The Wotter family of Lake Elsinore, California, captures a special moment in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle as Disneyland Park in Anaheim, California, reopens on Friday, April 30, 2021.
Courtesy of DisneylandLATEST April 30, 5:35 p.m. As the day progressed, attraction wait times remained steady, with favorites like Splash Mountain and Pirates of the Caribbean hovering around 30 minutes. The most in-demand ride of the day was, unsurprisingly, the new one: in the evening, Snow White's Enchanted Wish topped 45 minutes of wait time, a high number considering the previous iteration rarely had a wait at all, but not that high considering that today was the first day the ride was open to the public. Food, though, became more limited. Favorites like Tropical Hideaway, the only place in Disneyland Park serving fan favorite treat Dole Whip, sold out of mobile order time slots with two more park hours to go.
Overall, it seemed as though the day went as smoothly as possible. Cast Members anecdotally reported that they had few or no instances of having to ask guests to put their masks back on. People were, it seemed, just happy to be there and to be having a good time.
LATEST April 30, 3:44 p.m. At A Touch of Disney, one of the main issues with the experience was mobile ordering. Though ordering food through the Disneyland app was available before the pandemic, it wasn’t nearly as widely used as it is now, as Disneyland is trying to minimize touch points and encourage virtual interactions.
At that experience, mobile wait times were very long, with people waiting several hours to be able to purchase food. And because cast members weren’t as familiar with the technology, there were also delays in lines as people tried to figure it out together.
Attribute it to Disney magic if you must, but those issues seem to have disappeared at the park reopening. Mobile ordering has been seamless, and even at the height of the lunch rush, many restaurants have had food available for immediate pick up.
Even the most popular restaurants like Plaza Inn, which serves the park’s beloved fried chicken, had time slots open within the hour for food pickup. That restaurant even had a small amount of indoor tables available for guests to eat after they had picked up their food.
Just like all the other open restaurants in Disneyland Park, it’s currently serving a limited menu, with fried chicken being the only adult entrée option at the moment.
The Plaza Inn has radically changed the way it serves food under Disneyland's COVID restrictions.
Julie Tremaine/SFGATE--
LATEST April 30, 12:50 p.m. Other than avoiding any sort of lining up on the inside part of ride queues, the process of getting on rides is largely the same. On attractions where the ride cars are individual vehicles, Disneyland has lengthened the wait between deployments so there’s more distancing between parties. On rides where the vehicles normally hold multiple parties, cast members are just leaving empty rows between parties. How many depends on the size of the vehicle car and the number of people in each party. Per Disneyland‘s opening protocols, parties are allowed to comprise three households and up to 10 people.
Two rides that have the most complicated queue systems are in New Orleans Square: Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion. Both of those attractions have long, complicated lines out in the main walkways of that area of the park. Cast members are holding signs that say Line Starts Here to designate where guests should go, and there are ropes blocking off large parts of the walkways to separate those waiting from those walking by. Those systems actually aren’t new, though. Those ride queue systems are already being used during busy times, like the special Haunted Mansion Holiday that pops up during Halloween, when wait can be two hours or more for.
One additional element for visitors: Disneyland is keeping an eye out on whether or not guests are wearing their masks, even on rides that take place in the dark.
Ride times in general, though, are trending down during the lunch rush. This morning, Big Thunder Mountain has a half an hour, which was down to five minutes at 12:50 p.m. Similarly, Alice in Wonderland usually has a 30- to 35-minute wait, today it’s literally walk on with no wait at all (though Matterhorn being completely blocked off for construction may have something to do with that as well).
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Employees line Main Street for Disneyland's reopening day on April 30.
Julie Tremaine/SFGATELATEST April 30, 11:27 a.m. Since Disneyland announced it would be opening at the 25% capacity allowed by the orange tier of California’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, people have been speculating about whether wait times for rides would be longer than average. In Disneyland’s reopening protocols, both Fast Passes and single rider lines have been eliminated.
Today, as of 10:45am, the longest wait time is 40 minutes for Haunted Mansion, longer than average for a light-to-medium busy park day. The next: the new Snow White’s Enchanted Wish, at 35 minutes, with a distanced ride queue that extends all the way to the Main Street hub. Pirates of the Caribbean is 25 minutes, which is about normal.
Much shorter than usual: Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, at 30 minutes, and Space Mountain, at 15.
One thing that is likely contributing to lower wait times, besides the smaller capacity, is the pure novelty of being back in the park. Many people are congregating on Main Street and taking photos in front of the castle, or just soaking in the atmosphere. Rides seem to be of secondary concern besides just being here and chatting to fellow Disney fans.
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LATEST April 30, 9:49 a.m. Disneyland Park didn’t open until 9 a.m. today, but crowds were lined up hours early to be the first to get through the gates — and their efforts were rewarded. Guests were walking through the gates as of 8 a.m., though rumors were swirling among people in line that others had been let in even earlier.
But even outside the gates, the entertainment had started. In the distance, the whistle of the Disneyland Railroad sounded. The mood was jubilant: The crowd erupted in cheers, clapping and shouting with joy, to see the train pull into the Main Street U.S.A. Station.
After passing through a temperature check, security dog screening and security bag check, people lined up at the gates as though it were any other park day, with relatively light lines. None of the security protocols the company had warned about — ID checks, proof of reservations, proof of residency if you didn’t have a California license — were checked.
As long as you had a ticket on the Disneyland app that scanned into the system as valid for park entry today, with a linked reservation, you were in.
Visitors walked through Disneyland's Main Street on its reopening day.
Julie Tremaine/SFGATE
Inside, hundreds of cast members — Disney’s name for its employees — lined Main Street up to Sleeping Beauty Castle, greeting guests.
“Welcome back!” cast members shouted as they waved. “We’re so happy to see you! We missed you.”
“We missed you too!” some visitors responded. Others could be seen crying to be back inside the park, while others were filming themselves and the scene as they walked through the gates.
It was a moment to savor, to be sure, and the sheer joy and excitement of the crowd was enough to erase any of the memory of standing in long lines to get in, or of waiting in hours of virtual queues to get in.
Disneyland is back, and so are its biggest fans.
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For the first time in forever — the more than 400 days since it closed on March 14, 2020 — Disneyland is reopening.
Things will be different for the fans who are attending the reopening today. Disneyland has modified the park experience, not only to comply with California's pandemic restrictions, but to reshape what that experience will look like in a post-pandemic world.
That means there will be new safety precautions like social distancing and plexiglass dividers, not only in lines but on the rides themselves. That could be a good thing: there won't be strangers screaming in your ears as you go through rides.
A smartphone is going to be a much bigger part of your Disneyland experience, since the park has reduced the number of touch points in the park. Guests will be scanning QR codes for menus and to enter virtual ride queues.
The Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride soars again in Disneyland's reopening.
Julie Tremaine/SFGATE
The pandemic has also impacted the park's restaurants. On opening day, many will remain shuttered, while the ones that are open will offer modified menus, oriented towards take-out and to-go.
And some of Disneyland's most beloved experiences, the rides themselves, will not be open. The Matterhorn will be quiet, while others, like the Jungle Cruise, is closed because it is being revamped to remove culturally insensitive scenes. There will also be new experiences, like the revamped Haunted Mansion and the totally overhauled Snow White's Enchanted Wish.
However, there's also good news: because tickets are currently limited to residents of California, these could be some of the shortest lines that visitors will experience.
But just as the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped everything, it's going to be a very different Disneyland today. Stay tuned as our Disneyland editor, Julie Tremaine, experiences what it's like to be back inside Disneyland on its big reopening day.
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