My Disneyland Morning

Last month when visiting Disneyland Park, I wanted to get a jump on the day. Here’s how it went!

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First Time Planning? If you are planning your first ever Disney trip or first trip since the pandemic, check out my Disney trip planning tips for first time guests to see how to prepare for your visit to the Happiest Place on Earth! (Link opens in a new tab so you can continue reading the story below)

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To start off the day, I was up by 6am. The rest of the crew wanted to sleep in, so I walked to the park from the hotel solo, leaving at 6:30. Here are some pics I shared in my Good Morning From Disneyland post.

This video takes me to my rope drop location at Adventureland. When this video ends, you can see not much of a crowd behind me yet. This next video, Part 2, starts about 20 minutes later. It is crazy how many people were waiting for rope drop!

So this rope drop video takes me right to Indiana Jones Adventure, but we see the majority heading past and probably going straight to Rise of the Resistance. I wanted to do a specific time for that, so I bought a Lightning Lane pass for that later. I forgot at Disneyland, you can’t select a time for Individual Lightning Lane passes like you can at Walt Disney World. Anyway, here’s my ride video from Indy. I was able to get on the ride right away.

After having my gear searched by security, I went to the ticket lines to the right, which are right in front of the train tunnel, and was third in my line. Just before 7:30, the Cast Members each scanned several guests in each row, so when the entry countdown was finished, we were able to quickly head into the park. I was recording live, as well as with my 360 camera, of the mad rush. I went all the way across the front of the train station for better pictures. Here’s my 360° video from that morning!

Since I’m new to the 360 camera and using it in dark rides, I didn’t get the best videos on the early dark ride videos, so this one is pretty dark. However, Pirates of the Caribbean got a little better. My wait time here was less than 10 minutes.

After that, I was walking down New Orleans Square towards the Haunted Mansion when I came across the Bootstrappers playing a fun little medley to the delight of an adorable toddler.

I then headed to the Haunted Mansion where the wait time was about 10 minutes to get inside. Once we were in, a crazy thing happened in the stretching room…

Okay, okay, I’m only kidding. But here’s the full 360 ride video. I think this was the best so far.

I was on and off those 3 rides by 9am and was in line for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad by 9:15 with a 30 minute wait time, but I was off the ride by 9:30.

After this ride, the family arrived, so it was time to change directions. Hopefully this rope drop strategy can still work for some. I like to just go right down New Orleans Square, but I wanted to do the Jungle Cruise with family and it was a bit too chilly in the morning for Splash Mountain, which is why I went to Big Thunder. I feel like 4 rides in 90 minutes is a good start, with 2 of the rides being over 10 minutes long.

Thanks for reading along. Let me know if you have any questions regarding your rope drop strategy at Disneyland in the comments below!

If you’re ready to start exploring a Walt Disney World or Disneyland family vacation, I recommend checking out Undercover Tourist for your ticket options. I’ve already used them twice, once at Disneyland and once at Disney World and will plan to continue comparing their prices with other sites, however I usually come back to UT because they have the best deals and their instructions make it easy to add your tickets to the Disney apps.