Jeff Reitz: A New Guinness World Record for Most Followup Visits to the Disneyland Thermopark Between 2012 and 2020
There are Disney Park regulars, and then there’s Jeff Reitz. The California native earned a shiny new Guinness world record for most consecutive trips to the theme park when he visited Disneyland for 2,995 days between 2012 and 2020.
Who is he? About 30 minutes from Disneyland, is the home of Jeff Reitz. He and his friends were at the theme park on New Year’s Day 2012 when they spotted an advertisement for an “extra Disney Day.” It was an event celebrating Feb. 29, the additional day coming up that leap year.
How did he keep it up? 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 at the park was March 13th, 2020 which was the day the theme park closed due to the pandemic. He was just five days away from reaching the 3000 mark. Yes, on Friday the 13th, it was.
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 contacted Reitz recently, about the creation of a new record, after finding out about his feat.
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“One criticism I get is people saying, ‘Oh, that must have cost so much money.’ A year of daily visits costs around $1,400, but I have an annual pass that covers both parking and a day at the park. It’s a lot, but it’s not what people think.”
“Part of what made it fun was I tried to mix things up and do things differently each time,” he says. “The only consistent thing was, I would post a 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.
Reitz’s favorite destination in Disneyland is the Matterhorn Bobsleds, a pair of steel roller coasters twining through an Alpine landscape made to resemble the famously precipitous peak.
An attraction is not just an attraction, it is an experience for any Disney fan. One could sit all day without a single ride and still enjoy the atmosphere.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/disneyland-guinness-record-jeff-reitz-cec/index.html
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“There is an area by the boat docks across from the Matterhorn where I like to relax when I visit,” Reitz says. Sometimes, I will listen to the background music and sounds in GALAXY’s edge. I will climb the Adventureland Treehouse for a nice view.
As for sustenance, Disney Park food doesn’t come cheap or easy. Reitz used the Pizza Port restaurant in the Tomorrowland section as a go-to when ordering pasta.
“It’s always been the cast members that make the magic, not the place itself,” he says. He was a regular at Disneyland, but he also collected information from the cast members at the Disney Parks.
One of the cast members told Reitz about how they used to play with easter eggs in Frontierland, such as a bin that had different population numbers.
She said the tree had to be taken down because it had become sick and needed to be removed. She said that the good story was that when Disney’s first park opened there were some trees that were 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.
Times have changed, and swanning in and out of Disneyland isn’t as easy as it used to be. 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 won’t have his record challenged for a while because it makes frequent visits difficult.