I think I can count on one hand the number of queues I hit during the Vanilla era. The only consistent queues I saw after were during the Wrath launch (5+ hours- I took the free server xfer), and Cataclysm launch (up to 1 hour- just rode it out for the week).
That said, I understand that historically there were some Vanilla era servers known for their queue times, and exacerbated by constant crashes. Server migrations were a thing, for sure.