Rope Drop News API
Free live wait times and ride status for Walt Disney World, Disneyland and Epic Universe, plus 90-day reliability and crowd CSVs. No key, CC BY 4.0. Tested example included.
Endpoint tested and returned HTTP 200 on 2026-08-21
What is the Rope Drop News API?
Rope Drop News publishes a free, key-free open data API covering live ride wait times and status for Walt Disney World, Disneyland Resort and Universal Epic Universe, along with Lightning Lane prices and downloadable CSV datasets for 90-day ride reliability and crowd levels. Everything is released under CC BY 4.0.
Theme park wait time data is normally either scraped in violation of somebody's terms or sold by an app company. This is a first-party feed from a Disney and Universal news site, released deliberately as open data under a Creative Commons licence, which makes it one of the very few sources you can build on without a licensing conversation. Coverage is the four Walt Disney World parks, both Disneyland Resort parks and Universal Epic Universe, addressed by slug.
The design decision worth understanding before you write any code is that `wait` is null whenever a ride is not currently taking guests — overnight, during a refurbishment, or mid-breakdown — and `status` carries the reason. The example below was captured before the park opened, which is exactly the case most implementations get wrong: they render `null` as a zero-minute wait and tell users that Space Mountain is a walk-on at four in the morning. Check `isOpen` on the park and `status` on the ride before you display a number. There is also a companion `/parks/down-now` endpoint that lists only rides currently broken across all parks, and a `reliability.csv` covering the last 90 days, which is the more interesting dataset of the two if you like analysis.
Quick facts
- Base URL
https://ropedropnews.com- Authentication
- No key and no account. Data is licensed CC BY 4.0, so attribute Rope Drop News if you republish it.
- Rate limit
- No hard limit, but the publisher asks you to cache: live JSON refreshes about once a minute, CSV about hourly.
- Pricing
- Free, CC BY 4.0.
- CORS
- Enabled — callable directly from browser JavaScript
- Official docs
- Read the docs
How to use the Rope Drop News API
Every request below was executed against the live API on 2026-08-21, and the response shown is the real body it returned — not an illustration.
1. Live ride status for Magic Kingdom, captured before opening
GET https://ropedropnews.com/parks/magic-kingdom/live
curl 'https://ropedropnews.com/parks/magic-kingdom/live'const res = await fetch("https://ropedropnews.com/parks/magic-kingdom/live");
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${res.status}`);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);import requests
res = requests.get("https://ropedropnews.com/parks/magic-kingdom/live", timeout=20)
res.raise_for_status()
print(res.json()){
"slug": "magic-kingdom",
"name": "Magic Kingdom",
"isOpen": false,
"opensNext": "2026-08-21T08:00:00-04:00",
"closesToday": null,
"rides": [
{
"name": "\"it's a small world\"",
"wait": null,
"status": "CLOSED",
"lightningLane": null,
"lat": 28.4204816402,
"lon": -81.5820392026,
"lightningLaneCents": null
},
{
"name": "A Pirate's Adventure ~ Treasures of the Seven Seas",
"wait": null,
"status": "CLOSED",
"lightningLane": null,
"lat": 28.4183725,
"lon": -81.584669,
"lightningLaneCents": null
},
{
"name": "Astro Orbiter",
"wait": null,
"status": "CLOSED",
"lightningLane": null,
"lat": 28.4184926179,
"lon": -81.5789887902,
"lightningLaneCents": null
},
{
"name": "Big Thunder Mountain Railroad",
"wait": null,
"status": "CLOSED",
"lightningLane": null,
"lat": 28.4199638504,
"lon": -81.5846422864,
"lightningLaneCents": null
},
{
"name": "Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin",
"wait": null,
"status": "CLOSED",
"lightningLane": null,
"lat": 28.4182868839,
"lon": -81.5794086456,
"lightningLaneCents": null
},
{
"name": "Casey Jr. Splash 'N' Soak Station",
"wait": null,
"status": "CLOSED",
"lightningLane": null,
"lat": 28.4209221723,
"lon": -81.5786757124,
"lightningLaneCents": null
},
{
"name": "Cinderella Castle",
"wait": null,
"status": "CLOSED",
"lParameters
| Parameter | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
slug | path segment | Required | Park identifier: `magic-kingdom`, `epcot`, `hollywood-studios`, `animal-kingdom`, `disneyland`, `california-adventure` or `epic-universe`. magic-kingdom |
Response fields
slug / namestring- Park identifier and display name.
isOpenboolean- Whether the park is currently operating. Check this before rendering any wait time.
opensNextstring (ISO 8601)- When the park next opens, with the park's local offset. Null while it is open.
rides[].namestring- Ride name as the park publishes it, quotation marks and all.
rides[].waitinteger or null- Posted wait in minutes. Null means the ride is not taking guests — it is not zero.
rides[].statusstring- `OPERATING`, `CLOSED`, `DOWN` or `REFURBISHMENT`. This is the field that explains a null wait.
rides[].lightningLaneCentsinteger or null- Current single-ride Lightning Lane price in cents, where one is sold.
rides[].lat / lonfloat- Ride coordinates, precise enough to place pins on a park map.
What you can build with the Rope Drop News API
- Show live wait times on a trip-planning dashboard or widget
- Alert a group chat when a headliner drops below a threshold
- Analyse 90-day ride reliability from the CSV before booking a trip
- Plot rides on a park map using the returned coordinates
- Track Lightning Lane pricing over time and find when it is cheapest
Common errors and how to fix them
404
Unknown park slug.
Fix: Use one of the seven published slugs; they are lowercase and hyphenated. Water parks live under `/waterparks/live` instead.
Every wait is null
The park is closed, not the feed broken.
Fix: Read `isOpen` and `opensNext`. Overnight and pre-opening responses legitimately have no wait times at all.
Stale data
You are reading a cached copy, or polling faster than the source refreshes.
Fix: The live feed updates roughly once a minute. Polling faster gains you nothing and the publisher explicitly asks you not to.
Rope Drop News API — frequently asked questions
Is there a free Disney wait times API?
Yes. Rope Drop News publishes live wait times for the four Walt Disney World parks, both Disneyland Resort parks and Universal Epic Universe, with no key and no account, under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
Why is the wait time null?
Because the ride is not taking guests — the park is closed, the attraction is down, or it is in refurbishment. The `status` field tells you which. Rendering null as zero is the single most common mistake with this feed.
Can I use this data commercially?
The licence is CC BY 4.0, which permits commercial use provided you attribute Rope Drop News. Read the licence yourself before shipping; attribution is a requirement, not a courtesy.
What else is available besides wait times?
Rides currently down across all parks, water park status, live Lightning Lane prices, and CSV datasets for 90-day ride reliability, quietest hours, crowd calendars and Walt Disney World construction permit filings.
Tools that pair with this API
CSV to JSON Converter
Convert CSV to a JSON array of objects online. Header-row detection, comma/semicolon/tab delimiters and pretty-printed output — 100% in your browser.
CSV Viewer & Table
View CSV as a clean HTML table online. Live search filter, row and column counts, delimiter and header options — all processed locally in your browser.
JSON Formatter
Format, beautify and minify JSON online with 2-space, 4-space or tab indentation. Sort keys alphabetically and catch syntax errors instantly — free and private.
Rope Drop News is an independent third-party service and is not affiliated with ByteTools or ByteVancer. Details on this page were verified on 2026-08-21; always check the official documentation before relying on this API in production, as terms and limits can change.