Disneyland now hosts a number of special events throughout the year where a set of tickets goes on sale and quickly sells out. These include the Disneyland After Dark events and Oogie Boogie Bash Halloween Party. You could even consider the Disneyland Magic Key Annual Passes special tickets since their sales are now capped and they sell out consistently.
The tickets for these special Disneyland offers have become even more popular since the parks reopened after the pandemic. There is a massive demand for the special offerings that feels like it is higher than ever.
This demand has led to massive headaches for those trying to purchase tickets as hours-long virtual queues are utilized to purchase tickets. People have gotten stuck waiting hours in these queues and then not even gotten tickets. The last Magic Key pass sale was so in demand that hundreds lined up at the ticket booths in person rather than waiting online as seen above. Disneyland just announced a new feature that is clearly a test for future special events and ticket drops. See the details below.
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New Disneyland Virtual Queue Test
During the ticket sales for the upcoming Star Wars Nites at Disneyland, Disney will be testing a new feature that will notify those trying to purchase when they are up next to buy tickets in the queue.
Note, you can read all about the different sales windows for the Star Wars Nites in our guide linked above.
When detailing the new process, Disney shared the following:
For the first time, if you’re waiting in the online queue to purchase Star Wars Nite tickets, you may have the option to be digitally notified when it’s your time to enter the ticket store.
To participate, once in the queue, choose the “notify me” option and enter your email address. You’ll receive an email letting you know it’s your turn to return to the waiting room in order to enter the ticket store site. From the time your turn begins, you’ll have ten minutes to use the link to return to the site.
Guests will have 10 minutes to use the link to return to the site from when their turn begins, or they will lose their place in line and will need to re-join the queue at the back of the line. The link will no longer be valid once their turn has ended or after they have used the link to return to the site, whether they purchase tickets or not. If this happens, guests will need to re-join the queue at the back of the line. Guests should check spam and/or junk folders to ensure the initial email confirmation is sent.
So, to summarize you'll need to be on top of your email throughout the day or have specific notifications turned on to receive this new virtual queue notification.
Our Thoughts on New “Notify Me” Option
As we shared this morning in the Star Wars Nites article, we believe that this new “notify me” option is a good sign that Disney is listening to the feedback from fans who are frustrated by the current process for purchasing anything from Disney.
Last year during the Oogie Boogie Bash ticket sale, sales had to be postponed for multiple days due to technology failures with the virtual queue when the demand was too high.
It is a terrible brand experience for Disney to have guests sit in a virtual queue all day long all to just not get the tickets that they were waiting for. These are Disney's most hardcore fans and the worst thing that could happen here is that fans could say this really isn't worth spending time on. This is a step towards improving that guest experience. Disney needs to continue to work to make technology enable the guest experience rather than hinder guests.
We can also assume that this new “notify me” option isn't actually about Star Wars Nites and is instead about the general experience that fans have purchasing. My guess is that they are far more focused on getting this right for the new Disneyland Magic Key release and the Oogie Boogie Bash ticket sales release than for this Star Wars Nites set of events.
That said, I would expect that this version of the “notify me” option will not be perfect. Already you can see where there will be issues with using email. Personally, it would give me great anxiety if I had to keep an eye on email all day long waiting for a notification. The email may also not send fast enough. A far better version of this system would involve using a phone number for a text or call. Perhaps that will be an option in the future.
This new feature test is hopefully just the first of many new improvements coming from this team.
We will have to wait and see how this new notify me feature is received when this is tested out next week. For now, I will just say that I appreciate that the digital infrastructure team is listening to guest feedback and trying to iterate on a problem that has been an issue for a long time.
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