A lot has changed at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in the last month…
Labor Day weekend proved a major turning point for attendance at Walt Disney World. Previous to the early-September holiday weekend, guests across all four parks reported historically low crowds, to the point that “empty park” pictures were commonplace and most rides offered walk-on access. Even at the resort’s most popular park, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, guests enjoyed reasonable crowds compared to the gate-busting hordes that became a regular occurrence after Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance opened in December 2019.
Since Labor Day weekend, Walt Disney World has seen a steady increase in crowds across all four parks. This week, Magic Kingdom finally saw a jump in attendance following the arrival of Halloween festivities, and we even experienced increased crowds at Epcot in the final week of September. While the Most Magical Place on Earth continues to operate at lower capacity, the window is slowly closing on this historically quiet season.
Our last update on the current state of Disney’s Hollywood Studios was based on a trip that took place shortly before Labor Day weekend. While a good amount of information from that report that still holds true (such as the tips regarding the necessity of a smartphone, navigating distanced character encounters, and taking advantage of the amazing relaxation zone at Star Wars Launch Bay), enough has changed that it is definitely time for a fresh look at this increasingly popular park.
Our latest visit took place on Friday, September 25th–a convenient day that offers a good data point for both weekdays and weekends. If you are planning on visiting on a Saturday or Sunday in the future, expect any references to wait times or crowds to be increased. Vice versa, if you’ll be visiting on a Monday-Thursday, you may luck out and enjoy slightly lower crowds.
So what all has changed inside Disney’s Hollywood Studios as we head into October?
1. Plan extra time for parking or resort transportation
On our previous trip, we attempted an unusual strategy by only hitting the park for the second half of the day (from the 2:00 PM ROTR Boarding Pass call on). This tactic previously proved an attractive option for Passholders since lines tended to peak around 1-2 PM then gradually taper off throughout the rest of the day.
Our September 25th trip proved a little different. We were celebrating our anniversary, so we opted to stay on property in a villa at Bay Lake Tower. With the factor of a multi-hour morning commute eliminated, we decided we wanted to be in the park by rope drop to try for an early Rise of the Resistance boarding pass.
We covered this in our update about what the Walt Disney World resort hotels are like right now, but Disney resorts are currently encouraging guests to take personal vehicles to the parks when possible, reserving bus transportation for trips to Disney Springs. The reason for this is that resort transportation is currently limited, to the point that some guests have reported problems getting to Disney’s Hollywood Studios in time for the morning boarding pass call.
With this is mind, we decided to take our own car. We pulled up to the parking gates at 9:30 and immediately regretted cutting it so close. We feared we’d chosen poorly when we spotted huge lines of cars waiting to be let into the parking lot. We managed to pick the slowest parking gate lane (doesn’t it always feel that way?) and barely made it into a parking spot by around 9:45. We were definitely concerned we wouldn’t make it into the park on time, especially considering the crowds who all seemed to have the same idea. Fortunately, we made it through temperature checks and even a bag search without issue and stepped into the park by 9:53. Phew!
This reinforced something I suspected since our last visit: if you want to try for a Rise of the Resistance boarding pass, aim for a 9:15-9:20 arrival time. The best way to reduce the hassle is to stay at an Epcot resort or have breakfast in the Epcot resort area. Your chances aren’t shot if you arrive at the parking gates at 9:30 AM like we did, but you’ll save yourself some stress by getting there earlier. If you have no choice but to take resort transportation, give yourself a full hour to be on the safe side.
2. Crowds are definitely increasing
Disney’s Hollywood Studios has remained the resort’s busiest park since reopening, but the days of empty parks may be nearing their close. Since the Labor Day holiday, crowds have definitely increased, leading to more congestion in the parks, though attendance is still low overall compared to normal levels for this time of year.
Similar to the situation in Epcot, part of the reason Disney’s Hollywood Studios feels crowded is due to the park’s layout—it’s a small park, and there are definitely spots where guests might feel a little bottlenecked. DHS also has the unique phenomenon of still drawing large crowds right at rope drop thanks to the Rise of the Resistance boarding pass distribution—while the 2:00 PM call helps thin crowds a little bit and gives guests some semblance of hope for a second chance to get onto the ride, most fans are still arriving at rope drop.
