Frozen Ever After opened more than 15 minutes after the time shown in the app on 17% of days: one morning in six. And when it’s late, almost two times in three it’s by more than half an hour. Among the big rides, it’s followed by Buzz Lightyear (15%), Ratatouille (12%) and Spider-Man (11%). At the other end, Raiponce, Star Tours and Les Mystères du Nautilus have only been late on two mornings in seven months.
Overall, one opening in 17 is late. That sounds like little until you count by mornings: on 62% of mornings at Disneyland Park at least one ride opens more than 15 minutes late, and at Disney Adventure World, on 53%. If your first-hour plan has three rides, one of them is late on between one morning in four and one in five.
The good news: it’s almost always a matter of minutes. If a ride is still closed after 15 minutes, two times in three it opens within the next half hour. What you need to decide is whether to wait at the entrance or change plan, and that depends on the ride.
We measured it with 7,106 openings of 34 rides in both parks, from March 29 to November 4, 2026: 221 mornings. This article is for anyone with the first hour planned to the minute: with a Disney hotel and Extra Magic Time, or at the gate at 9:30 with a list of three rides.
The data: what we measured and how
- The scheduled time: each ride’s opening time as shown in the app that day, the one Disney publishes. It isn’t always the park’s: Extra Magic Time rides open at 8:30 (at 8:00 when the park opens at 9:00) and some have their own time, such as Cars ROAD TRIP, which on many days opens at 10:00.
- The real opening: the first time the ride shows as open with a posted wait. We record the status every five minutes and Disney takes a few minutes to publish it: when a ride opens on time, the first reading comes 0 to 10 minutes later (on 92.5% of days). That’s why we only count delays of more than 15 minutes as “late”.
- What we leave out: scheduled refurbishments. Days when the ride didn’t open at all are counted separately: in seven months, only three.
- What we don’t know: the cause. Disney doesn’t publish whether it’s a breakdown, an inspection, the weather or a lack of staff.
Data updated as of November 4, 2026.
Which rides open late
| Ride | Opens in | More than 15 min late | More than 30 min | When late, median delay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frozen Ever After | EMT | 17.2% | 10.9% | 33 min |
| Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast | EMT | 14.8% | 7.7% | 30 min |
| Le Pays des Contes de Fées | Park opening | 12.8% | 6.8% | 30 min |
| Ratatouille | EMT | 11.8% | 9.0% | 35 min |
| Les Voyages de Pinocchio | Park opening | 11.5% | 6.9% | 30 min |
| Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure | EMT | 11.3% | 7.2% | 40 min |
| Cars ROAD TRIP | Park opening or 10:00 | 10.0% | 3.8% | 25 min |
| Blanche-Neige et les Sept Nains | Park opening | 9.9% | 4.0% | 23 min |
| Big Thunder Mountain | EMT | 8.6% | 7.2% | 48 min |
| Casey Jr. | Park opening | 8.6% | 5.0% | 40 min |
| It’s a small world | Park opening | 8.1% | 4.1% | 28 min |
| Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain | EMT | 7.9% | 5.6% | 35 min |
| Phantom Manor | Park opening | 7.7% | 4.5% | 30 min |
| Pirates of the Caribbean | Park opening | 7.4% | 5.9% | 35 min |
| Crush’s Coaster (closed until 2027) | EMT | 6.8% | 3.7% | 30 min |
| Peter Pan’s Flight | EMT | 5.9% | 1.5% | 20 min |
| Avengers Assemble: Flight Force | EMT | 5.1% | 4.6% | 50 min |
| Cars Quatre Roues Rallye | Park opening | 4.1% | 3.2% | 30 min |
| Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop | Park opening | 3.8% | 1.4% | 25 min |
| RC Racer | Park opening | 3.7% | 2.8% | 45 min |
| Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril | Park opening | 3.6% | 2.3% | 35 min |
| Dumbo the Flying Elephant | EMT | 2.9% | 0% | 19 min |
| Slinky Dog Zigzag Spin | EMT | 2.6% | 2.1% | 50 min |
| Alice’s Curious Labyrinth | Park opening | 2.5% | 0.6% | 23 min |
| La Cabane des Robinson | Park opening | 2.3% | 1.4% | 85 min |
| Orbitron | Park opening | 2.3% | 0.9% | 25 min |
| Les Tapis Volants | Park opening | 2.3% | 0.5% | 15 min |
| Le Carrousel de Lancelot | Park opening | 1.8% | 0.5% | 23 min |
| The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror | EMT | 1.4% | 0.9% | 40 min |
| Mad Hatter’s Tea Cups | Park opening | 1.4% | 0% | 15 min |
| Autopia | Park opening | 1.4% | 0% | 20 min |
| Les Mystères du Nautilus | Park opening | 0.9% | 0.5% | 25 min |
| Raiponce Tangled Spin | EMT | 0.9% | 0% | 18 min |
| Star Tours: The Adventures Continue | Park opening | 0.9% | 0% | 19 min |
| All | 6.0% | 3.4% | 30 min |
7,106 openings from March 29 to November 4, 2026, excluding scheduled refurbishments. Each percentage is calculated over the mornings that ride opened: 221 for most, between 160 and 219 for those that were closed for a while, and only 101 for Blanche-Neige. “Opens in”: EMT = during Extra Magic Time; Park opening = with the park. Frozen Ever After and Raiponce opened on March 29; Crush’s Coaster counts until it closed on September 7.
