It’s no secret that a Disney World vacation usually involves a certain amount of standing in line!
Splash Mountain
When Disney World first reopened back in July, we noticed light crowds throughout all of the parks. In fact, the only place we seemed to frequently find long longs and bottlenecks at first was in Disney’s Hollywood Studios. But in the months following the initial reopening, the crowds in the parks have grown steadily.
With more guests heading to the parks, we’ve seen Disney Park Pass reservations fill up much more frequently than they did in the summer months.
Magic Kingdom Entrance
But that isn’t the only change that the increase in crowds has brought. While we were able to walk on to many popular attractions right after the reopening, the wait times for many of the rides have now started to climb.
Slinky Dog Dash Line
So, what were the average wait times for Disney World attractions throughout the month of October? Let’s take a look!
Average Wait Times for Magic Kingdom Attractions in October
According to our research, here were the average wait times for Magic Kingdom attractions throughout the month of October!
- Dumbo the Flying Elephant — 8 minutes
- Liberty Square Riverboat — 9 minutes
- Mad Tea Party — 9 minutes
- Carousel of Progress — 10 minutes
- Magic Carpets of Aladdin — 10 minutes
- Barnstormer featuring the Great Goofini — 11 minutes
- Tomorrowland Speedway — 11 minutes
- Under the Sea – Journey of the Little Mermaid — 15 minutes
- Mickey’s PhilharMagic — 16 minutes
- Prince Charming Regal Carrousel — 17 minutes
- Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh — 17 minutes
- Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin — 18 minutes
- Astro Orbiter — 22 minutes
- “it’s a small world” — 24 minutes
- Peter Pan’s Flight — 24 minutes
- Space Mountain — 26 minutes
- Haunted Mansion — 28 minutes
- Jungle Cruise — 31 minutes
- Pirates of the Caribbean — 32 minutes
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad — 34 minutes
- Seven Dwarfs Mine Train — 45 minutes
- Splash Mountain — 47 minutes
It looks like lots of guests are trying to catch a ride on Splash Mountain ahead of the planned Princess and the Frog retheming! While Splash Mountain had the longest wait on average throughout the month, we weren’t surprised to see the consistently popular Seven Dwarfs Mine Train just behind!
Seven Dwarfs Mine Train
But we WERE a little surprised to see where Peter Pan’s Flight landed on the list. This attraction regularly had one of the longest wait times in the park prior to the closure, but maybe the lack of FastPass+ has helped contribute to the shorter lines!
Check out photos and videos of our first Jingle Cruise ride of the year in Magic Kingdom!
Average Wait Times for EPCOT Attractions in October
Here were the average wait times for EPCOT attractions throughout the month of October!
- Awesome Planet — <1 minute
- The Seas with Nemo and Friends — 9 minutes
- Journey into Imagination — 10 minutes
- Gran Fiesta Tour — 10 minutes
- Living with the Land — 11 minutes
- Spaceship Earth — 13 minutes
- Mission: SPACE — 20 minutes
- Soarin’ — 25 minutes
- Test Track — 47 minutes
- Frozen Ever After — 48 minutes
So it looks like Soarin, Test Track, and Frozen Ever After continue to have the longest posted wait times in the park, which is in line with what we came to expect prior to the closures as well!
Frozen Ever After
Since all of the other attractions had an average wait time of 20 minutes or less, it looks guests could enjoy most of the rides in EPCOT without having to stand in line for too long last month!
Here are the 5 most important changes we saw in EPCOT in October!
Average Wait Times for Disney’s Hollywood Studios Attractions in October
Here were the average wait times for Disney’s Hollywood Studios attractions throughout the month of October!
- Lightning McQueen’s Racing Academy — 11 minutes
- Alien Swirling Saucers — 17 minutes
- Muppet Vision 3D — 19 minutes
- Star Tours – The Adventures Continue — 21 minutes
- Toy Story Mania — 22 minutes
- Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster featuring Aerosmith — 39 minutes
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror — 41 minutes
- Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run — 43 minutes
- Slinky Dog Dash — 52 minutes
- Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway — 67 minutes
With an average wait time of 67 minutes, Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway had the longest average wait of all the Disney World attractions.
Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway
Of course, since Rise of the Resistance is still using a virtual boarding group system and there’s no stand-by line available, this attraction doesn’t have wait times listed, despite its immense popularity!
Didn’t get a Rise of the Resistance boarding group at 7AM? Here’s what you can do.
Average Wait Times for Disney’s Animal Kingdom Attractions in October
Here were the average wait times for Disney’s Animal Kingdom attractions throughout the month of October!
- TriceraTop Spin — 5 minutes
- It’s Tough to Be a Bug — 10 minutes
- Kali River Rapids — 15 minutes
- DINOSAUR — 16 minutes
- Kilimanjaro Safaris — 17 minutes
- Expedition Everest — 20 minutes
- Na’vi River Journey — 31 minutes
- Avatar Flight of Passage — 40 minutes
Even though Flight of Passage had the longest average wait time in the park last month, it’s still significantly shorter than the pre-closure wait times, which were regularly between two to three hours.
Flight of Passage Queue
Outside of Pandora, the average wait times for all of the Animal Kingdom attractions were 20 minutes or less in October, so this is another park where guests were able to experience a lot of rides with relatively short lines!
You can see naked mole rats and snakes again in Animal Kingdom!
Now that we’ve covered alllll of the data, here’s a quick look at the attractions with the longest and shortest average wait times in each of the parks last month!
Average Wait Times in October 2020
There are definitely still some attractions that are pulling some pretty significant wait times, especially in Hollywood Studios! But overall, the average wait times for many of the rides last month were fairly low compared to recent years. Be sure to share your wait time experiences with us in the comments!
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Are these actual experienced wait times? Or posted wait times? Thank you!!!!
Rachel, they are posted times.
That’s even better! Thanks!
What about average wait times of weekday vs. weekend? Do you have data on that you could share?
Can’t wait to see this info released for the month of November. My guess is it’s going to be 35-50% longer, but we will see!
My family and I visited Oct. 12-17 and the line waits are not even near being correct to what is being posted!!! Seven Darwarfs was at least 90 or more minutes! Never did get to ride it! Frozen was at least 90 min. Or more! Standing in the heat with humidity was wicked! No shade anywhere while waiting. Na’vi River was over an hr. And Flight of passage was about 50 min. We didn’t get to enjoy the park as much as we would have liked, because the Magic Kingdom was only open till 5 pm! That stunk! Even food lines became bottled up with wait times! Very disappointed!