Animal Kingdom wait times by hour: what 140 days of posted waits show

At Animal Kingdom, the median posted wait peaked at 40 minutes at 11am and fell to 15 minutes by 6pm. That is the pattern in WaitScout's own polling from 2026-06-02 to 2026-10-19.

These are posted waits, not measured standing time. This guide gives the hour-by-hour table, shows how the biggest rides behave inside the park-wide number, and ends with how to use the hours on a trip. The Methodology section explains every figure.

What are Animal Kingdom's posted wait times by hour?

The table lists each local hour from 8am to 6pm, with the median and the mean of every posted wait recorded in that hour across the whole window. Medians move in 5-minute steps, so a difference of one step between two hours is weak evidence.

Hour	Median posted wait (minutes)	Mean (minutes)	Posted waits
8am	20	25.8	6,612
9am	25	29	7,948
10am	35	35.2	8,038
11am	40	38.4	8,067
12pm	35	36.9	7,949
1pm	35	33.3	7,623
2pm	25	29.9	7,447
3pm	25	26.7	7,122
4pm	20	23.5	6,755
5pm	20	23.8	5,380
6pm	15	21	2,140

The 6pm row rests on fewer posted waits than any other, 2,140, and on 89 days instead of the 137 behind 8am. The 7am hour is left out: its 1,984 posted waits fall under the 2,000 minimum used for this table.

What is the best time of day at Animal Kingdom?

The lowest hourly median was 15 minutes, in the 6pm hour, and no other hour matched it. Three hours tied for the next lowest at 20 minutes: 8am, 4pm and 5pm. The morning window is short and the late-afternoon window is wider, so the afternoon is the easier one to hit.

Between them the median climbs and falls in steps. It rose from 25 minutes at 9am to 35 at 10am, peaked at 40 at 11am, held at 35 at noon and 1pm, and eased to 25 minutes at 2pm and 3pm.

When are Animal Kingdom waits the longest?

The highest hourly median was 40 minutes, at 11am, and no other hour matched it. The mean peaks in the same hour, at 38.4 minutes.

At 11am, Animal Kingdom's median was 40 minutes. The same hour was 20 at Magic Kingdom, 25 at EPCOT and 40 at Hollywood Studios, so it ties Hollywood Studios for the highest of the four parks at that hour.

So the busy window runs from 10am to 1pm, with medians of 35, 40, 35 and 35 minutes, and 11am at its centre. If you can only choose one stretch to avoid for the big queues, choose that one.

How do the big rides behave inside that pattern?

The table shows five rides, ranked by overall median, from Avatar Flight of Passage at 50 minutes down to Kilimanjaro Safaris at 20. For each, it gives the hour whose median was lowest and the hour whose median was highest. Hour-level medians on posted data often tie, and a tie goes to the earlier hour, so read each hour as the centre of a window of an hour or two. Meet-and-greets and rides with fewer than 1,000 posted waits are left out.

Ride	Overall median	Lowest-median hour (median)	Highest-median hour (median)	Posted waits
Avatar Flight of Passage	50	6pm (35)	10am (60)	13,071
Na'vi River Journey	35	8am (20)	10am (45)	12,328
Kali River Rapids	30	9am (5)	12pm (40)	9,808
Expedition Everest - Legend of the Forbidden Mountain	25	8am (5)	11am (35)	12,768
Kilimanjaro Safaris	20	2pm (10)	10am (50)	12,887

The 10am hour was the highest-median hour for three of the five rides: Avatar Flight of Passage, Na'vi River Journey and Kilimanjaro Safaris. Kali River Rapids peaked at 12pm, and Expedition Everest at 11am.

Kilimanjaro Safaris is the biggest swing. Its overall median was only 20 minutes, but its hourly median ran from 10 minutes in the 2pm hour to 50 minutes in the 10am hour.

