Tomorrowland: what is actually worth skipping the line for?
The short answer
Tomorrowland at Disneyland Park has 5 attractions we track, and 4 of them offer Lightning Lane. Disneyland's Space Mountain opens at 40 inches rather than Florida's 44 — the single most useful height difference between the two resorts. On our honest reading only one — Space Mountain (Disneyland) — is a clear case for paying to skip the line. 3 of the 5 have a height requirement, the tallest being 40".
What to expect in Tomorrowland
Five tracked attractions, and they spread across the whole range. Space Mountain is the headliner and a premium Multi Pass pick. Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage holds a long, slow-moving queue and offers no pass at all, which makes it the most frustrating line in the land. Star Tours and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters are standard slots with moderate waits, and Autopia is a low-payoff moderate wait with a 32-inch floor.
Is Lightning Lane worth it here?
Space Mountain is worth a premium slot. Star Tours and Buzz are worth standard slots on a busy day and nothing on a quiet one. Autopia is the clearest skip in the land. And Nemo is the honest frustration: a sixty-to-ninety-minute peak queue with no line-skip offered, so the only lever is time of day.
Worth the money in this land
- ·Space Mountain (Disneyland) — Usually worth it, 60–90 min at peak
Offers a pass, but rarely earns it
- ·Autopia — 30–60 min at peak
No paid line-skip offered at all
These attraction is outside Lightning Lane, so the only levers are time of day and patience.
- ·Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage — 60–90 min at peak
The order we would walk it
Space Mountain or Nemo first — Nemo specifically because it is the one long queue here you cannot pay to shorten, and it only gets worse. Then Star Tours and Buzz whenever. Leave Autopia for last or not at all; it is the lowest return on time in Tomorrowland and the queue is largely outdoors.
Tomorrowland with young children
The 40-inch bar on Disneyland's Space Mountain is four inches lower than the same ride in Florida, which means a child who is turned away in Orlando may well ride in Anaheim — worth knowing if your family is choosing between the resorts. Autopia opens at 32 inches but requires 54 to drive alone, the same trap as Florida's Speedway. Nemo and Buzz have no height rule at all.
Height is checked at each attraction entrance rather than once at the gate, so a borderline measurement is worth planning around. Our ride height guide works the other way round from this page — it starts from your child's height and lists what opens up — and the crowd calendar covers the other half of the problem: which weeks make these queues worth paying for in the first place.
Every attraction in Tomorrowland, ride by ride
A top Multi Pass pick — Disneyland's version stays busy from open to close.
One of your three morning Multi Pass selections.
Star Tours runs several simulator cabins at once and loads in large batches, so it absorbs crowds far better than anything else in Disneyland's Tomorrowland — the line looks alarming and moves quickly. What makes it worth a second thought is the randomised ride film: repeat rides genuinely differ, which keeps demand steady all day rather than front-loaded.
Ride standby before about 11am or after dinner and you will rarely wait more than half an hour. Book a Multi Pass return only on a holiday-level crowd day, or if motion sensitivity means you want one guaranteed attempt rather than a gamble on a long line. The 40-inch bar rules out younger kids, so check heights before the whole group commits.
Astro Blasters is the Disneyland ride people want to do twice, and that is the only argument for spending a slot on it. It is an interactive shooting dark ride with a scoreboard, no height requirement and a fully indoor air-conditioned queue, so the first ride is rarely the problem — waiting is comfortable and the omnimover keeps moving. The second and third rides, once someone in the party has decided to beat a score, are where the afternoon disappears.
Ride it standby the first time, ideally before about 11am while Tomorrowland is still filling up, and only book a Multi Pass return if you are deliberately chasing a better score. The blasters are handheld and the targets scoring highest are the ones hardest to see — the diamond and triangle shapes, not the big obvious circles — which is the single tip that changes a kid's score more than a second ride does.
Autopia has the worst wait-to-payoff ratio in Tomorrowland: a slow-loading track where the cars are dispatched one at a time, feeding a ride most adults find unremarkable. The 32-inch bar to ride with an adult is low, but you must be 54 inches to drive alone — so the kids who most want to steer usually cannot.
Do not spend a Multi Pass slot here. If a child has their heart set on driving, go in the first thirty minutes after rope drop or the last thirty before close, when the line actually is short. Put the slot on Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage or Space Mountain, both within the same land.
The subs are not a Lightning Lane attraction — no pass covers them, so standby is the only option, and standby is rough. A small fleet, a slow dockside load and a fixed ride cycle make this the capacity bottleneck of Tomorrowland, and the queue is largely uncovered, so an hour here in August is an hour in direct sun.
Ride in the first hour of the day or skip it outright; there is no way to buy around this one. Be honest with yourself about claustrophobia and mobility before you commit the family, because boarding means a ladder down into a narrow cabin with fixed portholes and no way out mid-ride. Autopia is a two-minute walk away and does take a Multi Pass slot if someone needs to sit this one out.
Have someone sequence Tomorrowland for you
A real guide works your party's heights, nap windows and the day's actual wait times into the order you walk each land — and tells you which passes to skip buying. From $75/hour on your first trip.
The same land at the other resorts
Shared names hide very different lands. The ride counts, the height rules and whether a paid skip even exists change from one resort to the next.