Every ride at Disney World has a posted wait time at the entrance. There can be psychological consequences if the posted time differs from the actual wait time. If the actual time is longer than the posted time, this could lead to feelings of frustration and disappointment, and it could interfere with guests' subsequent plans (e.g., dining reservations). 

If the actual time is shorter than the posted time, this would lead to emotional experiences of surprise, delight, and feeling like one has "saved time." We predicted that these differential outcomes would motivate Disney to intentionally overestimate the wait times on rides, so we collected some data to test this hypothesis. Specifically, we recorded the posted wait times for each ride, then we used a stopwatch to calculate the actual wait times (we did this 57 times across numerous rides at all 4 Disney parks). We then compared the means of the posted times vs. actual times using a paired samples t-test.  

Our results indicated that the actual wait times (M = 28.35, SD = 20.35) were significantly lower than the posted times (M = 37.54, SD = 22.44), providing support for our hypothesis (t = 6.52, p < .001). In sum, Disney seems to systematically exaggerate the wait times for each ride in order to circumvent negative emotional experiences of their guests.