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Park Queue TimesPQT

Knotts Berry Farm cheat sheet

worked out from 39 days of our own wait data17 rides

Arrive for 10:00 and ride GhostRider, Xcelerator The Ride® and Sierra Sidewinder first. Leave HangTime until after 5pm, when its queue drops to about 5 minutes. The park's queues peak around 19:00 at 32 minutes and are lowest around 10:00.

Before you go

When to go

The days and months this park's rides run quietest

Quietest weekday
Wednesday
Busiest weekday
Saturday
Quietest month
August
Busiest month
December

Each ride's own quietest and busiest day, tallied and weighted by how long its queue runs. For a dated answer use the crowd calendar, which scores every day of the year.

The shape of the day

Average queue across the park, hour by hour

  1. 10:0014mquietest
  2. 11:0015m
  3. 12:0018m
  4. 13:0020m
  5. 14:0022m
  6. 15:0022m
  7. 16:0022m
  8. 17:0022m
  9. 18:0031m
  10. 19:0032mpeak
  11. 20:0031m
  12. 21:0029m

Arrive for 10:00. Queues climb to their peak around 19:00 and fall back through the afternoon; the last hour or two is the quietest the headliners get all day.

Ride these first

The headliners: longest queues, worst by late morning

  1. 1GhostRider ~44 min typical · up to 41 at peak · worst around 5pm44m
  2. 2Xcelerator The Ride® ~38 min typical · up to 8 at peak · worst around 5pm38m
  3. 3Sierra Sidewinder ~22 min typical · up to 5 at peak · worst around 5pm22m

Straight to these from the gate, in this order. Every minute before the park fills is worth three later.

Leave these until later

Rides whose queues collapse late in the day

  1. 1HangTime~21 min typical · about 5 min after 5pm5m
  2. 2Timber Mountain Log Ride~19 min typical · about 6 min after 5pm6m
  3. 3Calico River Rapids~18 min typical · about 5 min after 5pm5m
  4. 4Silver Bullet~15 min typical · about 5 min after 5pm5m
  5. 5Knott's Bear-y Tales: Return to the Fair~14 min typical · about 5 min after 5pm5m

Save them for the last two hours, when the coach parties have gone and the queue is a fraction of the afternoon's.

Fill the gaps with

Walk-ons at any hour, and the single-rider lines

Usually under 10 minutesSol Spin8mLos Voladores8mSupreme Scream9mSingle-rider lineGhostRider

Watch-outs

Rides that spend the most of the day not running

  1. 1MonteZOOMa: The Forbidden Fortressrunning 75% of the park's open hours75%
  2. 2GhostRiderrunning 76% of the park's open hours76%
  3. 3Xcelerator The Ride®running 77% of the park's open hours77%

If one of these is the reason you came, ride it the first time you see it running rather than saving it. The full picture is on the reliability page.

On the day

Your day-of sheet

The same park, for one date: the forecast, the hours, and your ride order

Plus members get this sheet for a date: the crowd forecast for the day, its published hours, a ride order worked out against that day's wait curve, and a printable version to take in.

PlusThe day-of sheet is part of Plus

Here, that is a ride order for your date, the forecast and the hours, printable.

  • Your rides, in order

    Sequenced against the wait curve, so the headliners land in their quiet windows.

  • quiet till 111pm · 66m

    Your date, hour by hour

    How the wait climbs on the day you picked, and the window it stays low.

£3.99/monthor £29.99 a year, about £2.50 a month

See everything in Plus

Sign-ups are paused while billing is finished.

Everything above is each ride's own recorded queue over recent weeks, sampled every few minutes through the park's opening hours - not an opinion. A ride with too little history is left out.