How bad is the wait while in the queue?

[whiporee]

It’s pretty rough. One line is okay — going from an hour line to an hour line to another hour line is a different story. The cumulative of a whole day of them is very hard. And stacking multiple days of them together would be a very difficult thing to do and still keep a good attitude.

A lot depends on where are, too MK has a lot of shaded spaces for lines, but HS does not. A lot of them are in isolated places where there's nothing interesting to do or see but the line, and a lot of them are in places where little ones can be very annoying to other guests as they fiddle with every single thing around them. And a lot of them are in tight spaces that don’t give you a lot of room for them to move. They may keep moving, but they are also very, very long. Very long.

 

[Moliphino]

If you used FP+ a lot in the past, now is actually a good time to see what the regular queue line looks like. Until our post-covid trips, there were several queue lines where we had never been through the regular line. While the interactive stuff is shut down now, it's still fun to see the entire queue and all of the design that went into creating it. The lines are almost constantly moving, so it's not like pre-covid where you would just stand in one place for a while before you actually moved.

It was nice to finally be able to see the Peter Pan queue! The standby line there is awful when fastpass is in use, so we've never gone through it before.

 

[jimmymc]

So the lines are physically long, but you are usually constantly moving. This lets you look at the theming in the queues without being stuck in the same spot for too long. I believe my longest wait was 1 hour, and you could frequently get on popular attractions in under 10 minutes.

 

[Raven01]

I went in September and again in March. I have a DD4. We just waited in line - no toys or other distractions. Most queues do move regularly. I do not believe they are allowing you to eat in line now, so either bring a distraction or be prepared to wait it out.

Boat rides for some reason were VERY long lines. Waits there were 45 minutes plus. I hit a big attraction at rope drop and then smaller ones for the DD4 from there. We just skipped anything with a posted wait over 30 minutes. But I"m DVC and know we will be back soon.

Late in the day or early in the morning is important. Mid day is busiest.

 

[#1hoosierfan]

In all of my times to Disney I had never waited more than 20 minutes for a ride. That changed last week. We waited 60 minutes twice and 80 minutes once. My boys are 11 and 14 and played on their phones while we waited.

 

[boltjames]

The funny phenomena about current park dynamics is that a) the lines are 2x as long because of distancing, b) therefore the lines are constantly moving and you aren't standing still much at all, and c) 90% of the rides posted wait times that were overstated by 50%.

Translation: Don't sweat the lines. They move and aren't as long as they lead you to believe.

 

[LSUfan4444]

People are severely overthinking the importance of FP+ as it relates to the overall amount of time you will spend in line all day. Overall, most people will spend less time in queues all day now than they did prior to COVID with FP+, especially if you arrive early or are there in the last hour.

Track the wait times for things like Flight of Passage, Slinky Dog, Space Mountain, Frozen Ever After, etc and you can consistently find standby times at or less than an hour for the week after Easter....prior to COVID, that was unheard of with FP+.

If you are going to try to rope drop, recognize the difference between being the 200th person in the park and the 1200th person in the park and realize you do not want to stand in line for 30 minutes for your first attraction of the day. You can come back in three hours and do the same ride and wait maybe 15 more minutes so spend that first 30-45 minutes wisely on things you can walk-on.

 

[MomOTwins]

People who waited only 20 mins for everything simply were not there at a busy time. We went during spring break waited 40-90 minutes for almost everything. I could count on one hand the number of things we rode with less than a 30 minute wait—pretty much just Little Mermaid (15) Dumbo (25) and Nemo (5), and none of those had big waits pre covid either.

As for the actual wait experience, there actually are a ton of posts on that in the here now thread (I’ve both read and posted)—you may just need to read back a bit. For us, it started off not bad on our trip. We had 70 degree weather, and were fresh and full of energy. We did trivia on the disney play app and solved riddles. However, toward the end of the week were tired and it was 90 degrees and the waits were rough—with the extended queues you are outdoor almost the whole time on most rides—often just in the regular walkways so no “interesting” queues to see out there, and you move quick through the more entertaining actual queue portion so can’t appreciate it as much. For example, in haunted mansion there is no stretching room and they don’t let you walk all around the cemetery looking at the funny gravestones any more—we spent 55 mins out in sun in the “extended” queue and just 5 mins in the original queue area. Most pre-shows like those at TOT and MMRR are gone, as are any interactive features like those at Winnie the Pooh and 7DMT. No chance to sit, no drinking or eating ice cream in line to cool off. And with the long windy queues our step counts were through the roof—7 to 10 miles a day so our feet HURT standing in the queues. Parks that used to be a half day mixed with a half day at the hotel pool became whole day parks because we had yo wait so long for everything. I started sitting on the floor when the line would stop for a bit and standing when it started up again. I think a short stay is more manageable for sure. Because after about day 3 DH and I both declared we won’t be back until there is fastpass.

 

[skuttle]

We went presidents weekend. We waited in lines we never would have before because we had no choice. It wasn’t too bad because the lines never stopped moving. Most were shorter than posted time, but a couple of times they were longer, which really made it hard to plan. 7DMT wait was awful...super slow and much longer than posted. So much so that half of our party skipped splash because the posted wait was long and they didn’t want to risk it, and it ended up being 20 min. I wish the waits were more accurate.

 

[mds88]

People who waited only 20 mins for everything simply were not there at a busy time. We went during spring break waited 40-90 minutes for almost everything. I could count on one hand the number of things we rode with less than a 30 minute wait—pretty much just Little Mermaid (15) Dumbo (25) and Nemo (5), and none of those had big waits pre covid either.

As for the actual wait experience, there actually are a ton of posts on that in the here now thread (I’ve both read and posted)—you may just need to read back a bit. For us, it started off not bad on our trip. We had 70 degree weather, and were fresh and full of energy. We did trivia on the disney play app and solved riddles. However, toward the end of the week were tired and it was 90 degrees and the waits were rough—with the extended queues you are outdoor almost the whole time on most rides—often just in the regular walkways so no “interesting” queues to see out there, and you move quick through the more entertaining actual queue portion so can’t appreciate it as much. For example, in haunted mansion there is no stretching room and they don’t let you walk all around the cemetery looking at the funny gravestones any more—we spent 55 mins out in sun in the “extended” queue and just 5 mins in the original queue area. Most pre-shows like those at TOT and MMRR are gone, as are any interactive features like those at Winnie the Pooh and 7DMT. No chance to sit, no drinking or eating ice cream in line to cool off. And with the long windy queues our step counts were through the roof—7 to 10 miles a day so our feet HURT standing in the queues. Parks that used to be a half day mixed with a half day at the hotel pool became whole day parks because we had yo wait so long for everything. I started sitting on the floor when the line would stop for a bit and standing when it started up again. I think a short stay is more manageable for sure. Because after about day 3 DH and I both declared we won’t be back until there is fastpass.

This was our experience as well this past week. Our last day we spent at AK and we only stayed til about 1 because we all were just over the miserable wait times by that point. And we are almost always rope drop to close people, so for us to leave a park that early says something. We absolutely will not be returning any time soon.