Theme parks in California will finally begin to reopen later this week after being closed for over a year. Not every theme park will be reopening April 1. Disneyland Resort has already announced it will be waiting until April 30. Waiting a month has the potential to allow the park to reopen to a larger guest capacity as well as other benefits, but new theme park guidelines reveal that some of Disneyland's most popular attractions may need to remain closed as the park reopens. There is a limit being placed on how long indoor attractions are required to be that might mean that fan favorites Pirates of the Caribbean and Rise of the Resistance, the latter of which was only open for a couple months before the theme park closed, will need to remain shuttered.
New specifics regarding theme park reopening guidelines have been revealed, and among them is a requirement that indoor attractions may not exceed 15 minutes in length. While the fast majority of Disneyland attractions come in under this point, Pirates of the Caribbean is about 16 minutes in length, and Rise of the Resistance, depending on how you mark it out, comes in at as much as 18 minutes long. Another of the all-time great Disneyland attractions, It's a Small World has a run time of just about 15 minutes, so it will likely be able to reopen, if only just barely.
Rise of the Resistance only opened in January 2020, a couple months before the global pandemic closed the theme park, so a lot of west coast fans probably haven't ridden it yet. It seems they might need to wait a bit longer. There is some hope for the ride reopening, however.
One of the things that makes Rise of the Resistance special is the way that it integrates the queue, live cast member performances, and the "ride" portion of the experience together. Exactly where the line ends and the attraction begins is a bit fuzzy, so one could certainly argue that Rise of the Resistance is short enough to reopen because the first part of the guest experience is still technically the line.
If the ride does need to stay shuttered, this will certainly put a potential damper on reopening for many. One of these is the park's newest and most innovative attractions, the other has been a fan favorite for decades. While it seems unlikely anybody looking to make reservations for reopening is going to stay home because these two attractions are closed, they are certainly going to be missed.
If nothing else, this shows that while Disneyland might be reopening, it's still going to be some time before things are back to normal. This 15-minute rule covers all of California's various tiers of infection rate, so it will seem to be in effect until all pandemic restrictions are lifted and capacity can return to 100%. Currently Orange County, Disneyland Resort's home, is in the red tier, which will allow the park to open to 15% of max capacity. but there's a good chance the county will improve to at least the orange tier by April 30, allowing the park to open to 25% capacity.
