How to Avoid Long Lines at Theme Parks

Tired of standing in line for Space Mountain, for Pirates of the Caribbean, even for Dumbo, one California family has found the perfect time to visit Disneyland: they go, annually, on Super Bowl Sunday.

As everyone knows, summer is the worst time to go to such places, if “worst” means crowds. Unfortunately, it’s also when people have vacations, most children aren’t in school and out-of-town relatives come to visit. And it’s even the best time, if “best” means special shows and added attractions, notwithstanding such off-season promotions as Halloween parties, crafts fairs and winter wonderlands.

But there are better and worse times to visit, or at least slightly better and slightly worse. Some require a bit of knowledge. Some are just common sense, applicable to any attraction in Southern California or elsewhere. All involve consideration of several factors: the day and even the hours of the visit; the kind of entertainment (rides, a guided tour, sit-down shows and walk-by exhibits); the popularity, capacity and frequency of the rides and/or shows.

Take just three attractions--Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm and the Universal Studios Tour.

Disneyland is open every day, including Christmas, Thanksgiving and Super Bowl Sunday. Summer (end of June through Labor Day) is peak season, and the park is open until midnight, 1 a.m. on Saturdays; off-season--with some exceptions--it closes at dusk, midnight on weekends. Weekend attendance is 50% higher than weekdays, and summer crowds may be double those of off-season days; the week after Labor Day, attendance is half what it was just the month before.

Sunday is for some reason the least crowded day in summer. Even better, for those who don’t mind, is a day of light rain; 90% of the rides are indoors, and there are few lines.

Most people spend 8 or 9 hours. There are 55 rides, many of them considered don’t-miss. Bob Gault, general manager of park operations, recommends coming on summer days from 2 or 3 p.m. until midnight, hitting the most popular rides while everyone watches the 8:50 “Electrical Parade,” and catching it at 11 p.m. instead. One might also arrive at park opening (9 in summer, 8 Saturday) and rush to such blockbusters as Star Tours (a 90-minute line at peak times), Space Mountain, and Pirates of the Caribbean (45-minute wait at worst). People with small children, not good on lines, should run to Fantasyland, the children’s favorite, before it gets too crowded.

Having a plan helps. Some lines are particularly slow. Dumbo, for one, isn’t flashy, but it’s low capacity, and must stop, empty and fill up between runs. Others are continuously moving: It’s a Small World handles 4,500 people an hour, boatload after boatload. Lines for outdoor, visible rides seem less boring, and the final stretch of the lengthy line for Star Tours includes a “pre-show” (movies, encounters with robots) that is itself a trip.

At Knott’s Berry Farm, the attendance on off-season weekdays is doubled on weekends and summer weekdays, and summer weekends are more crowded yet. “The day schools are out, attendance goes up 40%,” says Knott’s public relations director Stuart Zanville.

Knott’s is open every day but Christmas. Off-season, it’s generally open 10 to dusk, through the evening Saturdays and Christmas and Easter weeks; summer nights it closes at midnight and 1 a.m. on Saturdays. Mondays, for some reason, are less crowded than other days; weekdays during September and October and any December days are actually uncrowded, as are Easter and Thanksgiving.

Lines tend to be shorter than at Disneyland; Knott’s has a third of Disneyland’s annual attendance, and it has a lot of live shows (stunt show, ice show, dolphins, mariachis, concerts) and Ghost Town buildings and exhibits to take the pressure off its 35 rides. The lon gest line (45 minutes at worst) is usually at the Timber Mountain Log Ride, rivaled only by the new, wet Bigfoot Rapids on hot afternoons.

The park’s population is usually greatest at 3 in the afternoon and declines after 6. Camp Snoopy, which features children’s rides and entertainments, virtually empties in the evening, making that a good time for children who can stay awake.

The main feature of the Universal Studios Tour is an hour-and-a-half guided tour by tram through scene and sound stage; there’s an initial queue for a tram, but this isn’t a day of long waits and short rides. Getting on a tram shouldn’t be hard for people who arrive shortly after 8:30 a.m. opening, because everyone else seems to come after 10:30 or 11, or for those who come near box-office closing (3:30, 4 or 5, depending on the season). If the tram line gets too long, people are assigned later boarding times and told to see the rest of the park and come back.

The rest of the park, which stays open after the box office closes, is shops and eating places (many on recreated movie sets) and shows--stunt shows, animal shows, the new Star Trek show. The various show times are staggered, and waiting lines are cut off when they hold more than the seating capacity.

Rainy days are a good time to visit: Crowds are thin, the trams have tops and plastic roll-down sides, and some outside shows can be moved inside. Weekdays are a third less crowded than Saturdays and Sundays, both on- and off-season, and summer, like everywhere else, is busiest. Like everywhere else as well, “the best two weeks of the entire year are the first two weeks of December,” says Gordon Armstrong, executive vice president of marketing, “because people have their minds on other things.”

If lines for rides are unavoidable, the pain could be alleviated by costumed characters or strolling entertainers. Both Knott’s and Disneyland say that such employees are sent to “work” some of the lines; we’ve actually seen them on the line for Universal’s tram.

Alternatively, visitors could carry their lunch out to a line, take a paperback, bring a pocket game. Depending when they visit, they might need it.