Leap Day 2012 at Disneyland

Leap day occurs every 4 years, so Disneyland thought it would be “cool” to open the park for 24 hours from 6:00am to 6:00am.

Twitter friend Shelly and her family were going to stay the entire 24 hours and convinced me to join them after the Ducks hockey game. My other twitter friend, Tim saw the tweets and chimed in he wanted to join as well, so I agreed to meet around 10:00pm.

When I went to Disneyland after the hockey game, the line to exit the freeway was backed up outside the Harbor Boulevard offramp.

Luckily I knew a back way of exiting Euclid, to Manchester, and taking Walnut to the Downtown Disney entrance. I avoided 90% of the congestion.

My 02/29 parking ticket from Downtown Disney

The line at the security tent (at 10 pm)

Parking at Downtown was not a problem, and many families were leaving at 10:00pm. Once inside, the line was backed up at the security tent. I was amazed the huge line at the ticket booths. When I reached the turnstiles, I knew inside would be a mad house. I was right.

Main Street was packed full of people, with just as many people with strollers and electric carts trying to leave as there were coming into the park. It took 20 minutes to walk halfway down Main Street to meet Tim at Market Place.

The view of the congestion on Main Street.

Eventually I did find Tim, and we decided to get a bite to eat at Plaza Inn and wait for the crowd to thin out. While eating, we noticed our cellular service was spotty for both AT&T and Verizon users. Our batteries were draining, and it seemed everyone was too, as guests were plugging in to recharge their phones.

Texting and using social media was spotty, and even making a simple call was hard to do. There were too many people using their phones at the same time!

I did get a hold of Shelly, only to find out she was stuck in New Orleans Square. Our other friends were stuck in Tomorrowland and Toon Town. It seemed meeting up was a bust. After eating, Tim and I decided to head home.

I spent a total of 2 hours at the resort, most of it moving at snails pace from one end of Main Street to the other. It was just too crowded. Well, I can say I was there on Leap Day 2012.