Halloween Time at Disneyland and California Adventure has returned! The spook season event is back with frightfully fun experiences and entertainment throughout the rest of August, September and October 2024. This post shares what to expect and our experiences with crowds, characters, and the virtual queue for Haunted Mansion Holiday.
We’ve had a chance to spend some time enjoying Halloween at Disneyland and DCA, and want to share our experience thus far. One thing we should start by noting is that this post will not be comprehensive–we’re basically focusing on what’s different as compared to last year. And honestly, that’s not a whole lot!
Disneyland has taken a “don’t fix what isn’t broken” mentality with Halloween Time, which is probably for the best. In any case, check out our full 2024 Guide to Halloween at Disneyland Resort if you need comprehensive planning advice and recommendations for spook season. With that out of the way, let’s dig into what’s new for 2024…
The huge news here is that Halloween 2024 at Disneyland starts in August–the first time ever it has ever kicked off that early. The typical cadence for Halloween is it starting the first Friday in September, sometimes with a soft opening on the Thursday before that. That means that, following the historical pattern, Halloween should have started on September 6, 2024. That’s late, but consistent with past precedent (including 2019, when it started on September 6).
Disneyland is essentially starting Halloween two weeks early with the August 23, 2024 start date. While earlier than ever at Disneyland, this is still later than the start date of Halloween at Walt Disney World (by almost 2 full weeks!) in recent years. There are sure to be complaints about this from diehard Disneyland fans who think it’s “too early” for Halloween. We strongly disagree.
From our perspective, this all comes down to demand. Halloween Time crowds have been getting worse and worse, to the point that mid-September until late October is one of the busiest stretches of the entire year. There’s an element of seasonality to this with fall breaks at West Coast school districts. A big part of it, though, is simply that Halloween continues to grow in popularity.
Sure, some Disneyland diehards will complain about Halloween starting in summer, but that’s going to happen regardless. The reality is that Halloween draws huge crowds and Oogie Boogie Bash sold out in record time last year. Adding more dates–both for Halloween as a whole and the hard ticket party–is simply the smart move and a good way to even out crowds throughout spook season. It’s lucrative for Disneyland and better for guests–a rare win-win scenario!
Against that backdrop, let’s turn to crowds.
This summer at Disneyland more or less paralleled our recent crowd reports from Walt Disney World, except with higher numbers in the California parks. For those skeptical of these reported trends, the company itself has acknowledged as much, attributing it to an exhaustion of pent-up demand that’s lagging at Disneyland since California reopened later.
There’s never consensus when it comes to crowd reporting. (It’s better at Disneyland than Walt Disney World, as the more local-centric parks mean more fans with weekly experience, rather than yearly, which offers a much better frame of reference.) No matter what the data shows, there will always be people who claim the exact same dates were actually the ‘busiest they’ve ever seen the parks’ or ‘least busy they’ve ever seen the parks.’ With the exception of holiday weeks, those responses happen pretty much without fail.
We pop into Disneyland on a regular basis, usually at least once per week.
These aren’t all-day visits since we’re driving in and also trying to avoid traffic, meaning going late and often leaving by around 6:30 pm (threading the needle between missing traffic and not disrupting baby’s bedtime routine). Because of this, we also aim to do a weekend in the parks with a hotel stay about once per month (that also helps refresh hotel reviews).
We recently did a lengthy stretch in Anaheim for D23 Expo, which included a few partial days at Disneyland. We also did a long weekend at Disneyland with several consecutive rope drop to park closing days.
Anyway, our observations from those visits are that weekends continue to be much less busy than weekdays. There is a very noticeable difference between Sunday and Monday, with the latter being far worse. It’s actually so obvious that there probably would be consensus on this.
There are a few reasons for this. Magic Key Annual Pass blockouts on the weekends and tiered ticket pricing are the big ones, which push people towards the weekdays. When it comes to August, specifically, there was also the lifting of the summer blockout in mid-August, which caused a small scale or localized version of pent-up demand has also just played out.
Los Angeles and Orange County schools are already back in session–as is most of California and the West Coast–but there are still some stragglers. In any case, all of this explains why crowds have remained elevated into mid-August, especially on weekdays, even as this is the heart of off-season at Walt Disney World. All of this is consistent with what we saw last year at Disneyland.
Last year, the early fall off-season essentially arrived right now, which is probably the big reason why Disneyland moved forward the Halloween season. Spread out demand so that mid-September through late October aren’t quite so crazy, while also increasing crowds during the off-season.
Despite the start of Halloween, what we pretty much observed is that it’s still off-season at Disneyland. Wait times were low throughout the day, with a crowd level of 1/10 and average of 18 minutes on August 23, 2024 per thrill-data.com. That’s really low. Those numbers made this the slowest day at Disneyland since February on a few days that, if I recall correctly, had storms.
We completely believe this. This was the least busy Disneyland has felt in a long time (we didn’t visit on those February days) and there was a time during the middle of the day when the longest wait time in the entire park was 30 minutes. Even with an 18 minute average, you’d expect Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance, Indiana Jones Adventure, Matterhorn, etc., to be well above that.
Feels like crowds weren’t much worse. Our concern was that even with low wait times, there would be long lines for food and just general congestion given it was the first day of Halloween. However, that was not the case. We ate a lot of Halloween snacks (reviews coming soon), and never had any issues with lines–Mobile Order return times were instant for everything except Bengal BBQ.
