Toy Story Land Guide: Beating the Slinky Dog Line

Slinky Dog Dash averages a 56-minute wait — the longest average wait of any attraction in Hollywood Studios, ahead of every ride in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge and every other land in the park. If you're building a Toy Story Land plan, that single number should decide your whole morning.

Here's the full breakdown of the land's three attractions and when to ride each one.

Toy Story Land, ranked by average wait

Attraction	Avg wait (min)	Peak hourly avg
Slinky Dog Dash	56	87
Toy Story Mania!	38.5	66
Alien Swirling Saucers	20	40

Slinky Dog Dash (56) sits well ahead of Toy Story Mania! (38.5), with Alien Swirling Saucers (20) a distant third. Two of the land's three rides post peak hourly averages above 65 minutes; only the spinning saucer ride stays under 40.

Slinky Dog Dash: the park's toughest wait

Slinky Dog Dash isn't just the hardest ride in Toy Story Land — it's the hardest ride anywhere in Hollywood Studios, ahead of Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance (45.1 min) and Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets (47.5 min).

• Best hour: 10pm, averaging 39.4 minutes
• Worst hour: 12pm, averaging 64.2 minutes

Notice that even Slinky Dog Dash's best hour (39.4 min) is longer than Toy Story Mania!'s overall average (38.5 min). There's no genuinely short window for this ride — only a less-bad one. Riding at rope drop is the closest thing to a shortcut here, since 12pm is the single worst hour and the line only builds from park open.

Toy Story Mania!: second-hardest, and easy to underestimate

Toy Story Mania! doesn't get the reputation Slinky Dog Dash does, but at a 38.5-minute average it's closer to the coaster than to Alien Swirling Saucers.

• Best hour: 8am, averaging 21.7 minutes
• Worst hour: 7pm, averaging 46.4 minutes

This is the one ride in the land whose worst hour comes in the evening rather than midday — a different pattern from both Slinky Dog Dash and Alien Swirling Saucers. If your group is saving Toy Story Land for a post-dinner stroll, Toy Story Mania! is the ride that punishes that plan the most.

Alien Swirling Saucers: the land's easy ride

Alien Swirling Saucers is the outlier here, and by a wide margin.

• Best hour: 10pm, averaging 5.4 minutes
• Worst hour: 1pm, averaging 32 minutes

Even at its worst, it's still shorter than Slinky Dog Dash's best hour. This is the ride to send younger kids or less thrill-inclined family members on while the rest of the group works through the standby line for Slinky Dog Dash.

Every attraction's best and worst hour

Attraction	Best hour	Best avg (min)	Worst hour	Worst avg (min)
Alien Swirling Saucers	10pm	5.4	1pm	32
Toy Story Mania!	8am	21.7	7pm	46.4
Slinky Dog Dash	10pm	39.4	12pm	64.2

Two out of three rides here post their best hour at 10pm, near closing — the opposite of the standard rope-drop advice. Only Toy Story Mania! rewards an early arrival over a late one.

Zoom out to the rest of Hollywood Studios and that 10pm pattern only holds for a minority of rides:

Attraction	Best hour	Best avg (min)	Worst hour	Worst avg (min)
Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets	8am	26	12pm	57.3
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance	10pm	21.3	12pm	58.5
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror	8am	15.2	12pm	48.9
Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway	8am	15.5	11am	48.4
Meet Disney Stars at Red Carpet Dreams	9am	18.4	8pm	39.8
Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run	10pm	11.5	11am	44.5
Meet Olaf at Celebrity Spotlight	9am	9.5	12pm	22.4
Meet Edna Mode at the Edna Mode Experience	9am	14.3	10am	14.6
Star Tours – The Adventures Continue	8am	5	11am	11.3

Across all twelve of the park's attractions, only Slinky Dog Dash, Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, and Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run post their true best hour at night — the other nine, including both Toy Story Land rides that reward an early arrival and every meet-and-greet in the park, are cheapest at 8am or 9am. Noon shows up as the worst hour for five of the twelve attractions, including three of the park's four hardest rides, which makes it the single hour to avoid if you're not already standing in a line by then.

How Toy Story Land compares to the rest of the park

Attraction	Zone	Avg wait (min)
Slinky Dog Dash	Toy Story Land	56
Rock 'n' Roller Coaster Starring The Muppets	Sunset Boulevard	47.5
Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance	Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge	45.1
Toy Story Mania!	Toy Story Land	38.5
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror	Sunset Boulevard	37.1
Alien Swirling Saucers	Toy Story Land	20

Two of the park's four hardest waits belong to Toy Story Land. If your day includes both this land and Sunset Boulevard, you're covering four of the park's five toughest rides in two adjacent areas — plan your morning accordingly rather than splitting the visit across the whole day.

