week)…
Magic Kingdom Wait Time Scorecard Part 1
Data Source: Thrill-Data.com
The park was busier this week than last, with waits up pretty much across the board. The big jumper for the week was Splash Mountain. This was in part due to downtime—Splash Mountain was down all Monday and over 1/3 of Tuesday and Wednesday each.
Since there is no park hopping, the Monday closure may not have impacted wait times for the week (with park hopping, guests may visit later in the week just for one ride). But the Tuesday/Wednesday closures brought very high waits the rest of those days.
The daily remained mostly unchanged from last week. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train still jumps the quickest, and after that your goal is to get west (Frontierland / Adventureland) and beat the high waits there. We used to recommend stopping at Peter Pan’s Flight along the way, and I’d really like to try this in real life.
But the numbers suggest that skipping it works better, and there isn’t much risk to pushing it later in the day. For now, we suggest you head straight from Seven Dwarfs Mine Train to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.
Magic Kingdom Wait Time Scorecard Part 2
Data Source: Thrill-Data.com
Now, let’s talk about where to fit things in after you’ve finished your rope drop strategy. You shouldn’t have trouble finding waits of 30 minutes or less on Peter Pan, Small World, Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, and Astro Orbiter. Those last two even see 15 minute waits pretty frequently.
If you had to push Jungle Cruise or Pirates of the Caribbean later into the day, anything at or under 30 minutes wait is good for those rides. Splash Mountain, Big Thunder, and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train are good picks at 30 minutes or less, but realistically you’ll want to be open to waiting 45 minutes for these rides (which is why we recommend visiting them early).
Conclusions
If you want to ride everything at Magic Kingdom, you can expect to spend a few hours of your day waiting in lines. But hey, that’s theme parks! While things are getting more time consuming, we’re still not at a point where you need to stress about strategy, and basic rope drop strategies are making visiting the most Magical place on Earth pretty simple.