The first key to a great day at Disney California Adventure is to start the morning right! In this post, we discuss how to approach rope drop—the very beginning of the day—at Disney California Adventure. Read on to learn how to accomplish as much as possible in your morning at this exciting park!
This post covers only Disney California Adventure park. We have a separate post covering rope drop at Disneyland, the other park at Disneyland resort.
If you have Early Entry, we have a separate post focusing on Early Entry at both Disneyland Parks. Even if you have Early Entry, this post will provide you with more context about what to do after your first ride or two.
Rope Drop Basics at Disney California Adventure
Let’s start with a basic introduction to rope drop (like, for example, what does “rope drop” even mean?).
What time does Disney California Adventure Open?
Disney California Adventure opening times vary on a day-to-day basis, with openings at 8AM and 9AM being most common. You should check the Disneyland website or Disneyland app for the scheduled opening times for your visit.
What Is Early Entry at Disney California Adventure?
Early Entry is a perk available only to guests staying at one of the three Disneyland Resort hotels—Disneyland Hotel, Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, and Disney’s Pixar Place Hotel. Early Entry grants these guests access on select days to select attractions at the parks for an extra 30 minutes in the morning. For more on that perk, read our Guide to Early Entry at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure.
We generally do not recommend guests without Early Entry visit Disney California Adventure on days with Early Entry, if they can avoid it. If you do, you’ll probably still want to stick to the strategies outlined in this post, keeping in mind that you’ll probably encounter some waits immediately to start the day. My honest bottom line here is that if you’re in this unfortunate situation—GET GENIE+.
What Is “Rope Drop”?
Rope drop refers to when guests are actually allowed onto rides, as opposed to when they are allowed into the park. Rope drop is never later than the time the park is scheduled to open. At Disney California Adventure, rope drop typically occurs at the time the park is scheduled to open, while the gates to the park typically open earlier.
An actual rope in use at Disneyland
Depending on the precise protocols at a park on a day, Cast Members may actually have a rope up cutting off people from the park which is dropped when the park opens.
Why is rope drop important?
The two most important parts of putting together a great day at Disney California Adventure are rope drop and good usage of Genie+. If you haven’t yet, you should check out our post on using Genie+ at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure.
Rope drop is when waits are shortest, but some will go up quickly. The best way to visit the most rides at Disney California Adventure is to visit those rides that get long waits as early as possible. That’s also why rope drop is an important part of our one-day Disney California Adventure itinerary.
Keep in mind that if you’re traveling with little ones, you’ll also want to check the height requirements for every ride at Disneyland (including California Adventure). Your plans will change if your party doesn’t meet a height requirement or if you have to use rider swap.
What Time Should I Arrive At California Adventure?
We recommend arriving no later than 30 minutes before the park is scheduled to open if you are planning to start by riding Radiator Springs Racers. We recommend arriving no later than 15 minutes before the park is scheduled to open in any case. We typically arrive 30 to 45 minutes early. Keep in mind you’ll need to account for parking and security time, too.
What Happens At Disney California Adventure Rope Drop?
Typically, Disney California Adventure rope drop happens in three phases.
First, usually 20 to 30 minutes before the park is set to open (but sometimes earlier), Cast Members will be scanning guests into the park. These first five or so guests in each line aren’t physically allowed into the park, but they are scanned in and able to buy Genie+ and make their first pick.
Second, about five minutes later (or sometimes just immediately), guests are actually let into the park. Those who already scanned can walk right through, everyone else will be scanned as they enter. Guests are corralled at different points around Buena Vista Street, but we only focus on two spots here.
Guests heading to Pixar Pier and Cars Land are held at the start of the path toward those lands, right next to the Carthay Circle building.
Guests heading to Guardians of the Galaxy— Mission: BREAKOUT! are held near the Animation Theatre.
Finally, typically at the time the park is scheduled to open, guests are allowed to access the rest of the park. Depending on a variety of factors, Cast Members may escort guests to specific rides, asking them to form a line along the way.
How Lightning Lanes and Single Rider Impact Rope Drop Strategy
Your rope drop strategy and your Lightning Lane strategy are partners for putting together the perfect day at the parks. (What’s a Lightning Lane? Again, we have a post about Genie+ at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure.)
If you have Genie+, you don’t have to try and get every short wait on those rides in the morning. If you buy the individual Lightning Lane, you don’t have to start your day there.
In general, we always recommend getting Genie+ at least one day of a Disneyland trip, and we prefer to have it for two days—one day to focus on Disneyland and one day on Disney California Adventure.
The individual Lightning Lane at Disney California Adventure is Radiator Springs Racers. That means if you don’t get a short wait in the morning as part of rope drop, you’ll either have to wait a long time later in the day or pay for the Individual Lightning Lane. (The ride also has a single rider line, FWIW.) Generally, we’re happy to rope drop Radiator Springs Racers.
