MAE Explained – Theme Park Definition

MAE (Mean Absolute Error) is the standard measure of prediction accuracy used by park.fan. It calculates the average difference — in minutes — between each predicted wait time and the actual wait time recorded at the park gate. An MAE of 8 minutes means the model's predictions are off by 8 minutes on average across all tracked predictions.

MAE treats every error equally: a 5-minute miss and a 15-minute miss are averaged together linearly. This makes it intuitive to interpret — if you see MAE = 10, you can think of it as "predictions are typically within 10 minutes of reality." A lower MAE always means more accurate predictions.