For months (or really, years) since Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge was announced, people have talked about the ridiculous lines that would be formed to get in and ride the attractions.
This pic is one of the many memes that people have come up with to depict how long the lines were going to be. This one’s for Disney World, but the expectation was the same for Disneyland.
But Disneyland pulled off a miracle and day one of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge is likely to go down in the history books as a success. The lines worked. The land largely had the capacity for the capped number of visitors. Both the physical structure and the cast were clearly ready to bring this world to life even though the second ride wasn’t yet available. Although it wasn’t empty, there was a bit of breathing room you can see in the pics below.
The main complaints on opening day were things like not being able to even enter a line for some key experiences (such as building lightsabers or visiting Oga’s) when the line got too long. There was also period of time where there was a two-hour delay on mobile food ordering at lunch. But compared to the expectation that you would be shoulder-to-shoulder and wait hours just to enter the land, things were much better.
When Walt Disney World opened up Frozen Ever After, a boat ride themed around the Frozen franchise in the Norway Pavilion of Epcot, on opening day the wait time reached upwards of 300 minutes. The lines for the attraction stretched all throughout the park as families queued up for literally hours.
If you think that’s bad, the next year in 2017 when Disney World opened its brand new land, Pandora: The World of Avatar, the wait to just get into the new land surpassed two hours, and then once you were inside it was still another four hour wait to ride the main attraction, Flight of Passage.
So needless to say, when it was announced that Disneyland would be opening up a Star Wars land, Galaxy’s Edge, both guests — and cast members — braced themselves for the worst. This wasn’t just a single ride, it was an entire land with a dedicated and die-hard fan base already clamoring to get inside. How would Disney be able to combat the hours-long wait times that were sure to form and stretch on endlessly?
Doing something the theme park has never done before, it decided to require guests to obtain a reservation to access Galaxy’s Edge. It’s like a FastPass, but not just for a ride, but the whole land. The reservation system opened up roughly a month before its opening, and all reservations for Galaxy’s Edge were gone in a matter of hours. However, come opening day, would this actually work?
Surprisingly, yes. In a move that is now sure to be repeated again in the future (hopefully), with this reservation system in place Disney managed to keep the wait time for the one ride in the area — Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run — below 45 minutes for roughly the entire day. Honestly, that’s unheard of. Opening day of new land with a brand new attraction? A 45-minute wait?
By all accounts, this opening went incredibly smooth, it’s time to turn our attention to Disney World where its own Galaxy’s Edge is set to open August 29th, 2019. Currently, there are no plans to use a reservation system to access the new land in Orlando, Florida. Will that opening go as smoothly as Anaheim? I sure hope so as I will be there that very day! If you have any pull over any big-wigs at Disney, please convince them to do the reservation system there, too. Please! :)
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