Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to get Fastpasses at the other park, provided you have Park Hopper tickets. Collect-
ing Fastpasses this way allows the group to spend the less-crowded early-morning
time visiting popular slow-loading attractions that don't offer Fastpass. A father from
Petaluma, California, shares his technique:
The trick is to always be holding Fastpasses for the next headliner ride. Sending a
runnertogettheFastpassesiseasytodo,asasoloadultcanquicklyandeasilymake
his/her way across the park and back to rejoin the group. A time-saving maneuver I
call the Fastpass Daddy Limbo works like this: the main group gets in line for a ride
(the line must be at least 15-20 minutes long) while Dad takes off to get Fastpasses
for another ride. Dad returns 10-15 minutes later and rejoins his group in line by
goingunder/over/throughtherailing(unclaspingachainifnecessary).Thedadmay
need to wait a few minutes to rejoin his group until they are positioned at an easily
accessible point. This should be possible at other accessible lines such as Star Tours
and Splash Mountain, provided that the line outside is long enough.
Fastpass+
In 2013 Walt Disney World began rolling out a new iteration of Fastpass that is ex-
pected to eventually migrate west to Disneyland. Rather than retrieve timed Fast-
pass tickets from kiosks inside the park, guests will use their smartphones and radio-
frequency-identification-enabled electronic tickets to prearrange Fastpass times days
or weeks before arriving at the resort. The quantity and quality of the ride reservation
you receive may depend on the type of admission ticket you buy and the hotel room
you book. Details of this officially unannounced project are in flux, but rest assured
thatourLinesappwillbereadytoaddressanyimpacttoyourtouringplansonceFast-
pass+ rolls out.
SAVING TIME IN LINE BY UNDERSTANDING THE RIDES
THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT TYPES
of rides in Disneyland. Some rides, such as It's a
Small World, are engineered to carry several thousand people every hour. At the oth-
er extreme, rides such as Dumbo the Flying Elephant can accommodate only around
500 people in an hour. Most rides fall somewhere in between. Lots of factors figure
into how long you will have to wait to experience a particular ride: the popularity of
the ride, how it loads and unloads, how many people can ride at one time, how many
units (cars, rockets, boats, flying elephants, or whatever) of those available are in ser-
vice at a given time, and how many staff personnel are available to operate the ride.
Let's take them one by one:
1. HOW POPULAR IS THE RIDE?
Newer rides such as Star Tours: The Adventures
Continue or Radiator Springs Racers attract a lot of people, as do longtime favorites
