Disappointed in Deceiving Stand By Wait Times...

[DisDadDVC]

This whole thing is making me wonder...and I would be fascinated by an article on this...how do the standby line times get set? Is it by a CM at the attraction in the control booth? Is it at a central ops center for the whole park? How do they change the times throughout the day to move people around (Disney freely admits they try to disperse crowds through the park so that if Fantasyland is too crowded, for example, they roll out a mini parade near the castle or a show in Adventureland). Any insights?

 

[StuckInKS]

We really noticed this on our 2015 trip and decide to ignore the posted wait times. At TSMM, they even blocked off most of the inside line so that it would spill out into the walkway, along with the posted wait time of over 100 minutes. Now I know lots of rides sometimes have most of the long queue blocked off when lines are short so you don't have to walk through the whole thing, but this seemed like it was done purposefully.

 

[palmtreegirl]

Yep, they lie, especially at night. We went on Mine Train about 20 minutes before park close, the posted time was 50 minutes and it took us 10 minutes. The CM at the entrance said to the people behind us, it maybe a little shorter but the posted time was most likely accurate.

 

[Dbktmc]

We had the opposite experience about 8 years ago. We got in line to ride the Jungle Cruise because there was a 20 minute wait time posted. Well, about 2 hours later we finally got on the ride. We were NOT happy at all. No one in our party had ever waited in their standby line before and every time we came around a corner to see large winding lines we were so frustrated. We kept thinking we just had to be near the end so we didn't get out of line. And, truth be told, the line was so packed that I'm not sure how we would have even found our way out.

We swore that we would never ride this ride again. And we haven't.

 

[Davey Jones II]

I would say no. FP return times are not all on the hours. They come every 5 minutes, like 10:05-11:05, 10:10-11:10, etc.

It is impossible to predict when people will return with FPs, or if they will return at all. And that makes it that much more difficult to post accurate wait times for rides with FPs, which is now almost all of them.

IMHO, the biggest thing to avoid is planning on entering a standby line shortly after the end of a nearby show or parade. Like going to BTMRR right after the FOF parade ends or going to the Safari right after a FOTLK show lets out.

Makes sense. Thanks for the great tip!

 

[disneydentist]

We were there the week before Easter and it was mostly the opposite. Wait times were MUCH longer than posted on some rides. We saw many families that only had one person waiting in line and they'd join up right before getting on the ride. We figured that had to be a big part of it. You can't judge a line by the people not even in it who jump in at the last second! My husband and boys got in line at RnR with a posted wait time of 120 minutes. They came over the speaker and said wait times were longer than anticipated (they didn't even hear it in the line) and they added time to the posted wait time. It was close to 3 hours of waiting. So annoying.

We saw this once. On Jungle Cruise. Definitely a consequence of FP+ since the standby line was relatively short but with a very long projected wait time.

We also encountered more than a few standby lines with inflated wait times.