How often does Big Thunder Mountain Railroad break down?

Over the last 90 days we recorded 104 real breakdown episodes for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad — about 8.1 per week, spread across 71 different days. These are observed status changes from live park data, not estimates.

How long is Big Thunder Mountain Railroad usually down when it breaks down?

The median recorded outage for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad lasted 59 minutes (average 82 minutes). The longest outage we observed in the last 90 days lasted 39987 minutes, on 2026-08-14.

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Reliability & Wait Patterns

Magic Kingdom · Frontierland · Based on 22341 wait-time samples

Data updated October 12, 2026 · refreshed weekly from the last 180 days

0.32

Volatility Index (typical within-day swing)

Moderately volatile — expect meaningful swings through the day.

35m

Typical (p50) wait

50m

Busy (p90) wait

70m

Worst-case (p99)

145m

Highest (last 180 days)

Weekend vs Weekday

29m

Weekday average

31m

Weekend average

1.07×

Weekend multiplier

Real breakdown history (last 90 days)

Actual downtime episodes recorded by our live status tracker — every time Big Thunder Mountain Railroad flipped to DOWN and came back. Observed data, not estimates.

104

Recorded breakdowns

59m

Typical (median) outage

666h 27m

Longest outage (2026-08-14)

8.1

Breakdowns per week

Most recent outages

Date	Down for
2026-10-11	10m
2026-10-10	36m
2026-10-09	34m
2026-10-09	3h 16m
2026-10-09	40m
2026-10-07	9h 4m
2026-10-07	1h 40m
2026-10-05	1h 29m

Episodes under 5 minutes are excluded as status flicker; the typical-outage figure also excludes rare multi-hour artifacts (>8h). Breakdowns hit 71 different days in this window.

Downtime by hour

Share of running time the ride was down for an unplanned breakdown, by hour of the day (park-local time). Scheduled closures and refurbishments are not counted.

0
0%

8
17%

9
16%

10
12%

11
7%

12
10%

13
14%

14
15%

15
16%

16
16%

17
13%

18
16%

19
11%

20
7%

21
6%

22
5%

23
6%

Best & worst hours by day of week

Average standby wait (minutes). Green = lowest of day, red = highest.

DOW	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
Mon	–	14	26	32	36	37	33	37	38	38	42	36	34	22	17
Tue	–	15	25	28	29	31	29	26	25	30	30	24	20	19	13
Wed	–	20	28	32	38	36	34	36	36	35	36	38	33	26	26
Thu	–	17	25	32	31	32	35	34	33	33	37	37	32	23	15
Fri	13	26	30	32	37	35	32	32	30	33	33	28	24	22	17
Sat	8	18	29	34	38	38	38	38	39	39	41	43	36	30	23
Sun	11	21	29	32	35	34	35	33	33	34	34	30	25	21	16

Weather effect on waits

How the wait changed in each kind of weather, compared with this ride at the same hour on the same weekday within three weeks. Only differences marked “clear signal” are larger than day-to-day noise.

-0m

Cloudy · 604 ride-hours · within noise

-2m

Light Rain · 58 ride-hours · within noise

-4m

Heavy Rain · 75 ride-hours · clear signal

+0m

Clear · 194 ride-hours · within noise

What causes this ride to spike

Waits for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad rise when these rides are DOWN, compared with the same hour on a normal day:

Tiana's Bayou Adventure

+4m (13%)

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DOW	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
Mon	–	14	26	32	36	37	33	37	38	38	42	36	34	22	17
Tue	–	15	25	28	29	31	29	26	25	30	30	24	20	19	13
Wed	–	20	28	32	38	36	34	36	36	35	36	38	33	26	26
Thu	–	17	25	32	31	32	35	34	33	33	37	37	32	23	15
Fri	13	26	30	32	37	35	32	32	30	33	33	28	24	22	17
Sat	8	18	29	34	38	38	38	38	39	39	41	43	36	30	23
Sun	11	21	29	32	35	34	35	33	33	34	34	30	25	21	16

DOW	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
Mon	–	14	26	32	36	37	33	37	38	38	42	36	34	22	17
Tue	–	15	25	28	29	31	29	26	25	30	30	24	20	19	13
Wed	–	20	28	32	38	36	34	36	36	35	36	38	33	26	26
Thu	–	17	25	32	31	32	35	34	33	33	37	37	32	23	15
Fri	13	26	30	32	37	35	32	32	30	33	33	28	24	22	17
Sat	8	18	29	34	38	38	38	38	39	39	41	43	36	30	23
Sun	11	21	29	32	35	34	35	33	33	34	34	30	25	21	16

DOW	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
Mon	–	14	26	32	36	37	33	37	38	38	42	36	34	22	17
Tue	–	15	25	28	29	31	29	26	25	30	30	24	20	19	13
Wed	–	20	28	32	38	36	34	36	36	35	36	38	33	26	26
Thu	–	17	25	32	31	32	35	34	33	33	37	37	32	23	15
Fri	13	26	30	32	37	35	32	32	30	33	33	28	24	22	17
Sat	8	18	29	34	38	38	38	38	39	39	41	43	36	30	23
Sun	11	21	29	32	35	34	35	33	33	34	34	30	25	21	16