We are spending one day at Disneyland on Thursday this week. My family has been many times, so we’ve modified one of the standard plans to only the rides we want to go on. We are buying Genie+ and are willing to buy Individual Lightning Lanes for Rise of the Resistance.
The plan tells us not to get the ILL for RoR until 8:13 PM!! I don’t get it; does that make any sense??? And, does the rest of the plan work for the day? I’d really appreciate it if anyone could review this and let me know your feedback or how to fix it. I’ve run Optimize several times and this is the plan it came out with.
I think you’ll be able to use more G+ than it suggests and I most definitely wouldn’t get Autopia first.
I would rope drop Big Thunder and get Indy as the first G+ right as you scan in and after that I’m positive you can get almost all of the rest of the rides you want to ride. Star Tours & Buzz won’t need them that early in the day, but Matterhorn & Autopia might. I would use the plan as a loose checklist.
As for Rise, I wouldn’t wait that late in the day as the ride tends to go down later in the day. I would aim for much earlier in the day in any 45 min chunk that fits your plan. If you weren’t planning on buying the ILL then that time the plan is suggesting is a good time when the standby is typically shorter, IF the ride is running & has been running more than not that day. And it’s a good strategy if it isn’t your first/only shot at riding Rise. But with purchasing an ILL I would do one anytime after 10am-ish but before dinner.
Thanks for the advice. So I’ll go for LL for Indiana right away, as you mention, and head for Big Thunder as the plan says. Then you mean to go for Matterhorn and Autopia next–leaving Star Tours and Buzz Lightyear for later, right?
By the way, those big breaks are just the system doing it’s thing of putting rides at the beginning and the end. I don’t really plan on taking 4 hours off in the middle of the day. We’ll fill it with random rides.
Sorry to clarify, I meant keeping to the plan Star Tours & Buzz definitely shouldn’t need LL at that time but your next G+ after Indy should be for Autopia/Matterhorn. Autopia can be a looong line even if it doesn’t seem it in standby & an LL would be helpful to have if you’re doing it early (potentially before they have all the tracks open).
Rise had ILL availability all day yesterday and for not very far out in the future so you probably don’t need to buy it far in advance of when you want to ride it.
Just came back to say thanks. Your recommendations were spot-on, especially in getting Indy LL first. And, we got on a lot more LL, just like you said. The plan was a good guide for the morning then we did the afternoon and evening differently based on what we accomplished in the morning.
My family is all Disney diehards, so we have lots of favorites, but the best surprise of the day was probably Space Mountain. I don’t know if this is true or not, but SM seemed way smoother at Disneyland than Magic Kingdom. Add to that, we discovered the single rider line hidden in the exit, so my kids had a blast running it over and over at 11:30 at night.
I think we all would’ve liked Indy more than once, but we had only one day at Disneyland and one at California Adventures, so we needed to prioritize our time.
Everyone had a blast. I really appreciate your advice; it helped us get a great start to the morning and set the stage to the day.
I’ve only done WDW Space Mtn once (2012) & it’s been awhile, but DH & I both got off noting how rough the ride was. And I very clearly remember telling him then that maybe it wasn’t the best memory because it had been over 5 years since I was in DL, but I didn’t remember Space at DL being that rough. I said either I just don’t remember or I’m getting old! I was 25 (almost 26) on that trip. Now that I’ve gone back to DL upteen times between 2013 and now, I can definitely say it wasn’t an age thing. It was definitely that Space in DLR is smoother.
I rode Space at WDW for the first time in 2012 also! We had been to DL in 2010 and I was very much looking forward to riding it again. What a disappointment that was! I am not a fan of the WDW version at all.