Soon Epic Universal will Open its magnificent doors with so many new and exciting attractions. Now I am wondering How long you are willing to wait for an attraction.
When Harry Potter first opened some waited 8 hours just to get into the area. There were reports of folks lining up hours before the park opened and they had stop folks from waiting on the Highway.
I remember one day it was raining and we wanted to go on Avatar Flight of Passage. The wait said 120 minutes. The look on my wife’s face was indescribable as I walked into the Line. It ended up being only about 65 minutes, but it was well worth it. (I also bought her a poncho for said rain which made a huge difference).
The early word spreading during the first days of TM previews (and confirmed on the updated Universal Parks app) is that each of the portals will require you to sign up for a virtual queue before you can enter each land (this was rumored but never confirmed when the park was officially announced). The idea being that if they can manage the number of people in each portal, they can keep lines for individual attractions in each portal to a minimum and optimize the entire space available within the park, increasing overall capacity and attraction throughput. It's not clear how the system will work when the park is filled to the brim, but I'm sure it will frustrate some guests who may want to hop between portals just wanting to experience the highlights/coasters/thrill rides. The expectation will be that guests will be spending a minimum amount of time in each portal, and they will need to wait there or in Celestial Park before they will be given access to another portal. I do think given this confirmation of Universal utilizing virtual queues that it will be exceptionally difficult for most guests to experience all four portals (and Celestial Park) in a single day's visit during the first few months of operation, which makes the current ticketing restrictions extremely confounding.
Personally, I have a pretty high tolerance for waiting if it's for a brand new attraction (my wife and I waited over 4 hours to ride TTD in its first summer of operation), and I think many of the attraction queues at Epic will be just as entertaining and interesting as the rides themselves, so waiting in line will be part of the experience on your first few visits. However, to ride something I've ridden numerous times before, I probably would put my maximum tolerance at 90 minutes for the best attractions in the world, somewhere between 30-60 minutes for mid-level rides/coasters, and between 15-30 minutes for cloned attractions.
Yeah, 90 minutes before I get bored. This is usually reserved for exciting/ new rides.
It really depends on the situation, but I pretty much have three rough standards...
At my home parks or other parks I visit regularly (at least every other year), I'll wait 30 minutes for pretty much everything, but once it gets longer I start to become a bit more selective. 45 minutes is my typical cap for anything I don't consider a favorite, and for those I'll usually wait up to an hour. The only time I'll really wait more than an hour at a home park is if a ride is brand new, but even then if they get to be 90+ I'll just try again in the future rather than sacrifice a large chunk of my day.
At non-local parks I've visited before but don't visit as frequently, the pattern is similar but a bit more spread out. 30 minutes is the base, and pretty much everything that isn't a direct clone of something at my home parks warrants at least that. Rides that I enjoy, but that have an analogue at my home parks usually max out at about an hour. The unique offerings that I can't do at home I'm typically willing to wait up to about 90 minutes for, even if I've ridden them previously. Lastly, if there's a major new attraction at the park that I haven't ridden yet, I have no problem joining a two hour queue. It would need to be something truly special before I'd be willing to wait much longer than that, as spending hours in line for one ride significantly impacts your ability to ride other attractions.
If I'm at a brand new park I've never visited before, especially one that is in another country, I've got no problem joining a two hour wait for pretty much any attraction that isn't a stock model or import from elsewhere in the chain. Even in that situation, it's pretty difficult to justify much beyond that, but I have occasionally exceeded it when the situation warranted (such as the four hours I waited for Flight of Passage opening year, to date the longest I've waited for any theme park attraction).
90 minutes tops.
I have a low tolerance for extended waits and have PTSD from waiting 90 minutes only to have the attraction go down just before boarding. My limit is about 45 minutes. Also, I wait at least a year, maybe two, before going to a new park. The Star Wars expansion was two years and worked out good. Islands of Adventure was sooner and turned out bad.
With the outlandish prices these thieves charge to attend , I won't wait more than 15 minutes. What is amazing is that Guests will pay the ripoff admission fees then put up waiting for an attraction of 45 minutes or longer.
I think this is where an immersive and entertaining queue or pre-show pays dividends.
I am more likely to wait in line longer if I'm being entertained. If there's nothing but a long expectant wait then I'd be less inclined to hang around for much more than 40 mins.
One hour, tops. Life is far too precious to stand in a queue for an attraction of no more than couple of minutes in duration for more than an hour.