DCA Opening Day Plans - sleeping over anyone?
If you ever wanted to spend a night INSIDE
Disneyland, here's your chance...
All lines of business for Disneyland (Attractions, Merchandise, Foods, Custodial, Security, etc.) are quickly
drafting plans to hold up to 28,000 people inside Disneyland overnight on February 7th, before DCA officially
opens on the morning of the 8th. There will be an Opening Ceremony at 7:45 am in front of the DCA Main
Entrance, before the Park opens officially at 8 am. The Main Entrance Esplanade area will be full of grandstand
risers for media and invited Disney guests. The area will be very congested, due to all the extra equipment and
seating in that large plaza.
Since there will be no real place for large groups of people to wait before the Park opens, they will be opening up
Disneyland as a waiting area for those die-hard fans who plan on spending the night or arriving very early in the
morning before DCA opens. There will undoubtedly be at least a few thousand people who will arrive sometime
during the evening of the 7th, or the early morning of the 8th, in order to ensure that they can be among the first
official Guests to enter DCA. But, the number of early bird DCA visitors could reach into the tens of thousands by
the morning of the 8th. So, Disneyland will be used as the staging area for these early arrivals.
Right now the plans are still tentative, but Disneyland will close at 8:00 pm on the 7th. After the Park is cleared,
they will begin letting early bird DCA first day visitors into Disneyland to spend the night in the original Magic
Kingdom so that the Esplanade area can be kept clear for Opening Ceremony set up. There will most likely be a
very basic Food and Merchandise offering, in order to keep everyone from starving or freezing to death. It is still
being decided at this time if any Attractions will operate, or any hospitality services will be offered, or if this will
simply be a "containment" procedure to keep the early Guests out of the way of the set up crews and working
media.
But, they are making plans based on a worst (best?) case scenario of 28,000 people either spending the night,
or arriving in the very early morning hours before DCA officially opens. If they thought that only 5,000 would show
up early, Downtown Disney could be used as a holding pen. But there is a possibility that the numbers could
swell to beyond that so a pajama party in Disneyland will have to be the "pre- show" to DCA on February 8th. The
In-Park maximum for DCA has been lowered to 28,000 (see below). So, it's entirely possible that anyone who
arrives after 9:00 am on opening day won't be getting in.
The plan is to form a long "queue" through Disneyland after the Park closes on the 7th. The queue will start in the
Town Square and stretch down Main Street. As the evening turns into late night and early morning, the queue will
be directed up Matterhorn Way, through Fantasyland, down the Big Thunder Trail into Frontierland, along the
Rivers of America towards the Haunted Mansion, and then finally back over the bridge in front of Pirates of the
Caribbean and into Adventureland. As more people arrive, they will be directed to wherever the end of the queue
is at that time. It should be possible to hold up to 30,000 bodies this way, if that many really show up before 7:00
am on the 8th.
Right now, there will be no Attractions offered. There will be no Characters or Entertainment offered. There will
be some bathrooms open, and a basic offering of Food and Drinks. Perhaps roving ODV carts? The food that
will be available is uncertain at this time. This will be a simple "control and contain" strategy. All the resources of
the Resort had really been planned to have been focused on DCA that week, and especially during the 36 hours
of the 7th and 8th in preparation of the Grand Opening. This giant queue and crowd staging strategy is a last
minute realization, and there isn't a lot of time left to plan a separate "event" other than the DCA opening. If the
mood turns festive and party- like, it will be up to the people waiting in line overnight in a darkened Disneyland.
For at least the past year, the DCA attendance levels thrown about by Operations managers and TDA execs
have been a "Total Paid Attendance" for the day of 38,000, and a maximum In-Park capacity of 30,000. However,
after the past week of preview days with attendance near 15,000, the In-Park capacity has just been dropped to
28,000. DCA simply gets crowded after about 12,000 people click through the turnstiles. The In-Park capacity is
something that no one really knows until they can get at least 25,000 in DCA. Expect further revisions in
February. But, right now the In-Park capacity is being pegged at 28,000 maximum, instead of the previous
30,000. When there are 25,000+ people inside DCA, it will feel like New Years Eve at Disneyland. Very, very
crowded.
After the last couple weeks of DCA previews, the In-Park capacity for the park has been lowered. For the past
few years, the planned In-Park DCA capacity has been 30K. About 12 months ago, that number was even fine
tuned to 30,100 exactly. But after the recent preview dates, the In-Park capacity has been dropped by Operations
Vice Presidents' to 28K, in order to prevent overcrowding. However, the highest attendance DCA has
experienced so far was this weekend with total attendance for the day of 22K and a peak In-Park attendance of
17K. And DCA seemed fairly busy this weekend with 17K inside by late afternoon. 28K inside DCA will be very
busy.
So, if tens of thousands of people do show up before DCA opens on the 8th, there is not a guarantee that all of
them are going to get in right away. DCA could fill up within the first one or two hours on the 8th, and some of the
people who had been queued up and waiting all morning inside Disneyland may not be admitted until the
attendance hopefully reduces a bit later in the afternoon or evening.
Expect the same type of crowds throughout the rest of the opening weekend, except without the overnight
Disneyland staging for the Grand Opening. The attendance estimates for the first 3 days of DCA's opening are
planned at 38,000 total (in and out) for the day. That's the maximum number that the planning folks will allow to
be planned for. Anything over 38,000 in one day is simply impossible to plan for.
If you really want to ensure that they can get into DCA on opening day, you may need to commit to spending all
night at Disneyland.
Good luck to any die-hards that try it, though! 
