The new $400 Lightning Lane Premier Pass is now in a pilot period at Disneyland Resort. It provides one-time access to every Lightning Lane attraction whenever you want at both Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure. There are 23 Lightning Lane attractions — can we hit them all in one day? And is it worth the price point?

Lightning Lane Premier Pass Details

Lightning Lane Premier Pass is currently in a testing period with limited quantities available. It’s available to purchase via the Disneyland app up to 2 days in advance of your park visit, starting at 7 a.m. PT. It’s currently $400 per person, per day but pricing will vary from $300 to $400 due to date and demand starting on January 1, 2025. It includes access to Lightning Lane attractions at both Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure (the Walt Disney World version is for only one park).

We already compared pricing of Lightning Lane Multi Pass, Premier Pass, and VIP Tours. On the day we visited, Multi Pass was $39. Formerly called Genie+, Multi Pass requires you pick a timeframe to “skip” a line. You can only book a limited number of Lightning Lanes at a time and Lightning Lane Single Pass attractions aren’t included. As of our visit, Single Pass attractions are Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance and Radiator Springs Racers, which max out at $25 each. That’s the price they were on the day of our visit.

So, if you wanted to access all Lightning Lane attractions in one day through Multi Pass and Single Pass, you would spend $89.

For $400, Lightning Lane Premier Pass will allow you access all 23 Lightning Lane attractions — including both Multi Pass and Single Pass attractions — at any time you want. You don’t need to book an entry timeframe. As long as the ride is operating, you can tap into the Lightning Lane queue.

It’s much more expensive than Multi Pass and/or Single Pass. But for two parks, Premier Pass is much cheaper than a VIP Tour. It’s kind of like an unguided VIP Tour, if you will.

Initial Thoughts

I think Lightning Lane Premier Pass is going to make sense if you’re coming to Disneyland Resort on a once-in-a-lifetime trip, if you only have one day, and/or if you’re visiting all of Southern California. There are circumstances where, if this is in your budget, I think it’s going to make sense.

My theory is that, at $400 for two parks and 23 attractions, we’re going to like this much more than at Walt Disney World, where it’s cheaper but is only for one park per day. Stay tuned for our thoughts about Lightning Lane Premier Pass at Walt Disney World.

We’re not going to get into the ethics of this decision by Disney. I’ve already yelled about it. I don’t like the fact that they’re charging $400 for a line-skipping service. Charging for something that was once free is not great for the consumer. But the consumer has clearly already accepted it because sales are good. That doesn’t mean it’s right, but it does mean it’s working. The Genie is out of the bottle now and there’s nothing we can really do.

Paid line-skipping has been an industry-wide offering for many years. The moment Disney introduced FastPass for free, Universal introduced a charged service. Disney, to their credit and to the management of that period, held out for nearly 20 years. But now we have to pay to skip lines. You can choose not to, which is totally understandable, but for those who are interested in this, we’re here to walk you through the experience and tell you if we think it’s a good value.

Our Day With Lightning Lane Premier Pass

In the past, Disney IT has famously not thought things through or achieved the things they set out to. One thing that has been achieved this time is a sort of checklist that appears in the Disneyland app. As you use Premier Pass on each attraction, they appear checked off under “Everyone’s Redeemed,” so you won’t lose track of what your party has done.

Systems like Premier Pass have been in place at international Disney Parks, but at different points in time, they didn’t tell you what you redeemed. Most of them have become more intuitive and do tell you now. Disney seems to use the international parks as a litmus test for American audiences. Shanghai Disney Resort was the first Disney Park to do paid line skipping of any kind and it wasn’t a VIP Tour. Hong Kong Disneyland and Shanghai have both offered packages that let you skip a number of attractions whenever you want.

We visited on Saturday, October 26. It was a busy, crowded day, which we thought would be a better test to prove the worth of the pass.

We started with Indiana Jones Adventure, as that is a Lightning lane attraction that can be a struggle to get through the wait and ride. The posted wait time was 40 minutes and we waited about 15 minutes to board. In theory, we saved 25 minutes.

After Indy, we ran into our first problem. The homepage of the Disneyland app didn’t recognize that we had already purchased Lightning Lane Premier Pass. We found it by going to the “My Day” tab, where we were once again able to redeem our passes. After that, it appeared on the homepage again.

We broke from Premier Pass adventures to try the menu at Hungry Bear Barbecue Jamboree and use our Tiana’s Bayou Adventure virtual queue. By 1:30 p.m., we still had 21 rides to go. Since Disneyland was open until midnight, we moved over to Disney California Adventure.

The nice thing about picking the time you ride an attraction is that, if you prefer riding outdoor rides at night, you can leave those for later and get indoor rides out of the way during the day.

It’s important to note, sometimes Lightning Lanes aren’t that fast. Premier Pass holders aren’t getting a special third queue, either, they are in with Multi Pass/Single Pass holders. We just get to go whenever. Sometimes, your timing is everything. Your experience could differ from ours. Also, not every attraction with a Lightning Lane really needs it or needs it all the time. Some are going to be walk-on no matter which queue you use.

We got most Disney California Adventure attractions done in the few hours we had before closing. Because of attraction downtime, Radiator Springs Racers was the last one on our list. It went back up right before park close.

