Does Disney lie about wait times in their official app???

[Timsierramist]

I hope they do something with Magic Bands eventually to automatically and constantly estimate line wait times. From the time you cross the line at point A to the time you cross at point B. I imagine this wouldn't be too hard to set up.

 

[NCO91590]

I found the app to be pretty accurate as well. Better to over estimate than under estimate in my opinion. I've gotten into lines that said it was only a 20 minute wait and it ended up being closer to 40 (Living with the Land!!!!!!!!!!!!!).

 

[Djali999]

Having been a CM, I can confirm that Wait Times are generally inflated on official postings. This has more to do with the fact that Disney would prefer to round up and deliver a theoretically shorter wait (even if by a minute), and if things take longer than expected, then their butt is covered. Wheelchairs, E-stops, and other such things are simply part of the reality f running several thousand people through a fake cave per hour, and the Disney times have a certain degree of "float" to accommodate this fact already built in.

The super E ticket rides are programmed to display much higher numbers throughout the day, generally. When Splash and Big Thunder turn on for the morning, they tend to automatically display a "20". If the FLIK card consistently displays low or no wait, it'll sometimes drop it down to a 15 or 10. Rides with less demand, like Small World, tend to open with a 5 or 10 and build throughout the day. Generally speaking, even if a ride is a walk on, wait time boards will not display a 5 or 10 until the last hour of closing. You can see this in action very easily at Small World at night: wait time sign will say 15, with nobody in line. The system simply won't advertise the wait as "5" until the last few hours of the day.

The official given reason for this internally is indeed to help distribute crowds. Many under informed guests (not to be found on this board) will take the numbers at face value and may instead decide to check out the lower capacity rides like Tom Sawyer Island, TSI, and Riverboat. Disney really, really needs them to do this.

That said I don't think the official Disney numbers are incorrect, just imprecise. A "10" displayed doesn't mean they think it will take exactly 10 minutes, simply that they anticipate the wait to be somewhere between 8 and 12 minutes. In the middle of the day, the wait times are generally more accurate than at the start or end of the day. If you see Space Mountain displaying 85 minutes at 1 pm on July 5, it's probably pretty much right.

It's not that Touring Plans' numbers are wrong, it's just that they're more precise. Where the Haunted Mansion displays a 15, their app will draw on historical data and patterns to say the projected wait is 12 minutes. This also means, of course, that their numbers are much more easily impacted by stops, delays, and weather. I don't think their statement is necessarily incorrect, and of course they do have an app they want you to buy. I find the Touring Plans app is an excellent tool for planning out days - sometimes that precision really helps. Once inside the park, I tend to use the official Disney app because it presents an accurate photo of their official wait times at the moment, instead of drawing on projected attendance patterns.

Short answer: both versions of the story are correct.

 

[Timsierramist]

Having been a CM, I can confirm that Wait Times are generally inflated on official postings. This has more to do with the fact that Disney would prefer to round up and deliver a theoretically shorter wait (even if by a minute), and if things take longer than expected, then their butt is covered. Wheelchairs, E-stops, and other such things are simply part of the reality f running several thousand people through a fake cave per hour, and the Disney times have a certain degree of "float" to accommodate this fact already built in.

The super E ticket rides are programmed to display much higher numbers throughout the day, generally. When Splash and Big Thunder turn on for the morning, they tend to automatically display a "20". If the FLIK card consistently displays low or no wait, it'll sometimes drop it down to a 15 or 10. Rides with less demand, like Small World, tend to open with a 5 or 10 and build throughout the day. Generally speaking, even if a ride is a walk on, wait time boards will not display a 5 or 10 until the last hour of closing. You can see this in action very easily at Small World at night: wait time sign will say 15, with nobody in line. The system simply won't advertise the wait as "5" until the last few hours of the day.

The official given reason for this internally is indeed to help distribute crowds. Many under informed guests (not to be found on this board) will take the numbers at face value and may instead decide to check out the lower capacity rides like Tom Sawyer Island, TSI, and Riverboat. Disney really, really needs them to do this.

That said I don't think the official Disney numbers are incorrect, just imprecise. A "10" displayed doesn't mean they think it will take exactly 10 minutes, simply that they anticipate the wait to be somewhere between 8 and 12 minutes. In the middle of the day, the wait times are generally more accurate than at the start or end of the day. If you see Space Mountain displaying 85 minutes at 1 pm on July 5, it's probably pretty much right.

