The Disneyland Pilgrimage & Cruise - COMPLETE

Colonel, we did not. We got the Dream Suite. When the guide first told us that we would see neither the apartment nor Club 33, I was initially disappointed, but the Dream Suite was amazing!!

***********TRIP REPORT BEGINS HERE**********

Well, I should probably be catching up on some work, but I'm just too darned excited to start this report, so let's kick it off!

Monday, March 23 - Day 0

I waited a little longer than I should have to order my Disney Visa rewards card. I wasn't really worried because the estimated delivery date was 3/23 and a lot of times, our mail beats that estimated date. Even when it didn't arrive on Saturday, I was still hopeful that the card would arrive as scheduled, but when I got the mail out of the box on Monday, there was no rewards card to be found! What to do?! That was $400 of my DL vacation spending that was MIA! Well, should you ever find yourself in this predicament, you'll be happy to know that the nice folks at Disney Rewards have worked out an ingenious little system where you can visit a ticket booth (or presumably guest relations) and pick-up a new rewards card. Then you call the number on the back of the card and a nice customer service rep will transfer the balance from the card that was mailed onto the card that you are holding in your hand. Splendid. Crisis averted. Disney Rules.

Tuesday, March 24 - Day 1

We intended to leave for BWI at 5:00am for our 9:10 flight, but as luck would have it, Dad was about 20 minutes late picking us up. (Dad was driving us to the airport so that after my parents joined us in California and we all returned together, we'd only have one car to drive home and we'd save around $100 on parking.) Unfortunately, when dad tried to start his van, the battery was dead! No worries though because we typically build in some extra time because it's a solid 1.25 hours to the airport from our house under the best conditions. Dad charged the van enough to get it started and arrived at our house around 5:20. Since we were delayed and needed to stop for gas on the way, we ended up hitting the beginning of AM Baltimore rush hour. Driving with dad in rush hour is a little scary, so I was relieved to arrive at the airport shortly after 7:00.

We breezed through check-in and security and had enough time to stop at Phillips (famous local seafood chain) for breakfast. I think I had a crab omelet or crab cake or something and I forget what Benn had. It was a great little vacation kickoff. Everything about our flight was fine. It was a full flight, but that's par for the course on Southwest anymore. It was very smooth and arrived on time at around 12:05pm local time. The Southwest terminal at LAX is undergoing renovations and it's super crappy at the moment. It makes BWI look like a palace. We were going to be tight, but if the card fell right, we just might make the 12:30 DL Express bus. Otherwise, we'd have an hour to hang out in the airport. We arrived at the luggage carousels where we found that LAX currently has exactly TWO carousels for ALL of the Southwest flights arriving and we were greeted with an announcement apologizing for the delay in our luggage arriving, but they were backed up due to the large number of flights that had just landed. By some miracle, our flight was up for baggage claim by 12:27. Our bags were among the first off and by 12:31, we were hot-footing it to the DL bus that was just getting ready to wrap up and pull to the next terminal. We waved to the driver, he tossed our bags in the bus, we grabbed a seat, and we were on our way! I still can't believe how lucky we were to catch that bus!

The drive to Anaheim was supposed to take about 45-60 minutes (the first 15 of which is stopping at every terminal in the airport to invite passengers aboard because Southwest is terminal 1 at LAX), but it was closer to 1.5 hrs. Our bus was having some sort of overheating issue that forced the driver to pull over to the side of the road, power down, and restart the bus 4 times on our way to the resort. It was a little but strange because unlike Magical Express, this driver didn't speak to us at all, so we had no idea why we were stopping. The first time I thought we had been pulled over! There was no "Welcome to DL" video or anything really remotely "Disney" about this bus aside from the Disney banner ad that was splashed all over the vehicle. Also, the bus ride from LAX to Anaheim is wicked boring.

The first two stops were Grand Californian and Disneyland Hotel. We didn't make a stop at Paradise Pier, but it may have just been because we had no passengers who were staying there. The very next stop was Hotel Anabella. This was our stop and I actually nearly booked the Anabella because it was the closest Good Neighbor resort to Grand Californian, so it would have made transferring very easy. Instead, we booked the Eden Roc Inn right around the corner (literally Tiffy's Restaurant on the corner of Katella and Disneyland Dr. was the only building between them) and saved $50! Hotel Anabella was selling for $120/night when I booked, but I got Eden Roc for just under $70! They are still undergoing extensive reservations, so we encountered a few annoyances, but it was a throw away room, so I didn't care. I would not want to spend my entire vacation here.

Benefits of Eden Roc: CHEAP, convenient, everything is new and room was nice with laminate floors and a king sized bed, staff members that we encountered were nice and mostly accommodating, there's nowhere in WDW where you can stay within walking distance of any park for $70/night.
Drawbacks of Eden Roc: $100 security deposit (completely refundable, but annoying), doors are paper thin and you can hear EVERYTHING outside (luckily we were super tired, so no trouble sleeping), construction is not being conducted in a guest-friendly manner, so it's possible to get trapped by roped off areas and have to improvise, no phone or lamps have been placed in rooms yet.

After we checked in and I got over my snit about the $100 deposit (I get where they're coming from, but those kinds of policies make me feel untrusted and unvalued as a customer and I think that they are the epitome of poor customer service. I find it highly insulting.), we walked to Downtown Disney. We met a nice couple from Oregon on our walk and they showed us where to go. It's easy to understand on the overhead map, but slightly confusing the first time you walk it in 3D! There's a hidden Mickey that spans across the street on Disneyland Drive, so the sidewalk isn't straight. Also, DTD bridges across Disneyland Drive, so the easiest way to get there is actually to walk through the Grand Californian.

