Dave Dizney
<font color=blue>Super-Duper organized Ultimate Di
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2004
- Messages
- 460
Friday
After such a long travel/park day, we chose to go to California Adventure our first full day since it opened at 10am. Now, if it was any other trip, we would have been there at least 30 minutes before opening, but we were so beat, we got there after the opening. Upon entering, there was just a slight Disney/MGM Studios-like atmosphere to the park especially in the Hollywood Pictures back lot.
We were prepared to be disappointed in California Adventure based on all the online chatter. Sure, Tower of Terror is not as good as the one in Florida, Paradise Pier may too carnival-like, and there needs to be a few more major attractions before it can compete with other theme parks but we found the park to be easily distinguished as a Disney park, immersive and well themed, and quite enjoyable.
What was surprising to me was how easy it was to get on to Tower of Terror. We never needed a fast pass and if Im counting correctly, we rode it 7 times. Soarin Over California was fantastic! Grizzly River Run in our opinion was a better ride than Kali River in the Animal Kingdom, even though the rafts are smaller. Muppets and Tough to be a Bug shows were clones of their Florida counterparts. Our biggest disappointment was not getting a shot at California Screamin because of the accident a few weeks before (BTW, a cast member told us that the California authorities had already performed their check of the ride, and that the expectation was that it would open by the end of the month but what do they know?). Most of the rides in Paradise Pier are more distractions than major attractions, but we still had a good time on each (though we didnt smell oranges in the Stinger).
By far, the best experience for all of us was the Aladdin musical at the Hyperion Theater. Our middle son is very active in theater, and though this show didnt match the quality of Broadways Beast and Lion King, it surpassed any in-park show (and its hard for me to admit, it even surpassed my favorite the old Hunchback show at MGM). I had read all about the special effects and show elements beforehand, but it still was mighty impressive. So impressive, we saw it two times in two days!
We had lunch in the Mexican area of the Farmers Market OK, but no big woop. We had priority seating for dinner at Ariels Grotto for dinner. I wasnt sure how the princess theme would play out with my two older sons and now near-teen daughter, but it was one of our trip highlights. Between us we had meatloaf & mashed potatos (very good), fish & chips, salmon all at fixed prices that included choice of soup or salad, entrée, and dessert (the chocolate cake was wonderful!). The princesses were beautiful and entertained all of us in character. Chief among them was Mulan who had played around with our middle son earlier in the day, and Belle who actually pulled the same son out to dance with her (he had just finished playing the Beast in a local production so it was a fantasy for him on a number of levels).
When the day was over, we jumped out of California Adventure early enough to snag a place at the waterfront for the late show of Fanstmic. Though Ive seen it so many times at both parks, the Disneyland version continues to be so exciting and the superior adaptation. We then did some shopping and finally took our long walk home and retired for the night around midnight.
Saturday
This was our selected one early entry day. I wasnt sure that everyone was going to get up in time, but we made it. We chose to attempt to save our legs and drive to the park and take the tram in and out. Big mistake! The walk was much easier than the wait for the tram, the traffic, and the amount of time spent at the end of the day.
Early entry is great we jumped on Space Mountain, Matterhorn, and all the dark rides in Fantasyland before regular admission got into the park. It was good to see Mr. Toad again and for the first time my kids fell apart laughing over the strange ending to that ride. We did the rest of the Mountains and Indy before 11:00 and then took in a family favorite lunch at the Golden Horseshoe. That show continues to amaze me in its humor and entertainment after all these years. I keep asking myself if we REALLY want to spend the time there (Im not a big country music fan), and Im ALWAYS glad we do!
Then, four of us VMK-crazed people went to the VMK booth with our Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Adventureland brochures filled out, plus our online Tomorrowland and game award certificates (we had obtained the answers here on the DIS before we left home and were quickly able to get them filled out). On the way, we bought the gold Mickey ears and brought that code, too. We got all our code cards, and then went into Innovations to make our born-in characters and gloat to other players that we were really at Disneyland! Finally we went to the central hub by the Walt and Mickey partners statue and did our rendition of the closing dance.
After a little more shopping, the park got crazy crowded. We vacated and went back to California Adventure and did a couple more TofTs, Soarin, Tough to be a bug, and Aladdin. We returned back to the Magic Kingdom in time to make our reservation for Blue Bayou and recognize as soon as we opened the menu we had made a cardinal mistake Monty Cristo sandwiches are only served for lunch. My wife was super bummed. The service and ambience were superior, but the menu was only fair maybe because we had missed a favorite meal my wife remembers growing up.
