Disneyland is Reopening April 30th. Here’s What You Need to Know.

Since Disney just announced last week that Disneyland will reopen April 30th, I thought it would be worth digging into what this means for you, especially if y0u’re planning to visit in the near future.

This is the first of three posts dealing with the reopening. In these posts I’ll cover the following:

  • Disney’s operational changes and how you will be affected by them when the parks reopen (the subject of today’s post)
  • How touring strategies are likely to change based on the new Covid-related protocols
  • How we’re adapting RideMax to fit with the changes, including the release of a new Disneyland RideMax app

The Changes Are Coming!

Today, let’s dive in and look at some of the operational changes we expect to see when Disneyland finally reopens, and how these might affect your plans.

Continue reading “Disneyland is Reopening April 30th. Here’s What You Need to Know.”

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Walt Disney World Wait Times Are Increasing!

Just a quick note here to summarize what’s probably obvious to anyone keeping an eye on the crowds at Walt Disney World lately, and that is that the waits are increasing as Disney allows more guests into the park. (For those of you who are RideMax members, we’ve updated our RideMax planning estimates accordingly.)

We’ve been keeping a pretty close watch on wait times since the parks reopened, and I think this graph of the Avatar Flight of Passage wait times represents what we’ve seen lately:

As you can see, average waits here were pretty low for the last half of August (with a predictable bump on the weekends) averaging around just ten minutes on weekdays and between 30 and 40 minutes on weekends.

Fast-forward to this past week, and you can see that on weekdays the average now hovers around the 40 minute-mark, with the highs on weekends up closer to the hour range (with something of a blip on September 13th, when the average wait was 80 minutes).

I know I already covered this in my Five Tips for a Fall Disney World Visit post, but hope this serves to emphasize the point: come prepared for longer waits!

 

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Visiting Walt Disney World in Fall 2020? Here are FIVE TIPS for Getting the Most from Your Trip

Magic Kingdom - Fall, 2020

Thinking of visiting Walt Disney World this year over fall break? The parks are in such a unique state right now that I thought I’d rundown my top five tips for a 2020 visit.

Let’s dig in!

Continue reading “Visiting Walt Disney World in Fall 2020? Here are FIVE TIPS for Getting the Most from Your Trip”

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Disneyland RideMax Customers: Time to Re-Run Your RideMax Plans!

Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge - Millennium Falcon Ride View

This is just a quick post to let our Disneyland customers know that we recommend re-running your Disneyland RideMax plans, due to much lower crowds in the park than we had originally estimated. This applies to ALL dates on the Disneyland RideMax calendar except the 4th of July, for plans created prior to today, June 28th.

Just for some background here, prior to the opening of Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland, we had expected that the draw of the new land would bring in greater crowds than normal, and so we put together our initial RideMax wait time estimates under that assumption. Somewhat surprisingly, those crowds have either not materialized, or the attractiveness of the new land is serving to dilute the crowds in the rest of the park (or both). Either way, this summer is shaping up to be a GREAT time to visit Disneyland, and we’ve just made some pretty substantial cuts to our wait estimates for the resort as a result, for all dates on the current RideMax Disneyland calendar.

Also worth noting is that if you’re a RideMax subscriber and plan to visit Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge during your trip, be sure to check out the Disneyland Tips & Hints page, available from the link on the main page after you login to RideMax. We give some important “strategy advice” here for using RideMax to map out a plan which includes Galaxy’s Edge.

Enjoy!

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Riding Avatar Flight of Passage Without the Huge Line – 2019 Edition

Avatar Flight of Passage - Disney's Animal Kingdom

Next month brings us the second anniversary of the opening of Avatar Flight of Passage at Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and it still sees the highest wait times of any Walt Disney World attraction — even higher than the newer attractions in Toy Story Land at Hollywood Studios.

I thought it might be worth doing a short YouTube video describing my current best thoughts on how to visit Flight of Passage without a huge line if you aren’t able to get a FastPass — which is still likely to be the case in 2019. I also share a few “bonus tips” to help you navigate your way to the attraction if you’re visiting at rope drop, as well as on how to enjoy the ride a bit better once you’re actually there.

Enjoy!

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