how long are FP line wait times?

[princess lovers mom]

OK planning getting more intense for our "week after Christmas" trip...we are expecting huge crowds, but feel prepared - now, when we gather up all our fast passes in the morning and are using them in the evening when crowds are the worst what kind of wait time can we expect in the fast pass line?

our experience from WDW is that i think they give out too many FP sometimes and the FP line can often take 30-40 minutes...should I expect the same at DLR?

 

[HydroGuy]

OK planning getting more intense for our "week after Christmas" trip...we are expecting huge crowds, but feel prepared - now, when we gather up all our fast passes in the morning and are using them in the evening when crowds are the worst what kind of wait time can we expect in the fast pass line?

our experience from WDW is that i think they give out too many FP sometimes and the FP line can often take 30-40 minutes...should I expect the same at DLR?

It really depends on the ride but it is usually not 30-40 minutes. More like 5-15 minutes. The only ride at DLR I have found to have a long FP wait time is Autopia - where I have waited up to 25 minutes.

 

[jason417]

I have never waited in a FP line for 30 minutes at DLR. We usually go when it's fairly busy (summers and weekends). In my experience, this is the average length of FP lines:

Space Mtn: 5-15 mins
Indy: 10-15 mins
Splash Mtn: 10-15 mins
Thunder Mtn: 5 mins
Buzz Lightyear: 5 mins
Roger Rabbit: 5 mins
Haunted Mansion: 5-10 mins

Soarin': 10-15 mins
Screamin': 10-15 mins
Tower of Terror: 15 mins

 

[longtimedisneylurker]

I agree with the previous posters but will add two comments. We find Indy to be one of the longer fastpass waits sometimes. I'm pretty sure we have waited at least 20 minutes in that fastpass line on a couple of occasions. The fastpass line for Soarin' can get quite long near closing on a busy day. We thought about riding about an hour before park closing once and went to get in the fastpass line only to find it extending well out of the building and switchbacking. Honestly don't know how long that wait was since we decided to just come back for it the next morning instead.

 

[PHXscuba]

It really varies, especially when it's crowded. We used FP at least 3 times for Thunder Mountain last weekend. Twice we walked straight down to the base of the stairs where we joined the line and were the only FP people there. Once (later on a busy Saturday night) we only got halfway down that long ramp before the FP line stopped.

I also agree about the IJ FP still taking a long time (took about 25 minutes on a busy July afternoon). I think some of the FP lines join the regular line earlier than others. And even that can vary -- the Haunted Mansion FP line sometimes takes you right to the front door, but last weekend they routed us back through another queue before we went in.

So I don't think you can really "time it". But whatever your FP wait, it will likely be one-third of the time the standby line is on a "week after Christmas" trip like yours.

PHXscuba

 

[princess lovers mom]

thanks - so we will hoard away those FP's and enjoy our almost walk-ons!!! look forward to that!

 

[camouseketeer]

We were there on Nov. 12, the first day of the holiday season and it was the busiest I had ever seen the park.

The FP wait for Space shocked me. Normally, the FP line walks up the ramp and all the way to the CM collecting FP's. From there it's about a 5-8 min wait.

When we were there on the 12th, we didn't even get half way up the ramp and couldn't even see the CM. We had to wait a good 10 min just to get to that point, and then we waited about 10-12 in the queue inside. So it was about a 20-25 min wait.

That's certainly not bad compared to the stand-by line of 90 min, but it was just something that I wasn't used to.

I now understand the difference between busy summer crowds and crazy holiday crowds.