Wait Times Have Increased Every Week Since Disney World Opened, but Capacity Has Remained the Same

    With July behind us now, we’re taking a look back at the reopening weeks of the Walt Disney World theme parks and what wait times might be indicating. All data was provided by thrill-data.com.

    One of the great metrics to determine how busy a day at the Disney World theme parks might be is, of course, the posted wait times. Disney World regulars will be quick to point out that a posted wait time doesn’t always reflect the time that you’ll actually wait in line, but even if all wait times are inflated by 20% across the board, we can still use the posted waits as a data point to extrapolate trends from. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how the first three weeks of operation went at Disney World, and what Disney might be doing behind the scenes to manipulate it.

    Opening morning of Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway

    First, we’ll continue to postulate that there is a lack of demand for a Disney World vacation and we’re in for a slow summer ahead. While there is little doubt that seeing a posted wait of north of 100 minutes for Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway nowadays might lead to flashbacks of a winding queue that demanded that you fill in all available space back in early March when the attraction debuted, not all wait times are created equal in the midst of a global pandemic (a fact worth noting when discussing Walt Disney World crowds).

    Crowds waiting for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge to open on a typical morning earlier this year

    The capacity of all attractions has been dramatically lowered as a result of physical distancing and cleaning procedures put in place by Disney to attempt to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 to its guests. Whereas before the pandemic you might be packed tightly into a queue (“if you can look down and see the floor, there’s more space”), parties are spaced 6′ apart in the queues now and asked to stand on stickers that indicate a safe distance between groups. That means that when we see scenes like the one below on most mornings at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, it’s not nearly as daunting (or as dense) as it once was.

    Socially distanced extended queue for Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway

    That said, only placing one party per ride vehicle on attractions across the theme parks means that rides like Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway or Rise of the Resistance are operating at less than 50% of normal capacity, and more likely closer to 25% by the time you account for the attraction cleaning that takes place every two hours.

    Ok, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the average wait times for each park, by week.

    In these graphs, you can see that there has been a week-over-week increase in wait times at the theme parks. Some are beautifully represented like Magic Kingdom, and others are a bit less clear cut. You might be wondering where the EPCOT chart is. It’s below because it is completely inverse of the other parks, posting lower waits for each consecutive week, completely destroying our entire article…but that’s EPCOT for ya!

    We’ll circle back to EPCOT in a bit, but let’s talk about the other three Walt Disney World theme parks and the increase in waits. Many have been quick to point out that wait times increasing must disprove our theory that there is a lack of demand for a Disney World vacation right now, we don’t necessarily agree.

    Disney has been adamant that they have not increased the theme park capacity since they reopened in mid-July, and we believe them. They even went as far as saying that capacity has not increased via an email to Passholders letting them know that they’re taking unused Disney Park Pass reservations from other ticket types to allow more Passholders to visit.

    This reallocation of unused Disney Park Pass inventory from guest types that have led to the theme parks being the most profitable branch of The Walt Disney Company to Annual Passholders who don’t spend as much is what is likely leading to the increase in wait times. That, and the fact that over the past week Disney has allowed Cast Members to visit the theme parks as long as they don’t visit the park with the newest and most popular attractions. By letting more of these types of guests into the theme parks, Disney is able to keep their overall attendance cap at the same amount, while getting more people into the parks that will actually visit.

    Now, what’s going on with EPCOT? Before the parks closed, EPCOT was, quite frankly, a bit of a mess. Future World was a maze of construction walls and many experiences and offerings were permanently closing to make way for a new EPCOT. With the parks closed for 100+ days, many fans thought that we’d be returning to some wonderful progress on the construction projects that were an eyesore in the first half of 2020. However, Disney opted to not continue construction during the park closures and EPCOT is just as unpolished of an experience as it was before the parks closed. As you can see in the graph below, wait times are actually going down week-over-week at EPCOT, despite the debut of the longest festival yet – A Taste of EPCOT Food & Wine Festival.

    It’s not immediately clear why there is a downward trend in wait times for EPCOT. Of course, it could just be that locals, the demographic currently propping up the theme parks, are only interested in eating and drinking at the park and not necessarily getting on rides. Whatever the case, EPCOT is the only theme park seeing a decrease in wait times.

    As always, we’ll continue to keep an eye on wait times, crowd levels, and more as we continue to cover the reopening of the Walt Disney World theme parks.

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    5 COMMENTS

    1. We were at MK today. I think the longest wait was The Mine Ride – 16 minutes. Epcot on Friday was basically walk on – with Living with the Land maybe 10 minutes. Fun days!

    2. Sad to say I had to boycott disney because they signed a deal with Colin Kaepernick. Sorry I can’t continue my annual passes any longer. I will miss Mickey.

    3. You mean the deal they signed for a partnership that “will focus on telling scripted and unscripted stories that explore race, social injustice and the quest for equity“ ? I’m sure you will not be missed at the parks!. Thanks for leaving more space for those who care about others! 🙂 God Bless America!

    4. My husband and I spent a week at OKW starting on 7-17 then SSR a week later. We just got back Friday 7-31. We think there were a considerable larger amount of people our second week. The lines were getting longer AND they weren’t running the rides quite as fast. (The first week they were FLYING!) And for the record, Disney Springs was overcrowded. Now don’t get me wrong, crowds were still EXTREMELY low, but there were more people the second week. I think they had also opened another resort for guests.

    5. Epcot is down because this is the park that is mostly about just walking around and enjoying the sights. That’s tougher with masks. So I’m going to conclude that those who are venturing to the parks are choosing one with more rides or attractions. Epcot is my favorite especially food and wine festival. But we like to eat and drink and explore. It’s different now.
      Masks – yuck. I know, it’s just a new way of life… Still, it sucks.

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