Magic Kingdom wait times have inched up since the park reopened, and strategy is once again relevant. Read on to learn about wait time trends and touring strategy at the most Magical place on earth.
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If you’re new to the wait time scorecards, check out our post explaining our Disney World Wait Time Scorecards. That post explains the different numbers you’ll see here including why they’re imperfect. Our wait time scorecards are based on the last week of data from Thrill-Data.com.
Here are the most recent looks at wait times across the four parks:
Magic Kingdom Wait Times (Aug. 17) (you are here)
For upcoming trips, you’ll also want to consult our masterpost on the reopening of Disney World.
This post works in tandem with our Magic Kingdom Rope Drop Strategy post, which addresses things like how to get to the park and what time to arrive. If you’re new to Disney World planning, you might also want to read our Guide to Rides and Entertainment at Magic Kingdom, which includes descriptions of the rides.
As a reminder, we only cover 10 Magic Kingdom rides in this post. The remaining tend to have shorter waits and thus should just be fit in whenever they’re convenient.
Bottom Line + Random Walks
Magic Kingdom waits for the most popular rides are mostly unchanged from two weeks ago. However, some jumps to less popular rides, and changing patterns of wiat times throughout the day mean strategy is actually necessary if you want to maximize your chance at getting on every ride. Starting with Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, Big Thunder, Splash Mountain, and Jungle Cruise was a good strategy this week.
I ran 50,000 random walk simulations using Saturday, August 15’s wait times on three strategies:
a fully random strategy (all 19 rides)
a strategy that starts with Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, Big Thunder, Splash Mountain, Jungle Cruise (and then goes random for remaining 14 rides)
a strategy that starts with Seven Dwarfs, Big Thunder, Splash Mountain, Jungle Cruise, and Pirates of the Caribbean (and then goes random for remaining 14 rides)
The third strategy is the second strategy minus Peter Pan’s Flight and with Pirates of the Caribbean added to the end. Here’s how these simulations compared:
Data Source: Thrill-Data.com
On average, you’re looking somewhere around 6 hours spent waiting in line for the 19 rides at Magic Kingdom. As “end of summer” crowds head to the parks, strategy is becoming more important. Visiting the rides in random order would run a big risk of missing at least one. Luckily, pretty simple rope drop strategies all but eliminate the risk of missing rides.
Both rope drop strategies did better than a random strategy (or “no strategy”), but including Peter Pan’s Flight paid off best. This is a change from two weeks ago, when skipping Peter Pan’s Flight early worked better.
Magic Kingdom Wait Time Scorecard Part 1
Data Source: Thrill-Data.com
The park was slightly busier this week than two weeks ago, with waits up pretty much across the board. But there weren’t any standouts among the most popular rides, and Splash Mountain wait times were actually down a bit.
The daily trends remained mostly unchanged from last scorecard. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train still jumps the quickest, and after that your goal is to get west (Frontierland / Adventureland) and beat the high waits there. Stopping at Peter Pan’s Flight makes sense again, as the ride is spending more of the afternoon around 30 minutes instead of 15.
Magic Kingdom Wait Time Scorecard Part 2
Data Source: Thrill-Data.com
Now, let’s talk about where to fit things in after you’ve finished your rope drop strategy. You shouldn’t have trouble finding waits of 30 minutes or less on Small World, Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, and Astro Orbiter.
If you had to push Jungle Cruise or Pirates of the Caribbean later into the day, anything at or under 30 minutes wait is great for those rides, but you may have to settle for 30 to 45 minutes waiting. Splash Mountain, Big Thunder, and Seven Dwarfs Mine Train are great picks at 30 minutes or less, but realistically you’ll want to be open to waiting 45 minutes for these rides (which is why we recommend visiting them early).
Conclusions
If you want to ride everything at Magic Kingdom, you can expect to spend a few hours of your day waiting in lines, and you should know some strategy heading into the park. But hey, that’s theme parks! While things are getting more time consuming, some simple patience and strategy make visiting the Magical place on Earth pretty simple.