Hollywood Studios is the park with the most headliners and highest average wait times at Walt Disney World, making line-skipping especially valuable. With the launch of the new Lightning Lane Multi Pass system, I made pre-arrival ride reservations and headed to DHS to test the paid FastPass service on a moderately-crowded day.
This was actually one of a few field tests I’ve now done of Lightning Lane Multi-Pass (LLMP) at Walt Disney World. “Unfortunately,” crowds were even lower than expected on a couple of those days, rendering them useless from the perspective of a post like this. I know, I know…low wait times is a good problem to have! But not when trying to test strategy and produce representative results for LLMP that’ll be remotely useful for anyone visiting from October through December.
I shouldn’t be surprised, but it turns out that Walt Disney World’s pre-arrival pricing is not perfectly predictive of crowds. This isn’t the first time their forecasts have missed the mark. For those wondering what I mean by this, basically what I’ve done so far is target the most expensive days and do testing on those. In any case, I did have success at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and managed to hit the park on the busiest day of this month (so far).
Honestly, even that isn’t saying much. The day of my visit had an average wait time of 34 minutes and a crowd level of 4/10. I don’t want to oversell it–this is not even remotely busy by Disney’s Hollywood Studios standards. My personal threshold for moderate crowds at DHS is around 40 minutes, and 50 minutes for high crowds. However, the scale has shifted as crowds have slowed down across the board.
With that said, don’t make the mistake of assuming Lightning Lane Multi Pass was not necessary on this day because everything was a walk-on or had low actual wait times. To the contrary, there were rides with wait times exceeding an hour and some fleeting instances of triple-digit waits.
On this 4/10 crowd level day at DHS, here’s a rundown of average wait times (all wait times data is courtesy of thrill-data):
- Slinky Dog Dash: 78 minutes
- Star Wars Rise of the Resistance: 60 minutes
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster: 59 minutes
- Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway: 49 minutes
- Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run: 46 minutes
- Tower of Terror: 43 minutes
- Toy Story Mania: 42 minutes
At various points, every single one of these rides had wait times that were over an hour long. However, all of them also had much more manageable wait times over the course of the day, too. It all depends upon when you hit each attraction.
Nevertheless, it seems like Walt Disney World fans have unrealistic expectations for what “low crowds” means at DHS in the current era. This wasn’t exactly a dead day–it just wasn’t nearly as bad as DHS can get during the heart of the holiday season.
In any case, this photo report walks you through my step-by-step day using Lightning Lane Multi-Pass, with advance & same day selections, what I accomplished using LLMP during low to moderate crowd levels (by 2024 standards), and thoughts at the end about whether Lightning Lane Multi-Pass is worth the money at DHS.
Before we get going, it’s important to note that this is simply my day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios using Lightning Lane Multi-Pass. It’s not a recommended itinerary, touring plan, or universally-applicable day that I would suggest replicating. Simply what I did over the course of testing LLMP during a day at DHS. For actual advice, see the following:
If you’re trying to accomplish just as much in a day without Lightning Lanes, savvy strategy is required at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s the toughest park to tour at Walt Disney World. There’s no magical formula for sleeping in, rolling up to the park a couple hours after rope drop, not buying Lightning Lane Multi-Pass, enjoying the park in a leisurely way, and accomplishing everything.
Anyway, let’s move along to my day using Lightning Lane Multi Pass at Disney’s Hollywood Studios…
I had an on-site split stay, which enabled me to purchase Lightning Lane Multi Pass seven days prior to the start of my entire trip. With split stays, there’s always the possibility of problems, but these were linked in My Disney Experience and I had no issues whatsoever. Nevertheless, I still waited until the 7-day mark as other pieces of my planning fell into place.
As a result, I didn’t have every return time option available to me. Ideally, I would’ve wanted to knock out Slinky Dog Dash first and had slight overlap on all of my return times. Slinky Dog Dash first is both for the sake of convenience (I like doing Early Entry in Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Toy Story Land) and efficiency (Slinky Dog Dash gets a long line even early on).
Lightning Lane Multi Pass is a bit of a balancing act. In order to “run the table” on headliner Lightning Lanes at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, it’s usually imperative to stack your bookings in the 9 am, 10 am, and 11 am hour. This is due to the ‘rolling 3 rule,’ which allows you to always have 3 Lightning Lanes booked–and in order to book more, you first need to redeem something. You’re thus incentivized to aim for earlier return times so you can book subsequent selections.
The problem with this approach is that first thing in the morning is often when standby lines are the shortest–so you want to return early, but not too early when you could be knocking out rides with short lines via standby. This is why a lot of fans loved Genie+ and its stacking rules.