By this point we hadn't eaten a meal since 8am Eastern time (9.5 hours earlier) and we were extremely hungry. Even tough we had an ADR for Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen in 2 hours, we decided to stop at Tortilla Jo's and share some Chicken Nachos for "lunch". They were quite tasty and I would eat at Tortilla Jo's again. We did discover one VERY important thing during this transaction that would have changed some of the choices that we made had we known ahead of time. ESPN is the only dining establishment in DTD where you can redeem Disney Rewards or use Disney Gift Cards. Had I known this, we would not have made an ADR for Ralph Brennan's. I would have canceled it and chosen something more economical or used Jazz Kitchen's Express window, but since were within the 24-hour period, we would have been charged $10 for a same-day ADR cancellation. Instead we kept the reservation and we were just selective about the prices of the food that we ordered. We chose the appetizer sampler with Calamari, Coconut Shrimp, and Boudin Balls. The coconut shrimp was the best of the three and next time I would order just the shrimp. We split some sort of fried chicken entree. I forget what it was called, but it was bone-in fried chicken in a sweet/savory sort of sauce. It was very good and I would choose this entree again.

After dinner, we walked around DTD and visited the other two onsite hotels--Disneyland Hotel and Paradise Pier.

In case you can't see it, this chair is a teacup!

We also picked up our new Rewards card from the DL ticket booth and handled transferring our rewards dollars to the new card. Customer service was having some wort of computer glitch, so I was on the phone with them for about 20 minutes, but we didn't have park tickets for today, so it wasn't a major catastrophe or anything. This gave us an opportunity to see the front gates of both Disneyland and California Adventure. This actually made me a little bit nervous because the scale of the train station looks so much smaller than it does at WDW and the train is closer to the ground. It actually reminded me of Hersheypark back home (They've tried to rip off Disney in a number of different ways and I'm not a fan) and I was a little bit worried about what we would find beyond the gates the next morning. Of course our friends on WDWFG who have visited DL have had all kinds of wonderful things to say and my Disney buddy, Beth loves DL. Also my favorite podcasts were all screaming the same thing loud and clear: GO TO DISNEYLAND. Still there were a few friends who had been to DL and found it to be...lacking. Laying eyes on the train station for the first time, I couldn't squash the doubt that was creeping into my mind. My fingers were crossed that the detractors were wrong!! We were back in the room asleep by 8:00 (11:00 to us) because we had to check-out and transfer to Grand Californian in the morning before Magic Morning started at 7am! Good or bad, we were finally here and I couldn't wait to see what the next day held in store!!

Hi Morgan! Great question! You can use the Disney credit card anywhere. It's a regular Visa, but the rewards points that you accumulate can only be redeemed where Disney Gift Cards are accepted. When you cash in your points, they send you a redemption card that you can use like a Disney Gift Card. Unfortunately, both redemption cards and gift cards are only valid at locations that are owned, operated, or partnered with Disney. There are several restaurants at WDW that are independently owned and operated. They don't participate in DDP and cannot redeem Disney Gift Cards.

This brings up an interesting point. At WDW, you can use your magic band to pay for everything and then present your gift cards or Rewards redemption card to the hotel concierge and they can apply the balance to your account before it gets charged to your regular credit card. We usually only eat at EoS in DTD at WDW. I'm reasonably certain that I can use my magic band to pay for my meal at WDW EoS. I could then go back to my resort and apply funds from my redemption card to cover the cost of my meal at EoS. At DL EoS, I could NOT use my rewards redemption card directly and since there are no magic bands at DL yet, I couldn't use the MB to pay for my sandwich and then pay my account balance with the rewards card at the hotel. I don't know if I ever tried to use a gift card at EoS pre-magic band. Does anyone know if you can use a redemption card or gift card for restaurants at DTD in Orlando? I know that most of them participate in DDP and I would guess that any DDP participant would be authorized to accept gift cards?? I don't recall ever being told that I couldn't use a gift card for anything that I tried to buy in Orlando, so it was news to me that Anaheim DTD restaurants wouldn't accept it.

Wednesday, March 25 - Day 2 (part 1):

Warning: one thing I found about Disneyland is that it is much greener and more beautiful than WDW, but in being so, it is much more difficult to photograph well. Also, I was very excited about experiencing everything, so the photography (and tragically the pin trading) took a back seat.

Today started with a 6am checkout of EdenRoc and lugging our suitcases down the street to Grand Californian. I mapped it before our trip and it was suppose to be a .4 mile walk, but I say is was 1/4 mile at MOST. The weird thing was that it was dark out. This hadn't crossed my mind because it is very rarely dark out when I get up in the morning. In fact, some nights I'm up so late that I swear that the sun will start to rise before I go to bed. Schlepping our suitcases down the street under cover of darkness made me feel like the Von Trapp family escaping from Austria.

