Disney wait times: why are queues so long?

Lengthy wait times at Disney are as old as the parks themselves.

Even on the very first day Disneyland California opened to the public, back in 1955, people were apparently queuing up outside the park gates at 2am.

But queuing for more than an hour – as is standard on many popular Disney rides – can be draining, particularly for little legs. It’s also hard as a parent to watch that head-in-the-clouds excitement as your kids step into Disney slowly subside into the tedium of having to stand still or shuffle slowly forwards for 75 minutes.

In our view, the introduction of schemes like the Lightning Lane – paid-for passes that allow some to beat the queues – have seen wait times back up for everyone else.

How can you avoid queues at Disney World?

There’s no magic way to avoid every queue at Walt Disney World – particularly for the most popular attractions. However, there are plenty of ways to reduce the amount of time you spend waiting.

The biggest difference can come from when you visit an attraction. Arriving early, using quieter periods around meals and fireworks, checking live wait times in the My Disney Experience app and being prepared to change your plans can all help.

You can also use Disney’s paid Lightning Lane services, while Single Rider and Rider Switch are two free options worth knowing about, particularly if you’re travelling with older children or young kids who aren’t riding.

Here are 10 things we do to keep Disney queues under control:

1) Prioritise your rides

This, admittedly, can be tough if you’ve never been to Disney before. If this is the case, we’d suggest doing a little research before you go to decide on the attractions you definitely want to see.

We’d say this is particularly important if you’re a fan of thrill rides or Star Wars, as these attractions get busy. Then plan your day around going on the rides you want to cover – including when you are going to take breaks, eat and go on attractions without queues.

However, one of the biggest mistakes people make at Walt Disney World is assuming the longest queues will always be for the biggest or most exciting rides.

At Magic Kingdom, some relatively short and gentle rides are among the most popular attractions in the park. Peter Pan’s Flight is a classic example: the ride itself lasts only a few minutes, but it can regularly attract queues of 40 minutes or more, and much longer waits are possible at busy times.

The queuing and the walking between rides can all take time, so use the park map on your app to plan your route around the things you really want to experience. Grouping attractions that are close together can save you a surprising amount of time – and energy – over the course of a day.

And it’s worth being realistic about what you can achieve. Magic Kingdom alone has a huge number of rides, attractions, entertainment and experiences, so trying to do absolutely everything in a single day – or even two – is a tall order.

Don’t let the pressure to tick everything off your list stop you from enjoying the magic!

2) Start early

What?! Isn’t this meant to be a holiday? If mornings aren’t your thing, feel free to stay in bed – but don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Queues at Disney start building from around 10am. By 11am they’re often at their peak and they often stay busy until lunchtime. So it’s good to choose a few days – maybe just one or two – where you arrive as the park opens so you can beat those queues. Disney regulars call this “rope drop”. We’ve done a list of rope drop tips to highlight the biggest dos and don’ts of an early start at the Disney parks.

My parents used to have us all lined up at the entrance to the Magic Kingdom like it was the Olympic 100m start blocks so we could get on Big Thunder Mountain before the queues got too long.

Some advice recommends booking an early character breakfast (scheduled before the official park opening) to get a head start on the rides. But in practice, we’ve found character breakfasts take a fair amount of time and it’s not an experience you should rush through in order to jump on a ride.

If your priority is rides rather than meeting characters, you’re probably better off getting through the gates early and heading straight for the attractions.

Guests staying at Disney resort hotels can enter the parks before everyone else thanks to Early Theme Park Entry. Some of the higher-end Disney hotels also offer Extended Evening Hours, allowing guests to stay in the parks after closing on certain nights. It’s definitely worth making the most of these quieter times of the morning and evening.

3) Eat a late lunch/ skip dinner

If you really, really can’t get out of bed early and the prospect of sprinting across a theme park as it opens just doesn’t appeal, there is another way. Start your day late and head to the parks just before lunch. As everyone heads off to eat, you may see the wait times start to dip.

