It’s been a few eventful weeks at Disneyland Resort as October has rolled into November and nightfall lands a little earlier these days. There have been a few interesting changes to park operations that are worth covering! In this post we’ll discuss changes to the WEB Slingers queue, the upcoming Christmas season and the return of one of Disneyland’s best attractions.

WEB Slingers Switches to Standby Queue

We’ll start with the biggest piece of news from last week, with Disney California Adventure’s newest attraction moving from a virtual queue to a standby attraction. WEB Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure debuted with Avengers Campus in June of this year and has utilized a virtual queue ever since. That is until this week, when the attraction moved to a standby queue.

Frankly, the switch isn’t surprising at this point. There were plenty of days over the last couple of months when the virtual queue wouldn’t fill up in the afternoon until hours down the road. Trying to police a virtual queue takes far more effort for Cast Members than just having a standby queue and it also takes less effort on the guest end of things. WEB Slingers virtual queue never seemed to work exceptionally well, often extending past the actual queue area and producing waits of nearly an hour at times. I would guess this was because of the system calling back too many guests at a time.

With a standby line, that problem should be avoided. Instead of rushing through boarding groups, the attraction will be open all day and guests will have the choice of when to ride. At this point, we recommend doing WEB Slingers in the last hour of park operation. Despite being the newest ride, it is still not the most popular in DCA meaning that the line will die down the later it gets. Going first thing in the morning is also an option.

Disney has kept the virtual queue section of the app up and WEB Slingers may enact that process on especially busy days. Keeping the options open through the holiday season is likely in everyone’s best interest. Meanwhile, Rise of the Resistance continues to use the virtual queue and likely will until Genie+ debuts.

Speaking of, there are some indications that Genie+ will be around in the near future. Queues have been reconfigured in some key attractions, including Pirates of the Caribbean. I don’t think we’ll see it come into effect until after the holidays, as there’s plenty of signage and other work to be done still. But time will tell!

Christmas is Coming!

Halloween came and went and Disneyland is just days away from the official holiday season, starting on Friday, November 12th. No time was wasted getting Pumpkin Mickey out of Town Square and now both of the trees are up in Disneyland or California Adventure. Some other decorations have popped up throughout each park. A few of my favorites being the Christmas Sweaters on the bears in Grizzly Peak! Over in Disneyland, Main Street, Critter Country and New Orleans Square are all in on Christmas decorations.

Starting on the 12th, there will be ride overlays opening, a Christmas Parade running twice a day in Disneyland, a Christmas fireworks show, a host of holiday treats throughout the resort and the iconic castle lights will turn on! We will have our guide up shortly after the 12h and are very excited for the holiday season at the resort!

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Returns

Finally, we get to a good piece of news as Big Thunder Mountain Railroad returns to operation. While the refurbishment was planned, it didn’t come at an opportune time as October was one of Disneyland’s busiest months since reopening. Having rides go down is normal but Big Thunder plays a vital role in Disneyland’s operation. Frontierland feels downright empty when Big Thunder isn’t operating.

More importantly, the attraction has a very high capacity and gives guests a marquee ride that doesn’t generally have a long wait. Spreading people out throughout the park is vital and Big Thunder might play a bigger role in that than any other attraction in Disneyland. The ride looks cleaned up and in good condition. I can report that it is still a blast and the wildest ride in the wilderness!

That’s it for our update! What do you think about this news? Let us know, along with any questions you might have, in the comments below. Planning a trip to Disneyland Resort? Check out our Disneyland Trip Planning Guide to help you out. If you enjoy what you are reading here on Wandering in Disney please share this post with your friends and like our social media pages. You can also subscribe to the blog via WordPress or email. All of those links are on the right side of this page. Thank you for reading, we really appreciate it!