State of the Park: Islands of Adventure's Dark Season.
State of the Park is a recurring Standby Board series that grades an Orlando park on what our own readings say — not what the marketing does. First up: Islands of Adventure, as of Monday, September 14, 2026.
Islands of Adventure has three of the best roller coasters in Orlando. It also has a closed-attraction list that keeps growing, a show schedule that is functionally empty, and standby waits that are running well under its own typical. IOA is one of our favorite parks, and that is exactly why the numbers we've collected over the past two weeks are hard to look at.
The closed list is the story
Between planned refurbishments and unplanned downtime, it feels like half the park is behind walls on any given day. Two headliners haven't posted a standby wait once in the 14 days Standby Board has been collecting IOA data:
- Jurassic Park River Adventure — closed for refurbishment. Zero readings since September 1.
- Skull Island: Reign of Kong — an unplanned closure that has now stretched past a week. Zero readings since September 1.
Add the Lost Continent, which has been walled off long enough that newer guests don't know it was ever a land, plus construction fencing across the park, and the walk from Port of Entry to Hogsmeade has more plywood than theming in places.
Reliability: the rides that are open aren't always open
Every attraction page on Standby Board now shows a reliability score — the share of standard park hours the ride was actually posting a wait, with scheduled refurbishment excluded so it only counts the surprises. Here is IOA's board for the 12 operating days ending September 13:
| Attraction | Reliability | Typical wait |
|---|---|---|
| Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls | 57.8% | 23 min |
| Popeye & Bluto's Bilge-Rat Barges | 68.9% | 9 min |
| Hogwarts Express – Hogsmeade Station | 71.5% | 14 min |
| Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure | 81.0% | 62 min |
| Flight of the Hippogriff | 84.1% | 15 min |
| Pteranodon Flyers | 84.3% | 19 min |
| Jurassic World VelociCoaster | 85.5% | 33 min |
| The Incredible Hulk Coaster | 90.9% | 16 min |
| Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey | 96.6% | 17 min |
| The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man | 97.1% | 22 min |
Dudley Do-Right's was down for most of Sunday and has now missed more than 40% of its scheduled hours this month. Both Toon Lagoon water rides are under 70%. And the three coasters that carry this park — Hagrid's, VelociCoaster, and Hulk — are running 81%, 86%, and 91%. Good, not great, for the rides the whole day is planned around.
The bright spots are real: Spider-Man, a 1999 opening-day ride, is the most reliable attraction in the park at 97.1%. Forbidden Journey and Cat in the Hat are both above 96%. The old dark rides are holding up better than the water rides.
Waits say the crowds noticed
Standby Board's historical mean for IOA — across 26,000 readings — is a 26-minute average wait. Here is what the park actually posted each day last week:
- Tuesday, Sept 8 — 20 min average, 90 min peak
- Wednesday, Sept 9 — 13 min average, 80 min peak
- Thursday, Sept 10 — 13 min average, 95 min peak
- Friday, Sept 11 — 14 min average, 65 min peak
- Saturday, Sept 12 — 20 min average, 75 min peak
- Sunday, Sept 13 — 15 min average, 65 min peak
Six straight days under the park's own typical. A September Sunday with a 15-minute average and a 65-minute peak — at a park with Hagrid's in it — is not a quiet day. It is a park people are skipping. Labor Day weekend (27 and 29-minute averages, peaks up to 125 minutes on Monday) shows the demand is still there when there's a reason to come.
The best-time-to-visit data tells the same story from another angle: IOA's busiest hour of the day (11 AM) averages 31 minutes. That is lower than Universal Studios Florida's busiest hour, and USF is closing at 5 PM most nights for Halloween Horror Nights.
Early closes and the HHN staffing vacuum
IOA closed at 9 PM every night through September 7. Since September 8 it has closed at 8 PM every night, with 7 PM closes on the 22nd and 29th and a 6 PM close on the 23rd. Meanwhile USF is closing at 5 PM on 20 of September's remaining days to turn over for HHN.
Our read: HHN is pulling team members from every corner of the resort, and IOA is absorbing it as shorter days and thinner ride staffing. Losing an hour of operation on a park whose signature coaster (VelociCoaster) posts its longest waits at 8 PM is a real cost to guests — and the early closes compound the attendance problem rather than easing it.
Shows: there aren't any
The shows and character meets section of the IOA board lists exactly one entry — the Ollivanders wand experience — and on Sunday it showed no showtimes at all. For a park that once had Poseidon's Fury, the Eighth Voyage of Sindbad, and a full Mystic Fountain rotation, the live-entertainment lineup is effectively zero. On a day when Kong and River Adventure are walled off, there is nothing to absorb the crowd that isn't a coaster queue.
What would fix it
We know work is in progress, and the Lost Continent redevelopment will eventually give this park something new to sell. But the near-term fixes are operational, not capital:
- Get Dudley Do-Right's and the Bilge-Rat Barges above 85% reliability — they are the only rides in the park that aren't a coaster or a dark ride, and they are the least dependable.
- Reopen Kong or say why it's closed. A week of silence on a 2016 headliner is worse than a posted refurbishment date.
- Protect IOA's hours through HHN season. An 8 PM close on a 9 AM open is fine; drifting to 6 and 7 PM is not.
- Put something — anything — on the show schedule so the park has a rhythm beyond ride queues.
Dark seasons happen to every park. The question is whether IOA's is a few months of walls before a strong 2027, or a pattern. We'll keep grading it here.
Follow it live
Every number in this post comes from Standby Board's own readings, refreshed continuously. Check today's IOA board for live waits and closures, the September 13 history for the day charted above, or the all-parks board to see where IOA ranks right now. Any attraction page will send you a text or email the moment a closed ride reopens.