Report: Our day turned out great! We pulled up the parking structure at exactly 7am and were DL at 7:45. The morning was really nice, quiet low crowds. In fact, it was not really that crowded at all until around 2/3pm when DL suddenly began to feel very crowded.
I don’t know what the morning was like at DCA but when we park hopped at 4pm the LL availability was nearly gone for almost all rides. By 5:30pm the only LL left was for Ariel. We had hoped to ride a few things over there by grabbing later times and modifying them earlier but it was extremely difficult due to them being sold out. We only rode Webslingers over there and ate dinner, the hopped back to DL.
At DL the LL availability also ran out much more quickly than I’m used to seeing. Luckily since we had arrived for rope drop, we were able to ride everything we wanted to using standby and LL, heavily modifying the LL return times. The longest line we waited in was RotR, which was consistently long most of the day. We hopped in the line when it said 60 minutes and we were off the ride right about the 60 minute mark.
It was interesting to see the surge of people showing up later in the day. This had to be Magic Key holders. It was also strange to see the LL inventory run out so quickly, especially at DCA but also at DL. It makes me thing a very high proportion of guests were using LL that day. In DCA, it doesn’t help that Grizzly and Incredicoaster are down for refurb.
All in all we had a great day! My friends enjoyed a lot of good food and the kids loved
Disneyland. We left at 9pm because we were all exhausted but we got on these rides, in this order:
Matterhorn (5-minute standby wait)
Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway (standby, walk on)
Pirates (5-minute standby wait)
Indiana Jones (LL)
Smugglers Run (LL)
Rise of the Resistance (60-minute standby wait)
Big Thunder Mountain (LL)
Star Tours (LL)
Buzz Lightyear (LL)
Space Mountain (LL)
HMH (LL)
Webslingers (LL)
Small World (LL)
Autopia (LL)
Big Thunder (using MEP)
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