Disneyland

A random collection of thoughts and tips about The Happiest Place on Earth.

a blog post of @gabes | updated 30 dec. 2024

Contents

Background

I've been fortunate enough to have visited the Disneyland resort in Anaheim, California many times throughout my life. My parents are huge fans of Disneyland—they even had their honeymoon there. When I was young, our family were annual passholders to Disneyland and went there around 10-15 times each year. Back then, there was a very cheap annual pass that was only available to SoCal residents. It had a lot of blackout days, but it worked for us. This pass ended sometime when I was in elementary school, and we've never had annual passes since, but we still take trips to Disneyland every few years. (Our family doesn't really do "vacations"— I've only left California twice. So Disneyland is sort of our version of a "vacation.") Like anyone who's gone to Disneyland more than a couple times, I have my own collection of ideas and "tips" about the parks that I won't hesitate to share with others, so that's what I'm going to write about in this post.

Before the Park

Going to Disneyland is so complicated that it seems like you need a strategy just to get there. (Or maybe I just make things more complicated than they need to be.) Anyways, if you want to get the most out of a day at Disneyland, you should get there when the park opens, usually at 8 A.M. Ideally, that means getting to the front gate by 7:45 or so, which probably means getting to Anaheim at around 7 if you're not staying in a hotel there.

The first step is parking. There are two places to park at Disneyland, the huge Mickey and Friends/Pixar Pals parking structures to the northwest of the resort, or the smaller Toy Story parking lot to the southeast on S Harbor Blvd. Most people park in the big structure. This is a mistake! It is significantly easier to park in the Toy Story lot, especially in the morning. The parking structures have huge lines of cars just waiting to enter, while the Toy Story lot usually doesn't even have a line. Then, the structure feeds everyone into a massive security line that takes forever to get through. In the Toy Story lot, you get funneled through a separate security line which is significantly shorter. While the structure is closer to the park and has a tram that takes you to Downtown Disney, the Toy Story lot has its own shuttle bus that takes you right to the main entrance (and even if you don't take the bus, it's not a super long walk).

After parking, you will need to go through a security screening to enter Disney property. Please read Disney's official guidelines on what is allowed and not allowed inside the parks before you leave your car. Don't be like my uncle from Missouri who brought his pocketknife to the security screening and had to spend an hour going back to his car to drop it off. However, one important thing to realize is that, unlike most other SoCal theme parks, Disney actually allows you to bring food into the parks. Use this to your advantage to save some money... you've probably already spent a fortune just getting here.

Entering the Park

Once you get through security, you need to wait in another line to actually enter the park of your choice (Disneyland Park or Disney's California Adventure, aka DCA). The gates into the parks do open a bit before the posted park opening time, which is why it's good to get here early. If you're entering Disneyland park, here's a weird tip: you might notice that the placement of some of the planters around the front gates causes people to form one line that later splits into two entrance gates. If that happens, this line can be expected to move twice as fast as the other lines. Score!

Even though the gates open before the posted park opening time, you won't be able to fully enter the park until after the "rope drop" at the posted opening time. In Disneyland park, you will be able to walk down Main Street to the central hub, but each of the four lands branching off from the hub (Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland) will be roped off until the "rope drop." DCA has a similar rope drop at the end of Buena Vista St.

Rope Drop Strategy

Getting to the park before rope drop gives you a great opportunity to walk directly to a ride as soon as the rope drops and potentially wait much less time than you would in the middle of the day for the same ride. So which ride is it most worth it to "rope drop" in each park?

In Disneyland, there are several very popular rides that regularly have hour-long waits throughout the day—Indiana Jones, Rise of the Resistance, etc. In my opinion, the best rope drop ride is Space Mountain, because trying to wait in line for this ride later in the day can be awful, which is due to many factors including its terrible Lightning Lane integration that causes the standby queue to move at a snail's pace. (Don't expect any tips about Lightning Lane in this post; I've never used it.) While Rise of the Resistance also tends to have long lines, I consider it a worse rope-drop choice because (a) it doesn't always open right at the start of the day due to its complicated ride system, and (b) its queue is much more bearable than Space Mountain's.

For DCA, there is one very obvious contender for rope drop: Radiator Springs Racers. If you want to go on this ride at all during the day, your best shot is rope drop, and even then, it's probably still going to be an hour-long wait (hey, still better than waiting three hours). Once again, this ride's Lightning Lane is a real problem and standing in that outdoor queue on a hot day is awful. Other possible rope drops are Soarin', Grizzly River Run, or Spider-Man WEB Slingers.

Going on Rides

Now for my favorite part: the rides! There are a lot of factors to consider when deciding what rides to ride. For starters, you'll want to do research on Disney's website beforehand on height and other physical requirements to determine which rides your group might not be able to do. If you have a young group member who isn't tall enough for a ride you're interested in, find out if that ride offers child swap (it probably does). If you or a group member has a disability, read Disney's disability-specific guides to determine ride suitability. You may be surprised by how many rides are wheelchair-accessible, especially at DCA.

Wait times are the bane of everyone's existance at Disney parks. What most people don't realize at first is that the wait times Disney posts at ride entrances and in their app are intentionally not accurate to the ride's current queue. Disney actually manipulates the wait times to influence guest movement around the park. So if you are standing right in front of a ride with a short posted wait time, the line is probably okay, because Disney wants guests to move there. But if you're on the other side of the park and see a short wait time on the app, by the time you make it to that attraction the wait will likely take longer, because Disney wants people to move there. Generally, running across the park trying to chase short wait times is a bad idea. You're better off moving through the park one area at a time and evaluating wait times as you go.

More wait time tips: