What skewed the last two days to allow BG to be available for over 1/2 hour after park opening? Should I get my hopes up for my trip next week?
I've been thinking about this all day because people keep asking. First thing to remember, Disney doesn't release any actual numbers, so anything on crowd levels at park opening, total guests, boarding group size is all speculation.
A couple years ago, Hollywood Studios daily attendance average was 30k guests per day. Obviously some days were higher, some lower, but let's use that as a baseline for daily attendance. Out of that total, how many actually show up at park opening vs later in the day. With boarding groups, im guessing closer 2/3s are in the park before opening, so 20k.
It's previously been speculated that each BG holds 100-150 spots. It's also speculated that as the ride underperfoms, BGs available the next day go down, while availability goes up if it overperforms. They also offer more or less when total open hours change.
So let's put numbers in perspective. If 20k guests are in the park at 8am and each BG allows for 150 guests, you're at 133 groups filled at 8am. Based on recent activity, these numbers actually make sense and here's why. When the ride was underperforming, we saw groups sell out in a minutes 8 days in a row. When you look at groups called the day before, there was less than 120 groups called. The day after 132 groups were called, BGs lasted 5 minutes. They had 141 groups called that day, and BGs lasted 40 minutes the following day (yesterday). Today, BGs lasted 34 minutes.
While my numbers may not be exact to what Disney actually records, the point is, on any given day, as BGs currently are, the park is able to support filling roughly 120-130 BGs at open. Therefore, if BG availability drops below that number, you're going to see groups filled in mere minutes. As the ride does better and they add more groups, those groups will allow availability to remain indefinitely for the next hour as people trickle in.
If you really want to know if you’ll get a BG on your day, just look at the performance the day before to understand the availability of groups that day. If more than 130 groups are called, there’s a high likelihood everyone in the park at open will get a BG and still have some for the late arrivals. If the groups called is less than 110, and there’s been a downward trend in the ride, it’s highly likely some in the park by 8 will not get a BG. Between 110 and 130, I would guess nearly everyone in the park at 8 gets a BG, but very few if any late arrivals will get one. Word of advice, be in the park by 8!
