Max Pass

There is nothing quite like waiting in a long line with your kids at Disneyland… or anywhere else for that matter. For all the magic that Disney is, sometimes waiting in a line is just waiting in a line.

Your kids may do a couple of things while you wait. They may start to interact with one another and that’s all fine and well until it turns into a game of tag and they start bumping into the other guests at the park and disrupting their day. Another is they start pestering you to get out a screen so they can entertain themselves while you wait (I’m not above doing this but sometimes I do feel like you should just learn to be bored and take time to see the world around you). Another options is you try to engage with them and play “I spy” games or talk about things while you wait for that chance to ride in log being thrown over a water fall, fly with Peter Pan or drive the Millennium Falcon.

Now I give Disney lots of credit here. And actually I think this is one of the things that puts me over the top on Disney parks more so than other parks. I love the detail they give to their rides, even in the que areas leading up to the ride. Indiana Jones is a great example of this. Walking through the temple is a fun experience that takes you out of the real world and into an Indiana Jones experience. Millennium Falcon: Smuggler Run also does a good job of this as you walk through a repair shop where different vehicles are being fixed on while you wait to fly your favorite space ship. There’s even dialogue taking place in the speakers to help you pass the time. Not every ride at Disneyland is this way, many Fantasyland rides are more of your traditional amusement park feel, but Disney does it enough on the other rides, that for me, it makes it no so bad to wait a little bit.

Now to the point of this whole conversation, is paying the extra money for the Max Pass worth it? We recently did the max pass and based on our experience I would say yes it is. We had one person we spoke with who said, you should at least pay to do it for one day, I would agree. If you don’t want to do it for the duration of your trip, paying one day to have quicker access to fast passes is worth it.

The max pass operates through your phone using the official Disneyland app. The app does multiple things but what you may use it for the most is to see wait times for rides. When you have the max pass, you click on wait time and then you can move forward with reserving a fast pass for that ride. You don’t have to walk over to that ride to get the pass, it automatically loads onto your ticket. It will then also let you know when you can reserve your next fast pass, usually an hour and half or so after you made your reservation, though times on that vary.

I would reserve a fast pass for our family, then set an alarm on my phone for the next time we could get a fast pass. This worked great until I realized I had fast passes that fell into close time windows and were in different areas of the park. Sometimes we didn’t make it to the other ride in time. That isn’t a mark on the program, just a tip to pass a long to remember to think about proximity to where you will be when reserving your fast passes so you maximize your time.

The fast passes were great. We rode all the rides we wanted to ride, multiple times even, and once I got a handle on booking fast passes near one another, then our wait times shrank even more. If there is a criticism to this, it is that you do miss some of the magic of just being in Disney because you are busy running from ride to ride and getting on. You might miss some of the small details like the beautiful landscaping, or an unplanned character interaction because you have to make it to the next ride to meet your fast pass time.

If your phone is older and the battery drains a little quicker, you may want to bring an extra charger for your phone if you do the max pass. It doesn’t drain your phone quickly, but you are on your phone more and if you get to the park near opening and plan to stay until closing, you’ll probably be comfortable with a backup charge option.

You should also know, fast passes run out. Even if you have the max pass, eventually fast passes for rides and shows (like Fantasmic!) run out and you cannot get them again that day. So don’t put off getting your fast passes for Radiator Springs Racers or Midway Mania because they do eventually stop distributing them.

One other benefit of the max pass is you the photo pass is automatically included. I get it, you’re thinking I’ve got my phone I don’t need Disney’s pictures also, but we’ve found we really like the pictures the Disney photographers take of our family. They do a good job of taking candid shots and also the group photo with the characters always turn out well. One time a Disney photographer caught one of my daughters and myself waving at Mickey during a show and it is one of our favorite photos of the two of us. We wouldn’t have caught that photo on our own but the Disney photogs did.

I’d say the Max Pass is great and worth it. If you’re on a budget and you need to cut it, you’ll live and still have a great time, but if you can afford the extra expense, go for it! The quicker access to fast passes means less adventures of trying to entertain kids in line and also access to great pictures of your vacation from Disney.