Adventure World’s big rides open late the most. Frozen, Ratatouille and Spider-Man, all three Extra Magic Time rides, are in the top six. Frozen isn’t just the one that opens late most often: it’s also the one most often delayed by more than half an hour (24 of its 38 late openings).
Big Thunder is late less often, but when it is, it’s late for longer. It opens late on 8.6% of days, but with a median of 48 minutes, the highest among the big rides along with Flight Force and Slinky.
Safe bets do exist. Raiponce, Star Tours and Nautilus: two late openings in seven months. Tower of Terror, Autopia and the Tea Cups: three. Raiponce went 195 days in a row opening on time.
The rides that stop the most are also the ones that open late the most. If we rank the rides by late openings and by days with a stoppage of 30 minutes or more, the two rankings look very alike (a correlation of 0.76). And a day that starts badly carries on worse: after a late opening, the ride then has a stoppage of half an hour or more on 30% of days, against 19% on days it opened on time. We cover it in the breakdown ranking.
More rides open late at 8:30 than at 9:30
| Scheduled time | Disneyland Park | Disney Adventure World |
|---|---|---|
| Extra Magic Time at 8:30 | 6.9% (1,030 openings) | 7.4% (1,611) |
| Park opening at 9:30 | 5.2% (2,899) | 3.9% (838) |
| Extra Magic Time at 8:00 (park at 9:00) | 19.0% (100) | 4.4% (160) |
| Park opening at 9:00 | 4.0% (297) | 10.1% (79) |
Openings more than 15 minutes late, from March 29 to November 4, 2026. There were 20 days with Extra Magic Time at 8:00, from October 3 to November 1.
In both parks, Extra Magic Time rides open late more often than the ones that open with the park. At Adventure World, almost twice as often.
For hotel guests, it’s the advantage you lose. Of the rides that are late during Extra Magic Time, 80% at Disneyland Park and 77% at Adventure World are already open by the time the park opens to everyone. Frozen, 87% of the time. In other words: the delay eats exactly the hour you pay the hotel for, and the ride opens just as the first wave of day visitors arrives. Ratatouille and Big Thunder, on top of that, are still closed at that point in four in ten of their late openings.
Watch out for days with Extra Magic Time at 8:00. There are few of them, almost all in October, but at Disneyland Park almost one opening in five was late: Buzz Lightyear 6 of 18, Dumbo 5 of 20, Big Thunder 4 of 20. According to the schedule already published, Extra Magic Time starts at 8:00 on November weekends and every day from November 28 to December 28, except the 25th.
Three rides in the first hour
| First-hour plan | All three on time | If each were late independently | Any more than 30 min late |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frozen + Ratatouille + Tower of Terror | 72.4% | 72.1% | 19.5% |
| Frozen + Raiponce + Spider-Man | 74.7% | 72.8% | 16.7% |
| Spider-Man + Flight Force + Ratatouille | 75.5% | 74.2% | 19.4% |
| Peter Pan + Dumbo + Buzz Lightyear | 78.1% | 76.9% | 9.6% |
| Peter Pan + Big Thunder + Hyperspace | 79.2% | 77.4% | 12.6% |
Calculated over the mornings when all three were due to open: 221 for the two plans with Frozen, 216 with Flight Force, and 178 and 183 for the Disneyland Park ones. “On time” = 15 minutes late or less. “If each were late independently” = the product of the three probabilities.
Adventure World’s classic plan, Frozen, Ratatouille and Tower of Terror, goes to plan on 72% of mornings. One morning in four, something goes wrong, and one in five with a delay of more than half an hour. At Disneyland Park, with Peter Pan, Big Thunder and Hyperspace, one in five.