I will give Disney’s Hollywood Studios one credit that we did not give Epcot—people seem to be better behaved when it comes to masks and social distancing.
Did we see some weird behavior and mask flubs? Sure, though I’d say less than on the average trip to the grocery store. Were there some cases where social distancing was difficult? Yes, there are portions of the park where you’ll be thankful everyone has masks on, particularly in busy sections of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge. Were there some cases of bizarre behavior where guests just wouldn’t social distance even when there was space? Yes, but this seemed to happen far less than on our visit to Epcot.
I can’t explain it, but we personally noticed a marked difference between the parks—people at Disney’s Hollywood Studios just seemed to have a better handle on social distancing. While I wouldn’t recommend anyone with high risk factors for COVID visit a theme park right now, our experience with safety measures at Disney’s Hollywood Studios continues to be positive despite increasing crowds.
3. Rise of the Resistance seems to be running at higher capacity
As mentioned, we scanned into the park at around 9:53 AM (seven minutes before opening). This gave us plenty of time to find a comfortable place to sit to get ready to try for Rise of the Resistance boarding passes.
Unlike the repeated failures we experienced when the ride first opened, we have had fairly good luck getting boarding passes since the system moved to something more like a lottery. The tips that have worked for us are the same we’ve recommended since January:
1) Don’t use park Wi-Fi (mobile data is more reliable)
2) Use multiple devices with the My Disney Experience app if possible
3) Have the app open on the Rise of the Resistance boarding pass screen early and start refreshing it by repeatedly scrolling down around 9:59 AM / 1:59 PM.
4) When the option to grab passes for your party pulls up, move quickly and make sure your whole party is selected.
My husband seems to have a particular penchant for getting passes, possibly because of his speedy Samsung Galaxy S10. As a matter of fact, the Force must have been particularly strong with him on the day of our visit, because he managed to pull off something I’d never seen before…
He got us into Boarding Group 1. Woot-woot!
We headed straight to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and got right into the line without any issues. Starting the day on Rise of the Resistance definitely made for a new experience—our last visit played out opposite since we’d been part of a backup group that was called at the end of the day. Doing Rise early in the day plays very interesting from a story/lore standpoint since the concept of the ride surrounds the Resistance hurriedly attempting to evacuate new recruits off-planet to escape the First Order, resulting in the surprisingly-important Battle of Batuu.
The first thing I noticed was that our trip through the queue was much shorter than usual—we were actually guided through a shorter route that skipped some portions of the queue (you may have to scan those crates next time, Star Wars Datapad fans). We could tell immediately that cast members were in go-mode—everything seemed to move at light speed, from ushering people into the pre-show to boarding the transports. Hilariously, we got tucked into the dreaded spot #6 in the corner again (where you can’t see either viewport very well—no worries).
This trend carried to the Star Destroyer sequence where the First Order officers hurried guests along rather than letting people linger for picture taking. The escape sequence passed very quickly, and before we knew it, we were in our vehicles. We did still have our own transport and did not see any use of the new rumored plexiglass dividers some guests have reported.
As for the ride, everything seemed to run smoothly without any bugs or evidence of B-Mode. We did learn that you can’t guarantee which car you’ll end up in—we thought perhaps we finally got in a vehicle to see the second viewpoint (which sees the side of the AT-AT sequence) since we were placed in the rear instead of the front transport, but the viewpoint ended up being the same as our last two rides. We have yet to unravel the riddle of figuring out which vehicle is which.
Overall, it appears that Rise of the Resistance operated at nearly full capacity throughout the day. We spotted one temporary breakdown around 2:30 PM, but by the end of the day, they’d reached Boarding Groups 110-112, well into the backup groups. If this trend carries on, guests who are placed in backup boarding groups may continue to have a good chance of getting onto the ride.
4. Problems with Mobile Order, credit cards, and gift cards may be a problem
We did run into one unusual problem that put a damper on our day, and apparently, we’re not the only ones who’ve experienced this issue recently…
During our visit, Disney experienced company-wide technical issues with Mobile Order, gift cards, and even some credit card processing systems. Walt Disney World has been relying heavily on the My Disney Experience Mobile Order feature to encourage social distancing and keep lines from forming at counter service restaurants. Some locations (like the Milk Stand) have even moved exclusively to Mobile Order. Needless to say, this outage kind of threw all of that out the window.
