Allons-y! UPDATED 6/18: This is the end...

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Then there was no more time for being unhappy because we were taking a jaunt down Main Street:

We headed off to seek out adventure and Indiana Jones:

Then we needed to head back to Main Street for our dinner reservation at Carnation Cafe. I think I keep confusing this with Cafe Orleans. But we definitely ate at Carnation Cafe. They sound the same

Cool light:

I asked if we could be seated outside. The sun was going down so it was starting to get chilly, but that was ok because Cafe Orleans has these wonderful heat lamps!!

Yay heat lamps!

And it looks like I forgot to talk about our new friend:

We named him Black Bart but later found out his real name is Maverick. Which Brian much prefers, it was his Halo gamer tag.

Brian and I played each other at one of the carnival games at DCA. The one where you roll the balls into the holes and your horse races. At the very last minute some other guy sat down to play with us and we were super annoyed. We didn't want the big prize, we wanted one of the little horses. And we also wanted to be guaranteed a win so that we didn't have to blow any more money. Luckily, Brian won and we got this guy.

We got the fried pickles as a starter and they were pretty good. Not excellent, but I mean, its typical fried food.

Brian went out on a limb and got the chocolate cherry coke and I had to get my Pomegranate Lemonade. Brian thought his drink was good and I had a taste. I thought it was interesting and probably good (?), but I don't think I'd have liked it to be my drink for the entire meal.

Brian got the Chicken Fried Chicken and loved it. I think he finished it in about 5 minutes. I ordered the Green Chile Cheeseburger.

When they brought our food out it took me a minute to realize that they had not brought my right order. I hoped out waitress would show up right away but it took her about 10 minutes. I ate my french fries and contemplated just eating what I had, but Brian thought I should wait.

She finally came and said she would get me what I had ordered, but they had to cook a new one. So all in all that probably added another 20 minutes to our dining time. I wasn't too pleased about that and my stomach was starting to hurt. Probably from junk food overload.

Here is my correct food:

We ended up getting 15% off our bill, so that made me a bit happier.


Dinner took quite a while so we didn't end up with too much time left in the park hours.

We finally decided to just bite the bullet and get in line for the Jungle Cruise. Now, is this ride always super popular at DL? Usually at WDW you can find the line to be walk on at random times during the day, but here the JC always had a 45 minute or longer wait. We couldn't really understand it but I was more than ready for some awful/amazing jokes so we decided to just wait in line.

They had the upstairs open, and I was grumbling about the long wait until we started up the stairs and I saw this:

There is an animatronic bird in the queue!! Whaaaaaa?! I loved this bird and I want one for my adventurer's bar that I'm building. Funny how it takes just one little thing in a long queue to make you happy.

Another queue picture of upstairs:

I just love the Jungle Cruise at night. It looks a bit more real, and the skippers always seem more animated and willing to deviate from the script.

After our cruise we headed to Fantasyland.

We exercised very poor judgment and allowed Mr. Toad to give us a ride in his car. Ya know, I'm not sure if that frog was drinking or not, but he is not a safe driver. I don't recommend getting in the car with him, you never know where you'll end up.

He looks distinguished in that portrait, but trust me, he has a crazy side.

I tried to take some nighttime pictures but none of them came out great.

The park was now closed so we headed through DD back to the hotel. We were supposed to go to Trader Sam's, but Brian wanted a 10 minute sit down break at the hotel and once we were there I made the mistake of lying down in bed and then didn't feel like getting back up.

I think I played the headboard 5 million times then we fell asleep.

 

[flightdave82]

Not having a plan as to what to do next, I decided I should take my ride on TOT. Brian's stomach can't really handle this ride too well, and I wanted to go on to compare it with WDW's TOT, so Brian settled in on a bench to wait while I rode.

How did you like DL's version of TOT compared to Floridas?

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

How did you like DL's version of TOT compared to Floridas?

I thought it was pretty much the same. The queue/hotel has the same old creepy wonderful vibe and the ride is amazing.

This being said, I have heard that the DL version only has one drop sequence, unlike WDW which is random. Going on it once was fun, but I can imagine it may get old riding it a few times each trip.

Owing to the random drop sequences, I'd have to give WDW the edge. But if you only wanna do it once or twice or whatever, its great

 

[stacy~**]

I have finally caught up on your report. I think I had a million comments to make but now can only remember a few....

LOVE the DL hotel pictures....ah...if only my budget would allow it.

What a disappointment with the park tickets! I would have a hard time shaking that off.

