Disneyland reopens its Toy Story lot to guest parking tomorrow morning, adding another parking option for visitors to California's most popular theme parks. Photos and video of long lines outside the resort have been going viral this week, but wait times inside the parks have not been bad. Here's what you need to know to avoid getting stuck with unnecessary waits on your next Disneyland visit.
First, you still need a park reservation in addition to a valid ticket in order to enter Disneyland or Disney California Adventure. Many of the people who have been showing up thinking "everything is back to normal!" have been getting turned away when they learn that they still need a reservation.
Disney said that it will screen early arrivals at the Toy Story lot before bussing them to the parks. Masks continue to be required for all guests on the Toy Story lot buses. Over at the Mickey and Friends and Pixar Pals garages, guests are going through security screening there before walking to the parks along the old tram route. Parking trams continue to be unavailable for guests parking in the garages.
Much of the pressure to enter the parks right at opening is coming from people wanting to get into the new Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure. But your place in the land is assured without waiting in a standby queue if you win a place in the virtual queue for WEB Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure. The virtual queue opens at 7am daily, and you do not need to be present at the park to try to enter that queue through the Disneyland app. (The same goes for the Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance queue at Disneyland.)
Unless you win a spot in one of those queues with a return time before 10:30am, there's no good reason for you to rope drop the parks at this point, given the current crowd levels throughout the day. Only Radiator Springs Racers consistently has been posting a wait over an hour on the Disneyland app. Many queue are less than 15 minutes. The mid-afternoon wait for Peter Pan has been averaging around 30 minutes for goodness' sake. Wait for the early morning rush for security to pass before arriving.
There are second-chance opportunities for the two virtual queues at noon. If you strike out on both and still must see Avengers Campus, wait until later in the day, when guests have been reporting much shorter waits to get into the land.
Both parks are open from 9am to 9pm now. Rides and shows are now running at full capacity, and Disney has added many attractions that were not available prior to this week although some, including big shows and parades, remain closed. That has helped eliminate the long physical queues that guests saw inside the parks after they reopened earlier this spring.
Food service remains tricky for many, however, so check the Disneyland app early to place mobile orders for lunch and dinner if you did not get table service dining reservations in advance. Do not wait until meal time and expect to get food right away. That's just not how things are happening at pretty much any popular theme park in America right now.
And finally, even though the mask mandate has been lifted for people who got their final vaccine does at least two weeks ago, everyone else - including all kids between the ages of three and 11, who are not yet eligible for vaccination - are supposed to be wearing masks while indoors and not eating. The State of California strongly recommends that all guests be fully vaccinated or receive a negative Covid test prior to entering the Disneyland Resort.
For discounted tickets to Disneyland's theme parks, please visit our authorized travel partner's Disneyland tickets page.
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You still have to hit the virtual queue right at 7am or noon for Rise. It's still going fast. Otherwise, the land is accessible, and Falcon's wait time is consistently under an hour.
Have single rider lines been opened back up?
I noticed them at Universal Orlando last week, but they're not at Disneyland yet.
Saw today that no one really parked at toy story. The lines over there looked really short while the Mickey and friends/harbor entrances are super long still. Not sure if toy story will stay that way for long as people will probably begin to utilize the lot soon.
Also, I heard that the toy story busses drop you off at a different security line than the regular one on Harbor. Does anyone know if this is true?
Yes - Disney told me that if you do the security check at Toy Story, you will be dropped in a line that heads straight into the esplanade, skipping the walk-up security check line coming in from Harbor Blvd.
What explains the shorter lines? Are they still not letting in capacity? Or does the elimination of fast passes lower wait times overall?
@thecolonel-
Ride/attraction capacity is finally back to normal but park capacity is still limited. Because of that, lines are moving faster and wait times are shorter. Now would be the perfect time to go to the DLR before they increase capacity, I’d assume in July when park hours increase and more CMs come back
@postcott thanks, that makes good sense.
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Any idea how busy Star Wars is during all of this? Is it hard to get onto Rise of the Resistance?