I’ll preface with, I know this is subjective. But, I would like to hear some opinions. Dates for our DL vacation are starting to show up on the calendar for single day tickets. We are planning 2-3 days in the park. 2 adults, 2 children. On the weekend, we would be better off selecting multiday tickets due to pricing of $184/$199 a day. But on the weekdays, we are seeing 104/$ 129 day tickets for adults. Crowd Calendar says we are looking at level 5 on weekends, level 7 on weekdays. Is the crowd worth the savings? 2 day Multiday tickets are $168. So that could be a savings of $64/day per adult. That is enough to cover a LL multipass and single pass for the day whereas we might not have done that otherwise. So, what would you do? Lower crowd day with no LL, or higher crowd day with a little bit of spending money and LL. Is LL more impactful than crowds at DL?
A little about us, we have a lower tolerance for lines and crowds. We get grumpy around 30 minutes. We won’t rope drop (crowds) but we’ll get there within the first 20 minutes or so. We are low thrill, low spook, no pirates, no mansion, no mountains, no tower, etc. We’ll be jet lagged and probably go until around 4 and call it a day. We don’t need fireworks or parades.
I’m interested in how crowded it will feel moving around. I’m also a little iffy on the calendar, the numbers were similar last year. But the year before it was 7s on the weekend and 6/7/8 on the weekday. And we know its an imperfect science. To add to the mix, it sounds like there will be a kids deal of $50/day tickets for the summer. So might that increase crowds anyway? Plus grad nights on the weekend.
Thoughts?
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100% every single time. LL works really well at DLR and I’ve been on July 4th weekend and it wasn’t bad with LL
But wait you don’t ride thrill rides, spooky rides…..so you might not need it actually cuz that’s about all the LL rides. What is left? Kiddie and Dark rides? If so, you’re better off rope dropping, taking a break and then riding the dark rides in Fantasyland late at night. We did all 5 FL dark rides in an hour including Pan at 11pm.
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From my experience, that additional price you pay for ticket goes towards higher staff:guest ratios and that for me personally, my experience is better on the days that trend higher for the ticket prices. At least in terms of lines and any operations that can be eased.
I feel like when they have those lower priced days they intentionally staff less and you’re just waiting around in general more and that lower price tends to draw in more crowds so you’ve lost the trade-off of lower crowds too.
And even without LL you can still do a good amount in the first few hours especially if you’re not looking for thrills or spooks or mountains or towers.
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Nope! I am here now, and was here weekdays in mid October, also 2 long weekends in May, plus 1 in January. I have had a magic key for a long time and come many times a year.
Come on the weekends! Especially weekends when at least the 2 lower magic keys are blocked. Even better if the Believe (which is what I have) is blocked. The crowd levels only tell part of the picture. Like today the crowd level is probably low but it is insanely crowded because all magic keys are unblocked and day tickets are cheapest. Everyone is here for the Christmas stuff/entertainment. In October it was for the Halloween stuff. Many, many people in So Cal have a magic key. That and cheap Costco tickets are a thing. I am thinking about going back to weekends after this trip, even though my DVC points (own at Disneyland Hotel) go further duting the week. Although will be here in May with the family and weekdays are the only option as it is will be a trip based around my DS graduating from San Diego State Univ on a Saturday evening.
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Just re-read, so if you come on the lower crowd level weekends you won’t buy LL? Only if you come weekdays?
That might change things. My preference for my own family is weekends, and buy LL. If we couldn’t do that I might actually come Weekdays as I we don’t want to wait in lines.
I forgot to look at this! Thank you. The weekend is blocked for the lower two and the weekdays are the last days before enchant is blocked for the summer. So, that does give me something to think about. I imagine there will be a rush on those days to soak it up.
The frugal part of me would prefer this. If I’m going to pay more for the day and the crowd will be lower, I would hope to not also pay for LL. But, I know it might be needed anyway. We don’t like lines either. I guess we are paying for the comfort. As mentioned above, because we have small kids, we don’t end up riding a lot of the things that the LL helps with. But, for those things that it does cover, it will really help. Honestly, with the Kids at $50 we will probably get the LL anyway. That makes it less painful for sure.
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These are the LLMP we would use. Would you still get it?
DL
DCA
We will probably have 3 days. No late nights. Out around 5 each day.
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Nah. Toy Story and web slingers are gonna be the ones with long lines. And you can rope drop those. And if you’re willing to do single rider you can single rider IC and Web Slingers
buzz light year is a walk on late at night.
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Everything on the DL list can be achieved in 2-3 efficient morning hours with minimal waits. As for DCA, you could fairly easily get either of Toy Story/Incredicoaster or Web Slingers/Soarin’ at under 30 minutes in a morning (and maybe even a third one of those 4), but it would be difficult to get all 4 of those in one morning just based on their geography. If you can split your DCA starts into 2 days (and still get 1 DL start to be able to do what you want there with little wait), then you won’t need the LL.
But if you want to do just the 2 days and want to relax a little bit instead of trying to rush to headliners all within the first 2 hours of your day for DCA, the LL will had a lot of ease to be able to do that.
For what you’ve got planned to ride, if you’re doing just the 2 days, I would do one day without LL (and start at DL that day in ToonTown with Mickey & Minnie’s & Roger Rabbit’s), and you can use the rest of that day to get some of the rides that wouldn’t necessarily be a huge value on the LL (like Buzz, Small World, Little Mermaid in DCA). And then on day 2 get LL to clean up anything else from that list didn’t have tolerable waits the day before.
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Solid plan! Thank you so much