Disneyland Tests Shortcut for Lines
ORANGE COUNTY — A system to eliminate the bane of theme park fans--tedious waits for popular rides--was tested Thursday at Disneyland’s Space Mountain roller coaster to rave reviews.
Riders who insisted on doing things traditionally were allowed to simply work their way through a regular queue with a wait of up to 40 minutes. But urged on by Disney employees, many tried Fastpass, a system that assigned them one-hour windows of time later on. During that hour, the visitors could use a separate priority line of about five minutes.
The system, also called virtual queuing, drew only one complaint: It wasn’t available elsewhere.
“They should try to have it on all the rides. It would be a lot quicker,” said Ray Converse, 17, of San Diego, who rode the Matterhorn roller coaster during the time he would otherwise have been standing in the Space Mountain line.
Converse and his friend Joanna Dorado, 19, spent less than 10 minutes in line for Space Mountain at noon, a time when the wait for Splash Mountain was listed at 50 minutes and for Indiana Jones Adventure at 60 minutes.
Users of the system feed their park admission tickets or annual passes into a machine, which spits out a voucher assigning them the computer-determined hour to return for the short line. There is no additional charge.
Sign up for Essential California
The most important California stories and recommendations in your inbox every morning.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
