My group has always played original campaigns written by our GM and never any of the Adventure Path ones. We are starting Skulls and Shackles as something new and I'm wondering how long each of these campaigns takes to finish usually? My group usually plays 5-6 hours once a week.
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It's going to vary from group to group obviously, based on experience, roleplaying time, etc, but for the most part my group has taken about 30 sessions of 5-6 hours to get through an adventure path. Usually the first and last adventures are the quickest with the 3rd and 4th taking the longest.
My Curse of the Crimson Throne game took 34 sessions each of 4-5 hours playing time. At 5-6 hours/session, 30 sessions seems a good estimate.
So far, my group is doing about 2 sessions per book section. Most books are 3 sections, so I expect 36 weeks of play.
Our sessions are typically 6 hours, a large group (6 or more) with half the group very experienced, and the other half not so much. I'm relatively new to GMing, but I've been playing off and on for 35 years.
As I get better, we are starting to move more quickly, but we are a fairly... drama heavy group, so we may have reached our limit.
My Curse of the Crimson Throne game took 34 sessions each of 4-5 hours playing time. At 5-6 hours/session, 30 sessions seems a good estimate.
However Shattered Star 1: Shards of Sin took 11 3-hour sessions, ca 33 hours play time for one book!
Only one AP experience for what it's worth. We're at 50 sessions and about 20% into Book 5 on Runelords. The clock has each session at roughly 5 hours but we're not always focused so we don't necessarily get that much play in. We've known each other for a long time and the gatherings are as much social as play. We're not role-playing focused - indeed I'd say role-playing is under-emphasized compared to a "typical" group. Also our combat style tends to be ponderous which is only exacerbated as levels go up. I'm guessing we have about 20 sessions left given our pace and the remaining material (I'm the DM.)
Short version: could we have finished in 40-50 sessions if we'd been more diligent and focused? Probably. Not sure we'd have had as much fun, though. Which isn't to say I think anyone else's speed is wrong or the OP is off-base in asking - it's a good idea to try to set commitment expectations upfront.
I ran Rise of the Runelords for about two years, and we only got about halfway through before the group broke up. Of course, I added a fair amount of extra content.
We met weekly with 4-hour sessions, although we usually only used about half that as actual play time. (The rest was ordering/eating food and chit-chat.)
We seem to complete them faster than most. We finish each book in about 10 hours so about 60 hours per adventure path which usually works out to about 6 months.
We usually ignore xp, and leave out wandering monsters. I know we also add/delete/change encounters if who ever is DMing comes up with something more fun.
Our shortest was Wrath of the Righteous. The DM had a tight schedule and had to complete it in 4 months so I know he heavily edited it. The longest was Age of Worms which took almost 2 years to finish - mostly because of the dying. Oh, we died so often on that one.