That Park Place is about a month-and-a-half from our one year anniversary. During our time we have run multiple tests to check Disney World’s wait times posted versus their real wait times for attractions. In other words, how accurate is Walt Disney World with standby waits? It’s an important question because Disney has monetized skipping lines since the pandemic, meaning they have a vested interest in exaggerated wait times.
During our October test, we checked the wait times across all four parks over multiple days and at different times of the day. Our results showed that posted wait times were indeed very far off of what you’d really wait in line. We then tested this again in January with just as rigorous evaluation. The results were even worse:
What we discovered was that other than Rock’n Roller Coaster (which went down briefly while our staff waited), the queue wait times posted by Disney were substantially longer than the actual time guests wound up waiting. When combined with the merge points for Lightning Lane, we found that Lightning Lane picks via Genie+ provided almost no benefit except for a very few attractions at peak crowd levels. We also found that often, Lightning Lane purchasers were seen entering empty queues for attractions that had almost no chance of ever featuring long waits. These families likely hadn’t been to Walt Disney World often and were wasting their Lightning Lane options on rides that had no merit for even including a Lightning Lane.
So it was time again to see how Disney World is doing and we chose an entire week surrounding Memorial Day Weekend to send five different reporters to the different parks on different days. We chose this time frame to try to see not only if Disney had changed, but also because this is traditionally seen as the beginning of the summer crowd season.
We've got the biggest Disney news stories of the week! 🧞♂️
Genie+ CHANGES and 6 More Big Disney News Stories from This Week https://t.co/dccHzE32S3 pic.twitter.com/VyhADqQg5V
— AllEars.Net (@AllEarsNet) June 4, 2022
The results are in after seven days (though we do have reporters in Hollywood Studios today for other reasons). How did Disney do?
Surprisingly, we found Walt Disney World was significantly improved in accurately measuring wait times and providing estimates to the public. Whether this is because of better sampling size and time for Disney since they started Lightning Lanes, or whether it’s due to criticism having an impact, the improvement is notable. In the seven days of testing, Disney was only inflating wait times by 17%.
The best park for accuracy was Epcot. We found the worst was Magic Kingdom. The parks are best at relaying accurate wait times during mid-morning to mid-afternoon. We found that the 17% was partly due to late posted wait times being nearly worthless. Guests who purchase or use a Lightning Lane near closing may be totally wasting their time and money. Though posted waits near closing can still show 30 minutes or 40 minutes, they’re often walk-ons. This was especially true at Magic Kingdom. We can’t endorse the use of Lightning Lane near closing for anything but the two most popular attractions in any park.
We also continue to find that Genie+ and the fifteen dollar service is largely not worth the money. Despite all but one park reaching capacity on some of the days of testing, our writers had no problem accessing the rides easily. Lines never reached a point that would justify Genie+. Moreover, if one of your Genie+ Lightning Lane passes lands near park closing, it likely let you skip a non-existent queue.
Overall then it’s a major positive for a Disney in that they have greatly improved their wait predictions. Still, Genie+ didn’t seem like a very good product even with summer crowds in place.
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