Are the wait line times accurate?

[Antonio]

My last trip I noticed that the wait line times are somewhat accurate but I would never wait as long as they say. I noticed that most rides that said a 30 minute wait would usually be about 20 minutes or even sometimes less. Anybody else notice this or is it just me?

 

[BrianL]

They are, but only kinda. They do err on the side of being higher because people will be happy when a 30 minute posted wait is actually 20 or even 15 minutes instead of being mad that it said 5 minutes and took 20. I have noticed that very early and very late they will have exceedingly high estimates for the popular rides. Like TSMM will say 45 minutes immediately at Rope Drop, but it really isn't even close...yet. During late nights, they never seem to ratchet them down too much, probably to encourage people to move along.

 

[bc7ate9]

Yes - that is often the case.

The Lines app from Touring Plans reports posted, expected, and actual wait times - we've found it to be pretty accurate.

 

[Lucius Best]

My last trip I noticed that the wait line times are somewhat accurate but I would never wait as long as they say. I noticed that most rides that said a 30 minute wait would usually be about 20 minutes or even sometimes less. Anybody else notice this or is it just me?

Like previous posters said, I have always assumed that Disney inflates standby wait times slightly during the day. They'll also throw a big number up there in the morning when the crowds are coming in. Late in the evenings they will also significantly inflate posted waits to discourage people from getting in line. For example, on last trip, we saw that 7DMT posted standby wait increase from 30 to 40 minutes right before closing. We could see the line was nowhere near as long, waited only 11 minutes.

On last trip (first with FP+), it seemed that some standby wait times were inflated much more than we were used to. Such as posted 20 minute standby being more like 10 minutes, we noticed it on rides like HM and POTC that never used to have FP but do now with FP+. My guess was that Disney might have been inflating the standby wait times a little more, due to the unpredictable nature of when people return to use their fastpasses. It's possible that our observation was somewhat skewed, because if we were thinking of riding something like HM standby and the FP return line was backed up out the door, we would skip it. So we tried to avoid situations where the standby wait might be longer than what was posted.

 

[jtowntoflorida]

On some rides they seem to be fairly accurate, on others not at all. The most consistent offenders for us are TSMM, VotLM, and Star Tours. On one trip, we rode TSMM around 5:00 in the afternoon in 20 and 25 minutes when the posted wait times were 50 and 70 minutes. On that 70 minute posted wait time ride, we actually got to the merge point in 12 minutes and were just held there for 10 minutes, even though no guests were coming through the FP+ line. It was very frustrating.

For VotLM and Star Tours, if the posted time is 20 minutes or less, that means walk-on. 30 minutes means possibly a slight pause, or you just walk slowly through the queue.

 

[Hootch]

Disney measures wait times periodically by giving a guest a card when they enter that is read when that guest is about to get on the ride. If anything happens in the interim, such as three simulators in Star Tours shut down, the posted wait times will not reflect that. Or if a low wait time is posted for a major attraction and people rush to ride it, the actual wait time will be much higher than the posted time.

Both of those happened to us recently.

 

[AtlantaDisneyDreamer]

They are, but only kinda. They do err on the side of being higher because people will be happy when a 30 minute posted wait is actually 20 or even 15 minutes instead of being mad that it said 5 minutes and took 20. I have noticed that very early and very late they will have exceedingly high estimates for the popular rides. Like TSMM will say 45 minutes immediately at Rope Drop, but it really isn't even close...yet. During late nights, they never seem to ratchet them down too much, probably to encourage people to move along.

We've noticed the same thing. It must be very hard to estimate wait times very early in the day because lines can grow so quickly over a short period of time. We hit Cinderella and Rapunzel first thing with a posted wait time of 20 minutes, and it was walk-on. Next, we hit Peter Pan with a posted wait time of 25 minutes, and it was really 30 (and by the time we had been in line for a few minutes, posted wait time was 50 minutes).

Once, at BTMRR, the posted wait time was 40 minutes. However, the FP line was obviously much longer than the regular line. Therefore, people in the regular line were complaining that their wait time was much longer than posted because of all of the FP guests who needed to be let on first.