However, guests in standby were allowed to enter the moment they reopened the queue, while guests in the Lightning Lane had to wait to scan in. So we weren’t really skipping standby guests. But we got on, completing every Lightning Lane attraction at Disney California Adventure.

When you complete a park’s list of Lightning Lane attractions, the app shows fireworks and a celebratory screen congratulating you on riding every ride.

At 10:22 p.m., we headed back to Disneyland Park to finish the rest of our to-do list. When we entered, Matterhorn Bobsleds was 90 minutes. We should have gone straight to this but we instead went to Star Tours.

Sadly, the Matterhorn randomly closed early, so we missed our chance to ride it and check it off our list. According to the app, the ride was scheduled to close at 10:30 p.m. that evening, which baffled us. If we had known, we would’ve re-arranged our plan.

So we ended the day with Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters, completing 22 out of 23 attractions with Lightning Lane. We would have completed 23 if Matterhorn had not closed early.

Below is a chart of the wait time we supposedly saved. Note that posted wait times are not always accurate. The posted wait for Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run was 15, but there was no one waiting in the standby queue. Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway said it was 15, but it looked longer.

For the most part, the wait time is from entering the queue to boarding. So our Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: BREAKOUT! and WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure wait times include the pre-show. And because we entered Radiator Springs Racers right when it reopened, we can’t compare our wait to its usual wait time, which would be at least 45 minutes.

For $400, we (theoretically) skipped almost 10 hours of waiting.

Final Thoughts

Guests like us who go to the parks a lot sometimes lose sight of the viewpoint of regular guests. When it’s a vacation, some people don’t necessarily think about what we consider to be a good or bad value. Instead, they’re just considering if they can pay to skip a line.

Lightning Lane Premier Pass is really expensive. But I think it serves a purpose, especially for guests that have more money than time.

If you’re a Disneyland local, a Magic Key holder, or have been several times and have done everything, buying Premier Pass won’t make sense. Unless it’s a very specific circumstance like Christmas week and your family is coming to town. This isn’t something I’m going to buy regularly. But in a couple of months, my girlfriend and her family are going to come to Disneyland Resort, and we’re probably going to do this. Everyone is going to have a day, maybe less, so this might make it a really good time for everybody who doesn’t get out there super often.

I don’t see another circumstance under which I would buy this. But that’s the point of it. It’s not for every time you go.

For regular tourists, I do think there is a way to make this work financially. Between hotel, tickets, and food, you could game the system a bit. Because Premier Pass makes everything quicker, you can get away with a shorter and therefore cheaper trip. If you’re not a Magic Key holder, day tickets add up. They aren’t cheap. Hotel nights and meals add up too.

I didn’t ride every ride in the resort because not every ride uses Lightning Lane, but I rode 22. There is still plenty to do — pretty much all of Fantasyland. But most of the attractions that don’t use Lightning Lane have shorter waits (with the exception of Peter Pan’s Flight). The Haunted Mansion will eventually have Lightning Lane, it only doesn’t right now because they’re rebuilding the queue. Tiana’s Bayou Adventure will also eventually have Lightning Lane.

You could manage two days at Disneyland Resort, one day where you use Premier Pass and one day where you do everything else. If you do the math, that could be at least monetarily even if not cheaper than a longer trip. Or you could use more time to do other things in California.

I’m not saying everyone should get this. I’m saying there are very certain circumstances where, if you want to spend less time and money on hotel and park tickets, you might be able to save money using Premier Pass, even though it’s $400 per person. You can pay and have a really good time with your family, spending less time on your phone and more time doing the things you want to do.

There is also the option of, instead of paying that much money, putting in the work. That would be doing research on the best time to go to Disneyland Resort, figuring out the less busy days of the week, looking at a map and finding the cheapest hotels, building a touring plan for the parks, rope-dropping, and staying late. With enough work, for any Disney park in the world, you can avoid giving them more money. It’s doable but it’s not fun.

Disney shouldn’t be commended for the experience becoming miserable over the decades because they didn’t build enough capacity and they changed FastPass to Genie+ and then to Lightning Lane Multi Pass. That’s bad. But the whole industry is like this now, especially at the busier parks. If they’re not busy, they’re not doing well financially, and they’re going to spend the money until they are busy like Disney.

Some people have complained that you can only do rides once. I’m with you, I want to ride things multiple times. But at the same time, with the parks full of 30,000 to 70,000 people every day, letting guests go in circles through the Lightning Lane to ride Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance or Radiator Springs Racers is probably not the best idea. Universal can get away with that with their attendance where it is.

VIP Tours needs a reason to exist and get business, too. You can loop through a line as much as you want with a VIP Tour. They also offer viewing space for parades and fireworks. There is still a big difference between VIP and Lightning Lane Premier Pass.

As a consumer, you have every right to be mad at Disney. But in this world where it exists, I’m going to sign off on it for Disneyland.

In the meantime, if you want a pleasant theme park experience with fewer people, Hong Kong Disneyland is the place to go.

Watch the vlog version of this review below.

What do you think of Lightning Lane Premier Pass? Let us know in the comments and on social media.

For more Disneyland Resort news and info, follow Disneyland News Today on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. For Disney Parks news worldwide, visit WDWNT.

Brit Tuttle