The fact that the real percentage is so close to the “if each were late independently” one tells us something useful: each ride runs late on its own. It isn’t that the whole park opens late, although sometimes the delays coincide. On October 13, with all three scheduled for 8:30, Spider-Man showed as open at 8:55, Ratatouille at 9:10 and Frozen at 9:25.
At the entrance: wait or change plan?
If the ride is still closed 15 minutes after its time, it opens within the next half hour 67% of the time and within the next hour 84%. 16% take longer, and fewer than 1% don’t open all day. But it varies a lot from one ride to another:
| Ride | Mornings still closed at 15 min | Opens within the next 30 min | Within the next hour | Switching vs waiting | Nearest alternative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frozen Ever After | 38 | 82% | 89% | Wait: 16 min sooner | Raiponce, 5 min walk |
| Peter Pan’s Flight | 12 | 83% | 100% | Wait: 13 min sooner | Dumbo, 1 min |
| Ratatouille | 26 | 58% | 69% | Switch: 16 min sooner | Slinky, 2 min |
| Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure | 25 | 52% | 80% | Switch: 16 min sooner | Flight Force, 1 min |
| Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast | 31 | 68% | 84% | Switch: 19 min sooner | Hyperspace, 1 min |
| Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain | 17 | 53% | 76% | Switch: 28 min sooner | Buzz Lightyear, 1 min |
| Big Thunder Mountain | 18 | 44% | 72% | Switch: 15 min sooner | Dumbo or Buzz, 5 min |
| All | 427 | 67% | 84% | Switch: 11.5 min sooner |
From March 29 to November 4, 2026. “Switching vs waiting”: a simulation using the waits posted at each moment on those real days. At 15 minutes past its time, either you stay at the entrance until it opens, do its queue and then go to the alternative; or you go to the alternative, ride it, come back and join whatever queue there is. Both options end with the same two rides; the column says which one finishes first and by how much, on average. Alternative: the one with the lowest wait plus walk, 8 minutes’ walk or less, open at that moment.
In general, switching wins. Whoever stays at the entrance spends 33 minutes standing there on average. Whoever goes to the next ride and comes back finishes both 11.5 minutes sooner, and comes out ahead on 64% of days. Waiting only wins 16% of the time.
Frozen and Peter Pan are the exception. When they open late, they open soon after, and their queue grows so fast that whoever comes back finds the mid-morning one. At Frozen, whoever waits gets in with the first wave; whoever leaves comes back to an hour-long queue.
Big Thunder, Ratatouille and Spider-Man: better not to wait. Fewer than six times in ten do they open within the next half hour.
When it finally opens, there’s no stampede. In the first 15 minutes, the posted wait is below that of a normal day at the same time. Between 15 and 60 minutes it’s 11-16% higher, and from an hour and a half on, almost like a normal day. At Big Thunder, 12 to 15 minutes more between 15 and 60 minutes. And the neighbouring rides barely notice: while one is closed, the three closest wait less than a minute more than the rest of the park. Only between rides right next to each other, such as Hyperspace and Buzz Lightyear, does it go up, by about 3.6 minutes.
When it happens most: cold, the day before and reopenings
Here we need winter, which the app time doesn’t cover yet. We use the time each ride usually opens that month, in the series since January 2024.
| Temperature at opening time | Outdoor | Indoor |
|---|---|---|
| Below -3 °C | 27.9% (136) | 13.8% (159) |
| -3 to 0 °C | 22.5% (519) | 10.5% (554) |
| 0 to 3 °C | 11.2% (904) | 9.6% (921) |
| 3 to 7 °C | 7.6% (2,110) | 6.4% (2,216) |
| 7 to 12 °C | 5.9% (4,415) | 6.5% (4,523) |
| 12 to 20 °C | 5.8% (4,876) | 7.4% (5,266) |
| 20 to 28 °C | 5.7% (1,642) | 8.0% (1,561) |
| Snow in the previous 8 hours | 25.8% (159) | 11.7% (162) |
Openings more than 15 minutes late compared with each ride’s usual time, number of openings in brackets. From January 1, 2024 to November 4, 2026. Temperature at opening time according to our weather data.
Below zero, outdoor rides open late one morning in four. Indoor ones go up too, but half as much. Above 7 °C, it makes no difference. With wind gusts of 70 km/h or more, outdoor rides open late 27% of the time (only 30 mornings); with 3 mm of rain or more, 18%. That’s why winter comes out worse: from November to February, 10.2% of Disneyland Park openings, against 7.1% from March to October. And January is its worst month every year. What else changes in winter we cover in the early-closing article.
