What's new

Your most disproportionately long wait for a ride?

Matt N

CF Legend
Hi guys. I’m sure that at some point, most of us have gone to a park in the opening year of a major new ride and waited a huge amount of time for it. It’s almost a rite of passage for a theme park fan, and it’s hard to avoid if you want to ride the brand new major attraction at a park in its opening year. But have you ever waited a long time for a ride that probably didn’t warrant a queue that long? For instance, have you ever waited for a minor filler attraction and had the queue turn out to be longer than that of a major headliner? That’s what I’d call a disproportionately long wait, and it’s rarely talked about in the sphere of theme park queues. With that in mind, I today ask you; what has been your most disproportionately long wait for a ride? When have you waited a comparatively long time for something that probably didn’t warrant a queue of that length?

I’ll get the ball rolling with my answer.

Personally, I’d nominate Gangsta Granny: The Ride at Alton Towers for this, and I’d nominate both of the times I’ve ridden it. Don’t get me wrong, Gangsta Granny is far from a bad ride; it’s actually a very likeable little family dark ride, in my view! However, on both of the occasions I’ve ridden it, I have queued the best part of an hour for it. I don’t think I’ve ever waited less than 50 minutes for it, and if I’m remembering correctly, I may even have waited a full hour for it on one of the two occasions. On both days where I’ve ridden it, it has ended up being either one of the longest waits of the day or the longest wait of the day, and quite a significant percentage of the park’s major coaster queues have been shorter.

But what have been some of your most disproportionately long waits for a ride?
 

Howie

Donkey in a hat
You're gonna laugh at this... but I waited a total of about 5 hours for Wicker Dude on its opening day. 😯 I know, right? Madness. But there is a story behind it. See, I was there with a bloke called Antoine Derrick, not a CFer but quite a well known goon in the community, and it was his last weekend in England before being shipped off back to America, so it was his only chance to get the cred. Neither of us needed any of the other creds at the park and we both knew exactly how horrendous it would be, but our only goal for that day was to get the Wicker Man cred so we sucked it up.
Thing is, it was actually scheduled to open the weekend before but heavy snow scuppered that idea - I think some of you were there, wasn't there a CF Live that day? Anyways, we'd deliberately booked the second operational weekend to try and avoid some of the opening day crowds but... yeah, that turned out to be the opening day in the end.
First attempt, first thing in the morning, shoulda been a wait time of about an hour but constant breakdowns and tedious ops meant it was more like 3 hours.
2 and a half hours in, ride goes down big time and they clear the queue line. Get given a fast pass for use later in the day. Come back later in the day and the fastpass queue is quoted as being about an hour (regular line is still 3 hours) so again, we suck it up. Due to the continued breakdowns, and the need to send all three trains round empty before being able to load passengers again, that 1 hour wait ended up being another 2 and a half hour wait before we finally got on the bloody thing, making our total wait time for Wicker Man that day around 5 hours.
I mean, it was mission accomplished I suppose but yeah, it was a sh*t day.

Not a ride, but that pales into insignificance compared to the 14 and a half hours me & Mrs Howie queued in London last year just to see some old bird in a casket. 🙄
 

HeartlineCoaster

Theme Park Superhero
90 mins for Master Thai at Mirabilandia was pretty peak 'stuff this hobby', not helped by the deplorable conditions it was under. Sadly it's the first that springs to mind.

I can't recall another time the hour has ever been cracked for something that wasn't at least significant in some way.
 

Rob Coasters

Hyper Poster
75 minutes for Buffalo & Troublesome Trucks in the same day, October 2020
60 for Ice Mountain, January 2023
40 for Zooom!, August 2022
30 for Duplo Dino Coaster, December 2021
 

oriolat2

Giga Poster
3 hours for Challenge of Tutankhamon in Walibi Belgium,
3 hours for Kondaa
2,5 hours for Pulsar
At least those are quality attractions

I waited close to 2 hours for the Minions ride at USF. If only I hadn't visited the park with non-enthusiasts, I could have marathoned Mummy instead.
 

rob666

Hyper Poster
A full two and a half hours for loads on opening...
Nemesis, Big One, Space Invader, Oblivion, Ultimate, Air, Thirteen, Rita, Wickerman, Spin Doctor at BPB...
But never queued more than half an hour for Icon, funny that.
 
