Touring Hollywood Studios After Toy Story Land Opens
By Dave Shute
Yesterday, Disney World confirmed that each of the three Toy Story Land rides—Toy Story Mania and the new rides Slinky Dog Dash and Alien Swirling Saucers—will all be in FastPass+ Tier One, and be the only rides in Tier One, after Toy Story Land opens June 30.
(c) Disney
At the same time, it made a couple of points about the summer schedule at Disney’s Hollywood Studios:
- From June 30 through August 25, regular park hours will be from 8a to 10.30p
- Over that same period, there will be morning Extra Magic Hours from 7a-8a every morning, and evening Extra Magic hours every Friday from 10.30p to 12.30a
A couple of other things I gleaned from the post-Toy Story Land 6/30 to 8/25 schedule:
- Fantasmic is on twice every night, at 9 and 10.30p until 8/18, and then 8.30 and 10.30p 8/19 through 8/25.
- Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular is on every night at 10p
- Many Hollywood Studios shows have added schedules compared to say today—for example, Indiana Jones has its first show at 10.45a rather than noon, Beauty and the Beast adds a 6p show, the Frozen Sing-Along shows at various times from 9.30a to 8.30p rather than 10.30a to 7.30p, Disney Jr. Live on Stage goes to 6.40p instead of 5.40p, etc.
I’ve revised based on this my draft touring plans for summer visits to Hollywood Studios for those using my itineraries–you can see the new draft Hollywood Studios Touring plans here.
Some other observations:
- The added shows are welcome, but are probably not commensurate with the number of extra people who will be in the park. Just one more Indiana Jones and two more Frozen Sing-alongs seems not enough. This will make stacking your pre-booked FastPass+ earlier in the day, so that you have an earlier opportunity to refresh and look for more, more valuable.
- With the first Fantasmic at 9p or 8.30p, and Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular at 10p, through 8/25 guests will be able to see both shows on a single night—although the first Fantasmic will be mobbed
- There should be a pretty good opportunity to get in line for some priority attractions between 10 and 10.30p, with many of those who arrived for EMH long gone, others leaving after the first Fantasmic, and a large proportion of who’s left busy either seeing Star Wars: A Galactic Spectacular or in line for the 10.30p Fantasmic.
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6 comments
If one is willing and able to be at the bus stop at 5:45 for a 7am emh and is not interested in rock n rollercoaster or tower or terror do you think one day will be sufficient for Hollywood studios?
This will be day 2 of our trip.
Jackie, if you skip those, and you are at the turnstiles by 6.15a (I don’t know that the buses will be running that early–ask the concierge at your resort the night before, you might need to use a cab/uber/lyft instead) yes, you should–although it will be an awfully long day if you stay through the Star Wars fireworks.
Hi Dave. This might be a big ask, but we are going on Aug 28. These extended hours are much like what they did at AK for Pandora. Do you think there will be a hard stop on Aug 26 and they go back to BAU, or might they start weaning down the extended hours / shows / etc?
Eric that’s a hard call. I don’t expect anything at TSL to be of the quality of Flight of Passage. But on the other hand, Toy Story as a property has a much broader appeal, better range of age suitability, and MUCH MUCH better awareness than Pandora/Avatar.
Complicating things even more, Pandora opened a couple of weeks before the block-out dates for the Silver Annual Passes kicked in, so a lot of these passholders had the chance to see it. Because of the much later debut, no one with a Silver Annual Pass will get a chance to see TSL until 8/10. Now many of these silver holders are Florida residents, and in 2017 (I don’t have 2018 data yet) 90% of the 21 large FL counties I track were back in school by the middle of August. So maybe that won’t matter, but I would not be surprised to see the extra hours and EMH extended through Labor Day weekend.
Hey there! We are going to WDW the second week of October. For Hollywood Studios, we can do that park in one day, yes? We have a 6 yr old boy and a 1 year old girl so we’ll be doing mostly TSL, Star Wars, Pixar everything, and classic Disney characters. Any advice would be AWESOME. Thanks!
Carrie
Hi Carrie, yes if you skip the thrill rides you can do HS in a day–a long day if you stay for the evening fireworks.
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