If it doesn’t seem busy in the area outside the ride, the wait is probably shorter than it’s posted! Honorable mentions at Magic Kingdom: Pirates of the Caribbean, Under the Sea, and Space Mountain. Pro tip: If you see the posted wait time is 13 minutes, hop in line! That’s Disney-speak for “it’s probably gonna be a walk-on.” If you don’t see that line outdoors, you’re usually looking at a reasonable wait. If you aren’t sure, there is an overflow queue outdoors to the left of the building for when the line does build. It’s not uncommon to see a 50-minute posted wait and have it actually only be 25 minutes. If that first part of the queue is empty and you can walk right up to the building, you’re looking at about less than a 20-minute wait typically.īuzz is another culprit of hyperinflating wait times. The first part of the queue is outdoors and goes slightly uphill until you’re indoors. You can always look to the queue for visual help. We’ve seen the posted wait say 30 minutes and have the actual wait only be 5 minutes. So which rides are notorious for hyperinflated wait times? Magic Kingdomīig Thunder is often hyperinflated – sometimes by a lot, especially in the mornings and evenings. But Genie+ only allows one Lightning Lane per ride, and sometimes you just wanna ride Space Mountain twice in one day, so standby strategy comes in! This is also where Genie+ admittedly makes things a lot easier. There are just too many factors that could influence wait times like weather, time of day, time of year, what else is happening in the parks (ie, events), the ride itself, and so on. We’re basing this information on (a lot of) anecdotal experience and on posted wait time vs actual wait time averages from historical data. The real wait is probably 25 minutes or less. However, you look at the queue entrance and you don’t see a line of people forming right there or outside of it. The posted wait is 35 minutes (which is long in our world!). Does it look like there’s a line to get in line? As in, is it so crowded that a line is forming in the park area OUTSIDE of the ride? That’s usually the red flag – you might want to skip that one and come back to it.įor example: you’re at Animal Kingdom and looking at Expedition Everest. If it does, you’re probably looking at a more reasonable wait. Some queues may be harder to determine than others, but the “Golden Rule” is to see if the line starts AFTER the official queue entrance. We have what we’ve dubbed “The Golden Rule” when it comes to determining what the “actual” wait time for a ride might be. The Golden Rule: Using Visual Cues to Visualize the Queue Let’s talk about what we have dubbed the Golden Rule of park strategy at Disney. We talk more about our End of Night strategy for riding just about any ride – like Rise of the Resistance – without the same crazy wait times during the day in-depth, and MANY more strategies, in our Parks Strategy Playbook. Saving these rides for later is actually our personal preference and #1 recommendation. Many of these rides will also usually post a VERY hyperinflated wait time at the end of the night. If a ride is posted as a 60-minute wait, we typically assume it’s closer to 45-50 minutes. We have found that the actual wait time is typically 20-25% less than the posted wait. Knowing which rides tend to have consistent hyperinflated posted waits puts you ahead of the curve and may give you a chance to ride something that someone else would probably skip because they see the posted wait time and decide not to wait.įirst, the posted wait for most rides is always going to be at least a little hyperinflated. Why should this matter to you when you’re touring the parks? It’s a technique that allows them to manage crowd levels and increase (or decrease) flow in parts of the parks. Most Disney regulars know it, but it isn’t mainstream knowledge that Disney will at times hyperinflate the posted wait times for certain rides at certain times of the day as a method of traffic control. What if we told you it probably wasn’t actually that long?įor the sake of clarity, posted wait times are the official wait times that Disney posts in the MDE app and on the queue entrance.Īctual wait times are, of course, how long you’re actually waiting in line. The park is going to be closing soon! How is the wait time for so long?! Now picture walking all the way over to your favorite ride at the end of the day and you see the wait time is 90 minutes. Picture the snacks you’ll have, the photos you’ll be snapping, and all the rides you can’t wait to ride.
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