Finally, we staked out a place on Main Street for Remember.. fireworks. I had heard the music while touring a couple of days before and commented, Oh, great, a knock-off of Wishes! Though the theme song beginning and end were lifted from Wishes, the fireworks show was unbelievable! They really outdid themselves on this one. And though I hate to admit it, the show topped Wishes and did things the World could never do without a Matterhorn. It was beyond our expectations and so were the crowds! I mean, Ive been to Disneyland on a crowded day, but this was insane! There were no food carts anywhere, no people with light-up roses, and crazy traffic patterns. We wanted to ride Indy one last time after the fireworks, but the in traffic pattern was only through Frontierland and the out went through Adventureland. It took us 20 minutes to get from the hub to the ride which was only a few hundred feet away! We finished with a few more rides, and bid our short-but-wonderful trip to the east-side, goodbye.
We waited for the tram and watched human beings become angry, insane monsters! Meltdown was so thick you could have spread it like peanut butter. People pushed in front of us, and since we were a group of five we had to jump off once because people pushed on so hard, we couldnt get us all on the same tram. It taught us that though it was a longer walk, the walk beat the tram hands down and would have saved us ten bucks!
The rest of the story is that we got up at 3:00am to catch our cheap flights home. One of our flights was on North West airline which was going through their own crisis at the time, but thank goodness, didnt delay us.
The lessons learned:
California Adventure is a great park dont tell anyone, it will get crowded. Give it a couple years with some improvements and it will be in the same class as the Florida Studios.
As we said in our show get there early! Get there early! And did we mention, get there early?
Always go with a plan (I know, we got flamed for this on TV but it still helps even veterans)
Fast Passes are the only way to be able to ride everything you want in a short amount of time. Fast pass is a strange thing you love them when you have them, and you hate those who have them when you dont
When the crowds are thick, buy yourself a cookie and remind yourself where you are. There are some rude people out there do whatever you can not to become one of them.
The Genie in Aladdin was crazy fun.
Monty Cristo sandwiches are not available for dinner at the Blue Bayou
VMK codes are designed to eat up your park time. Its genius! If you do the research ahead of time and get the codes before hand, you can perform your own VMK virtual Fast Pass!
Never do the schedule we did if you are old or have little children. Im old and it was about my limit of no sleep and endurance but what a way to go!
If you stay at a Good Neighbor hotel, walk! It beats the parking and driving.
Disneyland looked great! Fifty years have been kind to the old friend!
Thanks for all your comments and assistance! Now, to start planning our Spring Break back in Orlando! One more kid to graduate and take to Disney World!
After such a long travel/park day, we chose to go to California Adventure our first full day since it opened at 10am. Now, if it was any other trip, we would have been there at least 30 minutes before opening, but we were so beat, we got there after the opening. Upon entering, there was just a slight Disney/MGM Studios-like atmosphere to the park especially in the Hollywood Pictures back lot.
We were prepared to be disappointed in California Adventure based on all the online chatter. Sure, Tower of Terror is not as good as the one in Florida, Paradise Pier may too carnival-like, and there needs to be a few more major attractions before it can compete with other theme parks but we found the park to be easily distinguished as a Disney park, immersive and well themed, and quite enjoyable.
What was surprising to me was how easy it was to get on to Tower of Terror. We never needed a fast pass and if Im counting correctly, we rode it 7 times. Soarin Over California was fantastic! Grizzly River Run in our opinion was a better ride than Kali River in the Animal Kingdom, even though the rafts are smaller. Muppets and Tough to be a Bug shows were clones of their Florida counterparts. Our biggest disappointment was not getting a shot at California Screamin because of the accident a few weeks before (BTW, a cast member told us that the California authorities had already performed their check of the ride, and that the expectation was that it would open by the end of the month but what do they know?). Most of the rides in Paradise Pier are more distractions than major attractions, but we still had a good time on each (though we didnt smell oranges in the Stinger).
By far, the best experience for all of us was the Aladdin musical at the Hyperion Theater. Our middle son is very active in theater, and though this show didnt match the quality of Broadways Beast and Lion King, it surpassed any in-park show (and its hard for me to admit, it even surpassed my favorite the old Hunchback show at MGM). I had read all about the special effects and show elements beforehand, but it still was mighty impressive. So impressive, we saw it two times in two days!
We had lunch in the Mexican area of the Farmers Market OK, but no big woop. We had priority seating for dinner at Ariels Grotto for dinner. I wasnt sure how the princess theme would play out with my two older sons and now near-teen daughter, but it was one of our trip highlights. Between us we had meatloaf & mashed potatos (very good), fish & chips, salmon all at fixed prices that included choice of soup or salad, entrée, and dessert (the chocolate cake was wonderful!). The princesses were beautiful and entertained all of us in character. Chief among them was Mulan who had played around with our middle son earlier in the day, and Belle who actually pulled the same son out to dance with her (he had just finished playing the Beast in a local production so it was a fantasy for him on a number of levels).
