The single best moment I had in my trip to Disneyland last month was when the trader guy in Smuggler’s Run said we needed to jump to hyperspace and I got to reach forward and pull the hyperdrive gears back. Man, that was like being in the movie!
edit: screw it, I can’t find a good gif that shows what I’m looking for
What is that? A gif for ants? :)
Hitting the parks today before it gets super crowded next week with the new Star Wars ride!
Anyone go on Rise of the Resistance yet? My sisters in law went on opening day because they are crazy and were blown away. We are leaving the little one behind on Feb 15th with her grandparents and doing the “get there at opening and refresh the app like crazy” thing.
Is that the newish millennium falcon ride? I thought it was a terrible waste of time, even though the single riders line made the wait pretty small.
Or is that the one that just opened?
It’s the new one. Trackless cars that each take their own path.
Full “spoilers” below.
Yea I’m talking about this one. Thumbnail spoilers!
With the kids grown, I haven’t been to Disneyland in a long time, maybe 10 years or so? (I also literally drive past Magic Mountain on the way to work, and I haven’t been there since 1996.) We used to have Annual Passes, but when children became teenagers is was so not cool to go to the Park with your parents, so we dropped those. So I have’t seen Cars Land, the Guardians of the Galaxy re-do of the Tower of Terror, or the new Star Wars land. My wife and I were thinking about going again this year, between Spring Break and Summer when the crowds are generally lower, but even then a one-day mid-week Park-Hopper ticket is currently $154. Throw in parking, a couple of decent meals (other people run for Fastpasses when the gates open, we run for a good Blue Bayou reservation), snacks, and we’re really looking at about $500 (luckily I already have a nice Lightsaber, so that saves me $200). We’ll probably bite the bullet and go, but budgeting $500 for entertainment opens up so many other options, it becomes a hard choice. But Star Wars, man! Star Wars!
It really is a fabulous expense. I’m really proud of how cheaply my partner and I managed without feeling like we were lessening our experience (for reference, about $2800-2900 for a five night, four park-day trip for two with SO much good food, good drinks, fun memorabilia, an amazing suite style room right by legit Disney resorts but technically “off campus,” plus flights down and back and Lyfts to the parks each day). But goddamn for that kind of money I could have put a down payment on a nice used replacement for my kinda failing car…
So did rise of the resistance on Saturday. If you can successfully navigate the BS of getting a boarding group it’s really an amazing ride. It’s also not intense at all so really anyone could do it.
As for actually getting a boarding group:
You need to scan into the park before it opens (you can leave immediately after to go somewhere less crowded and more importantly with less network interference.
You then need to fully shut down your Disney app like 10 minutes before the park official opening. Open the app 2 minutes before opening. Place a fake mobile order to make sure you are signed in properly
Have your app open when the park opens. I had the app open to the home screen, looked at my watch, as soon as the park opened (I’m saying 8:00:01) I clicked “find out more” and joined a board group from there.
if the “join board group is NOT orange then click on “my status” and join from there.
I was able to get into RotR last week down in DW, and can mostly confirm all this. We got into the park (past the turnstyles) about 30 minutes early, then just sat somewhere and waited until the park opened. I did have the app open the whole time, and it worked fine. I just kept going back and forth between the ‘join group’ and ‘find out more’ until I could click ‘join group.’ Also, I heard a suggestion of turning off wi-fi and only having on cell service, as that works better. I don’t know how true that is, but doing that worked for us (we got boarding group 21, which ended up being about a 2 hour wait).
On a different note - the Magic Kingdom in DW has a barber shop (back-left of the first courtyard area, by the ‘fire house’ where you can get sets of those cards for the interactive game, and the big double doors where the parades end). I believe DL has one as well. And I can’t speak for the one in DL, but I figured I’d give it a try, since I needed a haircut (was too busy the week before we came down to get one), and it was something I had never done there. Expected a $75 dollar charge for it.
Haircuts there are $19 dollars. So if you can spare 15-20 minutes, they’re cheap and do a nice job (or at least, I was happy with mine). Best deal on anything in the entire area.
I found this to be an interesting read:
Disneyland is cancelled. They say until end of March but I would imagine longer.
I promised my daughter we’d go day one (assuming we can get reservations with our passes). We all had covid in April anyways.
Jellies! Have fun! Stay safe!
You won the lottery (assuming you came through with no health issues or screwing over anybody else).
We would be going nuts with all the airline and cruise deals if we thought we didn’t have to worry about that pesky pandemic.
Totally jelly.
I was about to get really upset with you til I saw that last sentence :)
Enjoy!!!
Need to figure out how to keep our passes suspended if possible, or just cancel them if possible, I guess. We don’t intend to go anytime remotely close and I don’t want to pay for no reason. I’m sure we’re not the only ones so hopefully Disney has a plan for that.
Did you pay all up front or monthly?
There are two options:
Option 1: your expiration date stays the same and you get a refund on the months missed (default for monthly payments)
Option 2: you get your expiration date extended for the duration of the closure. (default for paid upfront)
You might be able to finagle a full on cancellation/refund if you get on the phone with them and explain that you don’t intend on going anytime soon for health reasons.