Midday Crowds Halt Disneyland Ticket Sales

Overflowing with visitors at the height of the holiday season, Disneyland halted ticket sales at midday twice this week, the first time it has taken such action in four years.

The park stopped selling tickets on Christmas Day about 3 p.m. and again Wednesday at just 12:30 p.m., Disneyland spokesman Tom Brocato said.

“We suspended one-day ticket sales for a period of time because of the capacity in the park,” he said. “We don’t want it to detract from our guests’ experience.”

Disneyland, of course, has helped to pack the park though its heavy holiday advertising and attractive admission discounts. The park also created special holiday events, like a themed fireworks display and machine-made snow.

“We deck it out for the holidays,” Brocato said.

The last time Disneyland halted the turnstiles was in the waning days of the popular Main Street Electrical Parade in late 1996, he said.

Visitors were flooding the park this year even before public schools shut down for the holidays. One insider said Disneyland is expected to have about 400,000 more visitors this quarter, setting a record for the October-December period. The additional guests have helped push the park’s attendance up a healthy 3% to 13.9 million for the year, according to estimates by Amusement Business, a trade publication.

Brocato declined to provide figures on the number of patrons, saying only that “there has been a bump in attendance” this holiday season over last year’s.

To determine whether the park is getting too packed, Disneyland workers monitor the turnstiles and gauge “guest flow” throughout the park, he said. If there are signs that the crowds are diminishing, ticket sales could resume, he said, though that did not happen Christmas Day.

Disneyland crowds have been so heavy in recent weeks that workers have been straining to attend to the throngs and keep rides going.

Despite the halt of ticket sales this week, visitors who had previously purchased tickets or who have annual passes were allowed to enter, as were those who had been in the park earlier and had left after having their hand stamped, Brocato said.