Walt Disney World’s Worst Bottleneck Is About To Get Much Worse

By | December 3, 2024

Ever since the closure of Lights, Motors, Action!(LMA), Disney’s Hollywood Studios has been a disaster for guests. The show(which was great) had a capacity of 5000 people. Rise Of the Resistance(RotR) can handle 1700 people per hour- when it actually is running(which is embarassingly infrequent). Millenium Falcon: Smugglers Run is around 1500-1800 per hour. Slinky Dog Dash is about 1440 per hour, and Alien Swirling Saucers just 600. Altogether, far less than LMA, and besides RotR, each is just a few minutes long compared to 40 minute LMA show. The change took a park that was comfortably doable in a day, to a world of frustration with 100 minute+ waits many days on most attractions.

Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular, with its 2000 seat theater still eats a lot of park guests. And so do Muppet*Vision 3D(584 per show, 4 shows per hour) and Rock N Roller Coaster(1800 guests per hour). However Disney has announced the closure of Muppet*Vision 3D and Rock N Roller Coaster in 2025 without having first added any capacity. This will take a bad situation and make it even worse. Rock N Roller Coaster will eventually reopen with a Muppet theme and Muppet*Vision 3D will be replaced by a Monsters, Inc. Door Coaster. Once complete, this will, at best, maintain current total ride capacity in the park which is already far too low for the number of visitors. Worse in the interim, capacity will be severely limited.

Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Animal Kingdom(which will have similar problems with the imminent closure of Dinosaur) , have a far lower density of attractions than Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disneyland, and California Adventure. As a result, the visitor experience in these 2 parks is significantly diminished despite some excellent attractions and it doesn’t seem that Disney’s current announced plans will improve the situation in any meaningful way.

It used to be fun to visit Walt Disney World. My last visit felt more like preparing my income taxes. Will the magic ever return?

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