RunThePark

The Rulebook

The principles behind every run, every ruling, and every leaderboard on this site.

The Governing Principle

"Would a reasonable member of this community consider this run true to what it claims to be?"

Cast Members and Park Rules Come First

No running, no line jumping, no unsafe behavior — full stop, regardless of what it would do to your time.
Cast member instructions are followed immediately, without argument, every time. Arguing on camera voids the run automatically, no exceptions.
Your run should never make another guest's day worse.

Ride-Specific Ambiguity: What Would a Normal Guest Experience?

A ride is "complete" the moment an ordinary guest would consider it complete.
Breakdowns, delays, and parades blocking your path are part of the real experience of visiting a park — a run isn't disqualified because reality intervened. It gets annotated, not erased.
Per-ride rulings get documented as they come up, and become precedent for future ones.

02b

Ride Rulings (Precedent)

Matterhorn Bobsleds counts toward Fantasy Challenge. It sits on the Fantasyland/Tomorrowland border, but its alpine theming matches Fantasyland, and it doesn't fit Tomorrow Challenge at all.
Disneyland Railroad and Disneyland Monorail only count toward a challenge when ridden as one complete loop, boarding and disembarking at the same station. Getting off at an intermediate stop does not satisfy the checkpoint.
Breakdown after boarding. If you've tapped Board and the ride goes down with you on it, that ride counts as complete. This is on the honor system: a breakdown costs you more time than just riding it, so there's nothing to gain by claiming one.
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage only counts when you board a submarine. The above-water viewing room does not count as riding it.

02c

How Categories Work

Access Method: Any Legal Method (Lightning Lane/Genie+ allowed) · Hard Mode (no paid skips, including single-rider lines, proof required) · Accessibility Access (DAS, rider swap)
Party Type: Solo · Group
Every run carries one tag from each. No combination is "the real leaderboard" — they're just honest answers to how you did it and who you were with.

02d

Refurbishments & Ride Downtime (Challenges of 6+ Attractions)

This rule applies to any challenge with 6 or more required attractions — right now that's Grand Circle Challenge, This was a Parking Lot Challenge, Fantasy Challenge, Tomorrow Challenge, Honk Honk Challenge, and By the Sea Challenge. Every other challenge is small enough that if a required ride is down, the run simply can't be finished — see 02e below.
Confirmed refurbishment. If an attraction is on the official, published refurbishment calendar for the day your run started, it's automatically removed from your required list. No prompt, no choice to make — there was never a real decision to skip it, so nothing needs your input. This is checked once, at the moment you start your run, and stays fixed for that run even if the ride reopens early or a new refurb is announced mid-visit.
Unplanned downtime. A ride can also be closed without being on the refurb calendar — a same-day mechanical issue with no advance notice. If that ride has been closed for more than 50% of its own operating hours on the day of your run, it's automatically excluded from your required list once you go to finish — you'll still get credit for completing the challenge. This can't be checked at the start of your run, since it depends on how the rest of the day actually goes; it's only evaluated once there's enough real data to calculate it, right when you submit.
"Operating hours" here means the ride's own observed window that day — from its first recorded open moment to its last — not the park's official hours. Downtime is measured from live wait-time data pulled every 15 minutes, so very brief outages (under ~15 minutes) may not be fully reflected. This is a solid approximation, not a perfect record.
Refurbishments are picked up once a day from a live ride-status feed, and planned closures are also added by hand — so there can be a short lag between a ride actually going down for a refurb and it being reflected here.

02e

If a Ride Is Down on Any Other Challenge

Challenges with fewer than 6 required attractions don't get the refurb-awareness above — every attraction in the challenge is required, full stop.
So while a required ride is closed for refurbishment, the challenge is marked Unavailable on the Challenges page and in the start screen, and a new run on it can't be started. It becomes available again as soon as the ride reopens. (If a challenge has a "pick any 3 of 4" style group, it only becomes unavailable when too few of the group's rides are open.) Custom challenges you build yourself aren't affected.
If a required ride closes after you've already started, your run shows a notice at the top. You can keep tapping through whatever's open, purely for practice, but the run can't be finished if a required attraction you haven't done yet stays closed. It'll either expire naturally or you can cancel it — no penalty either way, it just won't complete.

Breaks Are Normal, Not Shameful

Food, water, and bathroom breaks are expected. The clock doesn't pause for them — same as a marathon includes your water stop.
We will never valorize skipping breaks for a faster time. That's not skill, it's a safety risk.

03b

Your Recording Doesn't Have to Be One Continuous Take

You don't need to film the walk between rides, a bathroom break, or lunch. Stop recording whenever you want between checkpoints — nobody expects a multi-hour unbroken video.
The one thing that does need to stay continuous is the footage within a single checkpoint — from entering the queue up to right before boarding the ride, that stretch shouldn't have a cut in the middle of it. That's the part that's actually being verified; you don't need to keep recording once you're getting on.
Upload whatever you end up with as one video, made of whichever clips you took — that's completely normal, not something to be self-conscious about.

03c

Two Clocks: One for Rides, One for Submitting

You can tap new checkpoints (Enter Queue on anything you haven't started yet) up through midnight of the day you started your run. That's your park day — once it's over, it's over.
You then have until midnight of the following day to actually finish and submit — calculate your time, upload your video if it's a timed run, and send it in. That extra day exists for exactly the reasons you'd expect: getting home, uploading, dealing with life.
If you're mid-checkpoint when your park day ends, you can still finish tapping Board/Exit on whatever you already started — the cutoff only blocks starting something new, it doesn't strand you mid-ride.
Miss the submission deadline entirely and the run expires — everything you recorded stays visible on your profile, just marked expired instead of pending.

Be Kind, Have Fun, Don't Be a Jerk

Be considerate of other guests in your footage — this is someone else's vacation too.
Competitive spirit is welcome; contempt is not.