How Attractions wait times work
A practical guide to what the current and historical numbers on our public wait-time pages mean.
Current waits and statuses
Current waits are operator or provider posted standby estimates, not a measured queue duration. A ride status does not prove there is no wait. A missing or unknown status is shown as unavailable. A ride that is open without a numeric posted wait is still open; the missing number does not mean zero minutes.
Snapshots are fetched with a short cache to balance freshness and reliability. Refreshing the page requests the newest snapshot available after that cache; the page does not update itself in the background. A ride timestamp is the time the status changed, not the latest successful observation.
Historical context
The park-wide window uses up to 28 observed operating days selected from days with usable operating-schedule evidence. Actual coverage for each attraction counts days that contribute eligible posted-wait samples rather than implying every ride has a complete window.
Waits are reconstructed as step history and sampled at five-minute intervals so a wait that persists longer receives proportionate weight. Samples are grouped into park-local weekday and weekend hourly medians. A bucket needs a minimum sample count before it is published, and a daily graph needs at least six hourly buckets so a few isolated readings are not presented as a trend.
Historical graphs are suppressed when provenance is missing or invalid, generated in the future, or older than 48 hours. Historical context describes past observations; it is not a prediction or guarantee of what you will encounter.