I am invisioning LONG waits for us this July at RSR (we are not park openers typically) and seeing your que pictures (the glass bottle building!!) at least has me feeling like we have cool stuff to check out.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I have finally caught up on your report. I think I had a million comments to make but now can only remember a few....

LOVE the DL hotel pictures....ah...if only my budget would allow it.

What a disappointment with the park tickets! I would have a hard time shaking that off.

I am invisioning LONG waits for us this July at RSR (we are not park openers typically) and seeing your que pictures (the glass bottle building!!) at least has me feeling like we have cool stuff to check out.

I think I am a pretty quick TR updater, I do it at work when I'm bored (which is all the time).

DL hotel is a huuuuge budget buster, which is why we just had the one night, and only because of the Dapper Day discount.

I really was upset about the park tickets, at that point I was worried I'd get on my favorite PP at all (since I refuse to wait an hour). However, I just eventually shrugged it off as lesson learned, and maybe my warning will help someone else too.

The RSR queue is really not that bad!! There are tons of things to look at. One other hint though, I know July crowds will be really bad, but you might want to try getting in the queue right before park closes. We did this our final night in the park, and even though we were in the single rider line, we could see that the regular queue looked like it was going faster than usual.

 

[flightdave82]

I thought it was pretty much the same. The queue/hotel has the same old creepy wonderful vibe and the ride is amazing.

This being said, I have heard that the DL version only has one drop sequence, unlike WDW which is random. Going on it once was fun, but I can imagine it may get old riding it a few times each trip.

Owing to the random drop sequences, I'd have to give WDW the edge. But if you only wanna do it once or twice or whatever, its great

Aww that sucks about the random drop sequences not being at the DL version. My g/f and I last wdw trip we rode TOT like 6-8 times in a row. It was a walkon the entire night but we wanted to catch the last F! show otherwise we would have kept doing it lol

I know she will want to do it several times in a row again but being the same drop sequence maybe we wont find a need to marathon it again.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Aww that sucks about the random drop sequences not being at the DL version. My g/f and I last wdw trip we rode TOT like 6-8 times in a row. It was a walkon the entire night but we wanted to catch the last F! show otherwise we would have kept doing it lol

I know she will want to do it several times in a row again but being the same drop sequence maybe we wont find a need to marathon it again.

Maybe not a marathon, but you could certainly do it more than once a trip. For instance, riding it during the daytime and at nighttime will change up the ride a bit.

Plus there are other sweet rides at DL to marathon, like Indiana Jones

 

[flightdave82]

Maybe not a marathon, but you could certainly do it more than once a trip. For instance, riding it during the daytime and at nighttime will change up the ride a bit.

Plus there are other sweet rides at DL to marathon, like Indiana Jones

I know I can't wait!!!
It's the one ride I have yet (and refuse) to watch on youtube so that I can be surprised about.

Unfortunetly I couldn't hold back from watching RSR when it first opened lol

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I know I can't wait!!!
It's the one ride I have yet (and refuse) to watch on youtube so that I can be surprised about.

Unfortunetly I couldn't hold back from watching RSR when it first opened lol

Good. Indiana Jones will probably blow your mind, especially if you are a fan of the movies.

I wouldn't worry about having watched RSR, youtube does not do it justice at all

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I did not make a note, but I believe our get up and go power walk was at 7. So we were up pretty early. This was our morning view:

Hello Earl of Sandwich! You are delicious!

There were no cameras or pictures allowed on the walk, so we left them back in the room. We were all to meet in front of the DCA entrance in the GC hotel. There were about 10 of us on the walk and then we had 2 guides.

Let me stop here and tell everyone: this walk is not for the faint of heart. The walk is officially called the 'get up and go POWERWALK', and it really was. I wanted to walk up front by the guide and ask him questions, so I really had to move it move it.

It was really peaceful and nice zipping around the parks before anyone else was there. We saw a few CMs getting the park ready, but for the most part it was just us.


Here are some things we learned from our guide:

-DL will never build value hotels. The city won't grant them permits to build lower priced hotels. It sounds like it is a combination of all the other hotels in the area, and also the fact that if Disney can book the higher rated hotels, that is what the city wants. There are plans to put up more higher priced hotels in the near future though.

-There should be a new parking garage going up in the fall. I believe he said they wanted to use the old parking lot spaces for some of the new hotels or a new park (he was being kinda shifty about a 3rd gate, not sure if it was because he didn't know or couldn't say).

-When the Swiss Family Treehouse was fitted with the new Tarzan overlay, the tree had more attendance in that opening day than it had received for the whole past year. He told us in no uncertain terms that if the company doesn't think a ride is generating enough attendance, it will be updated/removed.