Park-wide timing

Hour	Avg wait across all Hollywood Studios attractions (min)
8am	20.5
9am	26.1
10am	35.2
11am	38.4
12pm	40
1pm	37.1
2pm	36.5
3pm	33.5
4pm	31.7
5pm	33.6
6pm	35.4
7pm	39.1
8pm	36.5
9pm	25.6
10pm	22.5

The park-wide worst hour, 12pm (40 min), matches Slinky Dog Dash's own worst hour exactly. Day of week also matters: Wednesday is the park's quietest day (28.5 min average) and Friday is the busiest (38.6 min).

Which day to visit

Toy Story Land's individual rides don't carry their own day-of-week numbers, but the park-wide pattern still applies to whichever day you pick:

Day	Avg wait across Hollywood Studios (min)
Sunday	31.1
Monday	31.2
Tuesday	36.9
Wednesday	28.5
Thursday	31.1
Friday	38.6
Saturday	32.9

Friday runs roughly 35% higher than Wednesday across the whole park. If Slinky Dog Dash is the ride you care about most and your travel dates are flexible, a Wednesday visit gives the entire park — Toy Story Land included — its calmest baseline. Friday and Tuesday are the two days to avoid if you have a choice; both sit well above every other day on the list.

Who this plan is for

This approach works best if you can be at rope drop for Slinky Dog Dash and Toy Story Mania!, since both post their least-bad numbers at or near 8am and only get worse from there until evening. It also assumes your group is fine splitting up occasionally — sending less thrill-inclined riders to Alien Swirling Saucers while others wait out Slinky Dog Dash keeps everyone moving instead of everyone standing in the same 60-plus-minute line together.

It's a weaker fit if your only Toy Story Land window falls in the middle of the day with no rope-drop or evening flexibility. Every ride in the land is at or near its worst somewhere between 11am and 1pm, and there's no combination of the three rides that avoids that stretch entirely if that's the only time you have.

A touring order for Toy Story Land

1. At rope drop: Go straight to Slinky Dog Dash. Every hour of the day is bad for this ride, but the line only gets longer as the morning goes on.
2. Right after: Ride Toy Story Mania! before 9am if possible — its best hour is 8am, and it climbs steadily from there.
3. Any time: Alien Swirling Saucers is flexible. Its worst hour (32 min at 1pm) is still shorter than the other two rides' best hours, so slot it in whenever the group needs a break.
4. Late evening: If you didn't get a second ride on Slinky Dog Dash, 10pm is genuinely its best hour in the data — 39.4 minutes, versus 64.2 at noon.

Frequently asked questions

What's the longest wait in Toy Story Land? Slinky Dog Dash, averaging 56 minutes — also the longest average wait anywhere in Hollywood Studios.

Is Toy Story Mania! worth riding early? Yes. Its best hour is 8am (21.7 min); by 7pm it's up to 46.4 minutes, more than double.

What's the easiest ride in the land? Alien Swirling Saucers, averaging 20 minutes, with a best hour of just 5.4 minutes at 10pm.

Is there ever a genuinely short wait for Slinky Dog Dash? No hour in our data drops it below 39.4 minutes. The best you can do is avoid its 64.2-minute worst hour at noon.

Which Toy Story Land ride swings the most between its best and worst hour? Alien Swirling Saucers swings the widest on a percentage basis — nearly 6x, from 5.4 minutes at its best to 32 at its worst — even though Slinky Dog Dash and Toy Story Mania! post higher raw numbers throughout the day.

Is Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run part of Toy Story Land? No — it's next door in Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, averaging 27.6 minutes with a best hour of 11.5 minutes at 10pm. It's a common pairing for guests touring both lands in the same visit.

The bottom line

Slinky Dog Dash sets the terms for this entire land: no hour in our data drops it below 39 minutes, so the real decision isn't whether to wait, it's when. Ride it and Toy Story Mania! before 9am, treat Alien Swirling Saucers as your flexible break-time ride, and if the morning window slips away, 10pm is a legitimate second chance rather than a consolation prize.

Related reading

For the ride that comes closest to matching Slinky Dog Dash, see Slinky Dog Dash wait times for a deeper look, and our Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge guide for the park's other major land. The full Hollywood Studios touring plan covers every attraction in the park, and Hollywood Studios with kids has guidance for families touring with younger children who may prefer Alien Swirling Saucers over the coaster.

Check live conditions at parkautopilot.com/wait-times/hollywood-studios.

---

Ready to put this into practice? Park Autopilot creates your touring plan from real-time wait times. Try it free →