Walt Disney World wait times in August 2026, hour by hour
Across 283,892 wait-time readings in August 2026, the average posted wait at Walt Disney World ran 11.1 min at 11 pm and 27.6 min at noon. The hour you arrive moved the wait by 149%; the day of the week moved it by 14%. Here is every park, hour by hour.
The hour you walk into a Walt Disney World park changed the average posted wait by 149% in August 2026. The day of the week changed it by 14%. Those two numbers come from the same 283,892 readings our collectors took across the four parks last month, and the larger of them is the one most trip advice spends the least time on.
Key Details
- What we measured: every posted standby wait our collectors recorded at the four Walt Disney World parks in August 2026, 283,892 readings across 31 days
- Shortest lines: Magic Kingdom, averaging 19.0 min
- Longest lines: Disney's Hollywood Studios, averaging 36.2 min, 91% above Magic Kingdom
- Best hour to be in a queue: 11 pm, averaging 11.1 min
- Worst hour: noon, averaging 27.6 min
Which park had the shortest lines
Averages across a whole month flatten a lot. This one flattens a real disagreement: the ordering below holds at only 8 of the 16 hours in it. Disney's Hollywood Studios carried the longest waits in August 2026 at 36.2 min, and Magic Kingdom the shortest at 19.0 min. Each park links to its live wait-time page, which is built from the same readings.
| Park | Average posted wait | Quietest hour | Busiest hour | Readings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Magic Kingdom | 19.0 min | 11 pm (10.1 min) | 6 pm (22.2 min) | 143,456 |
| Disney's Animal Kingdom | 22.8 min | 6 pm (15.9 min) | 11 am (29.4 min) | 33,193 |
| EPCOT | 25.6 min | 9 am (22.8 min) | 11 am (28.7 min) | 63,539 |
| Disney's Hollywood Studios | 36.2 min | 8 am (21.3 min) | noon (44.8 min) | 43,704 |
The hour matters far more than the day
Read down the first column. The average posted wait across all four parks bottomed out at 11.1 min at 11 pm and peaked at 27.6 min at noon, a 149% swing inside a single day. By comparison the quietest weekday, Sunday, averaged 21.8 min against Thursday's 24.8 min: a 14% spread across the entire week. Choosing the right hour was worth roughly 11 times as much as choosing the right day. A dash means that park did not report the hour on enough of the month to average; the columns end where each park does.
| Hour | All four parks | Magic Kingdom | Disney's Animal Kingdom | EPCOT | Disney's Hollywood Studios |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 am | 17.5 min | 11.8 min | 20.7 min | 25.1 min | 21.3 min |
| 9 am | 20.1 min | 14.8 min | 21.1 min | 22.8 min | 31.2 min |
| 10 am | 23.8 min | 17.4 min | 26.9 min | 25.0 min | 39.0 min |
| 11 am | 27.0 min | 20.4 min | 29.4 min | 28.7 min | 43.3 min |
| noon | 27.6 min | 21.7 min | 28.9 min | 27.9 min | 44.8 min |
| 1 pm | 26.3 min | 21.3 min | 26.1 min | 26.8 min | 41.4 min |
| 2 pm | 24.7 min | 19.9 min | 23.3 min | 25.8 min | 39.5 min |
| 3 pm | 24.4 min | 20.7 min | 20.6 min | 25.9 min | 37.0 min |
| 4 pm | 23.8 min | 20.7 min | 18.3 min | 25.6 min | 35.7 min |
| 5 pm | 23.8 min | 21.0 min | 18.0 min | 25.0 min | 35.5 min |
| 6 pm | 25.0 min | 22.2 min | 15.9 min | 25.3 min | 37.5 min |
| 7 pm | 25.4 min | 21.4 min | - | 25.6 min | 37.3 min |
| 8 pm | 23.3 min | 20.2 min | - | 23.6 min | 32.0 min |
| 9 pm | 19.0 min | 16.4 min | - | - | 26.4 min |
| 10 pm | 14.0 min | 13.1 min | - | - | - |
| 11 pm | 11.1 min | 10.1 min | - | - | - |
What this means for a park day
Three things follow from the table. The all-park average opened at 17.5 min at 8 am, peaked at 27.6 min at noon, and bottomed out at 11.1 min at 11 pm, so the end of the day is the part of it worth planning around. The parks do not share that peak: Disney's Animal Kingdom crested at 11 am and Magic Kingdom at 6 pm, 7 hours apart, so one park's timing does not transfer to another. And the weekday you pick was worth far less than the hour you arrive, so a plan built around the calendar was optimising the smaller of the two effects. Live waits for every ride are on our park data pages.
How we measured this
Our collectors poll Walt Disney World's own wait-time feed throughout the day and store every posted standby wait. This article reads 283,892 readings taken while a ride was operating, across 31 days and the four theme parks. Water parks are not included; they post no standby waits. An hour appears only when the whole month gave it at least 2,000 readings, which is what keeps a handful of pre-opening or after-hours polls from reading as a quiet hour. A park's own column is filled in only where that park reported the hour on at least a third of the month's days and gave at least 500 readings; a dash is where it did not.
Late hours exist only on the nights a park stays open, so they rest on less of the month than midday hours do. The quietest hour here, 11 pm, was collected on 17 of the month's 31 days; the busiest, noon, on 31.
The averages are recomputed from stored totals rather than averaged from averages. That distinction matters here: the busiest hour of the month carried several times the readings of the quietest, so averaging the hourly figures would weight a thin hour as heavily as a full one and quietly overstate the quiet end of the day.