The Best Time To Visit Disneyland To Avoid Huge Crowds

Just got done reading several sites and news blips about this issue. I have been to Disneyland at least 25 times since 1974. I was never able to find the right time. Sometimes I hit it, many times I did not.

I figured warm summer days would have people staying away from the place. Since I live in Phoenix, Arizona, Anaheim, California's version of a warm summer day and mine are on completely separate planes. I have been in California on many occasions where people were complaining it was hot and we were thinking how cool it is. Lol.

I have been to Disneyland SO many times when the ride waits are 2 and 3 hours!! Why would anyone wait that long for a ride that lasts 10 minutes? We were there when the "Finding Nemo" submarine ride opened, yes, I was there on opening day. However, I did not go on the ride. The line? Almost SIX hours long!! People were standing in the sun and fuming, I was laughing at them. What's the point of wasting that much time to go on one single ride, even if it IS the grand opening day? We couldn't have cared less, figured some day in the future we would come back and the line might be a bit more reasonable.

I can give you a few ride names that, even if there are a lot of people waiting, the wait times are short/er because there are so many vehicles in the ride going that it's a continuous flow. Two I can think of: The Haunted House and The Pirate of the Caribbean. Both are very cool rides, indeed, but what about getting on Splash Mountain or Space Mountain? Peter Pan? Oh, It's A Small World is usually a shorter wait, too because there is a continuous line of boats coming through seating people.

But, that doesn't do it. I have done the Fast Pass system there, 2 hours until the first available seating? How about this: the last time I was there, I got a Fast Pass for Magic Mountain that wasn't good until ELEVEN HOURS LATER!!!! And we were there, ELEVEN HOURS LATER and the ride was broken down!!

You can cheat on one ride. It is a very popular ride that has 2 and 3 hour wait times. You get a Fast Pass to it, come back later when it's valid, bypass a lot of waiting and then go on the ride. That isn't the cheating part. The cheating part is when you get off the ride, you can simply jump into the waiting line again to get back on it. I'm not talking the back of the waiting line, I'm talking inside the facility, where your wait is going to be about 15 minutes. We did that last time there 4 times in a row and no-one said a word to us about it.

No, it was a couple of years ago. I was in the middle of the desert at a construction site where they were building a new prison. I had already gotten to know the contractor that I was speaking with on that day. We always get into long conversations about things that have nothing to do with what is going on in front of us. Anyway, I have no idea how we got onto the conversation of Disneyland. This guy is in his 60's, even though he is still running a construction crew. A rather gruff man with flavored speech, I was very surprised to hear about his and his wife's absolute love for Disneyland!

This talk about our favorite rides went on for quite some time. He spoke of the fact that he doesn't bring any family with him on his frequent visits over there, just him and his wife. I got the conversation on the track of wait times and how unbelievably long they are.

He wasted no time in telling me when the REAL best time to visit Disneyland is, if you don't want to experience long wait times: weather. Not whether: weather. Disneyland never shuts down. In inclement weather, apparently some rides might shut down, but the park remains open. Well, I mean, it never shuts down during it's normal business hours, Disneyland isn't a 24 hour operation but it certainly has plenty of open hours.

He went into a rather long, drawn-out but illuminating discourse on looking at weather reports and specifically going when it is RAINING. Now, mind you, these aren't teenagers or 20-somethings, these are 60-somethings telling me that the BEST time to go if you want to avoid long lines is inclement weather. Get yourself dressed up in rain gear and go for it!! He said they wait until they see a "bad" forecast and that's when they head out.

I had never thought of such a thing. I don't know how they figured this out. Maybe they went one day and it was raining and they stuck out and obviously were happy they did. You see, if I have some nice rain gear on, it wouldn't bother me in the least to go on all of those rides in the wet weather. I haven't tried their idea out yet - I haven't been back since. I got pretty disgusted the last time I went, shelling out some money and finding myself in a literal sea of humanity. In many areas, you couldn't move without bumping into someone.