-the queue for IJ is so long because the ride is actually underneath the parking lot tram station in DD.


Those are the major ones I can remember right now. All told we walked 2 miles in half an hour. It was kind of exhausting.

We zigzagged all over the park. We went right from the GC's gate, we went into the redwood adventure area, we walked down and all around the Pier, we went through Cars land and Bug's land and down the streets of Hollywood.

We found a new area I never even knew was there, where Goofy's Sky School is. Apparently we have never gone over there. Kind of like how we didn't set foot in Bug's land our last, and first, visit.

After the walk was over we had worked up a pretty good appetite we found that Jazz Kitchen Express was about to open, so we walked around for a few minutes while we waited for them to open and then were the first customers of the day!!

We got breakfast to go and took it back to the hotel to eat.

I had to get a breakfast cherry icee of course

This was Brian's:

And mine:

It was pretty standard breakfast sandwich type fare. We weren't too excited about it, but it was good.

I put the Disneyland channel back on the tv and we started packing up and getting ready (and by that, I mean I started to take pictures of every boring detail of the room).

Coffee maker!!

I liked the coasters:

Our view again looking two ways:

Oooh and the carpet:

The fancy decoration thingie on the bed:

Look! It's Kashyyk from Star Tours!! On the TV!

I liked the dimensions of the sink:

Aww a mickey head:

My favorite bathroom picture one more time:

All during this time I was playing the headboard. (did I even need to say that, or was it understood?!)

Can I have these pillows?! Geez, if they would sell even half the pictures/fixtures in the rooms in the lobby I bet they'd make a lot of money.

Figment was hiding, pretty sure he wanted to stay and live there and be the room's official stuffed animal:

Then it was about 5 minutes until check out and we knew we needed to say goodbye:

Just keep on believing, headboard. The dream that you wish will come true.

 

[Daisybelle]

What a wonderful trip! I'm sorry you didn't get to add that extra morning though. What a bummer! You did so many cool things though. Some day we'll have to go see the WB lot, that looked realy cool. We love them Gilmore Girls!

 

[PHXscuba]

My BFF and I were just talking about the DLH today and she said her DH was about ready to take a break from Disneyland for awhile ... until they stayed at the DLH on their last visit! Now he's itching to go back too and they are getting APs!

PHXscuba

 

[gardengirl2790]

Thank you for sharing your trip! I appreciate all of the DLH pictures, and the pictures of the small details. We haven't stayed at the DLH since the remodel, and all of the small touches are really great to see. The WB tour looks like it would be a fun thing to do.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

What a wonderful trip! I'm sorry you didn't get to add that extra morning though. What a bummer! You did so many cool things though. Some day we'll have to go see the WB lot, that looked realy cool. We love them Gilmore Girls!

It did kind of sting at the time that we couldn't get those few additional early morning hours in the park, but instead we got to go on the power walk, and if we had gone in the park we definitely wouldn't have had time to make an extra stop on our drive to Anza-Borrego (spoilers for later).

If you love the Gilmore Girls you would love the tour! You get to see the entire Star's Hollow town center. I can't even remember how many scenes were filmed around that gazebo. If you do get to go, remember to ask your tour guide for any stories they may have about Gilmore Girls taping.

My BFF and I were just talking about the DLH today and she said her DH was about ready to take a break from Disneyland for awhile ... until they stayed at the DLH on their last visit! Now he's itching to go back too and they are getting APs!

PHXscuba

Hahaha I love that, the DLH as kind of a propaganda tool. Brian even said at the end of this trip that we should have done more nights, especially with our Dapper Day promotional price. Maybe next time...

Thank you for sharing your trip! I appreciate all of the DLH pictures, and the pictures of the small details. We haven't stayed at the DLH since the remodel, and all of the small touches are really great to see. The WB tour looks like it would be a fun thing to do.

I'm so glad people like all my pictures!! I kind of thought it'd be annoying to post so many, but I'm glad I did!

You know what this means, right?! You are going to have to take a visit back to the DLH to see all the new stuff!

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

So last year after our kazilionth trip to WDW to run the TOT 10 mile race we were thinking we might tone down the Disney trips.

I think that lasted for about 10 seconds. Since then we celebrated my birthday at DL (this trip report), decided we want to run the TOT 10 mile again and take Brian's mom and sister and last night I tentatively asked Brian if he'd like to do DL for Christmas this year. I was pretty shocked when he said yeah, if the money is there lets do it. Mind blown. We are also going to do a side trip to Vegas this time.

