Park hopping and capacity question

[Disneyhanna]

I’m deciding on park reservations for Halloween weekend and am worried about the possibility of Disneyland hitting capacity on Oogie Boogie nights, as I do not have OBB tickets.

If I start in Disneyland and park hop to DCA after 1pm, am I guaranteed to be able to get back into Disneyland even if it is at capacity if that is my park reservation for the day? Or is starting in DCA and park hopping to Disneyland the smarter idea since there are already a few days DCA is not available as the starting park…assuming Disneyland is at lower risk of reaching capacity?

Or perhaps I am overthinking this? Since Magic Keys will be available soon I just want to make sure I have reservations as I imagine it will be a busy weekend. I miss the days of no park reservations to worry about! Thanks!

 

[lalasmama]

Capacity isn't a set number. It's actually just a "feeling." The fire marshall decides the parks have hit capacity when it's too busy to get everyone out safely in an emergency.

Sometimes capacity is much lower than at other times. For example, a few years ago (2015, I think), the fire marshall closed the gates because Main Street was full, but the rest of the park was surprisingly quiet. All the crowds on Main Street were all waiting for the new parade. But since that's the only entrance, they couldn't let more people come in from a different place, so they called capacity, and stopped letting people in (for only an hour or so). In that case, they closed the gates when attendance was fairly low, just all stuck in one spot.

As far as if you can start at DL, hop to DCA, then hop back to DL before the start of OBB, you should be good. They are keeping the attendance numbers low-ish, so o would be shocked if they had to pause admittance at all right now. The only people that could go to DL when OBB starts would be people with park hoppers, so it's not like all the people from DCA would be flooding over to DL, because not all of them would have park hoppers.

Side note: Hitting capacity is also fluid thing, not a hard line. As some people leave, they will let more people in, so even when they have hit capacity, there's some guests getting in as others leave.

 

[gelatoni fan]

Disneyland generally uses several levels of hitting 'capacity'. At the lower levels of capacity restriction, re-entry into a given park is allowed while new entry is not allowed. This means that if you start at Disneyland, hop over to California Adventure and then try to go back to Disneyland, you will be allowed to while people who have not entered Disneyland for the day will not be allowed to.

At higher levels of capacity restriction, they will only allow a person into the park once a person has left the park and it doesn't matter if you've entered the park already or not.

With Magic Keys and the reservation system in play, I actually think the chances of capacity restriction are quite low. That is because people with Magic Keys hold a reservation but are less likely to spend all day in the park meaning there should be available capacity.

 

[Wesley815]

Now that everything is reservation based Disney knows how many guests have booked that day. Before it was more of a forecast, and random rush of AP's or same day (in person) ticket booth sales could show up causing capacity to be hit.

I highly doubt we'll see closed gates moving forward as they're already "closed" to everyone without a reservation in the first place.

 

[lcp9]

FWIW - which is probably not much - we typically go the week of Halloween, and on party days that last week of October DLR is a ghost town. Doesn't start to pick up until 3pm/whenever party people can start to enter.