Going to Walt Disney World usually requires you remember to pack the most important thing of all: your patience. Yes, it’s a terrible cliche, but it’s also deeply, incredibly important not only to maintaining familial peace, but also to ensuring you keep your sanity during your vacation.
You will have to wait in long lines nearly everywhere, from Space Mountain to Na’vi River Journey, and even to the hotel food court. That’s a fact of Disney life.
But, for whatever reason, there are a small handful of attraction that have very high profiles among Disney visitors, but which never really have tremendously long lines. Or, in some cases, their lines are only really long at specific times which can be avoided — and I don’t mean by arriving at 6:00 AM.
Here are the five attractions at Walt Disney World with surprisingly short waits.
Spaceship Earth
Image: rhysasplundh, Flickr (license)
One of the funniest things about Epcot is how unique and predictable the guest-movement pattern is within the park. Partly due to the delayed opening of much of World Showcase, guests tend to spend their morning in Future World and their afternoon exploring the national pavilions surrounding the lagoon.
Because of this, it’s easy to avoid major crowds in Future World by doing some of its attractions later in the day. One attraction, specifically, is famous for this effect: Spaceship Earth.
When guests arrive at Epcot, the enormous geodesic sphere at the park’s entrance is an unavoidable lure. It’s huge and iconic, and so many guests will just go there first because it’s the first attraction they pass.
Other guests will be savvy to the long wait times on rides like Test Track and Soarin’ over the World, so they’ll head to those rides first, but then make Spaceship Earth their second or third stop on their morning tour.
By the afternoon, however, most guests will be hungry and want to sate their appetites on the delicious cuisine of the World Showcase. This leaves Spaceship Earth — a high-capacity attraction — relatively empty later in the day. As a rule, the later in the day you ride it, the smaller the line will be. And, outside of a few peak days throughout the year, it will generally be a walk-on in the late afternoon.
Mission: Space (Green Team)
Image: CanenFam, Flickr (license)
When Mission: Space opened in 2003, it was one of Disney’s most expensive and most elaborate attractions in the company’s history. The ride sought to simulate a real spaceship launch, flight, and re-entry experience — in a deeply realistic and intense fashion.
Early in its life, a handful of high-profile incidents made the attraction seem intense to the point of danger — and, quickly, guests opted to sit the ride out rather than risk exposing underlying health problems or triggering intense bouts of nausea. The ride was still popular, but nowhere near the runaway hit Disney expected.
As a result, Disney tuned down the ride for some guests — creating what became known as the “Green Team” experience. It was, for over ten years, the exact same ride as the more intense “Orange Team” experience, but without the centrifugal force used to create the high-G-force feeling of shuttle launch and re-entry.
In 2017, Disney redesigned the attraction slightly, refurbishing the entire ride and giving the “Green Team” its own unique experience — an earth-orbit simulation that feels most similar to Soarin’ in both its intensity and scope.
The ride is actually far more delightful than you’d expect a tuned-down version of another attraction to be. It stands on its own, with stunning visuals, a lovely score, and a genuinely fun sense of adventure. Sure, it lacks the seat-of-your-pants thrills that the “Orange Team” mission offers, but it is a new and unique ride — and usually available with a minimal wait.
Gran Fiesta Tour
Image: lorenjavier, Flickr (license)
Just a couple of doors down from Mission: Space, the Mexico pavilion at Epcot’s World Showcase is one of the most magical and transporting places on Walt Disney World property. With the outside of the pavilion evoking ancient civilizations from Mexico’s history, the inside seeks to create the feeling of an evening festival in a small riverside town. There are shops, a bar, a restaurant, and a simple boat ride lurking in the back.
Originally known as El Rio Del Tiempo – the River of time, Disney redesigned the attraction in 2007 to star Donald Duck and the Three Caballeros. As such, it combines the classic touch of Disney’s best boat rides with more modern attraction sensibilities like humor and visual effects.
The result is a charming boat ride through faithful recreations of Mexico’s cities and countryside. And, with a fireworks finale that is memorable and delightful, it’s a ride that both adults and kids can enjoy.
Because it’s a boat ride much in the style of it’s a small world, the ride features high-capacity boats and can move a large number of people through it at any given time. For that reason, the line is almost never very long — even at peak times in the resort.
Star Tours
Image: harshlight, Flickr (license)
It’s hard to know the long-term effects Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge will have on Star Tours’ wait times, but even now — as Star Wars fever is at its peak — Star Tours rarely has a wait time exceeding 40 minutes. Considering Disney tends to inflate its queue lengths slightly as a way of increasing guest satisfaction (“It said 35 minutes, but we really only waited 20!”), it’s highly unlikely you’ll have to wait more than a half-hour to ride Star Tours unless you’re visiting on a particularly busy day.
That fact is truly astonishing considering the absolutely amazing offering that Star Tours is.
It’s easy to take it for granted nowadays, considering we have Millennium Falcon rides, Flight of Passage, and even a full-blown Hogwarts Castle down the street. But Star Tours packs an absolute wallop of a punch, with its thrilling score, randomized plotline, and delightful bit of humor courtesy of C-3PO and R2-D2.
In a world with Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, it will never be the best Star Wars-themed attraction on Disney property. But it is the original, and it’s still just as amazing as it was when it first debuted. That fact, coupled with its insanely-high capacity, make its relatively short wait times astonishing.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Image: harshlight, Flickr (license)
It’s hard to believe, but one of the greatest attractions that the Walt Disney Company has ever produced — one which birthed a multi-billion dollar film franchise, mind you — still rarely has a long line.
Pirates of the Caribbean is a slow-moving boat ride straight through a plundered pirate village, and it also is a ride that you can do at roughly any time of day without waiting any more than 30-40 minutes at most. That is astonishing, especially when you remember it’s near the top of every list of attractions guests must do.
Even if you do have to wait close to 30 minutes to ride the ride, the queue is entirely indoors, cool, and fairly relaxing to experience — making it a great place to wait without feeling like you’re gonna lose your mind from boredom. It compares favorably to the other classic Disney ride nearby — the Haunted Mansion — in this regard, considering that other ride regularly features 50-plus minute waits outside in the oppressive heat.
For a ride as popular and iconic as Pirates of the Caribbean to have such a relatively short wait time is astonishing — and, most likely, is part of the reason for its enduring popularity. It’s there when you need it, like the best things in life.
