How often does Big Thunder Mountain Railroad break down?

Over the last 90 days we recorded 103 real breakdown episodes for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad — about 8.0 per week, spread across 67 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 62 minutes (average 75 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 24817 wait-time samples

Data updated November 9, 2026 · refreshed weekly from the last 180 days

0.34

Volatility Index (typical within-day swing)

Moderately volatile — expect meaningful swings through the day.

30m

Typical (p50) wait

50m

Busy (p90) wait

65m

Worst-case (p99)

110m

Highest (last 180 days)

Weekend vs Weekday

27m

Weekday average

28m

Weekend average

1.05×

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.

103

Recorded breakdowns

62m

Typical (median) outage

666h 27m

Longest outage (2026-08-14)

8.0

Breakdowns per week

Most recent outages

Date	Down for
2026-11-12	1h 12m
2026-11-08	1h 2m
2026-11-08	54m
2026-11-07	2h 2m
2026-11-06	5m
2026-11-04	1h 3m
2026-11-04	52m
2026-11-02	18m

Episodes under 5 minutes are excluded as status flicker; the typical-outage figure also excludes rare multi-hour artifacts (>8h). Breakdowns hit 67 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
19%

9
15%

10
12%

11
7%

12
8%

13
12%

14
14%

15
14%

16
15%

17
11%

18
14%

19
10%

20
7%

21
7%

22
5%

23
5%

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	27	30	34	36	34	35	39	38	44	34	27	17	19	–
Tue	15	24	27	27	28	27	26	25	28	28	18	13	15	12	7
Wed	18	25	32	38	37	38	38	38	37	40	40	28	18	21	21
Thu	12	21	30	28	28	32	29	28	31	34	32	24	20	14	10
Fri	19	27	32	36	35	32	31	28	31	32	23	18	20	16	10
Sat	15	25	32	37	38	36	38	40	41	42	39	33	27	24	15
Sun	17	25	29	32	35	34	34	31	32	31	24	19	18	13	10

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 · 758 ride-hours · within noise

-2m

Light Rain · 67 ride-hours · within noise

-5m

Heavy Rain · 85 ride-hours · clear signal

+0m

Clear · 416 ride-hours · within noise

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DOW	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
Mon	14	27	30	34	36	34	35	39	38	44	34	27	17	19	–
Tue	15	24	27	27	28	27	26	25	28	28	18	13	15	12	7
Wed	18	25	32	38	37	38	38	38	37	40	40	28	18	21	21
Thu	12	21	30	28	28	32	29	28	31	34	32	24	20	14	10
Fri	19	27	32	36	35	32	31	28	31	32	23	18	20	16	10
Sat	15	25	32	37	38	36	38	40	41	42	39	33	27	24	15
Sun	17	25	29	32	35	34	34	31	32	31	24	19	18	13	10

DOW	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
Mon	14	27	30	34	36	34	35	39	38	44	34	27	17	19	–
Tue	15	24	27	27	28	27	26	25	28	28	18	13	15	12	7
Wed	18	25	32	38	37	38	38	38	37	40	40	28	18	21	21
Thu	12	21	30	28	28	32	29	28	31	34	32	24	20	14	10
Fri	19	27	32	36	35	32	31	28	31	32	23	18	20	16	10
Sat	15	25	32	37	38	36	38	40	41	42	39	33	27	24	15
Sun	17	25	29	32	35	34	34	31	32	31	24	19	18	13	10

DOW	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22
Mon	14	27	30	34	36	34	35	39	38	44	34	27	17	19	–
Tue	15	24	27	27	28	27	26	25	28	28	18	13	15	12	7
Wed	18	25	32	38	37	38	38	38	37	40	40	28	18	21	21
Thu	12	21	30	28	28	32	29	28	31	34	32	24	20	14	10
Fri	19	27	32	36	35	32	31	28	31	32	23	18	20	16	10
Sat	15	25	32	37	38	36	38	40	41	42	39	33	27	24	15
Sun	17	25	29	32	35	34	34	31	32	31	24	19	18	13	10