There is no single best queue times website for everyone, because the tools are built for different trips. For a UK or European park, use Park Queue Times or Queue-Times.com to pick the date and watch live waits, and the park's own app once you are inside. For Walt Disney World or Universal Orlando, Thrill Data and Touring Plans go deeper on those resorts than anyone else. We built Park Queue Times, so read this page knowing that, and check each claim below against the sites themselves. Everything here was checked on the date at the top of the page.
The short version
| Tool | Best for | Parks | Crowd forecast | Ride history and breakdowns | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Park Queue Times | UK and Europe, plus the big US resorts | 100 | 80 parks, up to 9 months ahead | Yes, per ride, with uptime tables | Free, optional Plus |
| Queue-Times.com | The widest list of parks | 146, says the site | Yes, predicted days marked with an asterisk | Yes, statistics and attendance pages | Free |
| Thrill Data | Disney and Universal in depth | 130+, says the site | Yes | Yes, with custom graphs | Free, optional Plus |
| park.fan | European parks, many languages | 150+, says the site | Yes, hourly ride forecasts | Some | Free |
| Touring Plans | Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, Disneyland | A few US resorts | Yes, the best known one for Disney | Through its Lines app | Paid subscription for most of it |
| Official park apps | The day itself | One park or resort | No | No | Free |
Every live wait on every site in this table comes from the same place in the end: the park's own ride system, the feed behind its app and the signs at each ride entrance. So the live number for a given ride should agree across all of them, give or take a few minutes of refresh delay. Where the tools really differ is in what they do with that number once it is stored.
Park Queue Times
Park Queue Times tracks 100 parks and about 4,100 rides, re-reading each park's live feed every few minutes while it is open and keeping every reading. The strongest coverage is the UK (Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington, LEGOLAND Windsor, Blackpool Pleasure Beach, Paultons Park and more) and the large European parks, with Disney, Universal, Six Flags and SeaWorld in the US as well.
What it adds on top of the live board:
- A crowd calendar for 80 parks, up to 9 months ahead. The forecast's accuracy is scored 6 weeks out on days the model never saw and published in full on the almanac page, including the parks where it is not ahead of a simple seasonal guess.
- A page for every ride with its typical wait, an hour-by-hour pattern, peak queue records and how often it breaks down.
- A reliability table for each park, ranking rides by uptime.
- A best time to visit page per park: quietest days, hours and months, worked out from the stored record.
- Free ride alerts, a free embeddable widget for other websites, and a public API.
The calendar, live waits, ride history and reliability pages are free with no account. Plus is optional and adds a ride order for your date, a live in-park day view, unlimited alerts, longer graphs and no ads. The site works in any phone browser and can be added to your home screen like an app.
Where it is weaker: fewer parks than Queue-Times.com, and less Disney-specific planning than Thrill Data or Touring Plans, such as dining reservation finders or Lightning Lane tracking at the US resorts.
Queue-Times.com
Queue-Times.com is the long-running name in this space and the one most people find first. Its homepage lists 146 parks and close to 16,000 rides. Each park has live queue times, a crowd calendar with predicted days marked by an asterisk, a statistics page and an attendance page. It is free, and it runs a public API that many other apps and sites are built on, so you will often see "data from Queue-Times.com" inside third-party apps.
Choose it when your park is not on the smaller trackers, or when you want the broadest single list. Its pages are simpler than the others, with less per-ride analysis, and the calendar shows one percentage per day without a published accuracy score.
Thrill Data
Thrill Data describes itself as live and historical wait times, Lightning Lane availability, crowd calendars and tools for 130+ theme parks since 2019, and it has been featured by The Wall Street Journal and CNN. Its depth is strongest at Walt Disney World, Disneyland and Universal: Lightning Lane availability tracking, dining reservation alerts, custom graphs, event countdowns and daily recaps. A paid Plus tier adds text alerts, data downloads and removes ads.
Choose it for a Florida or California Disney or Universal trip where you want to dig into the numbers. For a UK park it works, but the extra tools are mostly built around the US resorts.
park.fan
park.fan is a newer free site with a strong European focus and many languages. It shows live waits, opening hours, weather and crowd levels, and publishes hourly wait forecasts for individual rides alongside a crowd calendar. It also runs a guides and news section.
Choose it if you want a polished European tracker in your own language.
Touring Plans
Touring Plans is the specialist for Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando and Disneyland. It is known for its crowd calendar and its personalised touring plans, which give you a step-by-step ride order for your day, and its Lines app shows current and predicted waits. Most of the planning tools sit behind a paid subscription.
Choose it if you are spending several days at a US Disney resort and want a plan made for you. It does not cover UK or European parks.
Official park apps
The Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Disneyland Paris, Disney and Universal apps all show live waits, and on the day they are the most direct source because the figure comes straight from the park. Many also hold your tickets, paid queue-skip bookings and virtual queues, which no third-party site can do.
What they do not do is tell you which date to pick, how a ride's queue usually moves through the day, or how often it breaks down. That is the gap every site above exists to fill.
Which one to use
- Choosing a date for a UK park: a crowd calendar from Park Queue Times or Queue-Times.com. For Thorpe Park or Alton Towers, compare two or three candidate days rather than trusting a single number.
- Planning the order of the day: the per-ride hourly patterns on Park Queue Times, or a Touring Plans plan at a US Disney resort.
- On the day: the official app for anything to do with tickets and bookings, and any tracker for a quick look across the whole park.
- Disney or Universal in the US: Thrill Data for the numbers, Touring Plans for a ready-made plan.
- A park nobody else covers: Queue-Times.com has the longest list.
A sensible setup for most UK trips is one tracker to pick the day, the park app in your pocket, and a quick check of the live board when you arrive to see which rides are already down.
Questions people ask
Are queue times websites accurate?
The live number is as accurate as the park makes it, because every site reads it from the park's own system. Some parks round the posted wait up, and a ride that has just reopened can show a stale figure for a few minutes. Differences between sites for the same ride are almost always refresh timing.
Which site has the most parks?
Queue-Times.com lists 146 parks on its homepage, park.fan says 150+ and Thrill Data says 130+, when this page was checked. Park Queue Times tracks 100.
Is there a free crowd calendar for UK theme parks?
Yes. Park Queue Times and Queue-Times.com both publish free crowd calendars for the major UK parks, with no account needed. Park Queue Times publishes how accurate its forecast has been on the almanac page.
Do I still need the park's own app?
Usually yes. Third-party sites cannot hold tickets, book paid queue skips or join virtual queues, and on the day the park app is the most direct source. Use a tracker to plan, and the app to act.