Looking at the wait times and seeing 60, 75, 90 minutes and knowing as capacity increases those will only get worse.
This could be a competition to see which family member handles it worse.
So, how the heck can a family survive in line for that long?
What works for your family?
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Just got home Wednesday. Lines were pretty long but we didn’t wait over 30 minutes for anything. Focused rides during first two hours and last two hours. Worked out great for us!
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That’s encouraging.
Although with all of the live shows cancelled, I imagine it must create a bit of a void between those early rides and after-dinner rides.
Not too much! Plan a TS meal for lunch, shop/enjoying the cavalcades, take a mid-day break.
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My advice would be to only wait that long for the rides your family loves. If it’s not something you guys are excited about, there’s no use waiting. We had some long lines in UOR earlier this month even with XPs. It was NOT pleasant for the rides that we didn’t care much about. However, for rides like Hagrid’s, we didn’t mind the long wait, since we were so excited to ride it again.
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Yes it definitely facilitates the mid-day break strategy.
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I would not wait in lines that long with my kids (though I have waited in lines like that on adult only trips). If there is no FP for my next trip, I would plan on getting up early for RD. Even on crowded days (pre-Covid), the lines were always manageable the first 1.5 hours after opening. There were days I accomplished more in the first 1.5 hours, then the rest of the day combined.
The times might get worse with park capacities increasing, but that depends on if each ride still has room to increase its specific capacity yet as well. If more plexiglass dividers are used on some things, or it’s deemed safe enough on some outdoor rides to fill more rows (like SDD recently), then those effects could somewhat cancel each other. And opening up other things in the parks (not a lot of news on this yet) would help negate that also.
And keep in mind, in most cases those posted times are very inflated worst case scenarios that would include a potential delay for a cleaning cycle. When I was there, I would say for every 4 rides, 3 would have an actual wait of about 40-70% of the posted time while just 1 would be roughly the posted time. The TP app projected wait times were pretty spot on with maybe just a couple exceptions through my whole trip.
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Well I hope the TP times are a little overestimated too… darned if I can get MMRR below 90 minutes.
At this minute, app is saying 45 posted, but 32 actual, and that was pretty much the case when I rode it (or better, I think it was posted 50, but 24 actual for me). There should be plenty of opportunity for decently low waits on MMRR since they added the dividers, unless maybe midday on a weekend or holiday.
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Yeah my plan for April keeps optimizing it for 9:30-ish on Sunday morning but it’s still 90 minutes.
But I have faith this is like a worst-case projection.
Be a liner! Make a touring plan, optimize it, and stick with it!
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Wait, why did you have to wait? Was it at least shorter than standby?
Visited all the parks this week. The posted times were often way off, the lines being much shorter than expected. They certainly look lone, due to distancing. We rode MMRR at opening and again at closing. We basically walked on both times.
Anyhow, a good plan keeps you out of lines (e.g., show up an hour before the listed park opening time, make a touring plan a stick with it, go back to the resort midday for a short nap and recharge). If you find yourself in long lines, I use the Disney Play trivia.
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In my experience when we were there, actually the posted wait times were almost always accurate to within 5 minutes. I was expecting them to be shorter than posted, but never seemed to be the case for us.
Still, the lines always moved very quickly. A nice benefit to no FPs.
I have teens so they can stand on their own two legs better than I can but we did our best to RD. Lines were very long around the time official opening kicked in especially for DHS. Because of the extended queues they were in the sun and it was hot for us. I was fine except standing in line in the sun and then my mood suffered. I don’t know of tips to avoid that other than sunscreen, hats, sunglasses, fans, water if you’re going when it’s hot. It sucked and I greatly missed FP+ when even if I had to wait an hour for my FP+ to be good I could wait sitting down in the shade, browsing a store, etc. I am not a fan of no FP.
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I will be taking a leap of faith in my TP…
Currently it’s telling me to make the most of EMH at HS and first thing, make a beeline to head right over to… Muppets 3-D.
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LOL Don’t do that. Get there as early as you can on Disney transportation or walk to be an hour and a half early because they open the gates 30-60 min early in our experience. You will definitely be able to get through at least two major rides in that time if you hightail it. We did MMRR and SDD and were at the front of the line for SDD when official opening occurred.
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Agreed.
I’m hoping FP+ or something similar returns before my trip but…
A good TP would never tell you to do Muppets 3-D. 
Ok, I do like Muppets 3-D, but it never has a long line, or at least the wait is just a matter of waiting for the previous showing to be completed, so going there first makes zero sense.
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