For 8 years, 3 months and 13 days, Jeff Reitz was a fixture at Disneyland. Starting on New Year’s Eve in 2011, the 48-year-old annual passholder from Long Beach strolled into the Anaheim theme park a massive 2,995 days in a row. It began as a joke, but then became just a fun thing to do. Every day he would get off work at 3:30 p.m. and be at Disneyland around 4:30 p.m. He would spend 3-5 hours there, grab some dinner, and average about 10,000 steps per visit. In 2014, he set an unofficial record for visiting Disneyland for 1,000 consecutive days, and Disney took notice and celebrated him. That all came to a screeching halt in March 2020, when the theme park closed because of the pandemic. Reitz was disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to reach his goal of 3,000 consecutive visits, but he made the best of a bad situation by filling his time with hiking and scuba diving. When Disneyland reopened in September, Reitz noticed that he didn’t feel the same. Things were different, the Disney magic was gone. He’s only visited twice this year and didn’t even bother to buy tickets for the Touch of Disney event, something he would never have missed in the past. Meanwhile, Disney has ended the annual pass program, making it easier for Reitz to end his streak there. "To me, my streak is already done," he said. "Once the calendar hit March 14 and the park closed, it was done for me. My streak was always based on consecutive calendar days.”
