EXCLUSIVE: New Lightning Lane Math (April 2025) – What You Need to Know

Disney just changed how many guests are pulled from the Standby and Lightning Lane lines for each ride. This affects how long you’ll wait no matter which line you use. This article explains the Disney Lightning Lane change and how it affects both Lightning Lane wait times and Standby wait times.

What You Need to Know: These changes should reduce the amount of time guests wait in the Standby line. Guests using the Lightning Lane will see their waits go up by tiny amounts, but should be barely noticeable.

Background: Priority Queues and Ratios

Skip-the-line services like FastPass, FastPass+, and Lightning Lane are known as priority queues. The priority part means that guests in these lines are given faster access to a ride than guests in the Standby line. And queue is another word for line in much of the English-speaking world.

The thing that Disney has recently changed is the ratio of how many guests they pull from the Lightning Lane and Standby lines for each ride.

Back when Disney was using FastPass and FastPass+ – I’ll just say “FastPass” as the generic term for both – Disney typically admitted 4 FastPass guests on to a ride for every 1 guest admitted from the Standby line. This 4:1 ratio meant that 80% of a ride’s capacity was typically used by FastPass guests.

That 4:1 ratio could change. Cast Members were trained to keep the FastPass line short. Sometimes, after a ride closed unexpectedly, a long line would form of guests who had FastPasses to ride during the time the ride was closed.

Disney honored those FastPasses when the ride reopened. In that case, Cast Members were allowed to pull a much larger ratio of guests from the FastPass line. In extreme cases, Cast Members could admit 99 FastPass guests for every 1 Standby guest.

This chart shows sample ratios and the amount of ride capacity used by the FastPass system at those ratios:

It might not be obvious at first, but there’s not much difference between a ratio of 25:1 and 99:1. Both are assigning virtually all of the ride’s capacity to FastPass.

It also might not be obvious that priority queues like FastPass and Lightning Lane can make your Standby wait less predictable. Guests who enter the FastPass/Lightning Lane after you get in the Standby line can get on the ride before you. That’s not possible with Standby lines – guests who arrive in the Standby line after you are guaranteed to ride after you.

Why Lightning Lane Grace Periods Increase Standby Wait Time Variability

Every FastPass and Lightning Lane comes with a one-hour return time window. For example, if you book a Lightning Lane for Slinky Dog Dash, your return time window might be 12:15 pm to 1:15 pm. If you return to Slinky Dog Dash during that one-hour window, you’ll be admitted into the Lightning Lane.

The implication is that if you arrive outside of that window you won’t get access to the Lightning Lane. Disney encourages this way of thinking, too. That’s because when Disney assigned your family a return time window of 12:15 pm to 1:15 pm, its computers subtracted the number of people in your family from Slinky Dog’s ride capacity during that hour. When Slinky Dog’s capacity drops far enough, Disney changes the return time window to a little bit later in the day. The overall intent here is to create a steady, predictable stream of Lightning Lane guests from Slinky Dog’s daily ride capacity.

But Disney knows that it’s not always possible for you to use a Lightning Lane during that exact one-hour window. So Disney builds a grace period into every Lightning Lane return time window. That grace period runs from 5 minutes before the return time window starts, to (at least) one hour after the return time window:

Grace periods are absolutely essential in theme parks. On one of my father/daughter trips with Hannah, I am 100% certain that Hannah was wearing two shoes when we boarded Peter Pan’s Flight. She only had one when we got off. (I like to imagine it sitting in the London scene as some sort of giant art installation.) And we spent a good hour trying to find Hannah replacement footwear. There’s no way we could’ve made a one-hour return window for our next ride.

Grace periods are often used immediately after parades and fireworks. When we rode Peter Pan’s Flight for an entire day in 2024 to test wait-time models, we noticed after the parade that there were far more guests in the Lightning Lane than would be expected without a grace period. The practical effect of this was to greatly increase the wait for guests in the Standby line.

Lightning Lane to Standby Ratios Before April 2025

We think Disney used the following Lightning Lane ratios at most attractions until this new change:

The key thing to note here is that fewer guests use Lightning Lane than FastPass because Lightning Lane costs money. The Lightning Lane ratios look similar to the FastPass ratios, but they’re only used when there are guests in the Lightning Lane line. The amount of real ride capacity allocated to Lightning Lane is substantially lower than what was allocated with FastPass.

How Much Ride Capacity Does Disney Allocate to Lightning Lane?

We think Disney reserves Lightning Lane capacity at each ride based on its internal prediction of how busy the park is going to be. Internal documents we’ve seen seem to suggest these numbers:

These numbers are for Lightning Lane Multi Pass. I suspect the numbers are higher for attractions using Lightning Lane Single Pass, such as TRON Lightcycle / Run at the Magic Kingdom and Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind at EPCOT.

How Did Lightning Lane Change in April 2025?

We’ve been counting the number of guests getting in line at various rides – sometimes minute by minute – since 2023 as part of our new wait-time modeling. One of the things we noticed earlier this month was that Disney had changed the ratio of how many guests it was pulling from the Lightning Lane and Standby lines.

