Early start on Downtown Disney Monorail

[disneylover102]

Does anyone have experience getting on the monorail before park opening? What time do you get through the turnstiles? I read somewhere you can get in earlier at the monorail station than at the regular turnstiles and it gives you earlier Maxpass privileges. How much earlier do they actually let you in? 7 AM with the rest of Downtown Disney?

 

[Tinkerbell19672]

Not sure, every time we’ve tried the monorail has been down

 

[dina444444]

Does anyone have experience getting on the monorail before park opening? What time do you get through the turnstiles? I read somewhere you can get in earlier at the monorail station than at the regular turnstiles and it gives you earlier Maxpass privileges. How much earlier do they actually let you in? 7 AM with the rest of Downtown Disney?

The monorail opens at park opening.

 

[Malcon10t]

The monorail doesn't always run at opening. I think they may start allowing people thru 15 mins prior to opening. But only enough people to fill the first monorail (like 60 people.)

 

[disneylover102]

So basically there’s no Maxpass advantage whatsoever since the regular park gates probably open earlier anyway?

 

[motherof5]

what is Maxpass?

 

[disneylover102]

what is Maxpass?

Maxpass is just like Fastpass except you can get Fastpasses on the Disneyland app instead of going to the kiosks. It costs $10 per person per day and you can start reserving on your phone from anywhere once your ticket has been scanned in a park. You can even get Fastpasses before the park officially opens as long as you are in the park (they let you in about 30 minutes early most of the time.) You can get Fastpass for both parks. You can get a new Fastpass every 90 minutes as opposed to 2 hours with the regular Fastpass system which is still available, where you go to the kiosks. When purchasing Maxpass, you also get unlimited PhotoPass downloads.

 

[disland7]

The few times I’ve tried, the monorail has been late and we’ve been frustrated. We always go to the main gates now.

 

[motherof5]

Maxpass is just like Fastpass except you can get Fastpasses on the Disneyland app instead of going to the kiosks. It costs $10 per person per day and you can start reserving on your phone from anywhere once your ticket has been scanned in a park. You can even get Fastpasses before the park officially opens as long as you are in the park (they let you in about 30 minutes early most of the time.) You can get Fastpass for both parks. You can get a new Fastpass every 90 minutes as opposed to 2 hours with the regular Fastpass system which is still available, where you go to the kiosks. When purchasing Maxpass, you also get unlimited PhotoPass downloads.

Okay. Thanks for the explanation.

 

[Niltiac]

I've seen a number of people say that they've tried to use the monorail at opening time, and the problem is that they let everyone go ahead and line up but sometimes there's a delay opening (as can happen with any ride), and they don't necessarily announce it with enough time to get to the main gates. If I were rope-dropping I wouldn't want the stress of standing around guessing whether my plan was going to backfire, so I've never tried.

 

[gottalovepluto]

So basically there’s no Maxpass advantage whatsoever since the regular park gates probably open earlier anyway?

Exactly.

 

[gottalovepluto]

Sometimes the monorial is still in testing at park open. Last time we grabbed it during EMH we weren’t in a rush and they were holding the line outside of the gates until they were ready to board and didn’t scan anyone in until about 20 mins after the park opened. And even then we sat on the monorial for about 15 mins with the poor CMs apologizing for the delay. They even opened the doors for people to leave if they wanted to walk. The monorial is nice if you’re not in a rush but it’s definitely not a time saver in the morning.

(The delay can make interesting people watching though! Poor CM standing by the monorial when this woman hauls her family off it and stops to chew on the CM over how absolutely unacceptable it was- all I could think of was those people were going to have a miserable day, it was barely 7:30am! And then there was the nice old couple who had been first in line all morning who gave up and as they were headed down the stairs the announcement came on we were clear to go- I have NEVER seen older folks/grandparents move as fast as those two did to get back on, it was really cute actually )
ETA: cute because the couple was smiling and laughing about all of it