Disneyland queue management

Posted on Thu 02 January 2003

Between Christmas and New Year, we went to Paris to visit our family (both my wife's and mine). Lots of gifts, lots of food ! We also visited the Eiffel Tower and Disneyland Paris. Lots and lots of people :-(

Disneyland has a very carefully crafted queue management : people park lanes are kilometer-long and provide some in-queue attractions to help people waiting. But that doesn't change the time you spend waiting : during the day, it ranged from 20 minutes (just after the opening at 10 am) to 115 minutes in the afternoon. I refused queuing for more than 60 minutes. Waiting nearly two hours under the rain for a 5 minutes travel in a small train seems totally crazy to me.

Nevertheless, some of the attractions I had the patience to wait for were amazing. The one I liked most was the 3D movie "Honey, I shrunk the audience" : a sci-fi engine litteraly blows up in your face, and you get wet for real when a giant dog sneezes in front of you. I also liked "Star Tours", a space travel in the Star Wars universe : I had the impression to be part of these movies that I like and have watched so much.

But we must not forget that Disneyland is there for business, and everything is there for you not forget it : the 3D movie is "presented by" Kodak and Star Tours is "presented by" IBM. The park contains numerous advertisements for large companies such as Nestlé and France Telecom...

Anyway, my children liked it, even my oldest son that hates waiting. I guess he endured it because he really wanted to go to these attractions. But I'm not sure we will go there again soon...



Happy new year !

Snow