A late-arriving crowd filled Disneyland's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge land within minutes of its opening to all Disneyland ticket holders this morning.
Since its debut in late May, Galaxy's Edge has been open only to guests staying in Disneyland's hotels or those who made reservations for four-hour visits to the land. All those reservations were snapped up within two hours in early May, leaving others to wait until today to visit the land.
That's because, starting today, advance reservations are no longer required to enter the land; however, same-day reservations are now required to enter either the Oga's Cantina bar or Savi's workshop lightsaber-building experience.
All of today's reservations for Oga's were claimed within 25 minutes of their opening at 7 am. Disneyland is releasing the day's return time slots for Oga's and Savi's at 7 each morning through those locations' pages on Disneyland.com. That should help limit demand on the land, as annual passholders who do not obtain those reservations might be less inclined to visit Galaxy's Edge on that day.
Indeed, the crowd awaiting entry into Galaxy's Edge did not seem to gather substantially until around 7am. Brady MacDonald reported that only a handful of fans had gathered outside the Disneyland entrance shortly after 6am, with cast members outnumbering guests at that hour. Disneyland was scheduled for an 8am opening, with the Mickey & Friend parking garage announced for its regular 6am opening.
However, Disneyland opened the parking garage at 4 this morning and started using the new tram loading area inside the adjacent Pixar Pals parking structure yesterday. Disneyland officials had said that Pixar Pals would not be open until the end of the month. The extra capacity wasn't needed, as the opening-time crowd was not substantially larger than one would see on a busy day at the park.
However, pretty much everyone who was waiting made a beeline for Galaxy's Edge when Disneyland started loading the land before 8am. By 8:30 the land was filled and Disneyland started directing guests to join a "boarding group" — the virtual queue that Disneyland is using to control admission to Galaxy's Edge when it reaches capacity. By 9am, Disneyland was forecasting that people joining boarding groups at that hour would be admitted to the land by "early afternoon." The wait time for the land's Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run ride hit two hours and 15 minutes by then, too, with the queue stretching into backstage areas. The wait dropped to just over an hour by 11am.
Were you at Disneyland today for the opening? Please tell us in the comments about your experience.
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I think the morning-of reservations for Oga's are key... but that works well for Disneyland's AP-driven crowds. I suspect that Disney might need to open the reservations further in advance at WDW.
Update: Disneyland closed the virtual queue and opened the land to all by 4:45pm. Millennium Falcon wait times averaged under an hour by then.
So, this is interesting... Smuggler’s run is now missing asteroid scene that had been present since May 31. Do you happen to know why? Is this an effort to make the lines shorter?
Robert, I'm curious to know your opinion about how Disney will handle the opening of Galaxy's Edge at WDW. It's very interesting to see how things are playing out in Disneyland, but I imagine that Orlando will be a different animal. Thoughts on the reservation system, virtual queues, etc.? TIA
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Still expect a bigger crowd at WDW but this shows Disney is smarting in how they manage the crowds well.