A Guinness World Record is being set up for visiting Disneyland 2,962 days in a row

The Disneyland Experience Revisited: How One Visited the Disneyland Theme Park for Eight Years, Three Months, and 13 Days

A California man recently set a Guinness World Record for most consecutive visits to the Disneyland theme park — with 2,995 straight days of visits. That breaks down to eight years, three months, and 13 days. And yes, it took some dedication. He helped plan the visits around work and travel.

Reitz adventure started a decade ago when he found himself with a Disneyland annual pass and, due to being recently unemployed, a bunch of unanticipated free time. He started documenting his daily sojourns to thousands of followers under the social media handle Disney366, for the number of days in 2012 a leap year.

How did he keep going? That first year, Reitz was able to go to the park daily with an annual pass that his family gifted him in December 2011. He later got a job at a medical center and began purchasing his own passes.

What happened to his streak? Reitz said his last day was March 13th, 2020, which is when the theme park closed due to the Pandemic. He was just a few days away from hitting the 3000 mark. Friday the 13th was the day.

His visits were curtailed by the pandemic in early 2020, but history had already been made. (After all, one doesn’t just haunt the same place every day for eight years and not become something of a celebrity.) Researchers at Guinness found out about Reitz’s feat, and recently contacted him about the creation of a new record.

The Adventures of Disneyland: A Journey with Reitz on a BlackBerry Bold 9700, and Disneyland’s Matterhorn Bobsleds

People say that that must have cost a lot of money. I live about 20 minutes away, and with an annual pass that also covers parking, a year of daily visits costs about $1,400. It is a lot, but not what people think.

I tried to do different things each time, that’s what made it fun. I would check in on social media, and try to post one image of the park per day.

Back in 2012, Instagram wasn’t quite the cultural giant it is now, and smartphones weren’t nearly as smart. Instead, Reitz captured the first few years of his visit on a BlackBerry Bold 9700.

Disneyland has one of Reitz’s favorite destinations, the Matterhorn Bobsleds, a pair of steel roller coasters that travel through an Alpine landscape made to resemble the famously steep peak.

Any Disney fan will know that an attraction isn’t just an attraction – it’s an experience. The atmosphere is still great and one could sit all day without a single ride.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/disneyland-guinness-record-jeff-reitz-cec/index.html

A Disney Park Experience with a Cast Member: The Case of a Legendary Disney Park’s Visitor (R.D. Reitz)

“There is an area by the boat docks across from the Matterhorn where I like to relax when I visit,” Reitz says. The background sounds and music are what I listen to when I visitGalaxy’s Edge. Or I’ll climb the Adventureland Treehouse for a nice view.”

Disney Park food is not cheap or easy to get. Reitz came up with pasta from the Pizza Port restaurant, located in the Tomorrowland section.

The cast members have always made the magic, not the place. As years passed and he became a bona fide Disneyland regular, he collected stories and secrets from the Disney Parks employees, who are referred to as cast members.

A cast member of the show told Reitz that while he was a painter he would sometimes paint with different population numbers in Frontierland, like a bin in the ghost town of the park.

She said that the tree that was very old had to be taken down because it had started to rot. The feel-good story, she said, was that there were some trees that were planted when Walt [Disney] first opened the park, and they were simply moved to another location.”

Some time later, while passing a corner of the Soarin’ attraction at Disney’s California Adventure (the neighboring park to Disneyland, which Reitz sometimes also visited), he spied a tree he hadn’t seen before. It looked suspiciously familiar.

Disneyland used to be easier to go to, but it’s not as easy these days. As a result of the pandemic, Disneyland now operates on an admission reservation system that effectively limits when guests can come to the park. Reitz’s record won’t be challenged for a while because it makes frequent visits difficult.