The same applies in the evening – normally about 5pm – when the crowds start to head to their restaurant reservations. Disney has some great places to pick up a quick bite between rides and you can use the apps to pre-order your food, so you don’t waste valuable time – see our piece on the best 25 budget dining options for more tips.

And if you can bear to give the parades/ fireworks/ evening displays a miss, you will often be rewarded with reduced queues (the one exception is Epcot, where the rides close to most park-goers at 9pm as the fireworks start). See our piece on exploring Disney at night, to help get a steer on the best rides to explore after dark.

4) Use your My Disney Experience app

The My Disney Experience app is an essential tool for planning and managing your day at Walt Disney World.

The app gives you a live map of the parks, including current wait times for attractions, which is incredibly useful when deciding where to head next. You can also use it to manage your Lightning Lane selections (see below), make dining reservations, check park and entertainment times, view attraction information and place mobile food orders.

Download the app before your trip and get familiar with it. You’ll probably end up checking it throughout the day to keep an eye on queue times and adjust your plans in real time – whether that’s spotting a short queue nearby, checking when your next Lightning Lane selection is available or finding somewhere to grab food

📚 Essential reading for UK Disney World planners

5) Use Lightning Lanes

As you’ll have gathered, like most Disney regulars we have mixed views on this service when it was brought in by Disney during the Covid years but it seems set to stay.

And if you want to spend less time standing in queues, Lightning Lane can be one of the most effective options at Walt Disney World. But it’s worth understanding that Lightning Lane Multi Pass and Lightning Lane Single Pass cover different attractions, so don’t assume buying one gives you access to everything.

Lightning Lane Multi Pass lets you make advance selections for up to three eligible attractions in a park, with additional rides (subject to availability) becoming available after you use your first selection. The attractions included in Multi Pass vary by park.

Lightning Lane Single Pass is separate and is used for some of the most in-demand attractions. These attractions are not available through Multi Pass, so if there is a particular Single Pass attraction that you really want to experience, you need to consider it separately when planning your day.

The attractions available through each pass can change, and availability is limited, so check the current information in the My Disney Experience app before your visit.

There’s also a third version of the Lightning Lane at Walt Disney World – the Premier Pass. This is an all-inclusive premium pass that lets you use every Lightning Lane attraction once in the park. However, these passes are very expensive, costing hundreds of dollars per guest.

It’s also worth remembering that Lightning Lane isn’t essential for every Disney day. Your decision should depend on which attractions you want to ride, how busy the park is expected to be and how much you’re prepared to spend to reduce your time in the standby queues.

But read up on the system and be sure to maximise the service on the day you pay for it. You can read about our park-by-park strategy for using Lightning Lanes at Walt Disney World here. In general, though, we are not fans of Disney charging people to go on rides when they’ve already paid for park tickets.

6) Use Epcot’s second entrance

If you’re a guest at Disney’s Boardwalk or Yacht and Beach Club hotels at Florida’s Disney World – or if you take a boat from Hollywood Studios or the Disney Skyliner to Epcot – you can get access to Epcot’s second entrance, known as International Gateway. This takes you into the heart of the World Showcase – between France and the UK, to be precise.

From there, you’re just a short walk away from Remy’s Ratatouille Adventure – which often has a lengthy queue. Arriving via this entrance early in the morning – or around mealtimes when crowds shift toward restaurants – can be a great way to ride it before the queue starts to build.

7) Watch the weather

In Florida, you’ll often find outdoor rides close during thunderstorms and the wait times drop dramatically. If you can time it right and have your waterproofs on hand, you can be in pole position once the storm passes and the ride reopens.

The Animal Kingdom’s Kilimanjaro Safari is a great example of this. It’s often one of the first rides to close in poor weather but if you hover nearby, you’ll hopefully find wait times greatly reduced once it reopens.

How much does a Disney World holiday cost from the UK?

8) Stay hydrated

If you’ve got a long queue ahead of you, it definitely makes sense to have a few drinks and snacks to hand, particularly if you’ve got little ones in tow. Keep any snacks small and easy to pack away, should the queue suddenly start moving rapidly, as you’re not allowed to eat and drink on the rides themselves.