I realized this morning that I am going to get to celebrate all the best holidays at a Disney park!! Halloween in WDW, then Christmas in DL


Oh, I did hedge my bets last night kinda. I told Brian I wouldn't buy any more vinylmations until the October trip if we could go to DL for Christmas. I have been buying rather a lot lately. But oh well, that is a sacrifice I am willing to make

 

[caffingdu]

Interesting inside stories from the power walk guide! I didn't know about a lot of that stuff. And ya, I wouldn't be surprised if they tore down the Tarzan Tree House, or brought it back to its original Swiss Family state.

About the hotel building and possible 3rd gate stuff that you heard from the guide (if you're interested in this stuff): If you go to Google Earth or Maps or something, and look at the corner of Katella and Harbor at DL, you'll see a giant parking lot (which used to be strawberry field until a few years ago when Disney bought them out. I guess it was one of the last holdovers of when Anaheim was all fruit fields before Disney came to town). I hear that, if they were to have the 3rd gate, this is where they would build it (and that's why the bought the land to begin with).

And if you look just north of this parking lot, you'll see an under-performing shopping mall, which I hear Disney wants to buy out to build hotels and/or parking structures.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Interesting inside stories from the power walk guide! I didn't know about a lot of that stuff. And ya, I wouldn't be surprised if they tore down the Tarzan Tree House, or brought it back to its original Swiss Family state.

About the hotel building and possible 3rd gate stuff that you heard from the guide (if you're interested in this stuff): If you go to Google Earth or Maps or something, and look at the corner of Katella and Harbor at DL, you'll see a giant parking lot (which used to be strawberry field until a few years ago when Disney bought them out. I guess it was one of the last holdovers of when Anaheim was all fruit fields before Disney came to town). I hear that, if they were to have the 3rd gate, this is where they would build it (and that's why the bought the land to begin with).

And if you look just north of this parking lot, you'll see an under-performing shopping mall, which I hear Disney wants to buy out to build hotels and/or parking structures.

He didn't really specify what areas Disney was looking at for new hotels or parks. He just stressed to us that Disney had access to plenty of land to accomplish this. What my thought was is if they build a new parking garage, they might get rid of the rest of the surface lots and that gives a lot of space right there.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Then I frantically took pictures on the walk out:

I make no apologies for my frantic, last minute picture taking. I left so many pictures out of this trip report, I am not joking, I have a series of pictures of the sidewalk leading to the parking lot. They are seriously just pictures of the sidewalk and surrounding area. I will spare you and not post them.

I was kidding. I'm going to show them.

See? This is what I like to call the: 'I am about to leave this place and who knows if I'll ever be back so I have to document every single step with photographic evidence' disorder. I am pretty sure all DISers have this disorder.

Buuuuuut we were just loading up the car and were going to run back and do a last minute gift shop hunt and pick up some lunch! I totally got you, you thought we were leaving

We went into the Fantasy tower for the gift ship and I took pictures of all the paintings I want:

I love gift shop decorations:

We didn't have very far to go in DD to get our lunch:

Upon entering, we learned that EOS was now serving the Holiday sandwich year round, so we could get one.

I am not sure what I think about this. Yes, I think the Holiday sandwich is the best thing ever. But it was also special because it was only available a short time each year. I am not sure if having it available every day of the year is a good thing, it takes away some of the specialness.

Philosophical musings aside, we got one, of course. We also got a different sandwich to try, I can't for the life of me remember which sandwich it was. I then picked up some macaroni salad and was looking around for my favorite, the special brownie sandwich cookie things. If you've never had one (do it, immediately!) it is comprised of two brownies with delicious icing in between. I didn't see any out so I had to ask specifically. We were eating lunch pretty early so it turns out they were still baking in the back. They were able to package one up for me and I was suuuper pleased. The previous night we had stopped to grab one for me to have as a snack, but they were sold out. I'm pretty sure they sell out within an hour or 2 of being made, whether its DL or WDW.

We each had half of the holiday for now, and were going to share the other sandwich in the car later.

It was very delicious. But we were eating it in March. Which took some of the special holidayness away (I'm not joking it kind of did).

Love these golden bricks:

I probably had 2 bites of the macaroni salad and then was sick of it. No one is surprised by this.

I decided to save my brownie cookie of wonder for later.

We said goodbye to EOS:

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

We should have been hitting the road but I convinced Brian to let me go in D Street one more time to look at the vinyls.

Who can walk by the lego store and not take pictures?!

Not me, obviously.

This is where we'd had breakfast, except when we ate it was ghost town tumbleweed empty besides us.

