One More Disney Day

Yes I was here on that infamous 24 hours — 2÷29÷2012!
I got into the park at 6:15 AM and stayed til 6:20 AM… the next day! Yup, my best friend and I did it and we stayed up for 24 hours straight… NO JOKE! Although as soon as I got home (I live like 5 miles away… I hopped straight into bed and woke up at 7PM)
Walking into the park on Main Street at 6 AM the staff were wearing Mickey Hands and high fiving us! It was so fun to do that and Pin Trade! The OC register took pictures of my bestfriend and I at mad hatter!
At first it was heaven getting into DL at 6 AM… the lines were tiny, the characters were out and about in full swing! I even got onto Peter Pan’s Flight without a wait… that like NEVER happens! I think I rode the King Arthur’s Carousel like 5 times! And even though Space Mountain wasn’t open right away, around 1 PM it opened and I got to ride on it!
The day seemed to go by smoothly until like 5PM hit! All of a sudden it was cluster-f**k central! It was so hard to move around the park and after 8 PM a lot of the restaurants were closing due to the ‘special midnight menu’ preparations. I mean really Disney, during peak dinner time? I ended up getting a not so tasty dinner from French Market (my least favorite restaurant in all the land).
So after dinner my bestie and I parked our booties for prime seating for Fantasmic’s special 1 AM show. My bestfriend never saw it so it was a MUST. Same show, overall super awesome. Only thing that sucked was everytime we found a spot Disney workers would move us because some special group reserved it. SO ANNOYING, I was so glad I was able to find a front row seat somewhere.
Sucked for my friends who had to work and tried to come to DL around 5PM. Apparently the traffic was so bad and the lots and park was so full that people were turned away =(
Overall, park hoppers worked to my advantage. Going to CA Adventures around 12PM was a nice change of pace… I got to see Muppets in 3D, Monster Inc Dance group, Aladdin show and ride all the rides there before making DL my permanent locale since they closed CA Adventures around 8 PM.
At DL I ran into the parade while enroute to Small World… rode said Small World about 3 times, along with the Casey JR train and Storytime Boats… after midnight riding captain EO, Star Tours like 3 times and meeting Darth Vadar and Stormtroopers was cool too!
I have to say, it was so great to see the sun come up from the castle at Jolly Holly Café while eating Mickey cookies and drinking hot cocoa… and hearing the Mickey Mouse club singing over the speakers at 6 AM on 3÷1÷2012 «Now its time to say goodbye… M-I-C-K-E-Y…M-O-U-S-E =)»
Having Mickey and friends wave to us goodbye in their PJs at the Disneyland Railroad was sooooo CUTE too! Even though I had a cranky attack around 3−4ish AM… it was all gone after I saw them! Even on the way out… DL staff was wearing Mickey Hands and high-​fiving us on the way out!
I’ll never forget it. I hope for next Leap Year they do it again… I’ll be at Disney World though since they have more lands to explore.

I’m pretty sure this is my first review in which I’ve given something Disney-​related less than 3 stars. I was first excited when I heard about the 24 hour Disney day on leap day. After all, what better way to spend your extra day that only comes every four years at Disneyland? The problem was, everyone in their Mom was about to go balls-​to-​the-​wall on this day as well.
I know a few of my friends who stayed the entire 24 hours from 6AM on February 29^th to 6AM on March 1^st, and for them spending that long at Disneyland was probably worth it. However, the throngs of people I encountered when I attempted to walk through the happiest place on Earth was pretty difficult to endure. I went at night to do it for the story, and maybe stay a little bit their usual hours, but by by the time 11:30 rolled around, it was definitely not worth it.
Literally, navigating down Main Street meant being sandwiched between strangers, nearly losing my friends and feeling like cattle. We only got to ride IJ with a wait of about 40 minutes, and that in itself was kind of a miracle because they had shut down the ride (unknown to us), and when they opened it up again, we nearly breezed through the maze. Next, we tried to check out Thunder Mountain Railroad but we found a 2 hour wait… say what? That was when my tiredness had gotten the best of me and I decided to get some ice cream and call it a day.
When we left Dland was at capacity… that’s like 75,000 people! No wonder the waiting times became sky high. While it was nice to be a part of Disney history, it definitely wasn’t «as good as it gets», I’m not a fan, and it wasn’t even just «A-​OK». Sorry Walt but I’ve had better than becoming claustrophobic on Main Street.

Disneyland Open For 24 Hours?! You seriously can’t go wrong with that.
While there should have been a lot more police controlling traffic (it was crazy and took us 3 hours to get into the parking structure from our house, which is 15 minutes away from Disneyland), it was an amazing evening.
We just got married at Disneyland on 11÷11÷11, and we never thought we would get to party at Disneyland until the wee hours of the morning! It was such an experience & we are glad we got to be a part of Disney History!
102.7 KIIS FM had a DJ spinning some really good music until 4 AM. It was packed with people… everyone was happy inside the park.
5 Stars for ONE MORE DISNEY DAY: February 29, 2012

24 straight hours at Disneyland, how can you go wrong?
The last time something like this happened was 25 years ago when Disneyland turned 25 and they stayed open for 25 straight hours.
Special food options, special entertainment and of course stuff to buy!
I got there midway through the afternoon, I had friends who lined up at 10pm the night before since they were giving special edition Mickey ears to the first 2000 people through the gate. They had 3000 people there before the gates even opened at 6am. When I arrived in the afternoon it was busy, but not overly busy. Later in the day it was a different story… they actually hit capacity a few times and closed on more than one occasion. From 930pm to 1am they wouldn’t let anyone in at all. The lines got worse as the night wore on, at 4am the line for Space Mountain was 140 minutes long.
BUT…if you were there, you didn’t really care about riding any rides, you just wanted to be a part of history.
I really hope Disneyland does something like this again… I would be one of the first people through the gates.
:0)