Early Entry?

[T i DuBL GuH eRR]

On the back of my 3 Day Park Hopper that I purchased around 2 days ago, there's a black strip near the bottom that says "Includes One Early Entry". Does anyone know what that means? I thought DL stopped doing the earlybird a while back. Any help is appreciated. Thanks

Edit:
On the days I will be there, DL opens at 8:00am. If this ticket is, in fact, an earlybird, what time will I be able to enter the park?

 

[caimakale]

You will be able to enter the park 1 hour early (so at 7:00 am) one time with that ticket. There isn't early entry every day, you will have to use it on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday.

 

[Amy&Dan]

Yes, Disneyland does have Early Entry again. Fantasyland is open along with Buzz, Space Mountain and I believe Astro Orbitor in Tomorrowland. The monorail is also up and running. Also, if you are staying onsite at one of the three Disneyland Resort Hotels, you will get Early Entry each day its offered regardless of what type of ticket you are using. If this applies to you, you will need the room charge slip that shows your name and the dates of your stay as proof that you are an onsite guest eligible for early entry. Arrive to the gates as early as you can to go ahead and be in line so that you spend as much of your extra hour inside the parks and not waiting to get in! Its a wonderful perk, use it because the first hour or two of the day at Disneyland is always the best!

 

[twinmommyks]

We were there last month and had a ticket just like yours (printed on the back that we had one EE). Definitely take advantage of this perk!!!! We rode 9 rides in the first hour. Hydroguy gave me some helpful hints to get the best out of that first hour and we did!!!

We were the FIRST ones on the Dumbo ride and my ds10 and ds5 got the golden Dumbo which was so exciting for them. For me, it was no waiting in line for Dumbo!!!!! Get there earlier than EE starts so that you can be towards the front of the line and that will give you a hugh advantage.

Have fun!!!!

 

[T i DuBL GuH eRR]

Thanks for the feedback! We're planning to use this early entry opportunity on the 4th of July. Is it available that day? We'll definitely take advantage of going on Buzz and Space Mountain. Also will Indy Jones and the Matterhorn be open during the early entry hour? Thanks again!

 

[HydroGuy]

EE is on Mon/Tue/Thurs/Sat. So there should be EE on July 4 which is a Tuesday. However, a word of caution. As Bren said, to get the value of EE you need to be at DL by 7AM on a day when DL opens at 8AM. However, showing up right at 7AM will put you behind a lot of people and it is definitely worth it to get your sleepy bodies over to the DL gates by 6:40AM to be towards the front. We were shooting for 6:30AM and did not make it until 6:45, which still put us about the 10th group in line which was quite good and allowed us to walk on to Peter Pan and Dumbo. But between 6:45 and 7AM the lines grew significantly. What I am saying is do not shoot for 6:40 because being a little late (say 6:50-6:55) will cost you. Shoot for 6:30AM and then it is OK if you run a little late.

What I am also saying is that 6:30AM is early, especially if you have kids. And that meant for my family to use EE on our first possible day which was a Monday. That allowed us to get to bed early the night before and not be already tired from a park day on the previous day.

Finally, if you have kids or anyone who wants to do FantasyLand rides, then riding Buzz and Space Mtn during EE is not the best use of your time. These are FastPass (FP) rides, which means you can ride them any time of day with a short line as long as you get a FP for them - which is quite easy to do. Rides that are painful to do later in the day are the ones in FantasyLand where there are no FP rides. Many of the FantasyLand rides will have lines 30-60 minutes long just two hours after the park opens.

The other good thing about the FantasyLand rides is that they are short (2-3 minutes each). So during EE you can get on and off quickly and get all of the ones that are open during EE done in an hour, something that would take 4-6 hours later in the day.

 

[CalGal]

I agree with HydroGuy about using EE to ride FL rides first. I strongly recommend riding Peter Pan first thing. It backs up very quickly. I agree that it is not an effective use of time to ride Space Mountain at this time, unless that is your main priority. Many people go to Space Mountain first, and it takes a long time to get through the queue and ride. You may find that 1/3 of your EE time is over by the time you exit the ride. There's also been a few times when Space is not open right away during EE too for one reason or another. Get an FP for Space (after normal park opening; no FPs are available during EE) and ride it later, or at least after you've done some FL rides. I never find it a poor use of time to ride Buzz, but this ride won't back up until after normal park opening, while many of the FL rides will develop lines pretty quickly.

