Guests walking into Magic Kingdom this morning found themselves in a pretty strange situation: every single wait time sign across the park was dark. The rides themselves are still up and running, but the outage has made it nearly impossible to check wait times without pulling out a phone.
The culprit isn’t a glitch isolated to Disney. A massive global tech outage tied to Amazon Web Services has thrown off wait time displays throughout the park, and Disney’s systems are clearly feeling the effects.
A Very Unusual Morning at Magic Kingdom
Normally, guests glance at the posted wait time signs and decide whether to hop in line. Today, the screens are blank. While the My Disney Experience app is still showing wait times for most attractions, the physical signage being out is throwing off the usual flow of crowds.
Some guests are taking an old-school approach, asking Cast Members for estimated wait times. Others are making judgment calls based on how long the lines look. And as you might expect, that’s creating some messy crowd patterns, especially around popular attractions like Space Mountain and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.
The Bigger Problem: A Global Outage
This bizarre situation is part of a much larger issue. AWS, the cloud system behind countless apps and services around the world, experienced a massive outage earlier in the day. That outage affected airlines, banking systems, and popular platforms like Snapchat and Fortnite—and apparently, Disney’s digital infrastructure isn’t immune either.
Although AWS has started recovering, it’s clear that the ripple effect has already hit Disney’s parks hard. The blank wait time screens are one of the most visible signs of that impact.
Guests Are Taking Notice
Inside the park, it’s a surreal sight. Even during hurricanes or technical downtimes, it’s rare to see every single sign dark at once. Some guests on social media are calling it “a theme park blackout” and joking that it feels like Disney suddenly jumped back in time.
Despite the technical chaos, rides are still operational, and Cast Members are doing their best to guide guests and provide information manually.
No Clear Timeline for Fix
AWS says it’s stabilizing services, but there’s no word yet from Disney on when the signage will come back online. Until then, guests should keep refreshing the app and checking with Cast Members throughout the day.
This isn’t a full-blown park shutdown, but it’s definitely a rare and memorable morning at Magic Kingdom.
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