Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened with much fanfare yesterday at Disneyland, and by all accounts the reservation system Disneyland is using to allow access to this new Star Wars land from now through June 23rd is a huge success.
If you’re lucky enough to have a reservation for a four-hour visit to Galaxy’s Edge before it opens to the general public on June 24th, you might be wondering when is the best time to visit the only open ride in this new land, Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run.
Since we have a pretty keen interest in wait times here at RideMax, and thanks to the fact that Disney makes posted wait times available in their app, we tracked waits throughout the day yesterday, and the chart below reflects the result (click the image for a larger view).
As you can see, the results here were pretty impressive, with wait times peaking at 2 hours right around 3:00pm — not bad for such a groundbreaking new addition to the park. It’s also pretty amazing that there were VERY LOW posted waits of only five minutes just before 11:00am, and ten minutes just before 8:00pm.
If you’re wondering what the orange lines on the chart represent, these are the times at which each of the reservation slots began. (The four-hour time slots overlapped by an hour on each end with the previous and next group to be admitted.) So guests holding reservations were assigned time slots beginning at 8am, 11am, 2pm, 5pm, and 8pm.
Looking at the chart, if you plan to visit the ride during the reservation phase, it’s pretty clear that the best time to get in line for this ride is just before the next group is to be admitted, or just before the three hour mark into your reserved time slot. (And if you’re a RideMax subscriber, we’ll have more specific advice for getting around the land in the RideMax “Tips & Hints” pages, which you’ll see on the main page after logging into RideMax.)
All in all, this is a pretty impressive set of wait times for the opening day of the largest Disneyland expansion in park history. Congratulations to the entire Disneyland operations team for making this such a huge success!