Another ride strategy my DS and I have used when we've had multiple EEs (because we are staying on-site) and don't feel like doing FL again is to go to Buzz first, and then ride Buzz again, and then we ride Buzz, and then we ride Buzz, and then we ride Matterhorn, and then we ride Buzz, and then we ride Buzz.... (Early during EE we can put a little distance between ourselves so that we aren't going for the same targets at the same time -- and it's easy to get up on the top ten board)

 

[twinmommyks]

Totally agree with other posters about Buzz and Space Mountain. Those are FP rides. Do the Fantasyland rides first, especially Peter Pan and Dumbo. Then when EE ends, head over to Tomorrowland and get a FP for Space Mtg, but do NOT use EE to ride FP rides. If you do that, then later you will be standing in long lines in Fantasyland. Hydroguy had posted a list for me to follow for rides and it worked PERFECTLY. If I knew how to post that thread, I would, but I don't know how. I'll try to find that post and bump it up for you.

Have fun on your upcoming trip - wish I was going to be there again soon.

 

[twinmommyks]

I just bumped the thread with the list of EE rides and the order in which to do them. Take a look at hydroguys info - it worked great for us. We were able to do the majority of the rides the first day leaving the second day to go back and repeat our favorites.

 

[HydroGuy]

Here is a link to the thread that Bren bumped:

http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?p=13175703

Post #3 was the specific one. The two most important to do first, by far, are Peter Pan and Dumbo. The other seven are not as sensitive to order.

 

[JenDisneylandlver]

This is a great plan, I'm having trouble with my DH though. He is insisting that he and our son hit Space Mountain first, since he hasn't rode it in a few years, and wants to see the upgrade. Even though I've explained the fastpass thing to him, and told him it would be better so that we can do Fantasyland first. Arg, he's being a brat. Oh well if they do that I'll go on Peter Pan and all the other ones by myself!! At least we have two days of EE, the second day they will do it this way!!

 

[HydroGuy]

This is a great plan, I'm having trouble with my DH though. He is insisting that he and our son hit Space Mountain first, since he hasn't rode it in a few years, and wants to see the upgrade. Even though I've explained the fastpass thing to him, and told him it would be better so that we can do Fantasyland first. Arg, he's being a brat. Oh well if they do that I'll go on Peter Pan and all the other ones by myself!! At least we have two days of EE, the second day they will do it this way!!

I had to deal with this issue last summer, but it was with my kids and not with my spouse. FWIW, we did FantasyLand during EE (started at 7AM) and then right when the park officially opened at 8AM I was at the Space Mtn FP machines and got FastPasses that were for 8:45-9:45AM (I was the second person in the Space FP line). So if you can convince him to do this he can get on Space Mtn at 8:45AM. Heck, if Space Mtn is important - it was to us too - you can a second Space FP set at 8:45AM and it will be good for 9:30AM or so.

I was able to hold the horses back on Space Mtn until 10:30AM. So we got Space FPs at 8AM, Splash FPs at 8:45AM, Indiana Jones FPs at 9:30AM, and then another set of Space FPs at 10:45AM.

We did do Indy thru the standby line at 8:05AM after I got the Space FPs, and we did Splash thru standby at 9AM because I could not hold the horses back on that one (it was a 20 minute wait). I would not recommend our approach as the most efficient - we should have waited until later for Indy and Splash and used our FPs if we wanted to squeeze in more rides - but I had four boys clamoring to get on their favorites on the first day.

All in all we got in two Space rides that day (both with FP), two Indy rides (one with FP), two Splash rides (one with FP), and three Big Thunder rides (one with FP - the other two with 2 minute lines). Altogether we got on 29 rides that day (including one at DCA), while taking a break from 1-6PM for a swim and nap.

If your husband is non-negotiable on doing SM during EE on day 1, then hopefully you can negotiate FantasyLand during EE day #2 as you suggested. In our case, if we are using EE or are on a non-EE day, I love to see other people heading to the Space Mtn standby line first thing. That makes other lines shorter and we head to those rides.

 

[CalGal]

JenDisneylandlver, your husband and HydroGuy's kids are not alone. I've done EE 7 times in the past year, and it seems that every time at least 1/2 the crowd goes straight to SM. Clearly, many of those folks are not reading our advice. One of the times we did EE, we rode SM midway through EE. We had already gotten in a few of our favorite FL rides including Peter Pan and Matterhorn. This worked out pretty well because the initial rush for SM was over. I figured we got through SM about as fast as we would have had we gone directly there, but with much shorter waits for the FL rides than we would have had had we done Space first. Because of the lower flow rates, it takes no time for Peter Pan to back up. Most other rides are a walk up for 10 to 20 minutes but then start to back up, and it takes at least that long to get through SM first thing in the morning.