9:50 am Update 1:
Been in DCA for about 30 minutes and did Goofy’s Sky School (wow by the way! First time I’ve done that one) and Incredicoaster. As someone below pointed out, you CAN make standard
lightning lane multi pass reservations! So you basically could ride anything at *least* twice while line jumping. A little too early to say how useful this pass is (compared to the price), but right now it feel “fun.” Ultimately a Wednesday may not be ideal since wait times for the two attractions we’ve done so far were only ~15 and ~20 minutes, but times probably will grow throughout the day. ALSO, and this is huge, no bouncing around the park, you can make a logical path and just hit each thing in order. I see that being a HUGE benefit for stamina/longevity throughout the day.
11am lunch update:
Taking a break to have something to eat at Carthay Circle Alfresco. This is one of the nice things of the Premier Pass; it’s A LOT easier to plan around set plans, like table service reservations. Since the last update we did Midway Mania TWICE, waiting in the standby line once like the poors (
) since it said 10 minutes… it lied, probably more like 20. But then we redeemed the Premier pass immediately to do it again back to back. That second wait was exactly 5 minutes from scan to butt in seat. [Note, I’m also using the standard lightning lane]. I had pulled a standard lightning for Goofy while in line for Midway Mania and it must have gone down while we were on the attraction, so now I have a standing multi experience one that I’ll use over at Disney (most likely). This become *VERY* powerful since you could have multiple back to back rides if you had a couple multi experience and standard lightning lane AND Premier pass. It gets a little ridiculous managing all of that, but I could see if luck was on your side you could have MORE passes than you knew what to do with. We also did Little Mermaid… so 3 attractions between 9:50 and 11am, and we COULD have squeezed in Goofy if it had been up.
1:18 pm update:
Lunch ended at exactly noon. We got RSR, Spider-Man, and JUST getting on Guardians right now. So about an hour and twenty minutes for those three. I forget what normal pass I pulled for
Disneyland, but it must have gone down because now I have TWO multi experience redemptions waiting for me! We have Soarin’ and Grizzly (won’t be doing that) and Guardians after dark (will skip that too, did it last night at OBB) left in DCA. So not bad at all for starting at about 9:15 am today and having about a 50 minute lunch!
Final update:
Entered Disneyland proper at 2:15pm. We were able to do Runaway Railway, then Smugglers run, then headed towards Rise and it went down *just* as we got there. So instead we kept going around counter clockwise and hit Pirates and Indy. We noticed Rise was back up and then booked it over there and rode it. I had Napa Rose Chef’s counter at 6:30 and we wanted to return to our room at the Disneyland Hotel for a shower/refresh so we got on the monorail to exit the park at about 5:15pm. So in three hours we were able to hit five attractions, not as good as DCA, but you notice things are spread out more in DL, and the attractions we hit actually have decent queues AFTER lightning lanes. Railway, Smugglers, and Rise all have pre-shows which eat up some time. Pirates had the shortest scan to butt in seat, probably about 6-7 minutes. Indy was probably 10 minutes or so, the line was backed up to the room with spikes in the ceiling, which over my three rides the last few days appears to be a common area for the line to run until.
Summary:
I did 14 attractions between two parks in 7 hours (didn’t count my hour lunch). This isn’t great, but I think you could knock out more, especially if you hit all three in Tomorrowland, which we didn’t even make it over to. That makes for a per cost attraction of $28.57, ouch. That said, I had two multi experience lightning lanes available and plenty of Premier passes available still. If I hadn’t been so full after my 3.5 hour dinner, or if you plan better and DON’T buy this pass when you know you’ll be out of the park from 6:30-10pm, you’ll get a lot more out of it.
If my friend could have handled riding space mountain back to back I would have done that with one of the multi experiences and with the Premier. She also wasn’t sure if she could handle Thunder Mt (it was after a lunch of rich food and a lot of sun) but we probably could have used the other multi on that one and of course the Premier.
Realistically there were 20 attractions that interested us (ones we’ve done before and I know we like). Just getting those 20 would have made it $20/person/attraction. Guardians after dark obviously won’t always be on there, but small world would… for $35 or whatever lightning lane costs we could have added two more attractions easy and realistically maybe 5 or 6 to bring best case down to ~$16.73/person/attraction.
Could you do everything in one day? Yes. Probably not even open to close but maybe 9am to 9pm.
How many could you do max? Assuming the stacking of Premier and standard isn’t unintentional, I think if you rope dropped and were and insane person to midnight, you could probably hit 30-35 attractions for an ultimate price of ~$12.50 a ride. I honestly think more than that and you’ll be too worn out or just not organized enough to pull/use more passes.
The million dollar question (or $400 one at least), is it worth the money. It’s really subjective. That’s the short wimpy answer. It’s fantastic to jump lines and be in the driver seat on what you want to do, not reactive to what is the soonest return time. You can still have a blast without it and just the standard lightning lane(s); Monday my friend and I did about 11 attractions and still left the park by 11pm AND got started at 9:15-ish. We certainly walked two or three times more. I see this being for the return or non-first timer family that can afford a VIP tour, it would feel the cost of it. They don’t have to cut something out of the Disney trip, but they might be paying off debt for awhile or skipping another trip. This seems like a discount and offers just about everything for a fraction of the cost assuming you’re a family of 3-4 and not maxing out the tour size limits. I do actually think this will cannibalize sales from it. I also see this for small families (like a parent and child) or individuals. $400 is a lot, I get that not everyone has that, but a VIP tour at Universal is ~$350 or so. $500 (when you count park ticket) for Disney seems about appropriate for the Disney upcharge tax and I know a lot of “non-rich” people that do the Universal VIPs.
Now it’s really hard to comment on if you should decrease your vacation by a day or two so you can afford the pass. I would say if you’re doing a 4+ day trip and downsizing to a 3 day trip, it might be worth it. But if you’re downsizing to a 2 day trip, or worse yet, a get here 4pm Friday and leave 6pm Sunday, don’t do it. Have a full Friday and Saturday. There are too many things that could ruin some enjoyment, attractions can go down for half a day or more occasionally.