More specifically, we think Disney is now pulling more guests from the Standby line than before. Here’s a ballpark estimate of the new Lightning Lane to Standby line ratios:

These changes appear to be implemented by party, not by individual guests. Assuming groups who use Lightning Lane are the same size as groups who use Standby, the numbers work out the same in either case.

We’ve observed these changes on multiple rides that allow us to see the merge point where Lightning Lane and Standby guests get put on to rides. That includes much of Fantasyland in the Magic Kingdom, as well as attractions like Spaceship Earth and Living with the Land in EPCOT.

How April 2025’s Lightning Lane Changes Affect Standby Wait Times

These changes are great for anyone using the Standby line – you’ll have shorter waits to ride your favorite rides.

Guests using Lightning Lane will have marginally longer waits. We haven’t yet measured that increase. But I don’t think Lightning Lane guests will see much of an impact. For one thing, Lightning Lane guests still get priority over Standby guests. And Disney’s still basing future Lightning Lane ride capacity on predicted crowd levels, then using different ratios based on the number of guests currently in the Lightning Lane Line. That’s enough flexibility to ensure that guests paying for Lightning Lane are seeing value.

Here are some examples, assuming you’re using Lightning Lane.

On days with low crowds Disney seems to allocate around 13% of most rides’ capacity to Lightning Lane. The combination of low crowds and low Lightning Lane allocation means there’s a decent chance there’ll be only a handful of guests ahead of you in the Lightning Lane line.

Even a low-capacity attraction like Magic Carpets of Aladdin loads 12 guests per minute (720 guests per hour). On a day with small crowds, Disney would allocate around 94 seats per hour to Lightning Lane – around 1.5 seats per minute.

Suppose there are 6 guests ahead of you in the Lightning Lane line, and Disney takes 6 others from the Standby line. That means Disney would take a total of 12 guests from both lines before you. So your Lightning Lane wait at Magic Carpets would only be about a minute. (Yes, I know it’s a cycle ride. Work with me, people.)

On days with medium crowds, Disney seems to be allocating around 26% of ride capacity to Lightning Lane. That’s a little more than 3 guests per minute at Magic Carpets. With 12 guests ahead of you in the Lightning Lane line, Disney would reduce the number of guests taken from the Standby line by 50%.

That is, Disney would take the 12 guests ahead of you in the Lightning Lane line, plus only 6 guests from the Standby line, before you got to ride. That’s 18 people, or roughly 90 seconds of waiting in the Lightning Lane line.

On days with high crowds Disney seems to be allocating around 33% of ride capacity to Lightning Lane. Keeping with our example, that might work out to 15 guests ahead of you in the Lightning Lane. Disney would take all 15 guests in the Lightning Lane, plus 5 guests from the Standby line (a 3:1 ratio) before you got to ride – a total of 20 people. Those 20 people would work out to a wait of around 1 minute and 40 seconds for you in the Lightning Lane line.

For comparison, the old Lightning Lane ratios would’ve pulled the 15 Lightning Lane guests and 2 Standby guests (a 7.5:1 ratio), so your wait would’ve been 1 minute and 25 seconds. I don’t think most people are going to notice a difference of 15 seconds at Magic Carpets on a day with high crowds.

Likewise, I don’t think the impact on Lightning Lane waits at high-capacity attractions is going to be very noticeable, even on days with larger crowds. Let’s say Pirates of the Caribbean can handle 2,400 guests per hour – that’s 2 guests every 3 seconds. And let’s assume there are 100 guests in the Lightning Lane ahead of you.

In the old 10:1 Lightning Lane scenario we’d expect around 110 guests to board before you, an expected wait of around 66 seconds.

In the new 3:1 scenario it’s 133 people and around 89 seconds. That works out to an additional 8 minutes of waiting if you went on 20 rides using Lightning Lane. Not a big deal for Lightning Lane guests, and still better for Standby guests.

Standby guests should see their time spent in line drop by about those amounts – 16 to 30% – depending on crowd levels. That’s because those are the percentages of extra ride capacity now given to Standby guests.

To put that in perspective, it’s 5 to 9 minutes off a 30-minute wait in the Standby line. Over the course of a day – 10 to 15 attractions – that’s 50 minutes to about 2 hours and 15 minutes saved. This is great news!

The Take-Away: Standby Waits Are Shorter And Lightning Lane Is Still Worth It

This change is good news for budget-conscious families worried about standing in long lines at Disney’s theme parks. You’ll wait less in line and not have to pay more for it.

Also, these changes are minor enough to Lightning Lane that guests using Lightning Lane will still find it a good value, especially on days with higher crowds.

Our Walt Disney World Lightning Lane page includes tons of information to help plan your visit:

• Current Lightning Lane availability for each park and attraction for the next 21 days
• How much time Lightning Lane will save you at each attraction
• When we expect Lightning Lanes to run out

If you’re interested in learning more about priority queues, I strongly recommend watching Defunctland’s video “Disney’s FastPass: A Complicated History.” Not only does it explain lines in detail, it was nominated for a Peabody Award in 2023! (Fun fact: we provided some of the data for it, and I have an IMDB entry for it!)