Which is THE most popular ride at WDW?

[doconeill]

The question is not which ride YOU like most. Everyone is different and has a wide array of opinions. Someone's favorite ride might be Peter Pan's Flight (not knocking) but that doesn't mean it is the most "popular" ride at WDW.

Popular means which ride do most people determine to be a "must do"? Which ride is most sought after by most people...which is the most popular?

But that is EXACTLY my point! How do you find out overall which ride is the most popular? By asking EVERYONE (well, a statistically significant sample) what ride they like most, and add it all up and see what gets the most votes. Asking people what ride they think everyone else considers the most popular does not net you the same result.

 

[erinch]

Stitch's Great Escape is the most popular attraction in WDW if not the whole world.

 

[ugadog68]

Stitch's Great Escape is the most popular attraction in WDW if not the whole world.

 

[Experiment_626]

I was thinking it might be It's a Small World. Either way, very few people would actually list these rides as their "favorite"...

I agree, though I think most people like Spaceship Earth and would consider it a popular ride. While I enjoy my two favorite rides (Haunted Mansion and Big Thunder Mountain, for the record), for example, it is a rare trip indeed to WDW that I don't ride Spaceship Earth at least once. It's a nice ride, it's indoors and is dark and cool, and it is almost always practically a walk-on because of the way it loads.

SSB

 

[lorli]

Based on the newness of the ride and the lines to ride it, I don't think I have a choose but to pick TSM.

 

[Experiment_626]

One thing that would be interesting to know is which ride at Walt Disney World has had the most riders since the resort opened. I'd guess that whatever it is, it would be at the Magic Kingdom, where some of the rides had an 11-year head start on anything at Epcot. What might it be? Haunted Mansion? That could load as fast as Spaceship Earth if it weren't for the stretching room-dictated stop and start of the first part of the ride, and it was an opening-day attraction. Pirates? Not there opening day, slower to load, and in the years prior to the first movie, it seemed to be fairly low in popularity -- you could just about walk in from outside and walk straight on to a boat back then. Jungle Cruise? There from the get-go, but slow to load. Space Mountain? Not there opening day, slow to load, has a height restriction. it's a small world? Maybe ... anyone can ride it, loads faster than anything else in Fantasyland, and is an iconic Disney attraction -- but some people hate the song so much that it does polarize a significant minority.

It would be interesting to know where Buzz Lightyear falls in the mix if you include the years where it was If You Had Wings/If You Could Fly/Dreamflight ... especially since in the early days, it was free to ride without a ticket.

Interesting questions to ponder ...

SSB

 

[DisneyBamaFan]

...It seems like everyone has strategy when they go to DHS that inlcudes rushing to TSM at rope drop, getting TSM fast passes and then entering the qeue... ...Does this make it the "The most popular ride" at WDW? If not, which is?

Maybe not. The only way to ride TSMM without a tremendously long wait in the standby line is to get there early and/or get a fast pass - so people have built it into their strategy. That wouldn't necessarily make it their favorite ride in the park. After all, you can ride RnRc many times per day using the single rider line. So, even if RnRc ot ToT were your favorite rides in DHS, you would probably still go to TSMM first.

 

[ChuckGA]

Another thing is to look at the numbers. My best estimate is TSM can load 1000 guests per hour. DHS in the summer is open ~12 hours for normal operations (9-9). That means only 12,000 people get to ride it and on average, according to the yearly attendance numbers posted on this board, there are at least 25,000 people in the park throughout the day. Not everyone gets to ride it every time they go to the park. Even if they count everyone going through the turnstyle as one person so some of us are counted two or three times as we left and came back, it still implies a sizable percentage do not ride it. You also have to then take into account that some ride it multiple times in a day.

If I were to guess as to what I would consider the most popular ride taking into account load times and how long people are willing to wait to ride it, I would have to say that RnRC or Splash! are probably the two most popular rides or at least they have a very loyal group of repeat riders. Both those lines naturally shoot up to around 70 minute wait times even when the crowds are lower and they can load reasonably fast. Plus both those rides are many years old and still have huge popularity from open to close. Now Splash! does get to walk-on at 2am during EMH but MK is open 3 hours longer than DHS most every day. Space Mountain may have had longer lines but it was a slower loader that either of those so it should have a higher wait time. Another possible is TT but those lines do get much shorter when the crowd levels go down moreso than RnRC or Splash!.

Who knows, maybe in a few years TSM lines will look like Buzz lines where the waits are more like 30 minutes and FP is more optional than necessary.

 

[Doc CW]

Space Mountain when its open.

 

[mickeyluv'r]

I agree with those who say it depends how the answer is calculated.

Overall ride capacity vs. % of ridership (i.e which as the least number of empty seats all day), unique # of riders, location (is monorail included?), riders per park hour, riders over the history of the ride, longest average daily queue line.

Usuing any of these criteria could result in a different answer.

 

[Thumper & Bambi]

20,000 Leagues...it's still the best!

 

[ReelBigFish419]

TSM no doubt

 

[ma2jr]

To many attractions to little time... do as many as you can at least once

 

[Planogirl]

I think that I'm the only person who was only mildly impressed with TSM! I would have thought that Soarin' would have been the most popular, at least until TSM came along.