The morning of our visit, Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge had already drawn relatively heavy crowds. While many people drifted into lines for Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, the Droid Depot, or Dok Ondar’s Den of Antiquities, the Mobile Order outage led to the formation of long social-distanced lines outside both Ronto Roasters and the Milk Stand, further congesting thoroughfares. On top of this, the outage seemingly also knocked out Disney’s ability to process gift cards, meaning that guests looking to pick up a Batuu Spira credit chip (more on that later) were out of luck. Credit cards could still be entered manually, but this increased wait times at all dining and retail locations.
This may sound like a one-off issue, but according to some Galaxy’s Edge regulars we checked with, this situation has happened several times recently, and it has even affected the ShopDisney website. Fortunately, the problem was resolved by around 3:00 PM, but it definitely changed some of our plans for the morning and led to extra congestion in the park.
5. Lines are staying long later into the afternoon
On our pre-Labor Day visit, we noticed lines peaked around 1-2 PM and tapered off throughout the day. Like just about everything related to increasing crowds, this trend has partially changed.
On our most recent visit, lines quickly increased starting around an hour after rope drop, hitting a peak at around 11:30 AM. Combined with sweltering heat and the extra lines caused by the Mobile Order / credit card outage, we decided to take advantage of our room and left the park right around that 11:30 peak. A major goal of our visit that day (besides riding Rise of the Resistance) was to pick up one of the new Batuu Spira chips and to purchase our first legacy lightsabers, so we wanted to see if letting some time pass would see the outages resolved. This strategy worked, and after a nice afternoon nap, we returned to the park around 4:30 PM. If you are staying nearby and want to avoid the heaviest crowds, an afternoon break during peak hours might be a good idea during this season.
During our break, we monitored wait times closely. The longest line most of the day remained Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, which hit 90 minutes by 11:30 AM (about an hour and a half after rope drop). This ended up being the longest time of the day. This dipped to 70 minutes by 1:00 PM then bounced back up to 80 by 2:00 PM after momentarily being surpassed by Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run. The wait slowly decreased throughout the day until it finally hit only 40 minutes around 7:30 PM (half an hour before closing). This suggests your best bets for a shorter wait for this popular ride may be at either rope drop or shortly before closing.
Other E-Ticket rides like Slinky Dog Dash, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Millennium Falcon Smuggler’s Run, and The Rockin’ Roller Coaster all saw fluctuating times throughout the day. Here’s a few samples:
11:30 AM:
Slinky Dog Dash – 70 Minutes
Tower of Terror and Smugglers Run – 55 Minutes
Rock n’ Roller Coaster – 50 Minutes
—
1:00 PM:
Slinky Dog Dash – 55 Minutes
Rock n’ Roller Coaster – 50 Minutes
Tower of Terror and Smugglers Run – 40 Minutes
—
2:00 PM:
Smugglers Run – 80 Minutes (dipped to 70 by 2:30 PM)
Tower of Terror – 65 Minutes (dipped to 45)
Slinky Dog Dash – 55 Minutes (rose to 60)
Rock n’ Roller Coaster – 45 Minutes
—
7:30 PM:
Slinky Dog Dash and Smugglers Run – 40 Minutes
Tower of Terror and Rock n’ Roller Coaster – 30 Minutes
The data doesn’t give us a simple formula, but we can draw the following conclusions: your best bet for hitting E-Ticket attractions looks to be within the first hour after rope drop or in the last two hours before closing. However, if you see a short line—and 40 minutes is short—go get in it!
6. Changes to lightsaber sales (and a shiny new Batuu Spira!)
On our last visit, we enjoyed a visit to Dok Ondar’s Den of Antiquities with unusually low crowds thanks to legacy lightsabers being moved to Savi’s Workshop. While this was super cool, build-your-own lightsaber reservations are back up and running, meaning that legacy lightsaber sales have moved back to Dok Ondar’s.