We arrived at GC at around 6:15 where we met Linda on the early morning shift. We had a blast with her! She's been at GC since it opened 14 years ago and she calls it "Linda's Hotel". :much love: She was seriously the best CM ever! She gave us buttons for everything! We had Happy Birthday, I'm Celebrating, Happy Anniversary, Happily Ever After, Honorary DL Citizen...it was awesome. She told us to make sure that we wear all of them so we could score free stuff from the CM's in the park. LOL. We decided to stick with the ones that were relevant to our trip, so the Birthday & 1st visit buttons for me and the I'm Celebrating and 1st visit for Benn. Of course our room wasn't ready at 6am, but Linda assured us that we would receive a text when it was ready. We were all checked in and it was only 6:45, so we decided to go to DCA for Magic Morning (or maybe it was Extra Magic Hours...the terminology is a little confusing at DL). I was a little bit torn about this because I wanted the opportunity to get to Cars Land when relatively few people were in the park, but I felt like it was sacrilege to go to DCA before we'd been to DL. With the opportunity to ride Radiator Springs Racers with a short wait taunting us, I decided the order in which we visited the parks wasn't really THAT important!

We walked out to the front gate because even though DCA has a private entrance, Linda advised us to go to the main gate because the back entrance only has two bag checks and turnstiles. With 10 minutes until opening, we were among about 50 people waiting to get into DCA . Can you imagine waiting among so few people for MEMH at WDW?! The CM at the gate scanned out tickets well ahead of park opening and we were allowed in a little bit early, but the CMs guide the first group for safety and of course everyone was headed to Racers.

We weren't in the front of the line because the allure of looking at every detail of the park as we walked through was just too great. About 5 minutes after we reached the Racers line, the ride went down! NO!!!! We couldn't miss DL rope drop!! We were so close to the front--right at the cutoff before they sent us into the final queue section--this couldn't be happening! We stuck it out and within 10 minutes, the ride was up and running again and by 7:30, it was our turn!! OhMyGosh!! What a fantastic ride!! It has many elements that are similar to Test Track, but there is no high speed loop. The track is longer and the theming of the ride is amazing. It is seriously Disney Imagineering at its finest. While I love the Test Track loop, in total, Racers is a far superior ride in every other aspect. From the time you enter Cars Land, you are transported right into the movie and when you enter the queue for Racers, you're transported to Rt. 66 and you are literally in the race between Lightning McQueen and Doc Hudson. We knew that we had to figure out a way to ride again for sure. On our way out of the park, we passed the Racer FP kiosk near A Bug's Land and the line had to be 75 people deep. At 7:35 in the morning! The FP lines don't open until the official park opening, so these people were literally using their entire Magic Morning to get a FP for Racers.

We got to DL around 7:40 and within 5 minutes, we were inside the park! Just like WDW, you can usually get into the park early, but each major land has a separate rope drop. So we had an opportunity to stroll down Main Street with some leisure and examine the Hub and Castle area. Main Street looked exactly the same, but completely different at the same time and of course Sleeping Beauty Castle blends into its surroundings instead of sticking out and drawing you down Main Street. Seeing so many familiar sights inside, I instantly lost the "oh God please don't let it be a glorified Hersheypark" panic attack from the previous night. Sure the castle was smaller, but what it lacks i grandeur, it makes up in charm. There were a lot of silver-covered areas that I believe are due to have more jewels added to them before the official start of the Diamond Celebration. I imagine that it will look quite festive when it's finished. Part of the reason that I wasn't really bothered by the size of the castle is that the Matterhorn creates a beautiful backdrop and adds interest and dimension to the scene.

At home, we almost always start in Adventureland or Fantasyland, but at DL, it seemed appropriate to start in Tomorrowland--maybe so I could ride Space Mountain before I lost my nerve!! While we waited for rope drop, I was examining the spinning attraction to our left. I couldn't see the sign for it and I couldn't quite place it. It looked like Astro Orbiter because it had the same suspended-colorful-spheres-representing-planets motif, but it was so....small. It turns out that this quaint little ride that doesn't stand much taller than Dumbo really is Astro Orbiter! I decided that I didn't need to ride Spaceship Dumbo and we crossed a "must-do" off the list. I can say without riding it that WDW wins the AO match-up. After the rope dropped, Star Tours was our first stop. It was nearly identical to the WDW version with the same film options. (I think they were the same. The pod race looked different than I remember, but everything else was the same.)

Next up was Space Mountain. I'm not a huge coaster fan and I really hate the dark, so this was definitely a nervous-making ride for me, but I thought that it was important to try it...for science! There are lots of differences here! Part of the queue is outdoors, so you get a really neat view of the "mountain" and the rest of the park from about half way up. The ride vehicles seat two people side by side and I found it much more comforting to have Benn right beside me. The tunnels have WAY more head clearance. I was not even close to having a panic attack at any point during this ride. Not something I can say at home. There are SOOO many more stars at DL!! It's not light enough to see anything, but there's much more visual interest during the ride, so it distracts you from the fact that you're scared! Also, the track feels considerably smoother. I hate Space Mountain at WDW, but I liked it at DL and I would ride it again. Benn liked the WDW version better, but he said that he wasn't feeling particularly well this morning, so that surely influenced his decision.

Having hit the major headliners in Tomorrowland, we went on a quest to find the much anticipated Alice in Wonderland Ride. It was my absolute favorite ride. Not just at DL, but I think ever! You ride a caterpillar down the rabbit hole, ride through several movie scenes, and without even knowing that you were traveling uphill, you suddenly appear on the roof of the attraction!! It's so fun and cool and quirky. I absolutely adored this ride! Alice really gets a lot of love at DL. There's a Mad Hatter gift shop, Tea Cups, and the Alice dark ride all together in a little section off of central Fantasyland. We skipped the Tea Cups for now and picked up It's a Small World.

From the roof!

