ParkAlert MCP

An MCP server that exposes Disney ride status and wait times as on-demand tools, backed by the ThemeParks.wiki API.

This is the pull-based sibling of ParkAlert, a PWA that polls the same API on a timer and pushes a notification through ntfy.sh when a ride goes down or comes back up. ParkAlert answers "tell me when something changes." This server answers "what is the situation right now, because I just asked." The API client is ported from ParkAlert's server/themeparks.js; the polling loop, the transition detection, the trip codes, and the notification fan-out are all deliberately left behind.

Tools

Both tools accept a park by name, alias, or ThemeParks.wiki entity ID ("Magic Kingdom", "dhs", "epcot"), and a ride by however a person would say it. Partial and near-miss names such as "space mountain" or "tron" are matched, and an ambiguous name comes back with the candidates it could have meant.

Supported parks: Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, Disneyland (CA), California Adventure. Add more by appending to PARKS in src/parkalert_mcp/parks.py.

Related MCP server: mcp-themeparks

Setup

Requires Python 3.10 or newer, which is the mcp SDK's floor. Note that the system python3 on macOS may well be older than that, so name the interpreter explicitly rather than relying on whatever python3 resolves to.

python3.12 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e .

requirements-lock.txt records the exact versions this server is known to work against, captured from a working environment. It exists because the dependency that matters here is a moving target: mcp 2.0 renamed FastMCP to MCPServer, so a rebuild that quietly resolved to a different major version would fail at import with no hint as to why. To reproduce the known-good environment instead of resolving fresh versions:

python3.12 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -r requirements-lock.txt
.venv/bin/pip install --no-deps -e .

Regenerate the lockfile after changing dependencies:

.venv/bin/pip freeze --exclude-editable > requirements-lock.txt

The --exclude-editable flag is load-bearing. A plain pip freeze writes this project back out as a -e git+https://...@<commit> line, which would send a future rebuild off to clone the repository rather than installing the checkout already in hand.

Tests

.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"
.venv/bin/python -m pytest

The suite covers the two functions that decide what a caller's words mean: find_attraction in themeparks.py and resolve_park in parks.py. Both run offline, against a capture of real Magic Kingdom and EPCOT attraction data frozen in tests/conftest.py. The tests therefore describe the matching rules and their precedence, not today's ride list, and a ride opening or closing upstream will not turn them red.

One test does reach the network. It fetches /live for all six park entity IDs and asserts that each still returns attractions, which is precisely the failure the offline tests cannot see. It is marked network and deselected by default, so it runs only when asked for:

.venv/bin/python -m pytest -m network

Running it

The server speaks stdio, so it is launched by its client rather than run as a long-lived service. To exercise it by hand:

.venv/bin/python -m parkalert_mcp.server

For an interactive tool browser, the MCP Inspector works against the same command:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector .venv/bin/python -m parkalert_mcp.server

Claude Desktop

Add the server to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "parkalert": {
      "command": "/Users/austin/parkalert-mcp/.venv/bin/python",
      "args": ["-m", "parkalert_mcp.server"]
    }
  }
}

The absolute path to the venv's Python matters: Claude Desktop does not run through a login shell, so a bare python would not resolve to this environment. Restart Claude Desktop after editing, then look for the tools under the connectors icon.

Credits

Built by Austin Vodrazka with Claude.