On most days the individual Lightning Lane for Radiator Springs Racers maintains good availability throughout the day. This means you might skip it in the morning (neither riding or paying for it) and then see how it shapes up. If you get to 3PM and the wait is 60 minutes and that sounds okay, then you wait in line. Or you get to 6PM and the wait is 120 minutes but the Lightning Lane is for sale for $20, so you just opt to pay. This always carries some risk the Lightning Lane will sell out faster than usual, of course.
Single rider lines are another alternative for getting on several rides at Disney California Adventure. Single Rider is usually available on:
Radiator Springs Racers
WEB Slingers
Incredicoaster
Monsters Inc. (as a “Buddy Pass”)
Soarin’
Grizzly River Run
Goofy Sky School
If you’re willing to use the single rider lines (your party will be separated and every rider must be at least 7 years old), then you might de-prioritize rides with single rider lines as part of your rope drop strategy.
Moving onto actual rope drop strategy, we’ll start with a discussion for how to approach rope drop if you don’t have Genie+ before talking about what to do if you do have Genie+. These will focus on just the first few rides. We finish with a section called “Continuing Rope Drop at California Adventure” where we talk about how to continue your morning after you’ve gotten through your first one to three rides.
Disney California Adventure Rope Drop Without Genie+
As noted, we recommend having Genie+ at Disney California Adventure (or as part of a split day between the two parks). However, if you won’t have Genie+ at all during your trip, our rope drop recommendation is that you prioritize going to the following rides in the following order:
Radiator Springs Racers
Guardians of the Galaxy Mission: BREAKOUT
WEB Slingers
This is, not coincidentally, their order of popularity in the park. Competing with WEB Slingers in terms of popularity are Toy Story Midway Mania! and Incredicoaster (along with Goofy Sky School, don’t ask me why).
However, those are located a ways away over on Pixar Pier, where you’re likely to spend substantial time later in the morning / day. It probably doesn’t make sense to trek over to them if you’ll have to come right back to this part of the park.
The caveat here is straightforward—if you know you want to get to those rides before the lines grow too long, you might just save WEB Slingers for later. This can make a lot of sense if, for example, you only intend on taking a single lap around Pixar Pier but expect to visit Avengers Campus multiple times throughout the day.
Disney California Adventure Rope Drop Strategy With Genie+
If you have Genie+, you have fewer rides to stress about right at rope drop. But of course, the most popular ride at Disney California Adventure—Radiator Springs Racers—isn’t a part of Genie+. This makes Radiator Springs Racers an ideal option for rope drop, and that’s our recommendation.
If you instead buy the individual Lightning Lane for Radiator Springs Racers, you’ll basically have your pick of good rope drop options. Go to Mission: BREAKOUT first so you can ride it once now and again later using Genie+. Go to Pixar Pier and Paradise Gardens park to get short waits for the first hour of your day. Or, our recommendation, just continue how we recommend in this section, by going to Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters.
Continuing Rope Drop at California Adventure
Typically, I think of “rope drop” as the time from when you wake up until the time you stop rushing to rides one after another because waits have finally started to plateau (or you’re just tired). Usually I mark it with a late breakfast, early lunch, or coffee.
That is to say, the quick sections above aren’t really the end of rope drop. While morning crowds tend to converge on Cars Land and Avengers Campus (just like those above strategies), there are a ton of rides in the Pixar Pier / Paradise Gardens Park area of the park that will keep short waits for a relatively long time into the morning. Our goal is to get out of Cars Land / Avengers Campus quickly enough to catch some short waits in the rest of the park.
We do still have two rides in Cars Land to talk about. Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters and Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree are a pair of spinner / dancing vehicle rides in Cars Land. I don’t particularly like them, but my toddlers loves them.
If you want to get on every ride at Disney California Adventure, I highly recommend going to Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters before you head to Pixar Pier / Paradise Gardens Park. It gets moderate waits that just always feel tremendously long to me. Most days, you can save Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree for later in the day.
From there, you head to Pixar Pier / Paradise Gardens Park. If you have Genie+, you’ll time your Genie+ reservations so that you can go counter-clockwise around this part of the park en route to either Toy Story Midway Mania! or Incredicoaster. If you don’t have Genie+, you’ll probably want to clockwise, starting with either or both of those rides.
I don’t want to belabor discussion about these rides too much, but here are some key things to keep in mind…
The Pixar Pal-A-Round ferris wheel is not a short ride. Waits for other rides will likely go up while you’re on it.
In this author’s humble opinion, there’s no reason to wait more than 5 minutes for Goofy’s Sky School in the morning. Okay, fine, my honest opinion is it’s never worth waiting for. But if you’re going to wait for it, at least get some walk-on rides done first.
The Little Mermaid ~ Ariel’s Undersea Adventure is located relatively centrally in the park compared to other rides in this area, and it rarely gets long waits. Don’t force it into your morning too early—you’ll be seeing it with short waits plenty more times in the day.
If a butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing, Golden Zephyr closes for high winds. If you see this ride open, it will almost always have a 5-minute wait and almost always be worth getting on immediately in case it closes later.