IASW was so different! The queue is outdoors as is part of the ride, but it also has less separation between each country. At first, I didn't like that because I couldn't identify what country I was supposed to be looking at as easily, but by the end, I actually liked it better. Meshing all of the countries together shows less division and more harmony, which is kind of the point of the ride in the first place. I love the vaguely culturally appropriate Disney characters integrated with the children from their country. We spotted Alice, Mulan, Pinocchio, Stitch, and others among the performers. Oh! And the topiaries! They added so much fun and whimsy to the attraction. I'm definitely going to give the edge to DL over WDW for IASW. DL's version has loads more character and I think it's longer.

The scrim is up from the damage that was caused by an errant firework a few weeks ago:

I don't know if anyone read it, but I wrote an article about attraction sponsorship while ago. Siemens sponsors Spaceship Earth and IllumiNations and apparently, It's a Small World--at least at DL, so that was interesting to me.

Unicorn!

Of course, one of the things that I was most looking forward to was Toontown and it was really great. I love that the scenery is intentionally painted flat to make you feel like the buildings are literally popping off the page of an animated drawing. Our first order of business was Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin. I thought this ride was going to be awesome, but we both put it solidly in the "disappointing" category. The spinning was a little lacking and the attraction itself was full of random things with no discernibly plot or story line. Going to Minnie & Mickey's houses was great and we actually got a chance to see Donald's Boat and Chip & Dale's Treehouse.

Before picking up the rest of the Fantasyland dark rides, we stopped at a kiosk for a cheese & garlic twisty bread and an apple boysenberry freeze. I'm not usually a garlic fan, but that twist was amazing and the freeze reminded me a lot of Le Fou's Brew. The cart was right beside Fantasy Faire and I highly recommend it for a mid-morning snack.

Back to my favorite--the dark rides. Peter Pan was closed, so that was a bummer because we love that ride, but at least it's one that we have at "home", so it was a better situation than one of the DL-only dark rides being closed. We started with Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. I had never ridden Mr. Toad in WDW because when we went when I was a kid, my parents were afraid that the ride would indeed be "wild", so we didn't go and by the time I went as an adult, it was gone. I understand that the WDW version had two separate tracks and the DL version seems to have one track, so I assume that the two rides were somewhat different. We liked it, but it definitely has the same random vibe that our current WDW version of Winnie the Pooh has. I like it better than Winnie the Pooh (I'm not so much a Pooh fan), but after riding, I'm less miffed that we no longer have Mr. Toad. I'm glad that we had the opportunity to experience it and I definitely prefer it to Winnie the Pooh, but I didn't think that it was so spectacularly fabulous that we must have it back. Sorry Toadies. This was actually Benn's favorite of the three open dark rides in the castle courtyard.

Next up was Snow White's Scary Adventures. I haven't ridden this ride in 5ish years I guess. It closed at MK in 2012, right? SO I guess the last time I rode it was probably August 2010, maybe April 2012 if it was still open then. I know it was closed by my August 2012 trip for sure. I remember this attraction as having some creepy Evil Queen elements, but not in general being all that scary. OhMyGosh! The DL version is SCARY! Certainly as a mostly rational adult, I was fine, but if I was a little kid, I probably would have been crying. LOL. The forest scene was extra long and creepy and there was no happy music end scene with Snow White being kissed by the prince. It was still awesome and I was so excited to get to do any version of this ride, but it was definitely different from our version.

Finally, Pinocchio's Daring Journey. I'd heard mixed reviews on this ride and Pinocchio is not my favorite classic movie, so I had very low expectations, but this turned out to be my favorite dark ride in the castle courtyard area. My favorite thing was the effect of Pinocchio and the other boys turning into donkeys. It was just such a sweet little ride and I really enjoyed it.

On our way to Pirates of the Caribbean, we grabbed our Fantasmic and Big Thunder fast passes. I forget which color group is which, but we had been having so much fun playing that our FP was for the second color group, so that was a bummer. Anyway, Pirates...We found this part of the park to be confusing at first. Pirates is at the junction of New Orleans Square and Adventureland. Since our Pirates is in Adventrureland, it was odd to us to have the more New Orleans-ish tinge to Pirates. I like the building and the queue area at DL. It's not as dark and foreboding as the queue at WDW. Floating past Blue Bayou seemed out of place to me. In fact, the placement in New Orleans Square in general for an attraction that is set in the Caribbean just reads as a little bit off? to me. The other thing that was odd to me was the placement of the waterfalls. The purpose of the waterfalls in the story is to send you back in time, so at WDW, it makes perfect sense to me that the Pirates skeletons appear, you hear dead men tell no tales, Blackbeard or Davy Jones tell you that they do tell tales, then you plunge downy he waterfall to go back in time to see the live pirates. At DL, you go down the waterfall almost immediately, then you go down a second waterfall, and then you see the skeletons and hear "dead men tell no tales". There are some extra scenes, but we didn't find them to be substantive. It's still Pirates, so it was still fun and of course we did it again, but I was surprised that I liked the WDW version better.

Next was Haunted Mansion. Once again, from the beginning, the whole feeling was "off" for this attraction. The graveyard is basically non-existent. The mansion, itself, looks like a southern planation and I think it's less "creepy" than our WDW version. The stretching room and spiel were exactly the same as far as I know. Some of the effects in slightly different places. The busts from the library scene in WDW are in the queue at DL. That was probably the most notable difference. In total, this is another attraction that I like better at WDW than at DL.

