Is the Toy Story Mania Ride at Disney's California Adventure Worth the Long Wait?

Our family has been lucky enough to visit Disney World or Disneyland/California Adventure every year or two for the past twenty years. You might think we would be tired of going to Disney Parks by now but in fact the opposite is true - we find each visit to be even better than the last! Our most recent visit to the Disneyland and California Adventure parks was just a couple weeks ago and it was a fantastic visit as always. We hadn't been to California Adventure since Toy Story Mania opened in 2008 and we were eager to see what all the hype was about.

Most people do not make the effort to be at a Disney park before the official opening time and yet that is the single most important thing you can do to cut down on the long wait times for rides and attractions. Our family normally arrives at the entrance to a Disney park about 15 minutes before the official opening time, but on our recent visit we were unable to do this as we went to California Adventure and Disneyland during a layover we had at the Los Angeles airport. On the day of our visit California Adventure opened at 10:00 but we weren't at the entrance until just before 11:00 which meant by the time we got to Toy Story Mania the wait was 40 minutes. My children, ages 12 to 17, looked at me and wondered aloud if it was really worth it to wait 40 minutes to go on the ride. I said we should give it a try because it was suppose to be a really great ride and they grudgingly agreed to wait.

After waiting about 10 minutes in line an announcement was made that the ride was experiencing technical difficulties and they did not know when it would be up and running again. When I suggested we stay in the line and wait it out my kids looked as if they would mutiny, but after a bit of indecision they decided to stay in the line. We were lucky and the ride was up and running in about 5 minutes and the long line once more started to move. About two-thirds of the way through the line we came to a bin of 3D glasses and the simple act of picking out your glasses proved to be a great distraction from the long and boring wait in line.

Then it was finally time for us to get into our ride vehicle. Nothing can quite prepare you for the wonderful sensory overload of this ride. As soon as the ride starts your senses are engaged by the sights and sounds as well as the motion and interactive nature of this ride. According to a Disney website "Toy Story Mania is a 4-D world of midway-style games hosted by Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Rex, Hamm, and more! Use your spring-action shooter to throw virtual projectiles at targets and rack up points." We thought it might not be all that fun to throw "virtual projectiles" thus we were pleasantly surprised by how truly fun and quickly addicting it was! When our Toy Story Mania ride ended we were all talking at once about how great the ride was and how happy we were that we had decided to wait the 40 minutes. For the rest of our day at California Adventure and Disneyland we talked about how unique Toy Story Mania was and how much we look forward to riding it again.

I must say the 40 minute wait did go by slowly, it was hot and parts of the line were in direct sun, but as my kids are older they were able to handle it. I am not sure we would have been able to stick it out if the kids had been ages 10 and under. So is the Toy Story Mania ride at California Adventure worth the long wait? Now that we know how incredible the Toy Story Mania ride is our family would easily wait 30-40 minutes, but we have decided we wouldn't wait an hour to ride it. We would say Toy Story Mania is definitely worth a 30 minute wait for anyone. If you have young children you may not be able to handle more than 30 minutes in line but if any ride is worth a long wait, Toy Story Mania is!