Disneyland’s new dark ride will use a virtual queue when it opens next week. And there will be no standby option.
Guests will want to ride Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway when it opens January 27 will need to enter its virtual queue, which will open at 7am and again at 1pm in the Disneyland app. Guests can form their parties in the Disneyland app starting at 6am.
Only guests with Disneyland tickets and park reservations for the day will be allowed to enter the 7am queue. The second-chance 1pm queue will be open to anyone who did not get a time in the 7am distribution, plus guests with a Disney California Adventure reservation for the day and a Park Hopper ticket.
If you strike out with the virtual queue, there will be no standby physical queue for the ride, at least on its opening day. But there will be paid Individual Lightning Lane reservations available, with prices to vary daily.
There’s no end date at this point for the virtual queue, nor any word on when Disneyland might allow standby waiting for the new ride. The Mickey’s Toontown land surrounding Runaway Railway will not open until March 8, so there’s extra pressure to avoid a spillover crowd from the new ride’s interior queue.
For our sneak peek preview of that new queue, please see our post, Disneyland Looks to 'Toon' Up Its Runaway Railway
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I wasn't excited for this attraction when it opened in Florida. I thought it was fine when we experienced it. My kids loved it. They still enjoy it. They enjoyed it enough that the cartoons started to make the rotation on our TVs. Now I enjoy it because it made my kids so happy.
I'm excited to see how the Disneyland crowd feels about this attraction.
Given that we're getting a virtual queue on a ride that never needed one on its busier Florida iteration and one that's been reliably proven to move 1,500+ riders per hour (which, for reference, Rise can't even hit at 100% efficiency), I think it's safe to expect every Disney headliner at the US parks for the foreseeable future will probably have a virtual queue for at least the opening year. I was hoping they would have learned from Guardians, which according to some accounts runs at about 70% of it's possible daily throughput due to not having a consistent standby line to fill all seats. This is a disappointing decision by Disney, and I wouldn't be surprised if it does cost them some visitors. I personally don't consider an attraction to be open until it is possible to walk up and join a queue to ride, so I won't be buying a ticket to Disneyland until the ride drops the virtual queue. It could also put my plans to visit WDW this year at risk as well, as if both Guardians and Tron are on virtual queue it's not worth the cost for only one ride on each.
AJ, if history is to be believed, I'd expect that the virtual queue for Guardians will be gone by the time Tron opens. So far, Disney has not used that for more than one ride at a time.
"I personally don't consider an attraction to be open until it is possible to walk up and join a queue to ride"
sounds like queue shaming to me!
I have no doubt that VQs are here to stay for new rides. The code is already in place on the Disney World and Disneyland apps and servers, so it will not be wasted.
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Is anyone surprised by this? Will we ever see another new Disney ride open without a VQ for it's first few months of operation?