We’ve done the Haunted Mansion Holiday virtual queue several times since it debuted a month ago, but haven’t yet reported on it extensively, so now is as good of a time for that as any. It’s pretty easy.
Keep in mind that the Haunted Mansion Holiday virtual queue exists not because of demand or ride reliability, but due to ongoing construction of the physical queue. Although demand is fairly high for this seasonal attraction, it’s also a people eater. Because of this, it’s usually fairly simple to join the VQ, even long after the park opens. I’m sure this will change deeper into September and beyond, but for now, it’s fine.
We joined the virtual queue for Haunted Mansion Holiday in the early afternoon and got a callback around 5:30 pm. The process was simple but chaotic. Since there isn’t much room for even a return queue–and the overflow spills out into a walkway–Cast Members were working around to get guests checked in quickly. Our actual wait once returning to the physical queue was like 5 minutes.
With that said, this is all about the daytime hours. Friday was definitely ‘a tale of two days’ at Disneyland, with a sharp contrast between crowds before and after 5 pm. Again, this isn’t a huge surprise. It’s the normal dynamic at Disneyland given locals arriving after work, but especially during the Halloween season.
Nevertheless, it was shocking just how bad lines were–especially to enter–during the late afternoon and evening. Above is a photo of the Downtown Disney security checkpoint–I have never seen this side get this bad. This is always the “best” entry point, so you better believe it was worse on the other sides. (As a general matter, security has gotten so much less efficient over the last couple of months. The new system is awful.)
It was a similar story to enter Mickey & Friends, with a line of traffic backed up all the way to the highway. The last time we encountered anything close to that, it took us almost an hour to park. Hopefully there were more lanes open this go-round. In any case, all of this was a sharp contrast to when we arrived at 9 am, which had no waits whatsoever for any infrastructure.
Looking forward, expect a similar story for the upcoming week with a slight spike for the Labor Day holiday weekend and then the Disneyland Halloween Half Marathon. That should be followed by a retreat for the next two weeks in September, which will be a great time to visit. Then things will likely get bad, for the reasons discussed in our September 2024 Disneyland Crowd Calendar.
Day of week trends will be the biggest consideration, followed closely by Oogie Boogie Bash Halloween Party dates. That’ll cause some mild disruptions to attendance dynamics, while also creating crowd discrepancies between Disneyland and Disney California Adventure.
Speaking of which, we’ll be attending the first Oogie Boogie Bash and will report back on our experience at that. (For full planning details, dates, and pricing about this hard ticket event, see our Guide to the Oogie Boogie Bash – A Disney Halloween Party.)
Finally, Disneyland Resort has new-for-2024 Halloween outfits for Minnie & Friends! Mickey Mouse sports a skeleton-inspired suit and Minnie Mouse and friends will don playful patchwork patterns.
For each of the last few Halloween and Christmas seasons, Mickey & Friends have been getting new costumes each year for their meet & greet appearances around Town Square. These are a huge hit with fans, and the costumes are usually really good for Mickey, Minnie, Daisy & Donald Duck, and especially Goofy. (Pluto is present, too, but typically just gets a new collar.)
Speaking of which, meeting the characters for Halloween can be a tad tricky. All of these meet & greets are in Town Square, but the locations aren’t clearly marked, the characters rotate, and most do not have PhotoPass. If you want to meet them, your best bet is being in Town Square between 9:45 am and 2 pm, which is when most of them appear.
We attended a media preview of Halloween Time at Disneyland and were able to meet the characters in their new costumes during that:
Megatron has now met Minnie and/or Mickey Mouse several times while awake. She’s very intrigued by them, except when she couldn’t care less about them. This was one of the times when she was very intrigued by them.
It definitely helped that the characters got within “grabbing distance.” She is a keen fan of touching whatever is within her reach, whether that be strings, zippers, chest hair, or–in this case–duck bills and noses. The characters quickly caught onto this, and brought their bills and noses within her reach. What maybe they didn’t realize was that those grabs serve a purpose–putting the things she’s gotten ahold of into her mouth.
One of the things that they don’t tell you when having kids is that their mouths are magnets, and no matter how hard you try, it’s gonna happen. Obviously, you fight it and try to prevent foreign objects from winding up there. But I had this misguided notion before having kids that this would be preventable if only parents were a bit more diligent. How young and naive I was. Suffice to say, I have one photo of an open-mouthed Megatron inches away from making direct contact with Minnie’s nose.
Planning a Southern California vacation? For park admission deals, read Tips for Saving Money on Disneyland Tickets. Learn about on-site and off-site hotels in our Anaheim Hotel Reviews & Rankings. For where to eat, check out our Disneyland Restaurant Reviews. For unique ideas of things that’ll improve your trip, check out What to Pack for Disney. For comprehensive advice, consult our Disneyland Vacation Planning Guide. Finally, for guides beyond Disney, check out our Southern California Itineraries for day trips to Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, and tons of other places!
YOUR THOUGHTS
Thoughts on Halloween at Disneyland? What about the new character costumes for Mickey & Friends? Will you be visiting the parks during spook season? Doing Oogie Boogie Bash? Thoughts on the post-summer slowdown in crowds at Disneyland? Predictions on crowds for September 2024? Think next month will be more or less busy than August? If you’ve visited last month, what did you think of crowds and wait times? Do you agree or disagree with anything in our report? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