I remember going to Thorpe for my first time in 2018. The park was absolutely rammed as it was the summer holidays and I waited just under 2 hours for Colossus. This was before I was an enthusiast and knew how to ride that thing without feeling the roughness. In my gp head, I'd just waited 2 hours to be battered for a minute and a half. I love Colossus now though, how times change.
 

Swat

Mega Poster
I can’t remember exactly how long it was but I remember waiting for best part of the day for Spinball Whizzer on opening day. Multiple spells of downtime with the horrible capacity and opening day queue meant for the longest wait for any coaster for me
 

divvie_dave

Mega Poster
Around 3 hours for Scooby-Doo (Warner Bros. Movie World) Australia back in 2002. This was the new ride for that year, and naive me assumed new ride = great ride.

Don't get me wrong, it is fantastic. But consider spending 3 hours+ of your first and only time in Australia queuing for what is essentially just a Mack Rides Wild Mouse.
 

Peet

Giga Poster
Probably the day at Hopi Hari where we queued 2 hours for each of the 3 large coasters (skipped the kiddie cred) and that was our whole day. Many people would consider that a waste of a precious day in Brazil, but the odd thing is I don't even regret it 🤷.
 

rob666

Hyper Poster
Disproportionate though...got to be the Spin Doctor at Blackpool.
A (twin) booster ride, nothing more.
Arriving early, jogging to the ride, still an hours queue.
Later in the day, a three hour queue...for a booster!?
Very slow ops meant a quite small queue was moving forward at a rate of about five metres an hour, lots and lots of hot, angry, impatient punters.
Only the queue at customer services was longer.
 

Tonkso

Hyper Poster
80 minutes for the Friday 13th maze at Halloween Horror Nights. We really messed the plan up by listening to bad advice and should never have found ourselves in such a bad queue.

40 minutes for the Fast and the Furious, a ride in which 1 minute would have been too long. We actually walked on to Kong, and that was too long for that ride.
 

Hyde

Matt SR
Staff member
Moderator
Social Media Team
I have a lot of weather-delay-type waits, but the best, disproportionate wait is probably Dimaondback at Kings Island, opening day, where we waited 3 and a half hours. Typical waits are 2 hours-max (B&M hypers remain capacity monsters), but the visual of having the queue wrapped in a near perfect circle back to the queue entrance was truly a sight to behold.

1678114124000.png
 

Inverting_Thrills

Mega Poster
Time to add the obvious answer

Seven Dwarf's Minetrain:

I think I queued around 2 hours for this ride which is pretty good. The queue's theming was pretty boring for a Disney ride and worst of all the ride is likely the most "meh" coaster I've been on. The ride feels rather short for having two coaster sections as well as a dark ride section.
 

redheadedRobin

Mega Poster
3-4 hours for Dragon Khan because of a mix of PA's awful operations + the park having tons of visitors because of a special promotion in the admission tickets + the ride kept breaking down for some reason. This was when Shambhala had just opened, and I remember both Shambhala and Hurakan Condor's lines were at a 3h wait too, so I just skipped both of these. It has never happened to me, but I've heard friends who have queued for almost 5h for Furius Baco in the year it opened.
 
- 45 minutes for Corkscrew at La Ronde in the blistering heat, feeling my skin sizzle for a mediocre cred
- An hour for the Bat at Wonderland
- An hour for the stupid spinning coaster at Flamingoland
- 45 minutes for the Arrow mouse at Michigan's Adventure

I don't even like to wait more than half an hour for anything unless it's absolutely exceptional, so these all made my blood boil for sure.
 
Top