Whatever you do, try to avoid visit Disneyland or Disney California Adventure next Monday, Aug. 20. That's likely going to be the busiest day of the year at California Adventure, and might end up being the most-crowded day in that park's history.
How do we know? The answer lies in the most important webpage anyone should consult before planning a trip to Disneyland - the Annual Passport Blockout Calendar. Monday's the first day that "Southern California Select" annual passholders can visit the parks using their passes since before Cars Land and Buena Vista Street opened back in June. That means Monday will be the first chance to see these new lands for the hundreds of thousands of locals who hold those passes.
"Southern California" passholders got a few days to visit Cars Land before their summer blockouts kicked in, but they've been unable to visit using their passes since late June. Monday will be their first day back, too.
The Disneyland Resort lifts its summer blockouts in mid- to late-August despite the fact that many local school districts remain on vacation. The state's largest district, Los Angeles Unified, went back to class yesterday, but many of the other large districts in Los Angeles and Orange counties won't go back until after Aug. 20:
Visitors should always try to avoid days with the Disneyland Double-Whammy: No APs blocked out, and local kids out of school. That's what Disney visitors will be facing between Monday and the second week of September.
Disneyland has two other, more expensive AP levels that have been able to access the parks for most, if not all of the summer. "Premium" passholders are never blocked out, and "Deluxe" passholders are blocked only on Saturdays during the summer and some holiday periods. The Deluxe blockouts mean that if you do want to visit Disneyland within the next few weeks, this Saturday, Aug. 20 18, is probably your best best.
Typical theme park advice is to go to the parks on days when local schools are in session. And while those days at Disneyland are definitely preferable to "Double Whammy" days, visiting Disneyland during weekends or vacation periods when two or three levels of annual passholders are blocked out can be good choices, as well.
The visiting dynamic here is much different than at Walt Disney World in Florida, where the number of local visitors is relatively insignificant. At Disneyland, with its hundreds of thousands of annual passholders, the best days to visit are the ones when most of the locals are somewhere else.
Monday update (8/20): Weather to the rescue! It's freakin' hot in SoCal. Way too hot for many people to choose to visit Disneyland, or go out at all to anything other than an air-conditioned theater, or maybe the beach. That should hold down crowds a bit, and early reports from readers have said that the crowds today haven't surged above normal summer levels for the daytime.
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