Waiting in line for your favorite ride at Disney World looks a little different these days. With FastPass+ temporarily suspended, physically distanced queues stretching standby lines, and of course limited park capacity, folks have wondered if they should be taking those posted wait times with a grain of salt.
So how accurate are those posted wait times? We’ve done some first-hand research for ourselves over the last couple of weeks and timed our actual wait in the standby queues for many of Disney World’s popular rides!
Magic Kingdom
The day we visited Magic Kingdom (on a weekend), every posted wait time ended up being HIGHER than the actual wait time, with one exception. We caught a cleaning cycle while in line for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, which can typically add a slight delay to the wait time. The posted wait time for Mine Train was 55 minutes, and we ended up waiting 68.
Here are the posted versus actual wait times we saw at Magic Kingdom:
- Posted: 55 minutes
- Actual: 68 minutes
- Posted: 65 minutes
- Actual: 32 minutes
- Posted: 45 minutes
- Actual: 32 minutes
- Posted: 35 minutes
- Actual: 19 minutes
- Posted: 20 minutes
- Actual: 10 minutes
- Posted: 45 minutes
- Actual: 43 minutes
- Posted: 60 minutes
- Actual: 35 minutes
- Posted: 25 minutes
- Actual: 20 minutes
EPCOT
Much like Magic Kingdom, all of the attractions we checked out at EPCOT had shorter actual wait times than the posted times on signage and on My Disney Experience.
Here are the wait times we saw at EPCOT:
- Posted: 40 minutes
- Actual: 24 minutes
- Posted: 5 minutes
- Actual: 2 minutes
- Posted 60 minutes
- Actual: 33 minutes
Disney’s Hollywood Studios
At Disney’s Hollywood Studios, we experienced shorter wait times at all of the attractions we visited. We also experienced the longest standby wait time of all the attractions at Disney World, which was Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway. This family-friendly dark ride, which debuted in March just one week before the closures began, consistently sees longer wait times throughout the day.
Here are the wait times we saw at Disney’s Hollywood Studios:
- Posted: 65 minutes
- Actual: 53 minutes
Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway
- Posted: 105 minutes
- Actual: 84 minutes
- Posted: 45 minutes
- Actual: 28 minutes
- Posted: 25 minutes
- Actual: 13 minutes
Disney’s Animal Kingdom
Finally, we stopped by Disney’s Animal Kingdom to see if their wait times were consistent with the other three parks. Sure enough, every ride we checked out had a shorter actual wait time than what was posted!
Here are the wait times we saw at Disney’s Animal Kingdom:
- Posted: 30 minutes
- Actual: 24 minutes
- Posted: 30 minutes
- Actual: 18 minutes
- Posted: 30 minutes
- Actual: 16 minutes
- Posted: 50 minutes
- Actual: 40 minutes
- Posted: 40 minutes
- Actual: 30 minutes
Overall, we have found that typically the wait times are less than what has been posted. However, occasionally due to frequent cleaning cycles, the time you spend waiting can increase, which is likely why wait times can be slightly padded. We share posted wait times from Disney World daily, which you can use to better keep track of what each ride’s wait times look like on every day of the week.
Check out ALL the daily Disney World wait times here!
And if you want to see more of our first-hand experience with Disney World’s current wait times, you can check out our AllEars TV video below!
Click here to read about how Disney World is looking busier these days!
Have you visited Disney World since the parks reopened in July? What was your experience like with wait times? Share in the comments!
We Keep Track of the Wait Times DAILY! Check Them Out Here!
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It’s so hit or miss. We got in a 10 minute line for Dinosaur at 10:40. At 11:00, we got to the front of the queue. And they shut down to clean all the vehicles. Don’t know when they started reloading because we had to leave for a lunch reservation. Hit Buzz Lightyear in a cleaning cycle also, so it was a longer wait. Had a few other queues end up being longer because they were loading from the FP queue. Most other queues were a bit shorter than posted times, some were spot on. Rarely, we had one that was way shorter.