It’s also worth bringing a refillable bottle. Disney parks will give you free cups of water at most quick-service restaurants, so you can keep topping up throughout the day without paying theme park prices for bottled drinks.

9) Vary your day

Don’t spend your whole day in lengthy queues. You will come to hate Disney if you carry on like that. If you’ve just done a ride you’ve spent hours waiting in line for, try to find something completely different to do next, whether that’s seeing a show, sitting down for a snack and a rest or opting for a less popular ride.

Top tip: if you’ve just visited Space Mountain or Tron Lightcycle/ Run at Disney World, Florida, the nearby PeopleMover is pretty much its polar opposite: leisurely, slow-moving and – best of all – barely a queue in sight.

10) Use services like Single Rider and Rider Switch

It’s really worth knowing about these two innovations as they’re not well-known and they’re one of the best free ways to save time on queues for several popular rides.

Some Disney rides offer a Single Rider line, which can dramatically reduce your wait time if you’re happy to ride separately from the rest of your group. Disney staff use single riders to fill empty seats, which helps keep the ride running efficiently.

Single Rider queues are only available on a handful of attractions and you won’t get to choose who you sit next to – or sometimes even which row you sit in. On some rides you may also skip parts of the pre-show or introduction in order to keep the line moving.

At Walt Disney World Resort, Single Rider lines are currently found on attractions such as Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run and Rise of the Resistance, Remy’s Ratatoille Adventure and Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster Starring The Muppets. You won’t currently find them at Magic Kingdom.

However, it’s a fantastic way to experience rides that the rest of your family may not wish to go on or aren’t eligible for. My husband and I both separately rode on Rise of the Resistance in around 20 minutes – the queue at the time was more than an hour.

Another useful option for families is Disney’s Rider Switch service. If someone in your group doesn’t want to ride — or doesn’t meet the height requirement — one adult can queue and ride while the other waits with the younger child. Afterwards, you can swap without the second adult having to queue again (this can also mean an eligible older child gets to ride twice).

The downside is that you’ll experience the ride separately and you can end up separated for a long time, depending on the length of the queue.

But it’s a fantastic way for parents to enjoy bigger attractions they might otherwise have missed out on. For more on this, see our piece on What is Disney’s Rider Switch Service?

Finally – don’t let the queues take over

Which Disney World park is the least crowded?

This is one of the most common questions we see from people planning a Disney World holiday – and unfortunately there isn’t a simple answer.

Crowd levels vary considerably depending on when you’re visiting, what’s happening in the parks and which attractions you’re planning to visit. A park that feels relatively quiet on one day can be much busier on another.

Rather than choosing your park purely because someone says it is the “least crowded”, we’d look at the bigger picture: your travel dates, park hours, attractions you want to visit and whether there are any special events taking place.

As a general rule, midweek is often a sensible time to target the attractions you most want to ride, while long weekends Friday to Monday) can be more affected by local visitors and short-break traffic.

But remember that a quieter park doesn’t necessarily mean short queues for every ride. One particularly popular attraction can still have a lengthy wait even when the rest of the park feels relatively calm.

If your main priority is avoiding queues, you’re generally better off having a strategy for managing wait times than trying to predict which park will be quietest.

Finally – don’t try to do everything

There’s no getting around the fact that waiting in queues is part of a Walt Disney World holiday. Even with careful planning, you’ll probably spend some time standing in line – and during busy periods, some of those waits can be surprisingly long.

But you don’t have to let the queues dictate your entire day.

Do some research before you go, work out which attractions are genuinely important to you, and think about when you’re going to ride them.

Most importantly, don’t measure the success of your Disney day by how many rides you’ve managed to tick off. Walt Disney World is far more than a collection of attractions, and rushing from queue to queue in an attempt to do everything can mean missing the atmosphere, entertainment and spontaneous moments that make a Disney holiday special.