Disneyland Ceases Ticket Sales and Closes Temporarily as Holiday Crowds Emerge

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Disneyland

Credit: Disney

It’s one of the busiest times of the year for Disneyland and Walt Disney World as the holidays have officially arrived.

And on Friday, December 27, Disneyland was forced to stop selling daily tickets temporarily as the theme park reach capacity.

This really isn’t a huge surprise as the theme park expected to become extremely busy over the next few weeks and typically reaches capacity during peak tourist seasons, which includes the mid-summer and around the winter holidays.

Disneyland
Credit: Disney

The Disneyland Resort issued a statement on Friday, stating that Disney California Adventure, which is across from Disneyland, had remained open Friday, but Disneyland had reached capacity. Disney guests who had annual passes could still enter Disneyland Park, but unfortunately, guests with “park-hopper” tickets were only allowed to visit Disney California Adventure until the crowding died down at Disneyland Park.

“Visiting the Disneyland Resort during the holidays is a tradition for many people, and on high demand days like today, we do all we can to welcome as many guests as possible,” the statement said.

To get an idea of how crowded the theme park was, wait times for some of the more popular rides, including Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run and Space Mountain were reportedly at a 65 minute to two-hour wait on Friday afternoon.

Star Wars Crowds
Credit: Disney

Disneyland’s ticket sales halt on Friday marked the first over-crowding time since the opening of the $1-billion expansion of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge on May 31.

When Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opened up at Disneyland, it expanded the size of the theme park from 85 acres to nearly 100 acres! Though Disney representatives never publicly stated the capacity number of the park, we know that before the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge expansion opened, the theme park limit was 80,000.

Disney doesn’t currently release daily attendance numbers, but a longtime Walt Disney Imagineering director, Kim Irvine, revealed a couple of months ago that Disneyland attendance of 65,000 is a “normal” day.

2020 Walt Disney Crowd Calendar

According to an annual attendance study, Disneyland is the second-most-visited theme park in the world, following closely behind Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World. Disneyland brought in 18.7 million visitors in 2018 and Magic Kingdom brought in 20.9 million visitors. Both theme parks are up 2% from last year.

Are you surprised to see Disneyland hit capacity during this time of year? Let us know in the comments.

Source: LA Times

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