I will tell the truth here, I wasn't impressed with the vinylmation selection during this trip. During my WDW trip (which was about a 2 week trip) I bought at least 1 vinlymation a day and could have bought more. This trip, I think I bought 2. I traded several, but could not find many sets I wanted to purchase. I ended up grabbing a Park Starz. It was my first Park Starz purchase ever. I was really hoping to get the small world boy or the tiki bird. I ended up with the Haunted Mansion bride, which was still pretty cool.

If you are wondering the difference, vinylmations are always in the shape of Mickey, and Park Starz are just in their natural shapes. Except for Figment...who for some reason is bowling pin Figment.

Weird huh? If he looked like a normal dragon and not a bowling pin I'd want him, since I do enjoy Figment.

Ok, side tangent over.

Time to get moving back to the car in the DL hotel parking lot.

Buh bye DL Hotel, it was wonderful while it lasted

We were headed to Anza-Borrego for our national park/camping portion of the trip. Our day in Joshua Tree last time had been so successful we wanted to try another park. Originally we were going to go north to the Sequoia National Park, but the weather was not cooperating and it was cold and snowy there, so we chose Anza-Borrego instead. It may or may not be a coincidence that Anza-Borrego is the horseback riding scene in Soarin'.

On the way we needed to get a fuel supply for the camping cook stove so we made a stop at Target and REI.

Brian wanted to check their clearance winter coats. I discovered that I love REI. My 2 favorite clothing items are jackets and shoes. My favorite accessory is bags...and this place had all the styles that I love.

Brian didn't find anything, but I ended up with a coat and a bag.

We also made plans to stop at another REI near San Diego later in the trip.

Side note: why doesn't Columbus have an REI? There is one near my parents in Pittsburgh that we just recently went to, and yeah, I may have purchased another coat and 2 pairs of shoes (then another pair of shoes online)...I had a coupon, ok.

I was the driver, so at this point I reminded Brian that it'd be nice if he could take some pictures while driving. I'm sure this next part comes as a surprise to no one. So he picks up the camera right then and there and takes about 15 pictures in the next 2 minutes of the highway and the side of the highway. There was no sarcastic intent or malice to this, I am quite sure that is honestly what he thought I wanted.

He did manage to get this one which has what I like to call 'highway flowers'. In Ohio we only have trash and the random dead animal on the sides of our roads, and California gets lovely and vibrant wildflowers. Not fair.

*If you are not sure what I wanted, I wanted him to be ready to take pictures of anything interesting or unusual or pretty as we drove.

Example:

random, but still cool, helicopter flying along the beach.

About an hour into the drive there was an area to pull off the road and take scenic pictures:

I decided to spend my time taking artistic shots of these seagulls:

And then Brian spotted something. If you look real close in that last picture you can see it. One of these things is not like the other...

SQUIRREL!!!! <channeling some Griswold's Christmas Vacation>

What in the world are you doing there, squirrel? Your not a seagull. Ridiculous.

Then we got to see the helicopter land by this nuclear plant thing.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Then we were back on our way. About half an hour after this stop, I saw a brown sign for a 'historical place of interest'. I thought to myself, gee, I like history (I was a history major for my undergrad, then decided to be an idiot and go to law school) and I like places of interest.

Brian agreed the only logical thing to do would be to see what this 'place of interest' was.

So we followed the signs and found this:

Mission San Luis Rey de Francia

Here is a blurb from wikipedia:

a former Spanish mission in the present-day city of Oceanside, California. The mission was founded on June 13, 1798 by Padre Fermín Lasuén, and was the eighteenth of the Spanish missions established in California. Named for Saint Louis, the mission lent its name to the Luiseño tribe of Mission Indians.

The current church, built in 1811, is the third church on this location.[15] It is a National Historic Landmark, for its pristine example of a Spanish mission church complex.[14][16][17] Today the mission complex functions as a parish church of the Diocese of San Diego as well as a museum and retreat center.

These flowers looked amazing against the white backdrop of the mission:

We wandered around the grounds for a bit and paid a small fee ($5?) to go into a small museum inside.

Yeah yeah so I took 5 million pictures and I feel like you need to see them all. I love this type of architecture and thought all the landscaping was gorgeous. I would like to have a house one day that is kind of built like this, that is built in a hollowed out rectanglular shape and the inside is open air and has a garden and stuff.

That big tree in the right hand side is apparently the oldest living pepper tree in the US.

They had some very impressive old books in the museum:

This is one of the last known documents that Abraham Lincoln signed before his assassination

A little model of what the whole mission looks like (I love models):

This door stopper is adorable:

Looooved the landscaping and the look of all the flowers against the white walls.