Was the $59 Disneyland Deal Worth It?

Being a sucker for a deal, when the Mouse announced a rare sale to the Happiest Place on Earth, I couldn’t resist and pounced on it.

For an extremely limited time earlier this summer you could get a ticket to Disneyland on selected dates Sunday through Wednesday as long as you were cool with entering after 7pm. Park closes at the strike of midnight.

Full day ticket costs change annoyingly depending on demand but the average price is around $150, but it can fluctuate by $40 either way. So for $60 for a little less than a half day seemed like a no-brainer.

The Mouse gets you though because parking is $40, so you’re in for $100 whether you like it or not, smart guy.

My girlfriend hadn’t been in years, and I hadn’t in decades.

I feel like there’s two kinds of people: those who want to get there when the gates open and those like me who think five hours of anything is plenty.

Crazy thing is, time does fly even for those of us who are jaded, cynical, penny pinching, and a little bit ticked off that the largest entertainment conglomerate feel the need to stick it to their customers at every turn.

Did I have a good time despite it all? Yes. Of course. There are some things that Disney does better than anyone, and no matter what you can do, their characters, stories, and songs creep into your American soul and they dig in deeper as you age.

You could be pooped af and you faintly hear Randy Newman’s “You Got a Friend in Me” coming from the old school merry go round and the feels sneak up on you.

The criminally underrated Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster, especially at night is faster than you expect, relentlessly fun, and absolutely no joke. Even Star Tours, the park’s first Star Wars attraction zips you around - or it sure feels that way - tricking you into believing that you are scooting around scenes from George Lucas’ galaxy far far away.

The good news about showing up at the park “late” after 7pm is that after the 9:30pm fireworks and Mickey shows, the families who got there super early are beat and push their strollers and wagons out of there.

This means for a good two hours the lines of many of the most popular rides are reasonable, and some have 15-minute and shorter wait times. Pirates of the Caribbean, for example, had zero line as the clock approached 11pm, giving an even dire, darker take on the drunk outlaws, some still begging that mangy dog for the keys to their jail cell after all these years.

Disney has figured out many ways to separate their guests from their money. The most obvious one, it seemed was selling people a Lightning Pass, which for the right price let you skip lines.

There are various versions of these passes, some make you reserve the time you’ll be cutting in front of those of us who have waited. And then there is the $500 pass that lets you avoid all the lines all day and all night.

For a magical place that is in the business of making people feel good, it’s hard to feel chipper when you see one, two, then dozens of others walking right past you as you stand there waiting.

I believe it was Captain Lightyear who called it a buzz kill.

While you can’t blame Disney for offering a premium, and granted that time is the most valuable resource we mortals (temporarily) possess, it’s a lot like the $40 parking fee: just because you can get away with it, doesn’t make it cool.

What was cool, and priceless, were the cast members. Everyone we talked with were friendly, knowledgeable, and very helpful. As soon as we got into the park we asked one of the employees about the app, the parade that hundreds had already began lining up for an hour before it started, what should be the strategy for the big Star Wars ride in the very back of the park, and where we could score some shrooms.

jk

The dude could not have been more helpful, and surprisingly a wee bit more frank than I expected. Another cast member was similarly human in her cute period piece uniform and told us how to use the Single Rider lane if we were interested in a short cut.

Unfortunately the Single Rider secret was out. Sorry Space Mountain, maybe next time.

Also next time we’ll sample the food. For some reason the Mouse thinks $15 is what a turkey leg should cost nowadays. One of my fondest memories of my younger days was carrying around an obnoxiously large turkey leg and nibbling on it while walking through one land to another.

Disney lets you bring in small daypacks and we snacked on food from home and drank from our bottles of water which you can refill throughout the joint, which is nice.

Also surprising was the quality of the fireworks. How did Disney corner the market on the best ones? It’s nice to know the $10 billion (literally) in profits the company’s parks make in a year are being spent on something extra delightful and they’re not cutting corners.

All in all I thought it was a decent value for the money. The special lady friend, though, felt rushed to try to go to as many rides in the “short” amount of time.

She equated the experience to having a sampler of the appetizers instead of a full meal.

And yet all the next day she glowed a little brighter and said, “I can’t believe where we were yesterday.”