Walt Disney World Wait Times for First Week of February 2023
This past week, Disney introduced some new character interactions at its most chaotic theme park. Did that help to spread out the crowds?
We’ll know more in this week’s Walt Disney World wait times.
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
January proved fascinating at Animal Kingdom. The sustained popularity of Avatar: The Way of Water kept the crowds flowing to Pandora – The World of Avatar.
This past weekend represents the first time that Avatar 2 didn’t finish in first place at the domestic box office for a weekend since its release.
So, we should safely expect the rediscovered interest in Avatar to fade gradually. Was that the case this past week?
Avatar Flight of Passage averaged a wait of 93 minutes, a significant decline of 13 minutes from the final week of January.
Any time that the average Avatar wait is around 90 minutes, the rest of the park’s wait times shouldn’t be bad at all.
Let’s fact-check that:
- Na’vi River Journey – 70 minutes, down 5
- Adventurers Outpost – 42 minutes, down 3
- Kilimanjaro Safaris – 38 minutes, down 13
- Expedition Everest – 28 minutes, down 5
- DINOSAUR – 23 minutes, down 4
- TriceraTop Spin – 11 minutes, down 3
- It’s Tough to Be a Bug! – 10 minutes, no change
The average Animal Kingdom attraction required a wait of 38 minutes, which is seven minutes less than the last week of January.
Also, every attraction’s wait time decreased during the first week of February. That fact hints at smaller overall crowds at Walt Disney World this week.
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
Here’s the park that changed on February 1st. On that date, Disney surprised guests with several character interactions.
Two of them, Powerline Max and Frozone, are on the rare side. The rest are characters like Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl, and Goofy.
While the crimefighting Parr family hosted a joint character greeting, the introduction of all these characters should have reduced wait times elsewhere.
After all, guests cannot stand in line for a ride if they’re meeting the Parr family, can they?
How were the waits at Hollywood Studios? Here’s what we tracked:
- Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance – 99 minutes, down 3
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror – 98 minutes, down 9
- Slinky Dog Dash – 88 minutes, down 8
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway – 67 minutes, down 3
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster Starring Aerosmith – 64 minutes, down 4
- Toy Story Mania! – 63 minutes, down 4
- Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run – 59 minutes, down 2
- Red Carpet Dreams – 41 minutes, down 4
- Alien Swirling Saucers – 39 minutes, down 3
- Meet Sulley at Walt Disney Presents – 30 minutes, down 5
- Star Tours – The Adventures Continue! – 28 minutes, down 2
- Celebrity Spotlight – 24 minutes, down 7
- Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy – 15 minutes, no change
- Muppet*Vision 3D – 10 minutes, no change
Overall, guests waited for an average of 46 minutes for the attractions we tracked. As predicted, that’s a five-minutes decrease.
Currently, My Disney Experience shows a schedule for the new character meetings at Hollywood Studios.
So, we aren’t tracking this individually. If Disney adds them to the tracking board, we will.
If/when that happens, the park’s average attraction wait time will decrease even more. Currently, the seven attractions with hourlong waits skew the data.
A few attractions with sub-45-minute waits will counterbalance those popular rides even more.
That’s the phenomenon we’ll evaluate when the time comes.
EPCOT
Okay, if Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios have shorter wait times, EPCOT should as well. Let’s check my logic:
- Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure – 75 minutes, no change
- Frozen Ever After – 72 minutes, down 7
- Test Track – 57 minutes, down 1
- Soarin’ Around the World – 42 minutes, down 2
- Royal Sommerhus – 35 minutes, down 1
- Mission: SPACE – 18 minutes, down 3
- Journey into Imagination with Figment – 17 minutes, up 4
- Turtle Talk with Crush – 15 minutes, down 2
- Living with the Land – 14 minutes, down 1
- Spaceship Earth – 13 minutes, down 5
- The Seas with Nemo & Friends – 11 minutes, down 1
- Gran Fiesta Tour Starring the Three Caballeros – 10 minutes, no change
Overall, guests waited for 31 minutes for the average EPCOT attraction. That’s down one minute from last time. Honestly, I’d expected more.
Magic Kingdom
Okay, thus far, only one attraction has increased its wait time from the previous week. I expect similar behavior at Magic Kingdom.
Here are last week’s average wait times:
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train – 80 minutes, down 6
- Peter Pan’s Flight – 72 minutes, down 2
- Jungle Cruise – 56 minutes, down 4
- Space Mountain – 50 minutes, down 4
- Haunted Mansion – 43 minutes, down 6
- Ariel’s Grotto – 42 minutes, down 4
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad – 40 minutes, down 10
- Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin – 39 minutes, down 2
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh – 35 minutes, down 3
- Pirates of the Caribbean – 34 minutes, down 5
- Pete’s Silly Sideshow – 32 minutes, no change
- Princess Fairytale Hall – 31 minutes, down 3
- Astro Orbiter – 29 minutes, down 4
- It’s a Small World – 27 minutes, down 4
- Under the Sea ~ Journey of the Little Mermaid – 26 minutes, down 1
- The Barnstormer – 23 minutes, down 5
- Dumbo the Flying Elephant – 23 minutes, down 3
- The Magic Carpets of Aladdin – 23 minutes, down 7
- Tomorrowland Speedway – 21 minutes, down 2
- Mickey’s PhilharMagic – 16 minutes, down 1
- Monsters, Inc. Laugh Floor – 15 minutes, up 1
- Mad Tea Party – 13 minutes, down 2
- Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover – 11 minutes, down 4
- Prince Charming Regal Carrousel – 10 minutes, down 3
- Country Bear Jamboree – 5 minutes, no change
- Walt Disney’s Carousel of Progress – 5 minutes, no change
Overall, Magic Kingdom attractions required an average wait of 27 minutes. That’s substantially lower than the previous week’s 35 minutes.
Also, only one attraction experienced a wait time increase week-over-week. So, the parks were obviously less crowded.
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