They made us leave the park and come back in, which was different from what a CM told us when we entered the park 40 minutes earlier. We were originally told that we just had to come to the gate area but not actually leave. It didn’t take that long to go out and come back in, but fighting the pre-fireworks crowd to and from the gate was a pain. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t go into the park until I had my lanyard.
I’m glad we did the event, but It definitely seemed like there were more people than posters reported here about previous DAH. The crowd level felt about the same as a morning EMH. AstroOrbiter, while not really a 50 minute wait, did take a good 20 minutes for a one minute ride because of what seemed like an understaffing issue. I waited longer for SDMT than I ever have before (I’ve only ridden it with FPs or at EMM in the past), and we waited until after 10:00 to try to ride. That wait kind of killed our momentum and we ended up heading out at 10:30.
So in the time between the end of fireworks and leaving at 10:30, we rode Space twice, AstroOrbiter once, Buzz once, BTMR twice, and SDMT once, in that order. We didn’t stop for snacks at all because there were long lines at all the kiosks. We weren’t literally running from ride to ride, but we also weren’t meandering or taking breaks either. We were planning on riding Pirates, but as a previous poster noted, it was down. Obviously we could have gotten at least a couple of additional rides in between 10:30-11:00, but after waiting awhile for SDMT, DS6 was half asleep and asking to leave.
All in all, it was fun, but I didn’t think it was an absolute must do.