A Touch of Disney food event extended

The food and beverage festival at Disney California Adventure will now begin on March 18 and run through at least April 19

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 due to the popularity of the experience, according to Disneyland officials.

A Touch of Disney will start on March 18 at Disney California Adventure and will now run through at least April 19 with additional dates to be added on a rolling basis. The event — which was originally scheduled to run through April 5 — will run five days a week on 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. on Thursday, March 4 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 include parking in the Mickey & Friends structure, PhotoPass downloads and a $25 dining card for food and non-alcoholic beverages.