Some day, though, I am going to try it. I mean, the next time I go I want to try it. Get prepared to go and then, whenever there is a wet day forecast and it's a day I can get over there, go and see what happens.

I mean, basically, what is being said is that people coming from all over are going to stay in their hotel rooms or stay at home in terms of locals because they don't want to venture out in such weather. If a person were to get it in their mind before they ever even left their house that they were going to go in rainy conditions and prepared themselves for it mentally and physically?

For me, it would be a whole new adventure at a place I have been to dozens of times!! An adventure!!

Regular readers can disregard this entry. This was posted in response to several sites I have been reading about the "best" times to visit Disneyland.

Monday 8/22/2011

I wrote this entry this morning at work, but it wouldn't post for whatever reason.

Monday

Back at work.
Apparently my manager is taking 2 days off. No problem with that, I guess, but usually he lets me know about such things. Funny, I totally forgot to check my bank account to make sure that direct deposit had made it in there.

Qaddafi is history? I found it interesting that the rebels didn't say they were going to find him and kill him, they said they are going to find him and then try him in court. This gives the rebels a bit more credibility, I would think. Question is: who is going to run the country?

If I were to somehow come into money right now, buying another house would be on the agenda. For those with the means, now is the time, especially for someone like me who would love to get a house just for rental purposes. The amount of people looking for houses for rent in just the Craigslist ads locally is a tell-tale sign: people have lost their homes, lost their credit and can't do anything BUT rent, for now anyway.

So, what is the big news aroung these parts? The heat. 112 today. That's hot. Yes, it gets hotter around here, but after 110, it's just hot. I never expect the intense heat to go away until we get into September. I don't want to get my mind into a place where I have tricked it into thinking the high heat is over with, cause' usually, it's not. September will mark the beginning of a cooling down period - which doesn't necessarily mean it will get cool by anyone's standards or stretch of the imagination, lol.

Pastor wrote back after I threw the idea at him that perhaps I might be able to volunteer in the church in some small capacity and he agreed. I encouraged him to pray about that for a bit, though, as I haven't volunteered in a church since I was shunned by my ex-pastor some 7 years ago. I haven't WANTED to volunteer in a church because of that, to clarify the internal situation.

I don't expect an answer until perhaps the end of the week at the soonest. Meanwhile, my CL ads to rent the room? Just not getting a lot of interest yet.

The Army reservist's room remains a disaster. I posted the necessary legal notice on her door, but at this point, it is becoming obvious she is not coming back. ALL she had to do was leave the keys to her room and that would have made it legal to enter without any permission. But she kept them. The room is strewn with clothes, junk and even garbage laying around. I am going to ask the trailer tenants to go in, pick up everything and sort it into large, plastic trash bags. Any clother or personal belongings go into one bag, junk and trash in another. Get the room cleaned up and get it ready for the guy that says he wants to move in. That way, on the 24th, I don't have to wait a day or more while we're busy getting the room cleaned up: the room will BE cleaned up and ready. I just want to be sure that I don't have to also get the carpet cleaning dude back for that room as well. But that guy was really good, showed up on a Sunday, got the job done and really did a great job on the carpet in the other room.

It doesn't really take that long to pick all that up, it just makes the room look like so much trailer trash. I don't get how people can live like that. It's sort of like that Hoarders show - you see a room so filled with junk that you either can't get through it or there are little paths going through the middle of it. This isn't THAT bad, but there IS stuff laying EVERYWHERE. All over the bed, the floors, the furntire, everything.

Hopefully she didn't take anything that doesn't belong to her.

I had thought I came out REALLY good on the electric usage for that trailer over night with the AC on. Then I realized that it is pretty much normal use. They had shut it off. I wanted it to stay on all night long and determine how much extra electricity it is going to use and be able to give a definitive number on daily electric usage.

Oh well. The answer to this problem, I think, is to mount the evap cooler up on top of the thing and then they can run AC in the day and evap at night.

Anyway, work day is here.

G'day.

ben