graymatter
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2017
After all the craziness, I'm glad to hear you had a nice last day!
Morning into the afternoon today was fine! But yes, this evening (first day of Halloween) was insane. Couldn't even walk in adventureland + New Orleans area. At one point, Haunted mansion line wait was 120 minutes, but the line announcement said it was 150 minutes. The line was so long, they had to move all the strollers to even have this tiny walking path. Then they got the ropes out for Fantasmic and crap hit the fan. I have never in my life seen so many people packed into one space. We were trapped in front of Haunted mansion for 45 min just trying to get to a bathroom (not in line, just literally trying to walk to the nearest bathroom). My kid ended up peeing his pants. There was no path to walk. The people in front of us said they hadn't been stuck that long in a walking path since visiting Tokyo Disneyland. Good thing is we had a change of clothes and had Fantasmic dining seating to watch the show so that was a lifesaver.
Tomorrow we are spending a few morning hours before our flight to catch what we missed. A bunch of APs are blocked on Saturday I've heard!?!, so I'm hoping it will actually be slower tomorrow. The park really only got busy after 5pm all the days we were there, so just beware of that. The locals definitely come after work/school to check out the new Halloween stuff (because it is awesome!)
Good luck next week!
Someone posted on FB that the HM line got to 300 min yesterday. Where on earth do you put all those people???
Again. We had FPs and waited about 5 mins and it was BARELY worth that wait.
We were there all last week. We upgraded our parkhoppers and went to the parks every day from Saturday until Friday. Sunday night was probably the least busy night, and we were able to go on Pirates and Small World without fast passes.
Other than Sunday night and early mornings, we found it REALLY busy. A couple of times we left the park because it was so busy. Many times, it was so busy that the crowd was almost at a standstill, and once they put up the ropes for Fantasmic viewing, the crowds WERE at standstills.
We did have a great time. It was our 20th anniversary trip, so we stayed at the Grand Californian, which we loved. We thoroughly enjoyed the WoC Dessert Party. We had a "food bucket list" and tried a bunch of those items. We weren't impressed with the monte cristos at Cafe Orleans, but the pomme frites were amazing. I think my favourite treat was the raspberry macaron at the Jolly Holiday Baker, with the caramel chocolate apples and english toffee running close seconds. I'm a real ride chicken, so in the past have only gone a few rides, but this time, I sucked up my fears and went on a bunch of others. Most of them I loved. Thank goodness for max pass. It was worth every penny.
Our previous visits were all in October - in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and it was nowhere near as busy during those visits as it was this "black hole" week. Our plan was to go back from Dec 9-12 this year, but we're reconsidering now, if the crowds will be worse than the past week's. We were originally holding off on booking because we didn't know if spending a full week at Disneyland would have us "disneyed out". It didn't, but we are now holding off because we aren't sure if we want another visit as busy as this past week. I know they say there are no slow times any more, so I expected busy, but really, this was far, far busier than I expected.