How accurate are early morning wait times on my Disney experience?
I’m trying to gauge wait times for an 8 am HS open during the first hour or two. I have a few days where it’s scheduled for an 8 opening before my day so I’m thinking I’ll stalk wait times but I swear I read the wait times first thing are just set to default value and are inaccurate.
Unless things have changed, Disney measures wait times directly. (They used to hand out lanyards to random guests as they entered the line to measure wait times.)
Anyhow, the trouble with this technique is that it really shows what waits times WERE, not what they will be. So, if wait times are climbing, then the wait time that they measured will be slightly lower than reality, and if wait times are going down, then the wait time they they measured will be slightly higher than reality. I expect Disney applies some magic to the numbers as well.
Me when I get a lanyard: 
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I think for the super headliners they post what what they expect it will be within a few minutes. For example, when we RD TSL SDD was posted at 60 minutes but we were pretty close to the front of the pack so I really doubt it was 60 minutes at that moment but was probably going to be at that point if you were at the back of the RD pack.
From being someone who has had to hand this out to guests, IME, they’re used more to help Ops determine hourly capacity than adjusting queue waits. (“It took 52 minutes, in reality, to get this guest to the ride when, on paper, it should have taken 46 minutes. Why?”)
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“Because they pulled over to look for a FP4 after tapping in” 
Probably! Still doesn’t stop your Lead from fussing at YOU for not meeting your hourly cap that hour! 
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Thank you all they’ve now changed our opening time to 7:00 a.m. now I need you touring plans to catch up so I can recalibrate my plan and rethink everything again.
Then breakfast is looking better and better now.