Waiting in line is part of the fun, if you are a psychologist

I minored in psychology in grad school and the question "why do people do what they do" has always fascinated me. When I was a kid I would do psychological experiments on my siblings to see how far I could push them before they either beat me up or told on me. OK, maybe calling those psychological experiments is taking it a bit far, but you get the idea.

I came across this interesting article about Queuing Psychology. It shouldn't surprise anybody that there are people who study the psychology behind waiting in lines given that we wait in lines virtually every day. It makes three main points about what helps people accept waiting in lines.

Eliminating empty time is the first concept. You see this done very well, especially on the newer attractions, all over Disney. It's basically giving people something to do while they are in line. One of the examples used is the interactive group games in the Soarin' queue. Our kids actually wanted to stay in line longer so they could play the game! Another example is Expedition Everest. I actually wanted the line to go a little slower so I could spend more time reading.

The second tenant is fair play. This includes "first come, first served" but also includes the balance of greater service demands greater wait. Basically that's the idea behind "express checkout lines" for people purchasing 20 or less items or paying cash. One of the interesting points made about "first come, first served" is the move away from multiple lines when checking out to a single serpentine line where the next person always get served next. This removes the guessing game of which line will move faster. Of course, that removes the quasi-secret of always choosing the left most line at Disney.

Finally is information. Basically, people are less anxious in line if they have some idea of how long their wait will be. This is the logic behind Disney posting wait times. If the wait is less than the posted wait time you feel happy about your wait time, even if it was long. Of course the opposite is true, too. We once waited 1:20 for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad when the sign said 40 minutes. We were really ticked off by that, so this is a 2 edged sword.

Overall, Disney does a great job and is getting better all the time with their preshows. According to the article, they employ 75 industrial engineers who study queuing as part of their jobs. With new technology being deployed to provide more information I think it will get even better.