Fast-forward to the day of my visit to Disney’s Hollywood Studios. After tapping into my first Lightning Lane (Tower of Terror), I immediately booked my next Lightning Lane. The best option at this point was Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run.
You’ll note in the screenshot above that my return time for Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run is 10:45 am to 11:45 am. I’m not this lucky. My initial return time was early afternoon, but I played the refresh game until I was satisfied with a better return time.
This would also work well with my itinerary if I were trying to minimize backtracking. Disney’s Hollywood Studios has a really small footprint as compared the other parks, so I don’t mind some backtracking, but it’s nevertheless nice to knock out two nearby attractions in quick succession.
Before anyone bemoans having your face in a screen with LLMP, my rough “rule” for playing the refresh game is limiting it to my time in the Lightning Lane return line after tapping in. This means I have anywhere from 2 minutes to 10 minutes–it all depends on whether there are two tap points, where merge occurs, etc. Tower of Terror allows for more time since there’s queue after the pre-show. In any case, it took maybe 90 seconds of refreshing before I scored that Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run return.
After tapping into Toy Story Mania and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, I booked Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster and Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway.
These return times actually would’ve worked well with my schedule. In theory, I could’ve done stage shows or non-headliners at DHS to kill time during the middle of the day. In actuality, I was still doing Food & Wine Festival taste-testing, so I could Park Hop over to EPCOT to do that for lunch before returning for afternoon and evening at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
One thing worth noting is that Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run didn’t have a long line at all. The posted wait time was 30 minutes, but I’m guessing the actual was closer to 10-15 minutes. On slower days, I’ve noticed that ride reservation refills at Walt Disney World track with posted wait times.
Meaning that if wait times drop or spike, Lightning Lane inventory adjusts accordingly, also going up or down, and pushing return times later or moving them forward. At least, this is my theory–corroborated by dozens of days of use (and many more of observation). This is nothing new–it’s how Fastpass+ and Genie+ also worked.
That’s really one of the big differences between slower and busier day at DHS. While both are going to have hour-plus wait times for the headliners, the crowded day is going to have even worse wait times. No surprise there.
More important from the Lightning Lane perspective is that most attractions won’t run out of ride reservations until very late on a slow day. There’s a ‘tipping point’ of sorts on less-busy days where purchasers of LLMP falls below the overall allocated capacity for Lightning Lanes, and makes it really easy for most attractions so long as you book early and often via the rolling 3 rule. This was one of those days.
Tangentially related, this is part of the genius (for Disney) in moving from Genie+ to the pre-arrival Lightning Lane Multi Pass. Under the old same-day system, guests visiting during slower seasons (like right now!) might use Genie+ one day, realize it was unnecessary after seeing/experiencing some standby lines, and not buy it during subsequent days of their trip.
Under Lightning Lane Multi-Pass, many guests will purchase for every single day of their vacation in advance, before even experiencing the ‘feels like’ crowds or wait times. They’ll buy as a hedge or due to fear, uncertainty and doubt…even though they wouldn’t have purchased Genie+ in the same circumstances. (Just something to consider if you’re visiting on borderline dates and are on the fence about Lightning Lane Multi Pass!)
After doing Slinky Dog Dash, I was effectively done with Lightning Lane Multi Pass at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. I had already gotten every ride reservation I wanted, and re-rides aren’t possible. But I’m a completionist, so I booked Alien Swirling Saucers for some/no reason. I had no intentions of riding it, just got it to prove I could, I guess.
That’s probably the same reason I modified my Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Return time, moving it forward 15 whole minutes, from 3:30 pm to 3:15 pm. Total gamechanger. This does illustrate an important point: Lightning Lane Multi Pass tries to avoid overlapping plans (see the warning) and the auto results it gives you when pre-booking will typically not have any overlap.
However, you can override this (to the extent possible) by modifying in advance. The wisdom of doing this is debatable. Again, you want to be able to do some rides via standby first thing in the morning, so returning ASAP isn’t always the best strategy. It’s a balance.
There’s zero downside to overlapping in the afternoon when standby lines are at their longest. By default, the system will still try to prevent this from happening. I usually modify and have significant overlap unless there’s a different reason not to (rides on opposite sides of the park, hunger, sunset photography, etc).
As a reminder, it’s possible to enter the Lightning Lane up to 5 minutes early or 15 minutes late. There is no need to ask for a Cast Member’s permission to do this–it doesn’t require a computer override. If anything, asking a CM might result in confusion, as it’s possible they might not know about this Lightning Lane “rule.” (No knock at them–there’s way too much to keep track of with Genie!)
