Honest, realistic Disney World ride/attraction wait times

[carlsons92]

My family is heading down to Disney World early next week-for my children, it’ll be their first time, and for my wife & I it’ll be our first time since we were children ourselves (early ‘90s). I understand there’s the Genie+ thing that we’re trying to figure out, and I’m not looking for a detailed explanation of that-I’m curious if anyone can give me an idea of what I can expect for wait times for rides at the four parks. I know some rides are different than others, and I hear an average wait time is somewhere around an hour. How can we honestly plan a day at these parks? The shortlist of rides my family would like to hit are as follows:

Star Tours
Test Track
Soarin'
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Splash Mountain
Haunted Mansion
Mission: Space

Again, we’d ideally like to go on more, but I’m not naïve-I know people flock to these parks from all over the world and wait times are essentially guaranteed to be brutal. I know the core draw of these parks are the rides, which is why we’re going, so any feedback in this regard is appreciated!

 

[Aurorafan]

Be sure you rope drop the parks and you will minimize your waits. Soarin will be a walk on at park opening - I rode it twice in a row. Test track will be somewhat of a wait. You shouldnt have too much of a wait for Mission space. Star tours shouldn't be an issue early on either. I went to HM early and had about a 20 min wait. I would encourage you to invest in Genie+ at MK if you can. You will be able to get all the major rides. I used it and never had much of a wait for anything. Good luck and have fun!

 

[GuyFawkes]

Soarin' good luck with that. Maybe 2 hours if not longer this time of year. Same with test track and the two mountains.

 

[DisneyfanMA]

I'm sure you've already done this, but I highly advise you download and login to the My Disney Experience app on your mobile. Login and look at the 4 parks on the map and scroll around to get a feel for wait times each day and at various times.

I bought Genie + and will also consider buying 1 Individual Lightning Lane at a couple of the parks. I'm tempering expectations with 3 children in tow. We will enjoy the sights and sounds of the parks, the food and the shows as much as the rides. That said I want our money's worth and we'll ride as much as we can without pushing the kids and my wife to Madness.

In my younger days I was a lunatic on a vacation like this trying to rush everything in. I'm more relaxed now and will accept were going to have to wait and also may miss a ride or two here or there. As long as we can manage to get the ones the kids will love in (for example Mickey Minnie Runaway Railway and Ratattoullie) well be good.

Best of luck and report back!

 

[DisneyJoe]

My family is heading down to Disney World early next week-for my children, it’ll be their first time, and for my wife & I it’ll be our first time since we were children ourselves (early ‘90s). I understand there’s the Genie+ thing that we’re trying to figure out, and I’m not looking for a detailed explanation of that-I’m curious if anyone can give me an idea of what I can expect for wait times for rides at the four parks. I know some rides are different than others, and I hear an average wait time is somewhere around an hour. How can we honestly plan a day at these parks? The shortlist of rides my family would like to hit are as follows:

Star Tours
Test Track
Soarin'
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Splash Mountain
Haunted Mansion
Mission: Space

Again, we’d ideally like to go on more, but I’m not naïve-I know people flock to these parks from all over the world and wait times are essentially guaranteed to be brutal. I know the core draw of these parks are the rides, which is why we’re going, so any feedback in this regard is appreciated!

Really depends on:
- what park you visit on what day
- the time of day
- how early you arrive - if you get to a park when it opens, you can get much more done than if you arrive at 11am
- use the Disney app to view wait times - they are often inflated, but not always.
- learn to use Mobile Ordering for quick service food, it can help reduce waiting in line - order early as possible

Good luck and have fun.

 

[Chef Mickey]

Do them all before park close, all of those will be under 20 min.

 

[Twirlnhurl]

I strongly recommend the TouringPlans WDW Lines app. It has a year subscription that costs less than a day of Genie+ (which doesn't renew automatically, so you don't have to worry about forgetting to cancel) and it let's you input the rides you want to see and will tell you the order to see them to minimize the wait time.

I've been using it for years, and I really like it. They even have graphs showing the estimated wait times for each attraction over a day.

My sister took her family to Magic Kingdom a few days ago, so I put together a plan for her. It only took a couple of minutes, and it was accurate to within a couple of minutes.