Are All Wait Times Built on a Hill of Lies Now?

[Upatnoon]

I was given a red card at Disneyland in March, so they are still using that to track lines.

1. Complaints about wait time accuracy have been going on for years. They are not something that arrived with Genie+.
2. Usually the lines are shorter than what is reported on the sign.
3. Disney does manipulate the wait times near park close to help clear out the park.

The wait times aren't precise, but close enough in my opinion after many, many trips. There many factors that can influence a wait time. Ride goes down, show lets out, school group pulls in, the list goes on and on.

The more you fixate on wait times the more likely you are to be disappointed and have a bad trip.

 

[Mle8308]

I was given a red card at Disneyland in March, so they are still using that to track lines.

1. Complaints about wait time accuracy have been going on for years. They are not something that arrived with Genie+.
2. Usually the lines are shorter than what is reported on the sign.
3. Disney does manipulate the wait times near park close to help clear out the park.

The wait times aren't precise, but close enough in my opinion after many, many trips. There many factors that can influence a wait time. Ride goes down, show lets out, school group pulls in, the list goes on and on.

The more you fixate on wait times the more likely you are to be disappointed and have a bad trip.

They still use the red "FLiK" cards at DL, but not WDW anymore.

 

[MIChessGuy]

Wow, I hadn't even thought about those WDW "red cards" in a while. I can remember being given one and carrying it through the line with me. But consistent with what others mentioned, I have not seen them at WDW in years. For recent visits, my preference has been to use Lines while in the parks, as their data seem to be pretty solid in terms of actual wait times.

 

[SquashBanana]

I can't remember where, but I read somewhere a while back that they use a mathematical formula something like this:
People in line / Ride Capacity (ppl/hr) * 60 = wait time in minutes
For example, if there 500 people in line (which ride operators can estimate using their cameras) and a ride moves 1,000 people/hr...

500/1000 * 60 = 30 minute wait

They probably generously round up on both of those values and work in some kind of adjustment for LL riders, hence the inflated wait time.

 

[AcusTwinhammer]

There is a problem with G+, but not in a "try to upsell" way. The problem is that Lightning Lane gets massive priority over standby, something like 90%+ for LL, but that means that standby can stall out really easily if a bunch of LL people all show up at once. So trying to get accurate wait times are hard, since they don't necessarily know exactly when everyone shows up.

I ran into this my last visit, hit a couple of way-over-estimated wait times, then saw Remy was at 60 minutes but seemed to be moving. I got to the inside pretty fast, then things came to a literal standstill. I didn't know what was going on, and it's kind of hard to backtrack through the line, so I stuck with it, but my total wait time ended up over 2 hours. What I eventually found out was that the ride had been down all morning, so I must have gotten there right after it re-opened, but then all the morning LL people who had been turned into anytime LLs all showed up at once (when I got off the ride and got back outside, the LL line was still well down the avenue).

Had the LL people not shown up, the line probably would have been 20 minutes, so it was way off either way.

 

[blabbermouth]

Ok in reality when we were there a few weeks ago during NY Spring break the times weren't horribly off. Buzz Lightyear for instance had a line that a year ago took over an hour and 20 minutes and this year from basically the same exact spot it took 35. Rides going down and LL are the wild cards. If people jump into the LL all at once it clogs things up. Then there was Peter Pan toward the end of the night that said 55 minutes and I knew it wasn't real...jumped on the queue and of course 15 minutes later we were on. Lots of inconsistencies across the board. Eyeballing lines become an art. And sometimes you get on a line and realize that things aren't moving and you have to abort mission. But in general yes I'd rather they overestimate than underestimate.

We were there that week and the only standby that wasn't relatively close was Pirates after the fireworks, but I'd guess it might have just been that we beat the rush because we watched from frontierland bridge. Otherwise any time we rode standby they seemed pretty close!

 

[Jabroniville]

One thing I’ve had CMs tell me is that they often don’t advertise super short waits because they don’t want that area flooded with people. One guy admitted they were probably just late updating- Ariel’s Grotto advertising 40 minutes when it was literally a walk-in.

I’d assume it’s a mix of human error, lying to prevent rushes, lying to ensure more G+ sales, unexpected LL surges, and a few other things, lol.

 

[Jabroniville]

I was given a red card at Disneyland in March, so they are still using that to track lines.

1. Complaints about wait time accuracy have been going on for years. They are not something that arrived with Genie+.
2. Usually the lines are shorter than what is reported on the sign.
3. Disney does manipulate the wait times near park close to help clear out the park.

The wait times aren't precise, but close enough in my opinion after many, many trips. There many factors that can influence a wait time. Ride goes down, show lets out, school group pulls in, the list goes on and on.

The more you fixate on wait times the more likely you are to be disappointed and have a bad trip.

Haha don’t worry- the heat & sun has been way worse than the overestimating of lines. The line thing is more amusing than anything, though if I avoid long waits and it turns out they might have actually been MUCH shorter, I’m a bit put out.