Just finished the last of our three days here. Great time overall, though it was crazy crowded all three days. I think today (Monday) at
Disneyland may have been the most crowded of the three. Lines were long to get in by 8:30; rope drop was packed, and it remained crowded and grew worse all day. When we were here three years ago on the same weekend, crowds in DL were rated 7 that Saturday but the park didn't start feeling crowded until around 11 am. This time? It was crowded from 9 am on. It didn't help that Touring Plans had predicted a 4 for DL crowds. We were expecting something more than that, maybe 6 or 7, but it seemed far, far more crowded than that and our predicted wait times were probably twice as long as predicted by the app during those morning hours.
The other thing was that the rides seemed very, very glitchy. I don't remember frequent breakdowns or nearly as many temporary closures last time. This time? On the first morning it was drizzling on and off so some obvious rides closed (Mad Tea Party, Alice, Gadget's Go Coaster), but other things kept shutting down too. It's a Small World stopped completely while we were waiting, the Matterhorn went up and down a few times, and Buzz Lightyear stopped while we were on it. And shortly after Toontown opened we were standing in line at Mickey's house, but then they closed the door and we just had to wait. After 5 minutes my little one decided she needed to use the facilities and we gave up waiting since we weren't moving anyhow. On the second day Ariel's Undersea Adventure stopped both of the times we rode it; later Haunted Mansion did the same thing. Gadget's Go-Coaster was closed again for a while, this time not due to rain. Today's list of temporary closures or stopped rides includes King Arthur's Carousel, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Casey Jr (while we were on it; it ended up closed for most of the day), Matterhorn, Alice, Pinocchio, Peter Pan and (at DCA) Soarin'. I think I saw Buzz Lightyear go down too, though the apps (both Touring Plans and Disneyland's) were not great about updating times today. When Alice was open, it listed a time that was half as long as the actual wait, and that was true of a bunch of other stuff, like Haunted Mansion, Mr. Toad, etc. Is it the new normal to have rides stop or have to close that often or was it just a bit of bad luck that so many of them had problems?