Avatar Flight of Passage is the hard case. Its median ran from 35 minutes in the 6pm hour to 60 minutes in the 10am hour, and even its lowest figure, 35 minutes, matches the overall median of Na'vi River Journey, the next-busiest ride in the table.

The first hour helps some rides far more than others. Na'vi River Journey had an opening-hour median of 10 minutes against 45 minutes from 11am to 4pm, and Expedition Everest 5 against 30. Avatar Flight of Passage barely moves, at 45 against 50.

For the full first-hour comparison, see rope drop at Disney World, ride by ride.

Does the day of the week change Animal Kingdom's hourly pattern?

Yes, a little. Wednesday was the quietest day, with a median of 20 minutes and a mean of 25.3. Tuesday and Thursday were at 25 minutes, and Monday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 30. The mean ran from 25.3 to 33.4 minutes across the week.

The weekday gap, 20 to 30 minutes, is smaller than the hourly swing from 15 to 40 minutes. For the weekday picture at every park, see the best day of the week at each Disney World park. To compare dates, use the Animal Kingdom crowd calendar.

How can you use these hours on a trip?

• Be in line before 10am. The 8am hour had a median of 20 minutes and the 9am hour 25, before the climb to 35 and 40.
• Move Kilimanjaro Safaris away from the late morning. Its median was 50 minutes in the 10am hour and 10 in the 2pm hour.
• Check the live number for Avatar Flight of Passage before you queue. Its lowest hourly median was 35 minutes, in the 6pm hour.

Check the live list for your date at Animal Kingdom wait times, and for paid skip-the-line prices see Animal Kingdom Lightning Lane. For the same view at other parks, see Magic Kingdom wait times by hour, EPCOT wait times by hour and Hollywood Studios wait times by hour.

A table cannot tell you the minute a line shortens. The WaitScout iPhone app can alert you when a ride's posted wait drops, so you can move when the line does. See the app features.

FAQ

What is the busiest hour at Animal Kingdom?

11am. Its median posted wait was 40 minutes and its mean 38.4 minutes, the highest of any hour in the table.

What time of day has the shortest posted waits at Animal Kingdom?

The 6pm hour, at a median of 15 minutes, though it rests on the fewest posted waits. The 8am, 4pm and 5pm hours were next, at 20.

Is Animal Kingdom worse at midday than the other parks?

In this data its 11am median of 40 minutes sat above Magic Kingdom's 20 and EPCOT's 25 and matched Hollywood Studios' 40.

Are these the waits people actually stood in?

No. They are posted waits, rounded to 5 minutes.

Does this apply in winter or holiday weeks?

We cannot say. Our data covers 2026-06-02 to 2026-10-19 only, so it is silent on every other time of year.

Methodology

<!-- claims:exempt -->

Every figure comes from WaitScout's wait_history table, from 2026-06-02 to 2026-10-19 (140 local days), converted to America/New_York. Only rows with a posted wait are used. The hourly table uses hour_of_day rows for Animal Kingdom, pooled over the whole window; the median is the exact median of posted minutes and the mean is the arithmetic mean. Posted minutes come in 5-minute steps, which is why differences of 5 minutes are not strong evidence. The table keeps hours 8 to 18, each with at least 2,000 posted waits; the 7am hour and earlier fall below that. The ride table uses top_rides_by_median rows for Animal Kingdom rides with at least 1,000 posted waits and no sample or category flag; for each ride the lowest and highest hourly medians are computed over local hours 8 to 21 with at least 7 days in the hour, and ties go to the earlier hour. Opening-hour and midday medians come from rope_drop rows (opening hour is local hour 8; midday pools hours 11 to 15). Meet-and-greets, shows and films are excluded from ride claims. Weekday figures use day_of_week rows, about 19 to 20 days per weekday. Park opening times are not in the database. There is no winter, spring or holiday data.

WaitScout is an independent planning tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by The Walt Disney Company. All park names are used for identification purposes only.