If Slinky Dog Dash has been on your Hollywood Studios must-do list this week, I’ve got some bad news.
The coaster has now been down for three straight days, and Disney still hasn’t said why.
The trouble actually started before this stretch, with the ride closed for more than four hours on Friday, August 28th, and seven hours on Saturday, August 29th. Then things got noticeably worse. Slinky Dog Dash didn’t operate at all on Monday, August 31st, stayed closed through Tuesday, September 1st, and as of Wednesday, September 2nd, it’s still not running, officially pushing the closure into its third consecutive day. Cast Members reportedly haven’t been given a timeline for reopening either, so even the people working the ride can’t tell guests when to check back.
Photos from the scene show one of the Slinky Dog ride vehicles stopped on the tracks at the second launch, with an open electrical panel visible nearby — which at least hints that whatever’s being worked on is happening in that specific section of the ride. Disney hasn’t confirmed a cause, though, so that’s speculation based on what’s visible rather than anything official.
For anyone holding a Lightning Lane reservation for Slinky Dog Dash during the closure, Disney has been converting those into a Lightning Lane Multi-Pass valid on a different attraction, so you’re not just losing that reservation outright if you had one booked.
The bigger ripple effect here is what’s happening to the rest of Hollywood Studios. This park doesn’t have a huge attraction lineup to begin with, and Slinky Dog Dash is consistently one of its most popular rides, regularly pulling some of the longest wait times in the whole park. With it fully offline, that demand hasn’t disappeared…it’s just shifted onto everything else. Expect longer-than-usual waits at Toy Story Mania!, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway, The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, and Rise of the Resistance while this plays out, since guests who’d normally be heading toward Toy Story Land are having to find somewhere else to go.
A few hours of downtime is genuinely routine at any Disney attraction, and normally not something worth writing home about. Three consecutive full days without a train cycling, though, with no cause given and no reopening estimate, is a meaningfully bigger deal — the kind of stretch that starts to look less like a quick fix and more like something more involved is going on behind the scenes.
If you’ve got a Hollywood Studios day planned in the near future, the safe move is to just assume Slinky Dog Dash won’t be running when you show up, and build your plans around that rather than counting on it. Disney could bring it back at literally any moment, but going in with lowered expectations means you won’t be as disappointed if the coaster’s still down when you walk through the gates.
Did you get caught up in the Slinky Dog Dash closure this week? Let me know how it affected your Hollywood Studios plans!
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