Are wait times on the app inflated due to distancing?

[Orion Nebula]

I keep hearing that the wait times have been much less than posted. So I was curious when looking at the wait timer on the WDW if it's way off from reality? Either way I was wondering how the wait times were actually calculated. Are there sensors tracking the lines to see how far they extend?

I only ask due to seeing some crazy numbers that seem to be a bit too high for a Tuesday right now.

 

[GBRforWDW]

I'd have to guess there's numerous reasons for the inflated times. Distancing and trying to keep lines shorter is one of them. By that I mean, in order to spread people out in the park, they'll inflate times for queues that are getting long, trying to encourage guests to go to shorter lines.

Another theory I have is to make up for a potential cleaning stoppage while you're in line. No one's complaining if they get in a 30 minute line and wait only 15 minutes, but everyone would complain about getting in a 15 minute line and having to wait 30 minutes, then complain about the cleaning procedures.

I also think they'll try discouraging guests to not get in a long line at the end of the night by saying the line is longer than it really is.

 

[kevgraub]

Are there sensors tracking the lines to see how far they extend?

I'm not sure how they do it now, but in the past we have been handed a tag at the end of the line and asked to hand it to the cast member at the front of the line when we got up there. We were told the tags were used to track how long the line was at that point in time (how long did it take us to get from the back of the line to the front).

Not sure if they still do that, but at least some attractions used that simple method in the past.

 

[ucf_knight]

Wait times at the beginning of reopening were inflated imo. We went a week or so after reopening and they definitely were inflated. Our trip in October was more in line with wait times but usually about 15 min less than posted. Our trip in January was very accurate.

 

[Krandor]

I think one of the issues with ride times is ride capacity is very variable right now. Seating 1 party per row you may have a row with 1 person or a row with 4. So party size has a lot to do with it so they can't predict times reliably like they could before because number of people on each ride vehicale can vary a lot

 

[littlejessmarie]

We were there last week. It seemed like rides that were constantly loading, had a shorter wait time. Rides that had to stop for loading was maybe 10 minutes less then the posted wait times.

 

[reylas]

Have a friend that works in the "magic band" department. They used to use lanyards, but now use magic bands to estimate wait time. Pre Covid, your location was used to calculate a wait time. Now with social distancing, it is not as accurate.

I dont know if they will "clean it up" or just let it slide until things are more normal.

 

[MainMom]

I’m here now. We’ve been to Epcot and MK. The longer lines are mostly running about 10 minutes less. The ones that say 5-15 minutes are walk through the queue. And the ones that are in the 20-25 minute range are right on or slightly shorter. Just my experience so far.

 

[MomOTwins]

This is a pet peeve of mine because I can't emphasize enough how variable the experience is depending on how lucky you are on a given day. We've gone twice since Covid--once in August and once October. Both times, we had a mix with some waits substantially under the posted time, some waits substantially over the posted time, but most of the time, the waits were pretty close to accurate (within 5/10 minutes of the estimate in either direction).

It has not been our experience at all that wait times were consistently, across the board, lower than the posted time. I think that was true when they first opened the park in July, but I think it has become a bit of an "urban legend" on disboards as a result of that initial set of reports. Just like the urban legend that there have been no outbreaks of Covid among CMs.

I expect part of the reason for the elevated times today is it is a day after a holiday weekend and some people are taking off an extra day to finish off their vacation. That said, we waited an hour or more for most attractions in October, so it could just be this is the new normal, and last week's shorter wait times were a temporary post-holiday dip that wont last.

Another theory I have is to make up for a potential cleaning stoppage while you're in line. No one's complaining if they get in a 30 minute line and wait only 15 minutes, but everyone would complain about getting in a 15 minute line and having to wait 30 minutes, then complain about the cleaning procedures.

We actually had exactly this happen several times that we got in a line with a posted 10/15 minute wait and ended up waiting 45-60 minutes because of cleaning cycles. They do revise the posted wait after they announce the start the cleaning cycle, but did not increase the wait time before we entered the line in anticipation of the cleaning cycle.

 

[KristaZ]

I can echo what others have said. I've been in July, August, September, and December since reopening. Wait times have pretty much evened out. In part, I think, because they just didn't know back in July how long the wait times were going to be based on the lines with all the distancing whereas now they have a better idea. On our last trip most times were pretty much spot on - maybe a 5-10 minute difference (and that 5-10 minutes could go either way). You might still get a wait that's significantly shorter than what's posted - but still probably not more than 20-30 minutes for the really long waits.

 

[RanDIZ]

When I was there in Dec, the wait times were always longer than the actual time we waited in line which was great. I just can’t imagine once capacity doubles to around 50-60% how this is going to be.

 

[Aimeedyan]

I've found them to be mostly accurate here lately (in the last week or two), but occasionally find a nice surprise (especially near closing).

I would not expect them to be overinflated so you won't be disappointed when you wait the entire posted time (or longer!)

 

[elle21]

We’ve been here the past two days. We have found wait times inflated on a lot of the rides. We got in line for the carousel last evening and it said 30 minutes. I thought it would be 15 based on the way the rest of our day went. But it was 30 min and it was the longest wait of our entire day. For the silly carousel. Ha!
This evening at Epcot TT said 50 but we got in line anyway. It was 13. Kids wanted to go again so we looped around and it said 35. It was actually 12 that time. Soarin’ and Frozen were accurate at 15.

 

[sethschroeder]

It has to be super hard and something I didn't notice at first is length of line has a smaller impact than it use to.

A good example is you could have 7 of the socially distanced spots taken up. Thing is those 7 spots could contain anywhere from 7 to 45 or more people.

This also impacts things like loading vehicles.

As an example they may look to space every other row on a ride. If you have 3 group of 2 that is a 6 row vehicle filled with 2 per row capacity. Now if that is all groups of 3 now you can only fit two instead of three groups on that ride vehicle.

Hope that makes sense.