Estimating the real wait time?

[famy27]

So, I keep feeling like I am doing something wrong at RD. I read about people riding numerous e-ticket rides in the first few hours the park is open. We've never had this type of luck at all. Everything seems to have long waits, even within a few minutes of park opening.

It occurred to me that part of the problem may be that I put too much trust in Disney. We have season passes to SF near my house, and I have gotten pretty good at judging wait time for a ride by eyeballing the line. One particular ride almost always says 45 minutes, but I can tell the wait is only 10-15. For unknown reasons, I've never really considered that Disney's posted wait times might be off. One, I've been handed the little red cards they use to determine actual waits. Two, Disney has so much down to a science. I assume that they know what they are doing.

But, now I get the idea that I may have been wrong. It seems from recent pictures, that the A&E wait time says 240 minutes before the park even opens. I've always noticed that TSMM says 30 or 60 minutes at park opening as well. Maybe these are the times that they always post, even before a guest gets into line?

My problem now is that I don't know how to judge the actual wait time, if I don't go by the posted time. Are there visual cues you use to determine what the wait time actually is? For rides where the queue is indoors (like Space), I imagine it is difficult. If there are any real-world examples of markers to look for to determine that a wait is under 20 minutes, I would love to know what they are.

 

[wisblue]

In our many years of visiting WDW, our experience has been that the posted wait times are longer than the actual wait times a lot more often than not, and often by fairly significant amounts. Especially in the first hour or two after opening, we would often see posted wait times of 20 minutes for rides that were actually walk-ons.

We did have a number of visual cues that we could use at the rides at which you could see most of the line from outside, but I wouldn't want to trust those now, especially at rides that now have FP+ that didn't have FPs before. A standby line of the same length may take a lot longer if a lot of the ride capacity is being taken by FPs. Even for rides that have always had FPs, we don't know if Disney might be giving a higher percentage of ride capacity to FP than they used to.

Here is my opinion, based in large part on our observation over the years. Disney pretty much has the posted wait times down to a science. But, that doesn't mean that they intend for the posted wait time to equal the actual wait time. Disney is also a master of influencing guest behavior, and they know that a guest who waits 20 minutes to get on a ride will be a lot happier if the posted wait time was 30 minutes than if it was posted at 10 minutes. Underpromise and over deliver.

As for the red cards, I have always thought that those were for Disney's use in evaluating after the fact how their posted wait times compared to actual wait times. Maybe someone familiar with Disney park operations can correct me if I'm wrong, but I assume that Disney has very detailed data about posted wait times at all rides. If someone like Josh at easywdw has information like this to make his predictions, I figure Disney must have it too. So, by using the red cards, Disney will know, for example, that a guest entered Ride A at 1:00 PM when the posted wait time was 30 minutes and his actual wait time was 15 minutes. They probably wouldn't use that to change the posted time because that is, by definition, a trailing measure. By the time the guest gets to the loading area, the line behind him may have grown or shrunk.

I also suspect that Disney itself is still adjusting to the impact that FP+ has had on standby lines, so that posted times may be less accurate than before. Again, in the interest of guest satisfaction, they are going to err on the side of longer posted times. Longer times may also encourage some guests to go to an attraction with a shorter wait time and that will help spread out the crowds.

With all of this in mind, it is hard to prove that ACTUAL standby lines at a lot of attractions are longer now than they used to be, because the studies of those wait times are almost always based on posted wait times, as they would have to be unless you had enough people to actually go through the lines.

 

[wisblue]

I've always noticed that TSMM says 30 or 60 minutes at park opening as well. Maybe these are the times that they always post, even before a guest gets into line?

Using TSMM as the example, we have often been one of the first groups to get there, and the posted wait time is usually something like 20 minutes, even though we are able to walk nonstop through the waiting area to the loading area, and get on and off the ride in about 10 minutes.

At a ride like that, where the line grows so quickly, they have to start with a posted wait time of about 20 minutes because it will get there really quickly. Before long they will bump that up to 30 or 40 minutes or more.

At some other rides, like Tower of Terror, the posted wait time often starts at 13 minutes, and bumps up to 20 pretty quickly. But, if we go right from TSMM to TOT and get into the standby line with a posted wait of 20 minutes, we almost always are able to walk right into the library without stopping.

 

[kidd_freeper]

Wait times are measured by the CM at the entance to the line, handing a guest a tag, who then gives it to the CM at the front of the line. The time it takes for the guest to hand the tag to the front of the line CM is the wait time.

Thus, at rope drop, the wait time estimates are going to be very unreliable and probably way too high.

 

[ZehnJahren]

I was on my last trip when I decided I had time to kill and was going to stand in line for TSMM (I had only FP'd it before).

The wait time said 60 minutes outside, but when I walked in, there was no one in the first room at all and I ended up waiting around 30 minutes total. The CM at the door (who I'd had a short conversation with) even made a comment to me about it not being the full hour once I walked out.

Because FP is always full at TSMM, I'd wager that you're waiting 30 minutes if the first room isn't full and that this hasn't been changed by FP+. I know I will get in line in the future if I see that first room empty!

 

[2Tiggies]

I echo the comments by previous posters. Particularly early in the morning and late in the evening, there is a tendency to inflate posted wait times (or more likely, just not update them frequently enough in the last hour of the park being open).

I know it's personal preference as to whether to pay for a touring plan or similar, but this is one area where I have found the Lines app pays itself off each trip and then some. Because they have the posted time as well as the expected time, and because in my experience the latter has always been fairly accurate to spot on, it is a valuable resource to me.

 

[HM]

We've noticed that quite often the wait time is actually half of what is posted. Especially in the morning.

If you see 13 minutes at HM or ToT, that's means there is no line. (unlucky 13 is a 'joke')