A minivan collects you from your hotel, though most parks work in set rounds rather than individual pickups, so your time depends largely on where you are staying. A van might take Patong first and then work down through Karon, Kata, Rawai and Phuket Town, or run the same route backwards. Either way there will be a few more stops after yours while it fills up.
Two exceptions worth knowing. Jungle Xtrem in Chalong does not run blanket transfers, it includes them for groups of two or more and otherwise asks you to make your own way, which is part of why its prices are the lowest on the island. And every park has a free pickup zone with an edge to it. If you are staying at Mai Khao, Nai Yang, Ao Por or out by the airport, there is usually a surcharge, from 200 baht up to 1,400 for a private van at Tarzan. Check when you book rather than at the desk.
If you have booked a zipline, or are still deciding, this is what the day actually looks like from pickup to drop-off. Most Phuket parks run to roughly the same rhythm, so it applies whichever one you end up choosing, and the places where they differ are flagged as they come up.
Phuket is small, so nothing is far. From Patong you are 15 minutes from Erawan and about 25 from Flying Hanuman in Kathu. From Kata or Karon you are half an hour from Hanuman World and Jungle Xtrem, both on the Chalong side. Cape Panwa and Kamala are the outliers depending on which end of the island you sleep on. The last stretch to most parks is a climb up a hill road, narrow and winding in places, so if you are prone to car sickness take the front seat.
At the park you sign in, and this is where the age and weight limits get checked properly rather than taken on trust, because the staff do enforce them. Once that is done the guides fit your helmet, harness and gloves and take you through the briefing, which covers sitting into the harness, hand position, braking on the lines where that is your job rather than theirs, and the signals the guide on the far platform will be using.
This is the moment to ask whatever you are wondering about, since the guides run it every day and would far rather answer the same question twice than have somebody freeze on a platform an hour later.
Most parks then put you on a short practice line a metre off the ground, or a low first platform, so your body gets the feeling before anything serious.
This is where the parks diverge, and it is the main thing to get right when you choose.
The guided parks, which is most of them, walk you around in a group with guides at both ends of every line. They clip you on, they clip you off, you fly. Between the lines you cross sky bridges, climb staircases, sometimes abseil down. Hanuman World and Flying Hanuman work like this, and it is a relaxed rhythm, social, with plenty of standing about on platforms taking photographs.
Jungle Xtrem works differently. It is a via ferrata challenge course, so you clip yourself along a continuous safety line and move through the course under your own steam. Nobody is walking you round. It is more physical, hotter, and considerably more satisfying if that is what you wanted, but it is not the same product and reviews from people who expected a guided ride say so.
Course length follows the package. A short tour of ten or twelve platforms is roughly 45 minutes to an hour of actual course time. The big packages, 32 to 65 platforms, run two to three hours.
At Hanuman World the roller zipline, the skywalk, the slingshot and the luge all sit separately from the main circuit, so if your package includes them you do those before or after the ziplines rather than during. The luge in particular is worth leaving until last, since it is the one thing people come off grinning about.
This is the most common misunderstanding when people compare prices. A meal is not standard in Phuket. Hanuman World includes one at its Wanon Zone restaurant on every World+ package, and Flying Hanuman includes one on its full FH1 package. Everywhere else you get water, soft drinks and maybe fruit, and lunch is your own problem. If you are choosing between two packages 100 baht apart, check which one includes food.
Back at your hotel by early afternoon on the morning round, or around dusk on the afternoon round. Door to door, a short package is roughly three hours and a full package is five to six.
Take the morning if you have the choice. It is cooler, the light is better for photographs, the groups are usually smaller, and in green season the rain tends to arrive later in the day. Most parks run their first session at 08:00 or 09:00.
If you are only free in the afternoon it is no great loss. The last admissions are around 15:00 to 16:30 depending on the park, and the late light through the canopy is beautiful. Just know that a hot afternoon on a physical course like Jungle Xtrem is genuinely hard work.