We Analyzed 47 Million Theme Park Wait Times. Here's What We Found.
Based on real-time wait data from 56 US theme parks — updated daily by Thoosie.
Every summer, millions of families make the same guess: pick a park, hope for short lines, and discover mid-morning that the guess was wrong. We wanted to replace guesswork with data.
We've collected 47.5 million wait-time readings at 49 US theme parks. Every reading is a real-time snapshot from the park: this ride, at this moment, was showing this wait. What we found challenges some assumptions that get repeated a lot in travel forums and park blogs.
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The Park With the Shortest Lines Isn't the One You'd Expect
Kings Dominion averaged 6.4 minutes across 733,000 readings — the lowest of any major park we measured. Knoebels Amusement Resort came in second at 7.3 minutes (309,000 readings), and Carowinds third at 7.4 minutes (540,000 readings).
To put that in context: a 6-minute average means most rides are walk-ons or near walk-ons for most of the day. The longest average waits at Kings Dominion — on the busiest days for the most popular rides — are shorter than what many parks post as a good day.
The parks with the longest overall averages are on the opposite end of the spectrum. Universal Epic Universe, which opened in 2025, averaged 40.3 minutes across 111,000 readings — about 6× Kings Dominion. That's not an anomaly from opening week; it's held consistently across our tracking period. Walt Disney World's Hollywood Studios averaged 31.6 minutes, Universal Studios Hollywood 29.6 minutes, and Knott's Berry Farm 29.3 minutes.
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The Weekend Penalty Is Real — But Not at Disney
For most parks, visiting on a weekend adds meaningful time to every ride. For a handful of major parks, it actually reduces waits. The direction depends entirely on who visits and when.
Worst weekend penalties (additional minutes vs. weekday average):
| Park | Weekday avg | Weekend avg | Penalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Six Flags Over Georgia | 10.6 min | 35.4 min | +24.8 min |
| Knott's Berry Farm | 25.1 min | 35.4 min | +10.3 min |
| Six Flags Fiesta Texas | 14.8 min | 25.6 min | +10.8 min |
| Busch Gardens Tampa | 15.3 min | 24.1 min | +8.8 min |
| Six Flags Discovery Kingdom | 11.3 min | 19.4 min | +8.1 min |
Six Flags Over Georgia's 234% weekend increase is the starkest we found: a weekday visit there averages 10 minutes per ride; Saturday averages 35 minutes. That's a completely different experience depending on which day you show up.
Parks where weekends are actually lighter:
| Park | Weekday avg | Weekend avg | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Disneyland | 19.8 min | 16.6 min | Weekdays worse |
| Walt Disney World – Hollywood Studios | 32.7 min | 29.8 min | Weekdays worse |
| Walt Disney World – Magic Kingdom | 20.7 min | 19.0 min | Weekdays worse |
| Walt Disney World – Epcot | 27.6 min | 27.4 min | Roughly equal |
| Dollywood | 19.3 min | 15.7 min | Weekdays worse |
| Universal Epic Universe | 42.0 min | 37.6 min | Weekdays worse |
The Disney pattern is the annual-passholder effect. Passholders have schedule flexibility and tend to go on weekdays, while one-time visitors are more likely to show up on weekends. The park-pricing structure also steers date-sensitive visitors toward weekdays. The net result: if you visit a Disney park on a Tuesday instead of Saturday, you'll typically wait longer, not less.
Dollywood shows a similar but different dynamic. Its visitor base skews toward regional and domestic tourists who often have more mid-week flexibility than theme-park-goers generally do.
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The Longest Lines in the Country
These are the rides with the highest average wait times across our full dataset. We're only including rides with at least 5,000 readings to filter out outliers from single-day events.
| Ride | Park | Average wait |
|---|---|---|
| Mine-Cart Madness™ | Universal Epic Universe | 96 min |
| Harry Potter and the Battle at the Ministry™ | Universal Epic Universe | 92 min |
| Hagrid's Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure™ | Universal Studios Islands of Adventure | 87 min |
| GhostRider | Knott's Berry Farm | 84 min |
| Test Track | Walt Disney World – Epcot | 72 min |
| Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind | Walt Disney World – Epcot | 70 min |
| Radiator Springs Racers | Disney California Adventure | 67 min |
Hagrid's and GhostRider deserve a closer look. Hagrid's opened in 2019 and averaged 87 minutes across 8,000 readings — more than five years after its debut, the line has never substantially shortened. GhostRider at Knott's averaged 84 minutes across 31,000 readings, making it the highest-sustained-wait coaster in our dataset. No gimmick, no new-ride hype — just a well-liked ride that draws a consistent crowd.
Epic Universe's top two rides averaging 92–96 minutes represent a different category entirely: a brand-new park with attractions that aren't available anywhere else, drawing visitors who specifically planned trips around them.
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The Best Day to Visit
Across the 23 parks where we had reliable day-of-week data, Thursday is the lightest day at 12 of them. The effect varies by park type:
- Cedar Point: Thursday averages 18.8 minutes vs. Saturday's 25.8 minutes — a 7-minute-per-ride difference
- Hersheypark: Thursday 9.7 minutes vs. Saturday 16.7 minutes — waits nearly double on weekends
- Kings Island: Thursday 12.7 minutes vs. Saturday 21.7 minutes — 9 minutes lighter
- Knott's Berry Farm: Tuesday 21.1 minutes vs. Saturday 39.0 minutes — the largest absolute gap in the dataset for a single-park best-vs-worst comparison
Disney parks break from the Thursday rule. At Magic Kingdom, Sunday is the lightest day (17.6 minutes average); Wednesday is the worst (21.7 minutes). Animal Kingdom also sees its lightest crowds on Sunday. The broader theme: for Disney parks, day selection matters less than time of day — the variance across days of the week is smaller than the variance within a single day.
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The Bottom Line
The parks with the shortest lines tend to be regional or mid-tier parks that don't generate the same national draw as Disney or Universal. Kings Dominion, Knoebels, and Carowinds deliver solid rides with genuinely short waits because their visitor base is more local and less driven by destination-tourism demand.
The parks with the longest lines — Epic Universe, Hollywood Studios, Universal Hollywood, Knott's Berry Farm — are either new, nationally known, or both. Their lines are long because demand is structurally high, not because they're poorly managed.
If you want short lines: go to a regional park, visit on a Thursday, and avoid Six Flags properties on weekends. If you're going to Disney or Universal: the day of the week matters less than you think — focus on arriving at opening and managing your time within the day.
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> Note on methodology: All readings are from active, open rides with wait times above zero, collected during summer peak season. We filtered out rides with an open-rate below 30% to exclude maintenance-closed attractions that would skew averages. Sample counts per park range from 42,000 to 808,000 readings. Small parks with fewer than 40,000 readings are included in the dataset but not cited in per-park comparisons to avoid misleading claims from thin samples. Off-season waits will be materially shorter at most parks.