Disneyland looks to relax park hopping rules
Disneyland might be about to eliminate its rule against park hopping before 11am. That's one of several initiatives that resort managers are working on to help simplify visiting the parks.
"As we celebrate 70 years of the Disneyland Resort, we're also building for the future by focusing on the relevancy and quality of our product – simplifying the guest experience and bringing exciting new attractions and entertainment to The Happiest Place on Earth," Disneyland Resort President Thomas Mazloum said. Yesterday, Mazloum hosted a small group of reporters - including me - at the resort for an information session.
One Covid-era restriction that will not be going away anytime soon is Disneyland's requirement that Magic Key holders make reservations to visit the parks. Coupled with date-specific daily tickets, reservations have helped the resort balance attendance during the week. They also have helped to prevent the uncomfortable levels of crowding that often happened on weekend evenings at Disneyland before the pandemic, when annual passholders could visit the parks at will on dates when their pass level was not blocked out.
When making a reservation, Disneyland currently requires Magic Key holders to pick one of the two parks at which to start their day. The prohibition against park hopping before 11am is designed to balance morning attendance and prevent people unable to make Disneyland reservations from scanning in at DCA then immediately walking over to Disneyland.
There are no details set yet on how eliminating the 11am rule might affect the reservation process, or when Disneyland might make this change.
In addition to tweaking policies such as park hopping, Disneyland Resort officials are working on several other initiatives designed to improve the guest experience at the park. Disneyland officials yesterday highlighted cast training and attraction maintenance efforts as the resort works to increase ride uptime and throughput, to help keep guests happy during their visits.
To that end, Disneyland officials said that maintenance efforts last year helped the park to increase by 1.5 million the number of guest carries in the parks over the previous year, due to increased ride uptime.
"We know that being able to enjoy more attractions in a day plays a big role in how guests feel about their visit. Work behind the scenes to care for our attractions is one of the most important ways we can invest in making the guest experience the best it can be," Disneyland Resort Attractions Engineering Services Director Natalie Katzka said.
Maintenance can only go so far, however. Disneyland officials said that about 13% of attraction downtimes in the past year have been due to guests. That can mean everything from dropped hats blocking ride paths to guests, including crying children, trying to exit vehicles during the ride. The resort is looking at ways that it can improve communication with guests to prevent such incidents, from better signage to training and supporting cast members to identify and intercede before downtimes result.
Replies (4)
There is a half-hour rule on this now. But it is lightly enforced. CMs just give you a quick talking to if you hop too quickly.
The reservation system is garbage. There is no reason that the parks should be as crowded as they are.
The 11 am rule never made any sense to me. I've always thought a much smarter option would have been to require guests to remain in their reserved park for the first 2-4 hours following arrival before they were eligible to hop, which would discourage booking at the less preferred park and showing up later. Given that many guests treat the resort as one giant theme park anyway, it might make sense for Disney to stop making the reservations park specific and just let guests have free reign on the date they've reserved.
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The 11 am rule just seems silly. Why not just make Magic Key holders stay in their first (pre-reserved) park for a minimum of time (say 2-3 hours) before they can scan into the other park, just like they do with refillable drink bottles that prevent you from filling them again too soon.