Smugglers run queue vs Hagrids

[Big Donald 1983]

I got back last week and have been keeping an eye on the queues for Smugglers run and I expected it to be the same as Hagrids roller coaster c400 minutes but I’ve been really surprised to see it at 45 mins as it is now.
Why would that be? Are they only letting in a certain amount of people at a time or is it not as popular as they thought?

[Quensabob]

Originally Posted by Big Donald 1983

I got back last week and have been keeping an eye on the queues for Smugglers run and I expected it to be the same as Hagrids roller coaster c400 minutes but I’ve been really surprised to see it at 45 mins as it is now.
Why would that be? Are they only letting in a certain amount of people at a time or is it not as popular as they thought?

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It usually peaks around 90 minutes it just doesn't break down as much as Hagrids does!

[Eccle]

I think there are a few factors. Smugglers Run is higher capacity (I have seen 1600 per hour quoted), whilst according to this Hagrid’s is 1050 unless they can run more trains orlandoparkstop/news/the...es-first-week/

Plus Hagrid’s is opening and operating very unreliably whilst Smugglers doesn’t seem to have gone down at all.

Current times on Smuggler may be deceptive as Dorian has clearly affected crowds, it will be interesting to see what happens when things get back to normal.

Also when it opens I can see Rise of the Resistance being longer, Smugglers i believe is more the Navi River of Galaxy’s Edge

[iloveholidays1]

Crowd levels and queue times are very low at the moment due to hurricane effects. Low crowds since Sunday. Haven’t needed fast passes the last few days. Will be interesting to see when it picks up again.

[Nimbus]

To quote Bob Chapek himself:

"If you build in enough capacity, the rides don’t go down, and it operates at 99 per cent efficiency [then] you shouldn’t have 10-hour lines."

Hagrid's seems to be having issues at the moment and is not running at full capacity. It's also outdoors which means it's affected by the weather more; it probably has to close when there's bad weather nearby. Even if it was running normally, Hagrid's has less capacity than Smuggler's Run. Smuggler's Run is open for longer each day than Hagrid's. Plus, people seem to rate Hagrid's higher than Smuggler's Run.

I think all those things is why currently Hagrid's has longer queues than Smuggler's Run.

I would note however that the current average wait time for Hagrid's is around 70 minutes at the moment. Not 400 minutes. The queues are lower at both now because it's no longer peak summer season, all the US kids have gone back to school, and Hurricane Dorian drove a lot of people away. If Disney had opened Smuggler's Run in the middle of June then I bet it would have had much longer queues then than it does now, just like Hagrid's.

[AJ86]

It would also be worth remembering that there are multiple screens with Smugglers run, so if one goes down the ride and queue will continue to move, where as with Hagrids if there is an issue the whole ride will be down while it is fixed.

[dav220588]

Higher capacity (the theoretical capacity of Smugglers is much higher and there's absolutely no way Hagrid is hitting it's maximum even when the ride is running) and better reliability.

Smugglers was designed to absolutely eat crowds up, and it's doing exactly as designed.

It's also being helped by the extra EMH - there's essentially 3 hours extra per day for on site guests to ride. That spreads the crowds out better throughout the day. It'll also be part of the reason lines for the other rides are less - if more onsite guests ride Slinky in EMH then they won't be in the lines at 9am when the offsite people arrive.

[Troyston]

In addition I would add this point. I was there last week and whilst it certainly was quiet and I only queued for an hour to get on Smugglers Run the whole of Galaxies Edge was there to explore. People are obviously there for the ride, but the majority of people were also looking and doing things in a brand new theme park area and therefore I believe this diluted the queue times.
In contrast I queued 105 minutes for Hagrid (posted at 180mins) which is a new rollercoaster in an existing theme park land. Hogsmede in my opinion offers little more than a walkthrough from one part of the park to another therefore the majority of visitors are going to go straight to the ride and hence cause the large queues we have seen. I agree that the ride clearly has issues with maintenance and the weather. Indeed one of the days we were in IOA the ride didn't open at all until after 2pm! That isn't acceptable for the thousands of customers who turned up and paid good money to rope drop only to find they had to spend the day hovering around Hogsmede to wait for it to open or go and do something else completely. Just my thoughts!