When the day was over, we jumped out of California Adventure early enough to snag a place at the waterfront for the late show of Fanstmic. Though Ive seen it so many times at both parks, the Disneyland version continues to be so exciting and the superior adaptation. We then did some shopping and finally took our long walk home and retired for the night around midnight.
Saturday
This was our selected one early entry day. I wasnt sure that everyone was going to get up in time, but we made it. We chose to attempt to save our legs and drive to the park and take the tram in and out. Big mistake! The walk was much easier than the wait for the tram, the traffic, and the amount of time spent at the end of the day.
Early entry is great we jumped on Space Mountain, Matterhorn, and all the dark rides in Fantasyland before regular admission got into the park. It was good to see Mr. Toad again and for the first time my kids fell apart laughing over the strange ending to that ride. We did the rest of the Mountains and Indy before 11:00 and then took in a family favorite lunch at the Golden Horseshoe. That show continues to amaze me in its humor and entertainment after all these years. I keep asking myself if we REALLY want to spend the time there (Im not a big country music fan), and Im ALWAYS glad we do!
Then, four of us VMK-crazed people went to the VMK booth with our Fantasyland, Frontierland, and Adventureland brochures filled out, plus our online Tomorrowland and game award certificates (we had obtained the answers here on the DIS before we left home and were quickly able to get them filled out). On the way, we bought the gold Mickey ears and brought that code, too. We got all our code cards, and then went into Innovations to make our born-in characters and gloat to other players that we were really at Disneyland! Finally we went to the central hub by the Walt and Mickey partners statue and did our rendition of the closing dance.
After a little more shopping, the park got crazy crowded. We vacated and went back to California Adventure and did a couple more TofTs, Soarin, Tough to be a bug, and Aladdin. We returned back to the Magic Kingdom in time to make our reservation for Blue Bayou and recognize as soon as we opened the menu we had made a cardinal mistake Monty Cristo sandwiches are only served for lunch. My wife was super bummed. The service and ambience were superior, but the menu was only fair maybe because we had missed a favorite meal my wife remembers growing up.
Finally, we staked out a place on Main Street for Remember.. fireworks. I had heard the music while touring a couple of days before and commented, Oh, great, a knock-off of Wishes! Though the theme song beginning and end were lifted from Wishes, the fireworks show was unbelievable! They really outdid themselves on this one. And though I hate to admit it, the show topped Wishes and did things the World could never do without a Matterhorn. It was beyond our expectations and so were the crowds! I mean, Ive been to Disneyland on a crowded day, but this was insane! There were no food carts anywhere, no people with light-up roses, and crazy traffic patterns. We wanted to ride Indy one last time after the fireworks, but the in traffic pattern was only through Frontierland and the out went through Adventureland. It took us 20 minutes to get from the hub to the ride which was only a few hundred feet away! We finished with a few more rides, and bid our short-but-wonderful trip to the east-side, goodbye.
We waited for the tram and watched human beings become angry, insane monsters! Meltdown was so thick you could have spread it like peanut butter. People pushed in front of us, and since we were a group of five we had to jump off once because people pushed on so hard, we couldnt get us all on the same tram. It taught us that though it was a longer walk, the walk beat the tram hands down and would have saved us ten bucks!
The rest of the story is that we got up at 3:00am to catch our cheap flights home. One of our flights was on North West airline which was going through their own crisis at the time, but thank goodness, didnt delay us.
The lessons learned:
California Adventure is a great park dont tell anyone, it will get crowded. Give it a couple years with some improvements and it will be in the same class as the Florida Studios.
As we said in our show get there early! Get there early! And did we mention, get there early?
Always go with a plan (I know, we got flamed for this on TV but it still helps even veterans)
Fast Passes are the only way to be able to ride everything you want in a short amount of time. Fast pass is a strange thing you love them when you have them, and you hate those who have them when you dont
When the crowds are thick, buy yourself a cookie and remind yourself where you are. There are some rude people out there do whatever you can not to become one of them.
The Genie in Aladdin was crazy fun.
Monty Cristo sandwiches are not available for dinner at the Blue Bayou
VMK codes are designed to eat up your park time. Its genius! If you do the research ahead of time and get the codes before hand, you can perform your own VMK virtual Fast Pass!
Never do the schedule we did if you are old or have little children. Im old and it was about my limit of no sleep and endurance but what a way to go!
If you stay at a Good Neighbor hotel, walk! It beats the parking and driving.
Disneyland looked great! Fifty years have been kind to the old friend!
Thanks for all your comments and assistance! Now, to start planning our Spring Break back in Orlando! One more kid to graduate and take to Disney World!
isnyeland 8 times and WDW once and I have never heard of this.
