We (my friend Sean and I) left San Diego at 6:15 - on 5/19/2021.

Pulled off the road at 6:58am (near the decommissioned San Onofre nuclear plant) and launched the Disneyland app and was able to get Rise of The Resistance tickets at 7:00am on the dot. We got Boarding Group 8, scheduled for around 9:15am. (I later learned 9:15am was the starting time you could go, they also give you like a 45 minute window to show up.)

Got to the parking area at 7:50am off Harbor Drive. Parking lot was NOT opened yet and was physically blocked, so we circled around ONCE and it then was open. We left the parked car around 8:20am in Mickey and Friends lot. No trams were running so it’s probably a ¼ or 1/3 mile walk to the entrance.

We entered the actual park around 8:50am according to a photo I snapped.

We walked directly to Galaxy’s Edge (Star Wars Land) and were able to walk directly onto Star Wars Smuggler's Run with a zero minutes wait, none at all. Was inside that ride at 8:59am.

Then we walked to Star Wars Rise of The Resistance, showed our passes and were let in – started that ride at 9:20am.

After that we wanted to get some food – but it was hard finding food. We ended up having to walk back to Main Street at The Jolly Holiday, but thought we should try somewhere else – but everything was closed. We probably spent 30 minutes finding food before eating.

Then I signed us up for Indiana Jones Adventure Ride, and was told to go there in 55 minutes by the app.

We went to the Haunted Mansion, which said it was a 30 minute wait – but took a maximum of 10 minutes to get in on the ride.

We walked around a little looking at things wasting time until Indiana Jones.

Indiana Jones had no wait when we arrived with our reservation, but we did have to walk a long way to enter the ride. They made us walk around a stupid queue that went up the jungle cruise waiting area-- and then once inside it was a lot more walking. I didn’t really like this ride.

Then we went to Big Thunder Mountain. It was a 10 minute wait, the queue estimated at 35 minutes.

I tried to get ROTR tickets again at noon – but you are only allowed to go once a day.

Star Tours was an eight minute wait, queue estimated 30 minutes.

The only ride we might have wanted to go on but didn’t was Pirates of the Caribbean because it had a long line, but I bet that it would’ve been 30 minutes or less. Just wasn’t very interested in it - or Space Mountain.

Here’s the most surprising thing right now: There are no lines INSIDE the rides. Even if you are waiting outside for a while once you get inside there are no lines, you walk from the entry to where the start of the ride. So if you see a line outside then that’s the WHOLE line.

In the morning the park felt pretty open. I never felt crowded. 99.9% of everyone was masked properly and gentle reminders were given by staff to mask if it fell from the nose. I saw 2 small children that were not wearing masks at all times but they were most times.

Another surprise: I didn’t take many photos because we were never really inside a ride for long enough. Once you got in the door you walked around the queue directly on the ride. That means you didn’t spend time looking at droids, or a lot of the art – it was kind of a whirlwind.

We literally rode every ride we wanted to in less than three hours, and we ended up eating somewhere and taking a break and doing some shopping. We stayed like 4.5 hours.

Got back to San Diego by 3:30pm and am exhausted. I considered it a very successful trip.

------------


Gone: My Discogs collection for The Roots:
http://www.discogs.com/user/tomhayes-roots/collection