How do you avoid long lines at Disneyland?

Answer 1

Crowds are inevitable during the busy season at Walt Disney World (WDW), but there are tricks that will help. Guests at WDW hotels get early admission to the theme parks. Be sure to double check opening time upon arrival, because Disney fluctuates opening times during the year, often with little notice. Usually the park staff will actually let you in up to half an hour before the �stated� opening time, to avoid bottlenecks. Suppose official opening is 10 am for the public and 9 am for WDW hotel guests. If you�re there at 8:30 am you�ll get in. Take advantage of this quirk to maximize your fun! Minimize lines with your touring strategy. Most families arrive on Sunday, visit the Magic Kingdom on Monday & Tuesday, Epcot on Wednesday, and MGM or water parks on Thursday & Friday. Capitalize on this pattern. Visit Epcot on Monday, the MGM on Tuesday, and the Magic Kingdom on Wednesday and Thursday. More advice from WikiAnswers Contributors: * First time visitors tend to feel the pressure to spend their entire day in the parks in an attempt to get their money's worth. However, on extremely busy days, forcing yourself to stay in the parks will only make you hot and cranky. As a regular visitor, I recommend going into the parks in the morning and staying until lunch and then leaving for the afternoon to go back to your hotel to eat, take a nap, enjoy the pool, etc, and then go back into one of the parks after dinner. By doing this, you will bypass the heavy midday crowds (and heat), but you will often still experience just as much, if not more, than if you had actually spent the entire day there. You will particularly notice that the crowds thin considerably during the last hour to hour and a half before a particular park closes. On very busy days, such as Christmas and Easter, our family has actually been able to experience more attractions during the two hours immediately preceding a park's posted closing than we have in the course of an entire day. * One tip for bypassing lines is to skip the parades because everyone else watches them. Parade times are a great opportunity to visit those attractions that tend to have lengthy lines because the queues tend to thin somewhat while everyone is standing out on the streets gawking at floats with Mickey and Goofy on them. * Get to the park early and go on the most popular rides before lines get long. Eat a snack at 10 or 11am to keep your energy up. Continue touring between noon and 1pm, when most people take a break for lunch and the lines are shorter. By 2pm, the lines will be packed with latecomers. Have a long, relaxing lunch and consider going back to the hotel for a siesta or a dip in the pool. (Most kids leaving Disney report that their favorite part of the trip was the hotel pool!) Return, relaxed and refreshed, to the park about 4 pm, when most families of young children are leaving in a melt-down condition, and tour until the park closes. These strategies will cut your waiting time by 70%. For the truly dedicated, get a copy of �The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World,� and memorize it. They send out multiple teams of scouts with stop watches, at all times of the year, to fine tune the most effective strategies. If you follow their tactics, you can visit in the middle of September, as I did recently, and never wait longer than 5 minutes. * Once you�re in a park, make a bee-line for the most popular attractions, and ride them once or twice early, before there are lines. After the �public� opening time, when crowds start to build, if you have a choice, always go to your left. Most people are right handed, and will choose the right side in any fork in the road. So, for example, rides to the right of the main gate are mobbed shortly after opening, while rides to the left don�t get busy until noon.
Well there are many ways.

1: Use the fastpass system

2: Go on rides during the fireworls and parades

3: Book a VIP tour. Choose between an official and private:

- https://disneyworld.disney.go.com/events-tours/vip-tour-services/

- http://www.disneyviptour.com/disney_tours.html

Answer 2

Here's a strategy to avoid the crowds if you don't have small children: most people don't realize the restaurants often seat until the park closes. They will continue to serve for at least an hour or two after park closing. If everyone in our party can stay up late, having dinner at 8 pm is a great way to avoid the crowds. Don't worry about missing the last bus back to your hotel; ground transportation continues to run at least 2 hours after park closing.

Another similar strategy to the late night dinner is the mid-morning lunch. If you are getting up early for the morning rope drop, you may want to eat a quick breakfast in your hotel room before leaving for the park. By mid-morning you may be hungry enough to have a full meal and can hit the restaurants just before the lunch rush. There are also plenty of snacks to be had when you need to re-fuel later between your early lunch and dinner time. Being flexible about meal times really helps when you are in the parks on very busy days.

Making advance reservations is a great way to avoid a long wait (or being turned away!) at table service locations. There are some that are relatively easy to get into at the last minute: Marrakesh in Morocco at Epcot, the Kona Cafe in the Polynesian Resort and Raglan Road in Downtown Disney are just a few.

Meals at the Magic Kingdom are a particular challenge. One strategy is to take a little break from the park by heading to one of the nearby resorts. The Contemporary, the Polynesian and the Grand Floridian are all easy to reach via the monorail and have both table service and counter service restaurants that are less crowded in the middle of the day. The Wilderness Lodge resort is a short and pleasant boat ride from the Magic Kingdom and also has table service and counter service eateries.

It is quite impossible to avoid the crowds conpletely, you just need to go during the least busy time of the year: January to mid-February or September to mid-November.

Answer 3

Don't go.

Seriously though, it's the second most visited theme park in the U.S. so lines are unavoidable, but the best times to visit is off-season. On-season is considered Summer starting late June & ending Labor Day, two weeks before Christmas through New years Day & Spring Break. Any other time is considered off-season so it may be less crowded. Also a good time to go would be overcast and maybe even light rainy weather.

Answer 4

Just a side note: Disneyland in California does NOT operate this way; if you try to wait until after ... or even until shortly before ... park closing to eat, you will get a rude shock, because most of the restaurants in the park will have already closed (the restaurants in Downtown Disney do tend to remain open after park closing, though). Your best option for a less crowded meal is to eat at off-times: breakfast at your hotel (or IHOP, or Denny's, or someplace like that) followed by a late lunch/early dinner in the 2-4 PM time frame is a pretty good option; you can supplement that if necessary with lighter snacks such as a skewer from Bengal Barbecue, or if you're really hungry you might get a turkey leg from one of the food carts. You can also pop out to Downtown Disney; there are a number of counter service venues out there (some of them attached to full-service restaurants) that are pretty quick places to grab a bite.