It wasn’t particularly shocking, but this meant you can expect some unusually long lines to get into this location during the day. It actually felt a bit like opening day all over again watching the line snake through the outpost. As long as you aren’t trying to get a high-demand lightsaber (like the upcoming Ahsoka Tano or rumored Cal Kestus sabers), you’re probably best off waiting until later in the day to visit Dok Ondar’s. We returned to Galaxy’s Edge around 4:30 PM and didn’t have to wait long to get inside. Crowds appeared substantially lower compared to the morning.
Inside Dok Ondar’s, we got through the legacy saber line quickly. This store has always been a bit of a nightmare for line management, but thanks to a careful system, we were guided straight into a short queue without any distancing problem. Guests can still handle the legacy lightsabers for a short amount of time to test them out, and the cast members here are just as delightful as ever. My husband ended up choosing Obi-Wan’s lightsaber (one of the lightest), while I eventually settled on Ben Solo’s club of a saber after the gregarious cast member (who always accuses me of being Vi-the-Spy) remarked that it was the second-heaviest. Ironically, we weighed the thing later, and it’s only about 9 oz lighter than an actual HEMA longsword. It also came with a snazzy belt clip, a fun addition to the Galaxy’s Edge experience.
Annual Passholders currently have access to a hefty 30% discount on merchandise that includes lightsaber accessories like blades, sheathes, and belt clips. The discount doesn’t apply to the saber hilts, but it definitely knocked out a good chunk on the blade cost. If you end up buying a lightsaber with a blade, you may want to just take the plunge and buy a carrying case. We ended up having to run to the car to store ours when we realized we had no idea where we would put the things on rides.
With gift cards back up, we also had the pleasure of finally procuring one of the rare Batuu Spira credit chips—a unique Disney gift card that looks just like a Star Wars credit chip. The latest batch have a silvery finish and are usually found in the back room of the Droid Depot (with the jewelry and kitchenware). These souvenirs are super-cool (they have a nice weight to them!), and we’ve wanted to pick one up since opening. Unfortunately, they require a minimum load of $100, and you can’t use Disney gift cards to load them. Thankfully, you can use Visa gift cards, which did the trick. Just make sure you keep them somewhere safe. Our friend at Dok Ondar’s warned us that all sorts of problems can ensue if you scratch the barcode on the back. We used ours to pay for our lightsabers.
7. Line lengths may not be accurate (especially for Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run)
This one may sound like a bummer, but it’s actually good news—don’t be discouraged by long wait times during this season. The reason why is that lines may not actually be as long as posted.
We’ve noticed this in particular on two different rides on Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run (on both of our recent trips). Both times, we got into line with wait times listed between 20-40 minutes, yet we pretty much walked right onto the ride other than a short stop in the Falcon’s Dejarik table room.
We think Disney is using an old strategy that used to be common during the 90’s to early 2000’s—overestimating wait times. In previous years, wait times grew super accurate because Disney would monitor line lengths in real time by sending guests through with trackers (usually a simple card). During the current season, we haven’t seen that taking place, meaning wait times aren’t going to be as accurate. Rather than risking a bunch of angry guests, Disney assumably chooses instead of pad the wait times a little bit.
While this may vary from ride to ride, we’ve had pretty good luck with wait times less than 40 minutes on Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, and it seems reasonable that this trend might carry to other rides.
8. The park is still amazingly quiet about an hour before closing
Knowing we had a resort room to return to, we decided to stay in the park pretty much until closing time. The sun was in the middle of setting when we stepped off Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run, and the resulting scene proved so worth the wait.
The final hours before park closing are your best chance to still experience some of the “empty park” phenomenon guests enjoyed after Walt Disney World’s reopening. Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge takes on a truly magical look during this hour as the sunset casts blue and gold light over the spires of Batuu.
The park comes alive here and there as dedicated fans turn on lightsabers to catch pictures during this mysterious hour. We even caught the silhouette of Vi (the Spy) Moradi bidding guests farewell as she maintained an evening watch over the Black Spire Outpost. Without a doubt, the last hour before closing proved incredibly quiet, with the lowest crowds of the entire day.
In conclusion, despite increasing crowds, it still seems to be a good time to visit Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Your best bet is to plan a full day at the park with a mid-day break to skip the heaviest crowds. If your goal is to catch the park with minimum crowds, visit on a weekday towards the last half of the day.
Enjoy this article? Keep reading to find out what Epcot is like right now, as well as learning if Disney resort hotels are worth visiting during the pandemic…
