How accurate are the wait times?

[Darklord77]

They are actually tracking wait times now by magic bands, and it's not working out well right now. Wait times this past week were way off in my opinion. Example: Space Mountain was 30 min when we entered ride. After waiting 15 minutes in line the times suddenly jumped to 120 minutes. 15 minutes later it was 75 minutes. A cast member told me there are flaws with using magic bands over the red cards that can throw off wait times. She said Disney is trying to work out the kinks.

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

They are actually tracking wait times now by magic bands, and it's not working out well right now. Wait times this past week were way off in my opinion. Example: Space Mountain was 30 min when we entered ride. After waiting 15 minutes in line the times suddenly jumped to 120 minutes. 15 minutes later it was 75 minutes. A cast member told me there are flaws with using magic bands over the red cards that can throw off wait times. She said Disney is trying to work out the kinks.

That makes a lot of sense. We saw crazy variability at Epcot in early May and were wondering what was going on. If they were trying out a new MB based system that might explain it.

 

[Darklord77]

It seemed like every wait time would go up 10-15 minutes while we stood in line.

 

[wgeo]

The "red cards" seem to be white now, wondering if something has changed or if they just updated them. And also - whenever someone turns one in, they get handed something - is there a thank you or something now for turning one in? Thought it was interesting that while we were in the final room for FOP I saw 4 different groups turn in one of the "necklaces" which seemed like a lot of people, thought they spaced them out a little more, and even though the wait time said 120 and we all waited around 80, nothing changed at that point.

 

[ConnecticutNonna]

Don't know if this is true or not, but I have heard that if the posted time is 13 minutes, there us no wait...
We have found that to be true on Haunted Mansion, at least 4 - 5 times. Absolutely no wait whatsoever... Posted 13 minutes.
We have also almost always had a good experience with posted times bring LONGER that actual times in every single case for us. (And we've gone pretty much yearly since 1972)
Just our experience.

 

[Disnsyncey]

Don't know if this is true or not, but I have heard that if the posted time is 13 minutes, there us no wait...
We have found that to be true on Haunted Mansion, at least 4 - 5 times. Absolutely no wait whatsoever... Posted 13 minutes.
We have also almost always had a good experience with posted times bring LONGER that actual times in every single case for us. (And we've gone pretty much yearly since 1972)
Just our experience.

the "haunted" rides, like HM and ToT do that sometimes.....but I haven't seen those in forever! (maybe I keep going in high crowd times.....here's to hopin for September! haha)

 

[ConnecticutNonna]

the "haunted" rides, like HM and ToT do that sometimes.....but I haven't seen those in forever! (maybe I keep going in high crowd times.....here's to hopin for September! haha)

We were there in March and rode HM 3 times in a row with absolutely no wait...
Luck of the Irish, lol!

 

[PrincessWithABlaster]

The "red cards" seem to be white now, wondering if something has changed or if they just updated them. And also - whenever someone turns one in, they get handed something - is there a thank you or something now for turning one in? Thought it was interesting that while we were in the final room for FOP I saw 4 different groups turn in one of the "necklaces" which seemed like a lot of people, thought they spaced them out a little more, and even though the wait time said 120 and we all waited around 80, nothing changed at that point.

We carried a red card in early May. My guess is the white lanyards are Rider swap lanyards.

 

[wgeo]

We carried a red card in early May. My guess is the white lanyards are Rider swap lanyards.

Oh that makes much better sense - thx.

 

[cwis]

It is a form of crowd control (overstated times to guide guests to other rides) and a general overestimation.
But there’s not much Disney can do if a ton of people exit the train or a parade/show and enter a ride with a 5 minute time.

There's not much Disney wants to do. They know the capacity of every attraction in term of guests per hour, and they have turnstiles at the entrance of the attraction. They could adjust the posted wait time as people enter the standby line faster that what the attration can deliver.

 

[Upatnoon]

Generally, when you get in line, the wait will be longer than the wait time.

When someone else gets in line, they will wait less than the wait time.

In the end, it balances out.

 

[hakepb]

There's not much Disney wants to do. They know the capacity of every attraction in term of guests per hour, and they have turnstiles at the entrance of the attraction. They could adjust the posted wait time as people enter the standby line faster that what the attration can deliver.

I agree that there is a lot of information that Disney has, but doesn’t act on. And they should know how many people are entering the line with the photo eyes that replaced turnstiles at ride entrances + MagicBands (they should actually be able to use the long distance functionality of Magic Bands instead of the red cards).

But there are still possible data problems, if you enter a 15 minute standby line (where the current standby and FP+ crowd would be a 15 minute wait (with a 50/50 FP+ Loading mix that had been enough for to keep FP+ moving)...but 500 people stream into the FP+ line (some later in their cycle and some unexpectedly early in their window) and they need to increase FP+ Loading to 90%...all a sudden your 15 minute standby wait increases to 30.

 

[The Starr family]

So how accurate are the wait times that Disney posts on attractions? We didn't do a whole lot of rides on Standby during this vacation, but almost every ride we did was not really accurate based on the posted wait time. For example, in between FP on 5/29 in MK we did Little Mermaid because it was listed as a 5 minute wait - took 20. That's far enough apart that it was very noticeable. Usually things were only 10 minutes off or so, which I consider just normal.

However, today 5/30 during a very very rainy AK day we got in line for FOP with a 120 minute posted wait and were sitting on our "banshees" at the 80 minute mark. There were 3 people very close ahead of me wearing the "timer necklace" things, and they did change the wait time to 105 minutes, but again that's really not close to 80 at all.

Is Disney doing this on purpose - or are things that fluid that they change that frequently?

 

[The Starr family]

Yes. The understated times are on purpose. In line for N'avi boat ride and checked app wait times ahead of coming to the new Avatar land area. Stated time at entrance 80 mins. 45 mins into our wait we are now getting the announcements from staff (over speakers) that we apologize but your times might be extended a bit. Short story is the geniuses of social engineering know you are not going to jump out of line after committing/being buried in line. They oversell fast passes and you regular rate people can expect much much longer actual times. All is factored since comfort stations are near to sell a soda or snack. The old days of Walt are long gone. You better be ready to pay to play even buying after an overpriced ticket. Horrible to not be up front with your customers Disney. Stop overbooking in the name of profit.it is shameful. We are 105 minutes into this ride after being told 80 in person and online. Why?

 

[Sparkly]

Yes. The understated times are on purpose. In line for N'avi boat ride and checked app wait times ahead of coming to the new Avatar land area. Stated time at entrance 80 mins. 45 mins into our wait we are now getting the announcements from staff (over speakers) that we apologize but your times might be extended a bit. Short story is the geniuses of social engineering know you are not going to jump out of line after committing/being buried in line. They oversell fast passes and you regular rate people can expect much much longer actual times. All is factored since comfort stations are near to sell a soda or snack. The old days of Walt are long gone. You better be ready to pay to play even buying after an overpriced ticket. Horrible to not be up front with your customers Disney. Stop overbooking in the name of profit.it is shameful. We are 105 minutes into this ride after being told 80 in person and online. Why?

Uh...

You don't pay for fastpasses.....

 

[GADisneyDad14]

Thread is a few months old and OP’s question was well covered at the time. Closing.