We were there July 25-31. The best days were Thursday July 25 and Friday July 26. Saturday and Sunday weren’t too bad, but Monday and Tuesday were insane. Ride lines were 120-200 minutes for the big rides, the smaller rides were 30-45 minutes. We have magic keys and usually love summer, but this was insane.
Ugh, that sounds horrible! Since you were staying on site, how early did you make it into the parks? Were the lines that long before 10 am?
I follow a couple of vloggers and they have been in the parks of late and it has been super busy with quite long wait times. Touring plans has had several days listed as 8, 9 and even 10 so it has been busy of late.
Yes, DCA was so crowded on 7/30 and a lot of rides were going down too. We went to Pym’s for lunch with our group and the orders took forever even after we hit I’m here. We forgot one lunch order and adding it back on would have taken another 45 minutes. Then we got to webslingers just as it went down and had to wait and ride Little Mermaid instead.
Oh our schedule was all over the place. First day we tried early entry and were in the parks at 7:40. We rode so much that day! Other days we came in between 9-10am, and it was more crowded each day. We went home for a nap around 3-4 and came back to the parks around 6pm each night.Ugh, that sounds horrible! Since you were staying on site, how early did you make it into the parks? Were the lines that long before 10 am?
I wonder if this has anything to do with the opening of HMH. MK reservations for Disneyland booked up very quickly after they announced that it was opening. If locals try for VQ times from home and get an early return time, maybe they end up going to the parks earlier than they normally would have.
Pirates closed for a few days on Thursday. Maybe people didn't realize that it was only closing for a few days and wanted to ride it before it went down.
Or... maybe people were visiting Disneyland before or after SDCC (July 25-28)
On the day you did early entry, what time did you get in the security line up?
Did you get a survey for your day at DCA? I did. A lot of questions were about how crowded the park was.
We got down to security around 7:10. We thought about riding the monorail in but decided to hit the main entrance instead. The monorail starts at 7:30, but isn’t always working. We went through a short line at the main entrance, walked down main street and stayed to the right, tapped our key card and were in! We never enter early but it was so fun! We rode about 6 rides in fantasyland and felt so accomplished. Had a snack and people starting pouring in! Fantasyland was really empty for a few hours.
Awesome! We haven’t done an early entry in years but will be for this coming trip at the end of August. I don’t have a desire to be in the security line at 6:15am so I’m glad to hear you managed just fine going through security shortly after 7am.
I guess I’m used to the old security line from the Disneyland hotel side through downtown Disney. We never waited in line and security was super fast. This time when we would show up, the line would be from the new downtown Disney security line past the old downtown Disney security line. To me this was crazy. What changed? Are that many more people going through this security line?
Are they building a security line just for Disneyland hotel guests? On one of our visits in February (I think) they had an exclusive “line” for guests of the Disneyland hotels, but it was only for one day and they said they were just testing things.
They originally announced upon opening the new Security Entrance closer to the car park, that the area near the Mickey Sorcerers Hat would eventually be made into a dedicated Disneyland Hotel security entrance but I haven't heard much about it since so I am not sure if it is happening or not.
Is #3 the new security location? Someone mentioned which direction to line up, but I can’t find that post. Is the line towards #2 or towards the bottom of your picture? Thanks
Yes, #3 is the new security location.
I think perhaps the only problem with this scenario is how they would manage the queues to get in, as one entrance only (albeit with all gates open) would mean it would have to handle hundreds of people at a time and where would they all line up. The area directly outside the new security entrance is not big enough to handle that many people and they would need many staff to oversee organising everyone into the correct lanes. It would probably make more sense to have three separate security entrances so they can distribute the crowds easier and they will probably still only use pretty much the same amount of security staff. Just my thoughts anyway.
Early entry is amazing if you can wake up and get your kids there in time! Mine move so slowly in the morning that we usually don’t make it.