Critter Country was closed for refurbishment, so we couldn't ride Splash Mountain or Winnie the Pooh--neither of which were terribly disappointing to me. So we started working our way back toward Big Thunder Mountain. In looking to make a quick restroom stop, we ended up wandering all the way across the hub back to Tomorrowland. (It's much easer to find the restrooms at WDW.) So since we were planning to have lunch at Plaza Inn, we decided to do that before BTMR. Benn picked a pasta dish and I had the chicken. Go there. Get the chicken. It was fabulous. Seriously every nice thing that I've ever read about that chicken was true. Because Plaza is open for breakfast, they close at the beginning of "lunch" to clean up and turn over and they reopen at noon. When you've been walking around the parks since 7am, noon was a long time for me to wait for lunch. I don't love breakfast, so I'm all about eating lunch at 10:30-11:00. I wouldn't have made it without stopping for the cheesy garlic twist earlier. I took this pick after we split the food, so this is half of the chicken and my sample of Benn's pasta is on the left.

After lunch, BTMR!! This is one of my top 3 favorites at WDW. I don't walk into MK without riding BTMR (unless it's out of my control due to refurb schedule). This was my least favorite ride that we did at DL. ( The cave portions are longer and darker, which totally freaked me out--you know, claustrophobia and all. Y'all are probably well aware of my aversion to legless reptiles by now and there are a few instances of said creatures in this version. So basically, everything that triggers panic attacks for me is wrapped up into this one ride. It's telling that this was the one and only time that we rode BTMR this trip. I like Space Mountain better than BTMR at DL and I would have ridden Space Mountain again. Benn didn't want to do Space Mountain again because he felt sick riding it. It was like some sort of alternate universe.

We also did Sailing Ship Columbia, but I'm not sure when?? I think it was right after BTMR maybe?? It was cool.. I liked it better than the Mark Twain Riverboat. Columbia was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe and on the ship at DL, a Cast Member actually fires a live cannon!!

It was really hot and we're currently adjusted to average temperature of 32 degrees Fahrenheit, so even with the low humidity, the unmitigated sunshine and the 95 degree days meant that we definitely needed a break. We had received our room ready text, but we decided to hit Jungle Cruise first. The queue for this ride is the most insane thing I've ever seen. It's super narrow and it looked like the line was fairly short (posted wait time was 25 minutes). I've never seen so many queue switchbacks in my life! This queue was hilarious. Back and forth, up the stairs, back and forth again and again and one more time for good measure, down the stairs, around the corner, and finally we could see the loading area. It was crazy!! We came to learn as the week progressed that DL is the master of wacky and surprising queue paths. As for the ride, itself, I loved it. There's no cave and no giant plastic python!! All of the awesome jokes are still there and our skipper (Skipper Dino) was so much fun!

On the way back to GC we were going to get a dole whip, but the line was super long, so we opted for orange floats from the Dreyer's Ice Cream Parlor on Main Street. They were delicious. We managed to find the Dapper Dans, who pulled all of the birthday people out of the crowd and sang to us. They rode up on a bicycle! I've never seen our Dapper Dans do that. Another item of note on Main Street is that at nearly 2:00 in the afternoon, Main Street Transportation was still running! I love that transportation runs all day at DL and that the parades are later in the day (4:00 and 6:30 I think) and there are no stage shows in front of the castle. You could actually walk through the castle all day long!

Ok, break time. Stay tuned...

Thanks, Miss Mikki

Haha!! I know, I'm weird! I was thinking about it and hands down the rides that I ride the most at WDW are Pirates, HM, BTMR, and PPF. PPF was a non-issue since it was down, but for the others, I think I've become so accustomed to what we experience at home that seeing those rides imagined differently was too much of a departure from the norm for me. It was more of the Louisiana Bayou setting than the rides themselves that set off the cognitive dissonance for me. Both still warranted a second ride, but there was something about the atmosphere that made me feel like they weren't quite as magical at DL. I imagine that the holiday overlays would have made me love HM, but unfortunately, our timing didn't allow for that this time. Oh darn, we'll have to go back.

No Indiana Jones for us. I made the mistake of telling Benn that the ride vehicle and track similar to Dinosaur and he bailed. He was a little bit torn up after doing Star Tours and Space Mountain back to back and he wasn't up for pushing the motion sickness barrier any further! I was never planning to ride. Legless reptiles freak me out.

I shall comply shortly

Wednesday, March 25 - Day 2 (part 2):

We returned to Grand Californian and got to see our room for the first time. The layout and size reminded me of SSR with almost as much richness and character as Wilderness Lodge and we were lucky enough to score the same view of DCA that Kristen had sent me from one of her previous trip. We were on the 3rd floor--308 I think. The room was really nice and I would have liked to have spent more days enjoying it.

view from our balcony:

After a solid 2 hr nap (easier to squeeze in time for a long nap with the super early park openings, low crowd levels, and short "commuting" times), we returned to Disneyland for the evening. Since the GC exit to DTD is close to the monorail and we wanted to bypass any of the 4:00 parade fun that might have still been going on on Main Street anyway, we monorailed to Tomorrowland. The monorail is a one-way trip and the only stops are DTD and Tomorrowland. Therefore, you must have a park ticket to ride and the DTD Disney side does have a bag search at their entrance. (Did I mention before that bag search for the parks is before you reach the concourse with the ticket booths? So if you are park hopping, you don't have to go through bag search again unless you leave the concourse entirely. You just have to present your ticket for admission each time you enter the park. What a time saver and hassle reducer! At WDW, the bag checkers are adamant that you must remove the bag from your body completely. This did not seem to be a rule at DL.) The monorail was interesting. We really liked that the windows opened. Sometimes the WDW monorail smells kind of funky, so it was nice to have access to fresh air during the trip. Also, I'm not sure which trains are older, but we thought that the trains on DL monorail appeared to be newer and sleeker than the WDW trains. The DL monorail goes through some serious backstage areas, but we didn't notice anything particularly cool backstage.

