Is early entry worth it?

[DizMe]

For someone like me, EE is not worth it. If I had kids, then yes, but when I go now, it's usually all adults and we have all been to DLR many, many times. We don't care about rushing to FL or, for that matter, anything else. We love rides but aren't in combat mode to get on everything possible. As I said, we're old veterans and we like to savor the environment rather than do as many rides as we can. Don't get me wrong--I love rides, but as I go 3-4 times a year, it's different.

I'm more about finding interesting things I've never noticed, having meals in new places and old favorites (I like to do at least one sit-down a day), taking fun pics, and exploring things you often don't have time for when you're trying to hit as many rides as possible.

We usually stay late. Often, you can knock out most, if not all, FL rides shortly before closing. In Dec, my sister and I rode the carousel, Dumbo, Snow White, Mr. Toad, and PP, all with little or no wait. In Nov, I went with my daughter and 6-year-old grandson, and he and I had the same experience and were the very last ones on PP! It was pretty cool to come out of the ride and see a basically deserted FL. We had a blast.

Anyway, it depends on what your park style is.

 

[GeorgiaHoo]

So a quick follow up. We hit the parks Saturday from 10 am until about 730 PM and were wiped out so, despite best intentions, went back to the hotel for some sleep. Got up Sunday morning around 7-ish and got to the GCH entry to California Adventure around 730, and at that time there was no line to get into the park. We were at Toy Story Mania by around 735 but it was down until around 9 or 10 that morning, so rode Incredicoaster with no wait and walked over to Guardians and rode that with no wait and then rode Little Mermaid with no wait. My wife then rode Soarin' while I went back to the hotel to get my motion sickness patch, which I realized I forgot when I felt a little queasy after Incredicoaster and Guardians within 15 minutes of each other. At that point they'd let folks in the park though it didn't seem busy at all until around 11. We were able to ride Toy Story a bit later that morning using Genie Plus, and then did Philharmagic. I made Genie Plus reservations for Space Mountain at 11 so we hopped over to Disneyland at that time.

So EE worked well for us, even though we weren't the first ones in the park. We were able to ride the stuff we wanted to (we did Radiator Springs Racer the day before, and it was sort of meh and not worth the $38 extra we paid).

 

[BriannaRuth]

I concur. We were there this past weekend and totally bungled the Disneyland early entry from GC. I have never seen such a long security line - it wound deep into the courtyard and around in a loop back past there the security point is, and took about 25 minutes to get through which ate up our EE time. We got in line about 7:10 and did not arrive at the tomorrowland checkpoint until 7:55. Just long enough to beat the runners to an already long Pan line. >_<

We really needed the sleep from the night before, so it was what it was... We saw a secondary security point setup in the corner of the courtyard with metal detectors and such but it was not being used.

I agree with this assessment of the GCH lines! Every time we have stayed there and used them we ended up in the park much later than we anticipated. They do not have enough staff at that location or enough lines. Tends to move very slowly. One family with messed up tickets can cause a huge problem for just about everyone.