East Bay Times

A Touch of Disney event extended due to high demand

- By Brady MacDonald

The new food festival coming to Disney California Adventure has proven so popular that Disneyland has extended the event just a few hours after fans feverishly snapped up tickets as soon as they went on sale.

A Touch of Disney ticket sales have been extended by an additional two weeks amid the popularity of the experience, according to Disneyland officials.

A Touch of Disney will start March 18 at Disney California Adventure and now will run through at least April 19, with additional dates to be added on a rolling basis. The event

— which originally was scheduled to run through April 5 — will run Thursdays through Mondays from noon to 8 p.m.

Disney California Adventure and Disneyland closed in March and are unlikely to return to full operation until spring or summer under COVID-19 health and safety reopening guidelines issued by the state.

DCA’s new food and beverage event will feature classic Disneyland foods with a twist and socially distanced Disney characters. The festival menu will include Dole Whips, Monte Cristo Sandwiches and Lobster Nachos.

Tickets for A Touch of Disney went on sale around 9 a.m. Thursday, and within minutes the website was advising those in the virtual queue of wait times of more than an hour. By 9:30 a.m., the virtual queue had been paused and Disneyland was “temporaril­y unable to sell more tickets,” according to the website. Shortly after 10 a.m., the wait time returned to more than an hour. By 11:30 a.m., the wait time was still more than an hour for those who had entered the virtual queue at 9 a.m.

By 1:30 p.m., most of the March dates for A Touch of Disney were sold out — except for a few weekdays. Most dates in April were still available — except a few weekend days.

Disneyland partnered with Denmark-based Queue-It for the online ticket sale. The virtual waiting room service — which promises to prevent website crashes from high traffic — has worked with Ticketmast­er, StubHub and Tickets.com.

Queue-It throttles back traffic if visitors exceed site capacity and keeps those waiting in the virtual queue in a first-come, first-served order.

A Touch of Disney tickets cost $75 and provide parking in the Mickey & Friends structure, PhotoPass downloads and a $25 dining card for food and nonalcohol­ic beverages.

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