I cannot describe how disappointed my family and I were at Disneyland, CA on June 6th, 2022. When we first entered the park, the Disneyland App wasn’t working on my phone and we wasted a good 45 minutes finding cast members who could help me reset my account and then explain how to use the ripoff, I mean,‘helpful’ Genie + App. We then went to Autotopia, and I could not believe the cast member there let a family into the Lightening Lane that did not pay for Genie +!! No joke, a woman was saying her mom was hot and tired and they didn’t have the Genie + access, so he said ‘I’ll make a magic moment for you’ and let them in the Lightening Lane although they didn’t pay for it. The crowd was MASSIVE, ridiculously overcrowded so every standby line for rides was typically between 50-75 minutes. We had the Genie + and it made no sense because with the crowds, the rides were hours apart from each other; if you checked your phone at 2 PM, the next available rides would be around 4:30 PM. I was really hoping to ride Big Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, and the Matterhorn, and all those had conflicting times near the end of the day; I booked Splash Mountain for 4:50 PM which barred me from booking any more Lightening Lane rides for the rest of the afternoon since you can only book one at a time. After being disappointed at how lame the Autotopia ride was (very slow, no decor around the track) and eating dorm food quality chicken nuggets at Red Rose Tavern, we headed over to Galaxy’s Edge since we didn’t feel like waiting an hour in the hot sun in a standby line for a ride.
When we first got to the First Order Cargo area, there were no characters at all. Zero. I’m not a Star Wars fan myself, but had seen some fun YouTube videos of guests talking to Stormtroopers, so we asked several cast members at that area when Kylo Ren would come out. All their responses were ‘He comes out when he pleases.’ These cast members were stationed throughout that area and had clearly seen the actors’ routine; I could not believe they knew when the characters would be around and purposely lied to paying guests. Finally we asked a nice lady working at the merchandise store and she told us to come back in about an hour to see the characters. We were able to get some fun moments talking to troopers and the lieutenant, but other than Star Wars there were absolutely no other characters to interact with throughout the park. We did not see any princesses and Mickey and Minnie were walking with the marching band but never stopped to interact with guests.
We left Galaxy’s Edge to head to Splash Mountain and had to wait a good amount of time to get in despite our Lightening Lane reservation. The standby line at that point was 90 minutes. I even heard another guest in front of us saying you pay for Genie + but still have to wait in a huge line. Splash Mountain was honestly a great ride although our boats started colliding near the end since they were putting too many people through at once. After that we checked our Genie + app again, and it said Haunted Mansion was available in an hour. However, once we reserved it on the app it changed the time to 8 PM! Here’s the crazy part though…we walked past the ride and noticed the standby line was only 25 minutes, so standby was suddenly faster than the Genie + you pay extra for. They crammed way too many people onto the Haunted Mansion and the ride malfunctioned TWICE when we were on it. When we got off we saw we not only had to wait a few more hours to even hope to catch another popular ride, but Indiana Jones was broken down for the rest of the day.
Hardly anywhere to get water, very confusing queues, so disappointed we only got 3 rides in the whole day. The park just didn’t have the ‘Disney Magic’ we were hoping for. They are cramming people in with no regard for curbing long wait times or general safety. Regardless of one’s views on Disney as a whole (politics, newer films/shows, company leadership, etc.) this trip wasn’t worth all the money we spent. I hope someone benefits from reading this long review and doesn’t waste their day here 🥺.