agamble
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2011
- Messages
- 3,264
We just spent a long weekend at Disneyland for Halloween. It was a great time even though crowds were crazy, especially Friday night. I wanted to comment on a few "oddities" in queues, FP, etc.
First, Peter Pan was a 30 minute wait most of the time we were there even though crowds were very high. You may be thinking, "NO WAY!" But it was. I'll come back and post a picture of why from my phone in a few minutes.
Haunted Mansion and Guardians both had some FP issues this weekend. Friday morning I left my Mom and DH with our older kids to ride Star Tours and took the baby to get all of us FP for Haunted Mansion. The queue was super long and went through switchbacks outside the fence blocking the typical way to get to the FP machines. I had to walk around the planter on the other side. I got there and there was a huge FP line and it was very slow moving. I would say I waited about 15-20 minutes to get our FP. This was because only ONE FP machine was working inside the FP area. There were not any CM out letting people know this either. So we all just stood and waited forever and finally got to the front to see all the machines out of order except one. Crazy!
We could have gotten FP for Monster's After Dark on Friday if we had park hopped before 4, but my mother wanted to do other things and since she doesn't get to visit as frequently as we do we didn't make it over there before party crowds began streaming in. Standby waits for MAD were 4+ hours Friday night. So we needed to get FP on Saturday. My mom and I took our two younger ones back for a nap Saturday and left my DH and oldest at the park with instructions to get into the FP queue shortly before 3. My husband did and he told me he was right in front of the machine area with several hundred people in front of him and hundreds more behind him with the line stretching around the corner out of sight. 3:00 came and went and the FP machines did NOT open. CM told them that there was an error and they would get them up and running soon. My husband stayed until 3:20 but they hadn't opened so he and my daughter moved on. I have Max Pass on my AP so I just paid the $10 for him to have Max Pass too and got 2 FP for MAD so he could ride with my daughter, we then used rider switch for my mother and I to ride with my daughter again. It was crazy. I'm pretty sure they opened a few minutes after he left the line too as the FP were going slowly with only Max Pass availability but they had gone much quicker by the time I was able to purchase Max Pass for him and obtain the FP.
If you have Max Pass it will be helpful for this busy season. Also, you can use it to keep checking for canceled availability. Our FP for MAD was for 8:05. At 8:02 FP showed as available for MAD. I couldn't book it because I already had an unused FP for the ride. At 8:05 the FP was gone of course. I continued to check and MAD never came back up, but FP were pretty much gone for everything but GRR and other rides did frequently come up.
Popcorn lines were very long due to AP refills. The lines moved slow. Also, several locations began serving popcorn around 9:30 in the morning.
First, Peter Pan was a 30 minute wait most of the time we were there even though crowds were very high. You may be thinking, "NO WAY!" But it was. I'll come back and post a picture of why from my phone in a few minutes.
Haunted Mansion and Guardians both had some FP issues this weekend. Friday morning I left my Mom and DH with our older kids to ride Star Tours and took the baby to get all of us FP for Haunted Mansion. The queue was super long and went through switchbacks outside the fence blocking the typical way to get to the FP machines. I had to walk around the planter on the other side. I got there and there was a huge FP line and it was very slow moving. I would say I waited about 15-20 minutes to get our FP. This was because only ONE FP machine was working inside the FP area. There were not any CM out letting people know this either. So we all just stood and waited forever and finally got to the front to see all the machines out of order except one. Crazy!
We could have gotten FP for Monster's After Dark on Friday if we had park hopped before 4, but my mother wanted to do other things and since she doesn't get to visit as frequently as we do we didn't make it over there before party crowds began streaming in. Standby waits for MAD were 4+ hours Friday night. So we needed to get FP on Saturday. My mom and I took our two younger ones back for a nap Saturday and left my DH and oldest at the park with instructions to get into the FP queue shortly before 3. My husband did and he told me he was right in front of the machine area with several hundred people in front of him and hundreds more behind him with the line stretching around the corner out of sight. 3:00 came and went and the FP machines did NOT open. CM told them that there was an error and they would get them up and running soon. My husband stayed until 3:20 but they hadn't opened so he and my daughter moved on. I have Max Pass on my AP so I just paid the $10 for him to have Max Pass too and got 2 FP for MAD so he could ride with my daughter, we then used rider switch for my mother and I to ride with my daughter again. It was crazy. I'm pretty sure they opened a few minutes after he left the line too as the FP were going slowly with only Max Pass availability but they had gone much quicker by the time I was able to purchase Max Pass for him and obtain the FP.
If you have Max Pass it will be helpful for this busy season. Also, you can use it to keep checking for canceled availability. Our FP for MAD was for 8:05. At 8:02 FP showed as available for MAD. I couldn't book it because I already had an unused FP for the ride. At 8:05 the FP was gone of course. I continued to check and MAD never came back up, but FP were pretty much gone for everything but GRR and other rides did frequently come up.
Popcorn lines were very long due to AP refills. The lines moved slow. Also, several locations began serving popcorn around 9:30 in the morning.
