Reservations for Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge - A Star Wars Story

I typically don't blog about things like this but, then again, when have reservations ever been required to enter a certain Land in Disneyland?

I booked my family's Summer Disneyland trip back in January for June 21st through the 24th because this was the weekend most Disney experts concluded that Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge would open based on many factors, most notably Annual Passholder block out dates. Well, as we know now, the experts were wrong, as Disney announced the opening date for the new land as May 31st, 2019. Disney also announced that reservations would be required for Star Wars: Galaxy's edge from May 31st through June 23rd, meaning that for the first three days of our trip if we want to see Galaxy's Edge, we would need a reservation.

Information at first about the reservation process was very vague. We were told that more information on how to make reservations would be available on the Disney website on May 2nd at 8:00 am (Pacific Time) and that the reservation process would begin two hours later at 10:00 am on that same website.

I got more and more excited as May 2nd approached, not really knowing exactly what to expect but knowing that I had to get a reservation for our family. Both my wife, Liz, and I made sure our Disney accounts were current and up to date so we wouldn't have any problems when reservation time came.

I was scheduled to work on May 2nd so I knew I would have to be somewhere where I had internet access and could check my phone. One thing I should mention is that I had a feeling that there might be so many people trying to book reservations that the server would crash. Well, I'll say now that fortunately that didn't happen but what did happen was that I was welcomed with a page that told me, "Due to high demand, you are currently waiting to visit Disneyland.com."

And this was just for the information on how to book my reservation 2 hours later! I knew I would have to be ready right at 10:00! Once the information page loaded, it really didn't give us any new information that we didn't already know.

Here's a screen shot of the information that was provided...

...and here's the second page of information.

We learned that each reservation could only be made for up to 6 people. Since there are 7 people in our family going to Disneyland, that meant that both Liz and I would have to make reservations. The chances of both of us getting through didn't seem very likely.

Our plan was to have Liz on the computer at home and me on my phone at work 15 minutes before reservations became available just to insure we didn't miss anything. As the time drew closer to make the reservations, I decided I would take an early lunch and run home to hop on our second computer just in case I couldn't get good internet reception at work.

I got home about a quarter to 10:00 and we set up our computers and logged into our Disney accounts. We had our phones on the Disney webpage as well to maximize our chances of getting through. The wepage informed us that we "were currently waiting for an opportunity to make a reservation at Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge."

Here's a close up of what our computer screen looked like.

As the reservation time neared, our anticipation grew and grew. When the clock struck 10:00, we were both on the edge of our seats and ready to go. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Then 15...20...25. Still no change on our webpage. We could see that Disney was updating their system every so often as our page would refresh. At 10:28 my computer screen changed and asked me to log in to my account, which I had already had done when I first got home.

At first, I was a little annoyed thinking that I had just been bumped from my place in line to get through to the reservation process. But after I had logged in, I was taken to a page to select the day and time I wanted to make my reservations for! This was it! After almost 30 minutes of waiting (which seems quite a bit longer than that when you are just sitting there looking at your computer screen) we got in!

I was surprised to see that all the reservation times overlapped each other by an hour - for example 8:00am-noon, 11:00am-3:00pm, 2:00pm-6:00pm, 5:00pm-9:00pm, 8:00pm-Midnight. I selected our day and time and then added 5 other members of our family to my reservation. That was it. I had done all I could do, now we had to wait all over again for Liz to be able to make another reservation for her. I then printed out the page and logged off, and then back in under Liz's account.

I had to head back to work so Liz manned both of our computers and her phone, hoping to get in to make one more reservation. At 10:55 my computer came up again and she was able to make the last reservation. We found it odd that both reservation opportunities came up on my computer even though her computer and phone should have been "in line" before my computer came up the second time. As a side note, every singe reservation to Galaxy's Edge from May 31st to June 23 was taken within 2 hours!

With all 7 of us headed for Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge on the 21st of June, the next exciting question we will face is: will we be able to get into Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge on the 24th - the first day reservations aren't required....