Our first stop was dinner at Rancho del Zocalo. Benn had the three tacos. They were very small, but he said they were delicious. I had the tostada (basically taco salad) and it was fantastic. This was one of my favorite things that we ate during the trip.

We grabbed Benn a Dole Whip (they only have pineapple in DL, so no citrus swirl for me) and headed for Mickey's Soundsational Parade. We scored some standing room right behind the benches that line Main Street and it was a great spot for looking straight ahead. Unfortunately at DL, the parade literally cuts the park in half, so the CM's have to let people collect in the walkways and let them cross the street between parade floats, so our view of the parade coming down Main Street was partially obscured some of the time. Ok, so it's not Festival of Fantasy, but it's still a great show. Benn didn't love it, but he didn't hate it and he's definitely a harder sell on parades than I am. Show me some characters, toss in some fun costumes and jazzy music and I'm happy. I really liked that Mary Poppins got some love in this parade and at DL in general.

After the parade, we popped into Innoventions. I though Benn would really enjoy this, but we missed Captain America because his line was closing for the evening and the interactive Iron Man suit thing had a really long line, so we ended up not really spending much time here.

Before we got in line for Fantasmic, I was on a quest to locate the Mint Julep Bar. I found it! It's a small walkup window on the Adventureland side of the French Market. Speaking of which, French Market isn't place that we ate, but I saw some good looking food coming out of that place. I would readily try it in the future. The Mint Julep was delicious. It was like a slightly flat Sprite with Mint. Sounds kind of gross, but somehow it just worked.

Our FP ticket said to return to the riverboat launch area between 8-9pm to get a spot for Fantasmic. It seems that 7:30 is a more appropriate time. Though I wonder what would have happened had we arrived at 8:55. I feel like we may have gotten spots that were as good or better than being behind a family that decided to make a sudden shift to the left and close up the hole through which I had previously been able to see the stage. Colonel, you were absolutely right. Fantasmic is SOOO much better on the Rivers of America than it could ever be in the Hollywood Hills Amphitheater. For one thing, it's closer. For another, they replaced the Pocahontas scene with an awesome Peter Pan swordplay scene aboard the Columbia as it makes it's way down the river. The Mark Twain seems like it has more characters in the final scene and Maleficent appears as a full body dragon, not what looks like some black & purple shimmery fabric draped over some coat hangers. First class grade A production that blows the DHS show out of the water.

This is the Peter Pan scene. I had a crummy view to photograph it, but it was really cool in person!

After Fantasmic, we watched Fireworks. I think the current show is called Fantasy in the Sky and it's a little bit lacking compared to WDW's fireworks. It lasts about 10 minutes; I don't think there was a story; and the fireworks go off over Tom Sawyer's Island instead of behind Sleeping Beauty Castle. I think the new fireworks are rolling out on May 22 or 23 for the Diamond kickoff and I understand that these are just a placeholder.

We decided that the night was still young enough to stay and play for a bit, so we milled around Frontierland while we waited for the crowds to thin out and took advantage of prime riding time while everyone else was waiting to get into the 2nd Fantasmic show. We went back to Fantasyland and hit Storybookland Canal Boats (Benn's favorite ride of the trip), Tea Cups, Dumbo, and the Carousel. We also did the castle walkthrough before calling it a night. That walkthrough was really well done--much better than I anticipated actually. We stopped on our way out for two character shaped cookies--one for me and one for our friend Linda from the check-in desk for being so nice to us that morning.

Our boat captain was awesome and I've suddenly forgotten his name!

We hit the pillow hard around 10:00, ready to get up and be at DCA for 8am opening! Thank goodness we were on the west coast so that 8am was real like 11am to me and we didn't have to rely on any transportation schedule except when our feet would be willing to carry us to the parks!

Like the DVC/cash hybrid properties at WDW, DVC is in a separate section, so if they are doing a cash room, it may be different. The DVC park view rooms face Paradise Pier. I seems like the cash rooms have park views, but they would overlook Grizzly Peak. Without seeing it, I think that view is probably even better because it matches the theme of the hotel more closely.

Thursday, March 26 - Day 3 (part 1):

The day where everything went wrong. Not really, but it was definitely a day where we changed a lot of plans on the fly. Since Linda had warned us about the line to get into DCA using the GC back entrance, we arrived around 7:20 for 8:00 opening. We were second in line and we spent some time chatting with the lovely family in front of us. We had decided not to try for Racers this morning since we did not have the advantage of Magic Morning/EMH. Our plan was to grab a World of Color FP, hit Toy Story, then find Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, who was supposed to be doing meet & greets from 8am-7pm and was my priority meet & greet of the trip. Our expectation was that since the bulk of the crowd would be heading for Racers, Toy Story would be deserted. We were the only people who had prioritized getting a World of Color FP and from our entrance we walked right past the machines, so we were actually the first people to get our FP for the day. Lol. We finished getting out fast passes and took a scenic walk around the back side of Grizzly River Run only to find that we were still waiting for the last internal rope to drop anyway. There we were informed that Racers was down. Benn and I just looked at each other and thought "I guess we know what that means: TSM is going to be swamped." A few minutes later, we were informed that both California Screamin' and TSM were both down as well.