If a ride closed early the day before, keep an eye on the morning. When a ride stopped running at least 30 minutes earlier than usual the previous day, it opens late the next day 17% of the time, against the usual 6%. After a long stoppage in the afternoon (an hour or more), 10%. Measured since February 2025, over 18,300 openings.
The day a ride comes back from a refurbishment, it’s late more often: 27% of 78 reopenings since 2024 (in 2026, with the app time, 2 of 17).
The day of the week matters little: at Disneyland Park, rides are late slightly more often from Tuesday to Friday (8.5-9.5% against 6-7%). And the new rides didn’t start out worse: Frozen had one of its best months in its first (10% of days late) and its worst in its fourth, from June 27 to July 26 (37%).
Over the years, Disneyland Park is getting better and Adventure World worse. From January to October, late openings at Disneyland Park went from 9.4% in 2024 to 7.5% in 2025 and 6.8% in 2026; at Adventure World, from 4.7% to 5.9% and 6.6%, with Frozen, Ratatouille and Spider-Man.
What this means for your first hour
| Ride | On time | Wait in its first half hour | Wait from 11:00 to 13:00 | What you save by going first | Advice |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ratatouille | 88% | 11 min | 62 min | 51 min | First, with a plan B |
| Spider-Man W.E.B. Adventure | 89% | 5 min | 51 min | 46 min | First, with a plan B |
| Frozen Ever After | 83% | 36 min | 82 min | 46 min | First, with a plan B |
| Big Thunder Mountain | 91% | 17 min | 58 min | 41 min | First, with a plan B |
| Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast | 85% | 6 min | 44 min | 38 min | First, with a plan B |
| Peter Pan’s Flight | 94% | 24 min | 61 min | 37 min | First, with a plan B |
| The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror | 99% | 8 min | 43 min | 35 min | First, no surprises |
| RC Racer | 96% | 14 min | 51 min | 37 min | First, no surprises |
| Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain | 92% | 5 min | 36 min | 31 min | First, with a plan B |
| Dumbo the Flying Elephant | 97% | 5 min | 34 min | 29 min | First, no surprises |
“On time”: days it opened 15 minutes late or less. Average waits on the days it opened on time, from March 29 to November 4, 2026. “First, no surprises”: opens on time on 95% of days or more.
- Put first what saves the most, even if it’s sometimes late. Ratatouille, Spider-Man or Frozen save you 46-51 minutes first thing. Being late one morning in eight or six doesn’t change that: what it changes is that you need your plan B decided before you arrive.
- If you want a first hour with no surprises, Tower of Terror, Dumbo or RC Racer almost always open on time and save between 29 and 37 minutes.
- Decide at 15 minutes. If it’s still closed, go to the alternative from the table above and come back. Except with Frozen and Peter Pan: there, stay.
- With a hotel, watch the end of Extra Magic Time. Around 9:10, several non-EMT rides are already running: RC Racer on 61% of days, Toy Soldiers 56%, La Cabane des Robinson 55%, the Tea Cups 51%. Pirates of the Caribbean, on 29% of days, and Indiana Jones, 25%, around 9:16. What else happens in that hour, in our Extra Magic Time analysis.
- On sub-zero or snowy days, start with an indoor ride.
A Note from Verónica:
As we can see, choosing the first rides of the day is risky as long as you don’t have a plan B. With data, this decision is much simpler, and my experience fully matches it. Frozen is perhaps the riskiest, since it’s the furthest from the other rides, but looking at the data we can tell that it usually opens within the next half hour and it’s worth waiting. For all the others, a plan B with nearby rides works great.
In the end, most of the rides that are late most often at opening are rides that stop a lot during the day (Frozen Ever After or Big Thunder Mountain), so you need to go prepared for it.
The decision
One opening in 17 is late, and on six mornings in ten at Disneyland Park at least one ride is late. That’s no reason to change the order of your day: the rides that are late most often are still the ones that save the most first thing. Head first to Frozen, Ratatouille or Spider-Man, but arrive with your plan B decided and one rule: if it’s still closed after 15 minutes, switch. Except Frozen and Peter Pan, which open soon after and fill up fast: there, wait at the entrance. If you don’t want surprises, start with Tower of Terror or Dumbo.
Got your first hour planned and want to know which plan B suits you? Write to us at hello@magicwaitparis.com and we will look into it. To check whether it has opened before crossing the park, MagicWait Paris.
