Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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time, buy your tickets in advance and get a jump on the crowds at the ticket booths. For
information on pur chasing adv ance tickets, see “ Admission, H ours & I nformation”
above.
Attendance falls dramatically during the winter, so the park offers discounted or two-
for-one admission to S outhern California residents, who may buy up to fiv e tickets per
zip code verification. If you'll be visiting the par k with someone who liv es here, be sure
to take advantage of this promotion.
Another secret timesaving tip is to enter Disneyland from the turnstile at the Monorail
Station in Downtown Disney. The line is usually shorter and the Monorail will take you
straight into Tomorrowland (but it doesn 't stop in D isney's California A dventure).
Another timesaver is booking your vacation through the Walt Disney Travel Company—
those package guests can enter M ickey's Toontown and F antasyland 1 hour befor e the
general public.
Once in the park, many visitors tackle Disneyland (or Disney's California Adventure)
systematically, beginning at the entrance and wor king their way clockwise ar ound the
park. M y advice: Arriv e early and r un to the most popular rides—the I ndiana J ones
Adventure, Star Tours, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain, the Haunted
Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean, all in D isneyland; and Twilight Zone Tower of
Terror, Soarin' Over California, California Screamin', Grizzly River Run, and It's Tough
to Be a Bug rides in Disney's California Adventure. Waits for these rides can last an hour
or more in the middle of the day.
This time-honored plan of attack may eventually become obsolete, thanks to Disney's
complimentary
FASTPASS
system. H ere's ho w it wor ks: S ay y ou want to ride S pace
Mountain, but the line is long—
so
long the curr ent wait sign indicates a 75-minute
standby. Instead, you can head to the automated FASTPASS ticket dispenser, where you
pop in y our park ticket to r eceive a fr ee voucher listing a computer-assigned boar ding
time later that day. When you return at the assigned time, you enter through the FAST-
PASS gate and only hav e to wait about 10 minutes (to the envy of ev eryone in the
slowpoke line). The hottest featur es at D isney's California A dventure had F ASTPASS
built in fr om the star t; for a complete list for each par k, check y our official map/guide
when you enter and look for the r ed FP symbol.
Note:
You can obtain a FASTPASS for
only one attraction at a time. Also, the F ASTPASS system doesn't eliminate the need to
arrive at the theme park early because there's only a limited supply of FASTPASSes avail-
able for each attraction on a giv en day. So, if you don't show up until the middle of the
afternoon, y ou might find that all the F
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ASTPASSes hav e been distributed to other
guests.
Disneyland
Disneyland is divided into eight sub-areas or “lands” arranged around a central hub, each
of which has a number of rides and attractions that are, more or less, related to that land's
theme. Be sure to pick up a fr ee park map on the way in, or y ou'll probably get lost
almost immediately.
MAIN STREET U.S.A.
Located at the park's entrance, Main Street U.S.A. is an ideal-
ized version of a turn-of-the-20th-centur y American small-town street inspired by Mar-
celine, Missouri (Walt Disney's childhood home), and built on a
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/
8
scale. A ttention to
detail her e is ex ceptional—interiors, furnishings, and fixtur es conform to the period.
As with any r eal Main Street, the Disney version is essentially a collection of shops and
