I got group 28 this morning.
Seemed to be more people here today than last Saturday.
Went back to the park today. Previous day's I had BG 71, 55, 21, 27... and today 116.
Tested the esplanade area. No wifi.
App opened before park opening and got the constant loading screens.
Word is getting out how early you have to be in the park. Mickey and Friends was a nightmare at 7am. Pixar Pal entrance was not open until after 710am.
Was able to park by 730am as the far right parking lane worked.
Didn't bring a bag. Went to Downtown Disney security. Packed and went to Disneyland Hotel security not as bad and they opened up a no bag check lane. Got thru by 740am.
Walked through Downtown Disney and got in the planter trick line on the left side. Line started near the center of the esplanade. Got through that and entered the park by 755am.
Exited the park by esplanade and got stuck with the loading screen but got 116.
ME
Word is definitely getting out. Today was crazy. Way more people than I expected from previous reports. Way worse than our experience WDW.
Much faster. But when WDW opened no one knew it was a must-do attraction yet. They also initially weren’t separating out backups. After a couple weeks it got much crazier, particularly with the holidays.
I anticipate DL will remain crazier than DHS for the foreseeable future. It opens later, there’s hundreds of thousands of AP holders who can go whenever, DL has roughly 2x the daily attendance of DHS, and it’s easier to park hop and people aren’t usually there for a week so ROTR is everyone’s #1 every single day.
We did ROTR a couple weeks ago at DHS and today was our attempt at DLR. Wow, what a difference. There were way more people at DLR than DHS from what I could tell. It was a very stressful morning.
We are staying at the Grand and got up around 6:45 am. We were at the downtown disney security gate from the hotel right after 7am. OMG the lines were crazy. My stress level shot through the roof. I had a backpack, but DH and DS23 (birthday boy today) didn't have any bags so I sent them through the line. I figured worst case scenario they would be in the park and able to ride even if I couldn't. I ran back up to the room to get rid of my backpack. The no bag line was walk through, and I caught up with them at the magic morning lines. I can't believe they had all those hotel people funneling through one line.
Then by time we got to the gates, the magic morning lines were ridiculous. They seemed to take forever. This was a completely different experience from WDW where you "tap in" very quickly. We seemed to be in the line that had every clueless person possible. Super frustrating. We didn't get though until about 7:40! Not what I was expecting.
We stuck to the right to enter the not-very-magic-morning line and headed toward the back of the park by small world. I had a speed tester app going and we tried out a few different places, and I was panicking. Last night when I speed tested *inside* Oga's, I was getting in the 150s. Today it was more like in the 30s. I finally found a place that was decent (70s) and we sat down without our five phones. The three of us had our regular iPhones (one 11, one x, and one 8 all on AT&T) as well as an old 8 and an old 6 that were on wifi. I had my apple watch with the count down on the table. We decided to split the difference and had two phones at the landing page and three pones with nothing open. It was all a flurry, but basically, I had a couple phones turn red, and I ended up going with the oldest phone (the iPhone 6) that was on wifi. I could have also done my iPhone 11 on AT&T, but I was worried about doing something at the same time and screwing up. So I kept my iPhone 11 AT&T on the red "join boarding group" page while I proceeded on the old iPhone 6. We ended up with boarding group 53, which was perfect for us as we had the napa rose princess breakfast for DS's birthday.
There were so many people that didn't get groups, I felt really badly for them. At WDW, it felt like most people were successful. That wasn't how it seemed here. I'm not sure how long the regular boarding groups lasted, but it felt really fast. My husband said he had a full about 35 seconds after 8.
WDW felt way more civilized compared to this morning. Very stressful.