It's not that Touring Plans' numbers are wrong, it's just that they're more precise. Where the Haunted Mansion displays a 15, their app will draw on historical data and patterns to say the projected wait is 12 minutes. This also means, of course, that their numbers are much more easily impacted by stops, delays, and weather. I don't think their statement is necessarily incorrect, and of course they do have an app they want you to buy. I find the Touring Plans app is an excellent tool for planning out days - sometimes that precision really helps. Once inside the park, I tend to use the official Disney app because it presents an accurate photo of their official wait times at the moment, instead of drawing on projected attendance patterns.

Short answer: both versions of the story are correct.

Incredibly insightful, thank you for sharing!

 

[alissafalco]

Well, as I said, I was certainly skeptical that this was true. The consensus seems to be that the highlighted line from my first post is not true, which leads me towards the idea that the author of the book was simply attempting to make their own wait time app appear more valuable, which instead, brings renewed skepticism into other parts of the book I've read. Besides that little caveat however, I have found the Unofficial Guide (2016) to be useful if not just an overly fun read before heading to WDW even though I originally swore I would never buy it because I could find the same information "on WDWmagic or other 3rd party sights". For example, I had always wanted to know how to "hack" the resort air conditioners so they wouldn't automatically switch off when you were not present... . Up until reading the guide, I always thought buying a balloon and letting it drift around was the best way.

Also, I get the whole idea behind wait times fluctuating based on a X, Y and Z and the simple fact that there is no way for the wait time information to be 100% accurate. My questions was more geared towards the books claim that Disney intentionally misinforms it's guests about actual wait times in order to disperse crowds.

The team that creates the Unofficial guide go into a lot of work and research to create the book and I would be curious to know what research and investigative work they have conducted that leads them to this conclusion, if any.

@lentesta

 

[alissafalco]

When I was there this past September, all 3 nights I was at MK, literally 5 minutes before park closing 7 DMT said a 40 minute wait. I went on all 3 nights and all 3 nights it was only a 20 minute wait (I timed it). Now were they inflated to discourage people from getting on because the park was about to close? I don't know.

 

[alissafalco]

I was browsing through the 2016 "unofficial" guide to WDW the other day when I came across this sentence which barely stops short of accusing Walt Disney's World's official wait time app of blatentely lying to it's guests to disperse crowds throughout the park.



I never heard of anything like this until I came across this page in the book, but I'm skeptical.

Does anyone think this is true or is the author of this book just trying to push their own wait time and planning app that is probably major part of said authors income.

The author is a member here. I'm sure he will explain. @lentesta

 

[lentesta]

I was browsing through the 2016 "unofficial" guide to WDW the other day when I came across this sentence which barely stops short of accusing Walt Disney's World's official wait time app of blatentely lying to it's guests to disperse crowds throughout the park.



I never heard of anything like this until I came across this page in the book, but I'm skeptical.

Does anyone think this is true or is the author of this book just trying to push their own wait time and planning app that is probably major part of said authors income.

I wrote that - thanks for reading the book!

For a long time, Tim, Disney included in its data feed for My Disney Experience, both the posted wait, and a field called "Actual Wait."

Only the posted wait was displayed to users. We think the "actual wait" field was used by internal apps that, for cost savings reasons, used the MDE feed.

I'm pretty sure we have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of data points to back this up. And I'm pretty sure that the practice is common knowledge to most people here, especially Castmembers.

len

 

[lentesta]

Ah, I forgot that we had graphs of these data, @Timsierramist.

Here's Space Mountain from December 31, 2014. The black dots are Disney's posted wait times. The green dots are actual wait times, from our users and Disney's internal MDE data. You can see that most of the time between 10 AM and 11:30 AM, for example, the posted wait was 250 minutes, while the actual wait was under 70. That's an example of Disney using the posted wait as a signal to go somewhere else.

You can use the site to explore any attraction any day in the past. You'll see the same trend day after day when it's busy. And you'll notice it happens most in the morning and just before park close, and at headliner attractions.

Toy Story Mania's waits right before closing are another example. They're frequently inflated (here's it's 2x - 2.5x higher than actual) so they can close the park on time. Again, you're free to explore the data going as far back as we have it, for any attraction.

And just to be clear, it's not just Disney. I'm pretty sure this happens at most theme parks on a regular basis.