Ok so at least we could meet Oswald with no line, right. Well we made our way to Buena vista Street, seemingly confusing all of the people who were streaming past us to get to the rides and located a CM near were we thought Oswald was probably meeting. She quickly informed us that Oswald would not be visiting with guests until 11am that morning despite the fact that the posed start time in both the times guide and on the official Disneyland Resort website still showed an 8am meet & greet. Was NOTHING happening on time in this park today?!!

Ok fine. We wandered down a side street toward Tower of Terror and we stumbled upon the DL Frozen Funland. This wasn't really on our list of must-do's because we had seen Frozen Funland at WDW and it was cute, but it hadn't made our priority list. Well, the Olaf meet & greet was up and running, so we hopped in line for that. While we waited (maybe 10 minutes) we chatted about the differences between the two attractions. This Frozen Funland had sledding instead of ice skating, which seems a little bit more inclusive and practical, but maybe a little bit less "special". The snow ground play area was WAY bigger that the play area had been at DHS and the theming at DCA was much more detailed and immersive. I hope that they'll keep this attraction at DCA and continue to build on it because they really did a nice job with the concept. DCA's Wandering Oaken's Trading Post also looks more appropriate. We got our warm hug from Olaf and then asked an available CM about the play area because many folks with name tags were roaming around the area and no people were playing in the snow. He informed us that the CM's in charge were dissatisfied with the quality of the snow and that they were going to spruce it up before they let people in to play for the day. It was cute, but not something we were going to wait around indefinitely for, so we moved on.

Next up was Monsters Inc.: Mike & Sulley to the Rescue. It's a very cute dark ride with all of your favorites from Monsters Inc., but to make this attraction different from other ride-throughs, I would have loved to have seen them suspend ride vehicles from the ceiling so that the guests should actually "ride" on the "doors" in the Scare Factory. Maybe something similar to Peter Pan's Flight. We enjoyed it and we would do it again. I'm a sucker for the animated film ride-throughs.

We caught the 9:00 Animation Academy where we got to draw Mickey Mouse. They have cute little "Do You Want to Draw a Snowman" signs up all over the place, so I was afraid that they were only offering Olaf as a subject. I would have been disappointed by that because Olaf really isn't all that complicated to draw. Fortunately, that was not the case. The room in DCA's Animation Academy is much brighter and more visually appealing than the studio at DHS, but DCA does not have lighted desks and every student has to draw on a lap desk. Also, I don't know if our instructor was just really fast, but our class was only 15 minutes long. Mickey's not super hard to draw, but I felt a little bit rushed and I had to go back and finish shading my drawing later because I ran out of time. I would have done this two or three more times, but Benn's patience for drawing is limited and since he had decided not to do ToT, I didn't have any "downtime" to sneak back over there and do it again.

When we left Animation Academy, there was a cable car pulling up outside, so we decided to hop a ride to wherever it was going. Turns out it only had one more stop--Tower of Terror. So we hopped off the cable car and wandered through A Bug's Land. This is one of my least favorite Disney-Pixar films and the rides were definitely intended to give the little folks a place to play, so this was a walkthrough for us. But I will say that it was well themed and with the tall grasses and maze-like quality, I thought that this land was very well done and served its purpose nicely. Not that it would have been my first choice of things to do, but It's Tough to Be a Bug was on refurbishment and I think that's basically the only reason to venture into Bug World if you're not traveling with youngsters.

We walked over to Pacific Wharf to scope out the evening's dinner options and I realized that we were at the Boudin Bakery Tour, which I had wanted to check out anyway. I thought it was going to be one of those deals where the tour is given at certain times throughout the day and you had to choose a time to return, but it's a self-paced, self-guided walkthrough. It's a pretty fascinating tale about a loaf of bread that the founders made during the gold rush that made them richer than anyone who came to California looking for gold and how every loaf that they make is still derived from that same mother loaf. I'm not a sourdough nut, but the free sample of bread that they were handing out truly was about the most delicious bread I'd ever eaten. So much so that every time we had bread for the rest of the trip, it just made me feel sad because it wasn't as good as that Boudin Bread. It seemed that maybe they served the delicious bread at Pacific Wharf Cafe, so that's where we were planning to have dinner later.

Next up, Paradise Pier and TSM!! Well of course by now, the line had swelled to a 45 minute wait, but for 10:00 in the morning, that wasn't too bad by our standards! Can you imagine deciding at DHS two hours after the park has opened that maybe you'll just stroll over to TSM and enjoy a quick game? The highlight of our wait was the guy in front of us who had managed to find a sweet Toy Story shirt! The ride is frame for frame the same at DHS and DCA, but the park placement and queues are very, very different. Since I've spent a LOT of time in the Andy's Room queue at DHS, it was refreshing to see some different scenery while we were waiting. If you like to take a picture with the Mr. Potato Head, you'll be glad to know that it is much easier to get a clear photo of him with a point & shoot or camera phone at DCA because his eyes don't looked possessed in photos when he's in natural light. The shade in the queue was quite adequate even though the temperature did limb into the upper 90's later in the day. Even though the queue is less elaborate than DHS's Andy's Room queue, it's fitting. Maybe even more so. After all, it is supposed to be a "Midway Game". What better setting for that than a Coney Island style Boardwalk? The midway theme is very simple, but very well done on this attraction. There are still some references to Andy's toys scattered throughout the attraction, but not in the same immersive way that they are presented at DHS. The loading area is covered, but it is on the exterior of the ride building. It looks very inviting as you walk past the attraction and with the Barker calling you in, how can anyone resist? As for where the attraction is better, I have to call this one a tie. Oh and save the suspense, my game is a little rusty after 6 months and Benn did eclipse me for the win. Sadly the rematch was not to be.