Again, my original plan was to head to EPCOT for lunch and return to DHS. However, I saw earlier availability for Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster pop up, so I modified my time and grabbed that. I’m making a point of watching MuppetVision 3D as often as possible (for obvious reasons), so I did that while waiting for my return time.
While waiting for MuppetVision, I opted to push back my Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway return time so I didn’t have to get back to DHS from EPCOT quite as early. (Again, I had no intentions of riding Alien Swirling Saucers. That’s just a trophy Lightning Lane.) Even if I planned on booking Lightning Lane Multi Passes at EPCOT (and I did!), there was little downside to doing this since I’d have open slots from both RnRc and ASS. There’s no way I was scoring three worthwhile LLMPs at EPCOT, so not having that empty spot didn’t hurt me at all.
This is as good of time as any to share my refresh strategy, which is going to the modify screen and then toggling the “close” dropdown to refresh times. Compare the left and right, the latter of which shows pop-up availability for 4:25 pm that wasn’t there 2 minutes earlier. In my experience, toggling this “close” dropdown is the most efficient way to play the refresh game. YMMV.
Fast-forward to afternoon and evening, and wait times all around Disney’s Hollywood Studios were significantly lower than when I left for EPCOT. My Lightning Lane for Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway was useful, but barely. I’m betting it saved me 10 minutes, tops.
All waits were minimal by 6 pm or so. Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, which I had also done during Early Entry, had a posted wait time of 25 minutes and was actually a walk-on. On slower evenings when downtime isn’t bad, a posted wait time under an hour often means near walk-on status. (At the end of the night, it was only 10 minutes–that’s a rare posted wait time to see for RotR!)
It was a similar story with Slinky Dog Dash. This had a posted wait time, but one look at the queues led me to believe the wait time was about half of that. The standby line here later in the evening benefits from LLMP users leaving, doing dinner, or opting for Fantasmic instead of their Lightning Lane reservations.
Ultimately, I ended up using Lightning Lane Multi Pass to secure all four top tier Lightning Lane selections and the only two worthwhile second tier attractions during this 4/10 crowd day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. (I also booked three at EPCOT: Soarin, Living with the Land, and Spaceship Earth.) I probably could’ve scored 10+ Lightning Lanes had I also done the pointless ones for stage shows.
Going by posted wait times during my return windows, I saved over 3 hours waiting in line at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (plus another hour or so at EPCOT). This was actually down considerably from my last time testing Genie+ on a similar day at DHS, and that’s almost entirely because I pre-booked several ride reservations earlier in the day when I otherwise would’ve preferred to be doing attractions via standby. By contrast, I often found myself stacking by default at DHS and using the 120 minute rule under the old system.
Three hours saved is going to be enough to make Lightning Lane Multi Pass worth the money to the average tourist. Of course, that amount of time savings assumes posted wait times are accurate (they are not) and that I would’ve waited in standby lines at identical times as my LLMP returns (I would not).
I could’ve gotten a lot done via standby during Early Entry and at rope drop, and also been aggressive with standby lines at the end of the evening. With that said, using Lightning Lane Multi Pass was the more laid back option for this day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. Lightning Lane Multi-Pass allowed me not to worry over wait times or stress about accomplishing everything in an efficient order. I didn’t do much backtracking or refreshing, and knocking out so many attractions earlier in the day allowed me to have a leisurely evening.
In short, LLMP this was the easiest approach to this particular day at DHS. That won’t always be the case. On busier days, my preference is Early Entry and staying late and doing standby once the crowds start to subside. There are multiple “solutions” to beating crowds and no one-size-fits-all answer. Sometimes, it actually will take more than one–meaning Early Entry plus Lightning Lane Multi Pass.
Thankfully, Lightning Lane Multi-Pass doesn’t necessarily need to involve excessive screen time, frantic refreshing, or criss-crossing the park multiple times. While there are downsides versus Genie+ (especially with the way I like to do things at DHS), the ability to arrive with 3 ride reservations in hand offers tremendous peace of mind (and will also offer strategic advantage–especially when it’s busier). Hopefully this day illustrates that LLMP can be a good tool to have in your ‘park touring kit’ for use when necessary or appropriate.
For more info and answers to common questions, see our Guide to Lightning Lane Multi Pass Walt Disney World. We’ve already updated that several times, and it’s a great jumping off point if you’re confused, overwhelmed…or fully understand the system, but want some next-level strategy to better leverage LLMP.
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Your Thoughts
Thoughts on my day in Disney’s Hollywood Studios using Lightning Lane Multi Pass? Would this be enough time savings for you to be satisfied with LLMP? Are you planning on using Lightning Lanes or sticking to free standby lines at DHS? Prefer Early Entry, LLMP, or end of day at DHS? Do you agree or disagree with my assessment? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
