Guardians of the Galaxy

We live in Arizona. Our kids did so awesome at Disneyland when we visited with friends in December (level 7/8 crowds), we purchased annual passes. We went to Disneyland January 26th-29th, expecting low to reasonable crowds based on the crowd calendar. While Thursday and Friday were “manageable”, Saturday was a nightmare. 2 and a half hour wait on Space Mountain, fast passes all gone by noon, mosh-pit type crowds in the evening…(I feel we did well, considering, but it wasn’t our most pleasant Disney experience). Looking back, we’re thinking that the MSEP return, the Lunar New Year Event, and the inclement weather the previous weekend probably led to the high crowds.

Our next planned trip is May 29th-June 1st (currently predicted to be level 7/8 crowds, which we have found to be fine). We can’t change the dates, as we have planned travel with my brother’s family, and they have plane tickets. Disney just announced that the new Guardians of the Galaxy ride will be opening May 27th, Monday is a holiday, and there are three grad nights during our visit. Did I just set myself up for misery? Should I just start assuming that whatever crowd level Touring Plans has predicted for Disneyland, it’ll be 2-4 levels more crowded in 2017?

Any new ride at Disneyland will attract more crowds. We have come to expect that the crowds will be higher than what Touring Plans is predicting no matter the day. And 2 levels is about where we expect it most of the time.

Unless you’re really into Guardians of the Galaxy, you may want to skip it for a bit. Or make sure you get Fastpasses at park opening. Hopefully, we won’t see 6-hour stand-by lines like when the Frozen ride opened at Epcot.

The real key to surviving these days is to set your expectations correctly. Expect that you’re not going to everything on your trip. I start early with a solid plan, I’m strict with a midday break and I try to stay as late as I can.

BTW, Disneyland Liners prefer the chat over the forum for some reason. I don’t have any experience with Grad nights but I can ask the question for you over there if you want.

I think monday will be miserable! But hopefully the other two days will be ok. I went on a grad weekend once, and friday was ok, saturday was awful and sunday was fine. so you never know! Get your fast passes for the rides you feel like you must do and just enjoy the day. We always take a break mid afternoon and grab lunch. it helps… hope you have a great trip.

So I hate to bear bad news, but i heard crowds were unbearable last week during grad nite. heard they even shut the gates for a bit!!! ugh… good luck to you. make the best of it!

Some good news/silver lining to that bad news just delivered: the deal that DLR did for 3 day Socal Resident tickets had to be used by May 25th so I believe that is why the crowds leading up to Memorial Day weekend have been so freaking crazy, add in Grad Nites on top of that and yes you are looking at miserable crowds.

Now the good news, those tickets are no longer valid and yesterday (with three levels of passes blocked) the crowd levels were VERY low. DL was 3, DCA 4! Now your dates only have SL passes blocked on Mon, and no blockouts the rest of the week so I doubt you’ll see that low of numbers, but Monday might not be as crazy as one would think simply because it has one level of block out and Peak pricing for 1 day tickets. As for the Grad Nites, I have been to more where I enjoyed my time than didn’t and only had one truly bad experience with Grads where I left the parks wanting to punch all the teenagers I encountered on my way out. It really does depend on the make-up of the particular groups you end up with in the parks. A really easy way to avoid them though is go at RD (most teens sleep in), enjoy DCA throughout the day beffore they arrive and hop to DL in the evening when they are starting to filter in for their party after having hit DL first in the afternoon.

However, you tour though, i hope you & your kids have as magical a time as you had to convince to purchase your APs!!