California Screamin' wasn't something that either of us were interested in seeing in the 1st person, but I did enjoy it watching it from the Toy Story queue. A few other pier amusements had caught my eye. Benn wasn't so sure about some of these rides that he considered to be carnival-esque, so for now, I chose my absolute must-do: The Silly Symphony Swings! OhMyGosh so much fun!! TThe swings at DCA are on a raised platform, so you get to fly out over the water. I can't really remember exactly what I could see from up there but I can tell you that it was super fun and it was a really short ride.

By this point, it was nearing 11:00, so we decided that it was best to make our way back to the front of the park to find Oswald before our lunch ADR at Carthay Circle. We asked a CM at Oswald's service station where we should expect to find the elusive rabbit and she informed us that he typically greets guests at the small entrance plaza that resembles Town Square at Magic Kingdom. We pulled up a park bench and waited around at that spot for 20 minutes. No sign of the rabbit anywhere and we only had about 10 minutes until our ADR, so we gave up the hunt yet again. On the way to the restaurant, we passed some streetmosphere performers that reminded me a lot of Citizens of Hollywood. If you're picking up on a theme here that DCA is a lot like Hollywood Studios, you would be right. Sure there are some elements from EPCOT and AK thrown in, but it's basically full of all of the awesomeness that we COULD have (and hopefully someday WILL have) at DHS. Since DHS was my favorite park until they started gutting it, I was loving DCA.

We checked in at Carthay Circle and after a short wait, we were escorted upstairs to the dining room. I would say that the decor of the restaurant reminded me of what I would have expected a Hollywood restaurant to look like in the 1930's. The closest facsimile at WDW is probably Hollywood Brown Derby. I liked the food better a little bit better at Carthay I think. I had Shrimp Tempura and Benn had the Angus Burger with bacon and onions. His burger was much more filling than my shrimp and for the price, I thought they could have maybe tossed in another Shrimp. I want to say that there were maybe 4 or 5 shrimp surrounding a a bed of black rice stir fry. I believe the sauce was described as "Red Thai Curry", but I'm just going to go ahead and call it heaven. Like I said, for the price, it was a little skimpy on the seafood, but it was delicious. I had it in my head that I wanted to try the firecracker duck wings, but I wasn't feeling it that day and Benn didn't seem super excited about that option. Would I go again? Possibly. I'm not usually one for the fanciest meals, but I'd heard such rave reviews of Carthay and just in case this was our only Disneyland visit, I wanted to check it out. The quality of the food was very good, but food just isn't typically the place where I prefer to spend the majority of my budget. There are pins to buy, people! More on that later.

After Carthay, tracking down Oswald was back on my radar, so I marched right up to Guest Services to find out what in the world was going on with this rabbit. A helpful Cast Member approached us and informed us that he was currently greeting guests and they had moved him to a shadier location due to the heat. (He was decidedly not in this shady location earlier as we had a view of this spot from the bench where we were waiting.) Of course when went to join the line, we were informed that Oswald was taking a 5 minute break. The 5-minute break turning into 20 minutes seemed to support the hypothesis that I had formed--maybe Oswald had partied a little too hard the night before. To add further corroboration, there was a veil of annoyance in the handler's voice when Oswald failed to appear at what she thought was the appropriate time, as though she was having a difficult time "handling" Oswald today. At any rate, we finally got our picture and went about our business.

We decided that the heat was becoming intense enough that it warranted a nap. We had left the resort in the morning prepared to do Grizzly River Run and get soaked right before returning for a mid-day break. Unfortunately, there hadn't been a time that had been convenient for us to grab a FP where the return time was going to work for us and it seemed that many other people wanted to mitigate the afternoon heat the same way. (By the way, this is why I love FP+. I could have told you a year ahead of time that I would want to eat lunch around 11:30 and shortly after lunch, I would like to ride the park's only water ride and then go back to my room to change and have a nap, so I need a FP with a return time of 12:30-1:30.) With a 50-minute wait, our choices were to wait it out, grab a FP for 3:20-4:20, which there was no way that we were going to use, ride single rider, or skip it. Well, it was crazy hot, so I was not on board with skipping it and it's been our experience at WDW that the wait is rarely actually as long as the posted wait time, so I convinced Benn to get in line. We really did wait every bit of 50 minutes (remember what I said about DL being the king of queue switchbacks) and the whole time I was thinking to myself "oh please let it be better than Kali River Rapids or Benn is going to kill me for making him wait in this line instead of getting a head start on napping." Well I'm pleased to inform you that not only was our ride on Grizzly River Run cool & refreshing, it was tremendously better than Kali! There were three sizable waterfalls, tons of spray, a lots on visual interest on this very beautifully constructed and landscaped attraction. Next time I would do single rider for sure, but it sure was fun and I'm glad that we waited. The only downside to Grizzly vs. Kali is that the belongings holder in the center of the raft is not covered on Grizzly like it is on Kali. Bring a ziplock bag for your phone, camera, and anything else you need to keep dry. I packed plastic bags, but I forgot to throw them in my park bag, so I spent the ride clutching my park bag and praying that I had the phones and camera buried enough to keep them dry. Luckily the electronics survived unscathed.

I had wanted to check out the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail, but it looked like it was Wilderness Explorers Headquarters and I had expended enough of Benn's tolerance for my crazy missions for the morning, so it was more important that I acquiesce to nap time.

Be back soon...