Disneyland Resort from a WDW perspective

[GatorChris]

While I did enjoy AK I spent the whole time comparing the live animal part to San Diego Zoo. I was disappointed in AK from the live animal aspect. I was expecting so much more.

If you are at DLR and want an awesome animal experience the SD Zoo is the place to go. I don't think anything like AK would be very popular due to the proximity to the SD zoo.

I'm going to side with 999 on this one. In November of 2013, we weren't able to go to WDW as was our tradition. So we thought we'd hit DL for 4 days, and throw in a day at the San Diego Zoo since we wouldn't get an AK park for our trip. After that trip, here's our thoughts. SDZ doesn't even come close to the AK. NOT EVEN CLOSE!!! It's small, the animals are in cages, there aren't any great rides, and no shows that can compare. While I love San Diego, and while I'm sure the zoo is considered world class (not to mention cheap to get into), the AK in Orlando is in a league of it's own. It's an experience - not just a place to see a lion and an elephant behind cyclone fences.

 

[GatorChris]

To the person who mentioned the fireworks, remember dreams come true is the best fireworks show ever, imo, I wasn't a fan of the Christmas fireworks at DL and not a fan of whatever one was at MK when we went.

Did we just find the one person in the universe who doesn't like "Wishes"? Man, that fireworks show is incredible! I can't even fathom how someone could see it and think it's anything but amazing.

As for Remember, I was really hoping to see it on our next trip as our last two trips have been during Christmas. The youtube vids look great. Unfortunately, DL execs decided to pull the plug on it and replace it with the cheapest fireworks they could find during this celebration of refurbs. I live for Disney night time entertainment, but I'll probably be skipping it in a few weeks.

 

[HydroGuy]

We were at Disneyland/California Adventure this past weekend. Visited Disney World four times before that between 2004-14, and before that visited Disneyland twice when we lived in California. My thought based on the more recent visits is that the Disney World experience is vastly superior to Disneyland. Disney World, even when ride waits are longer than at Disneyland, feels less crowded. The rides aren't vastly different - some better in FL, some better in CA -- but Disneyland simply can't compete with the number of things to do and see at 4 different parks, such as shows, restaurants, etc. For example, California Adventure is a great park, and some of the rides like California Screamin' are superior to anything at Disney World. That said, Animal Kingdom has Expedition Everest, several very good shows, the Safari ride, two great trails, etc. and I think the overall experience is at least as good if not better. Add in Epcot and DHS and it is hard for Disneyland to compete. And there really can't be any dispute that Disney World is much more immersive. Disneyland does a very good job of screening the outside world but can't totally do so. And the area immediately surrounding Disneyland isn't awful but isn't great.

You make some great points. And as you have drawn the box defining "vastly superior" you are entirely correct.

However...

Others can and do draw different boxes. Some of those boxes include:

• weather
• minimal need for transportation so that time spent in the parks is maximized and ease of taking breaks
  
• quality of high end shows (World of Color, Fantasmic, fireworks shows, Aladdin)
• investment in new experiences (such as CarsLand at DLR) vs. investment in infrastructure like Magic Bands and FP+
• other activities outside the Disney resort boundaries such as Hollywood, white water rafting, snow skiing, mountains, deserts, awesome national parks (Yosemite/Sequoia/Grand Canyon), Las Vegas, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Since I personally have never treated any Disney trip as a "vacation" then much of the WDW advantages do not have as strong an appeal for me. With that said, WDW does indeed have many cool things DLR just cannot do. So I continue to love both of them somewhat equally - but for different reasons!

 

[GatorChris]

Others can and do draw different boxes. Some of those boxes include:

• investment in new experiences (such as CarsLand at DLR) vs. investment in infrastructure like Magic Bands and FP+

Since I personally have never treated any Disney trip as a "vacation" then much of the WDW advantages do not have as strong an appeal for me. With that said, WDW does indeed have many cool things DLR just cannot do. So I continue to love both of them somewhat equally - but for different reasons!

Never treated Disney as a vacation? I guess that's why I love WDW so much is because it truly feels like vacation when you're there. So immersive. That said, the bullet I left in the quote is a big reason why we're making DL our vacation home for now. While the new Fantasyland at WDW is appealing, it doesn't compare with Cars Land. And the whole infrastructure thing just made me mad. At least they're working now on a new ride at Epcot and hopefully thinking about better live entertainment options than what they've added recently at Epcot.

 

[ClaraOswald]

Did we just find the one person in the universe who doesn't like "Wishes"? Man, that fireworks show is incredible! I can't even fathom how someone could see it and think it's anything but amazing.

As for Remember, I was really hoping to see it on our next trip as our last two trips have been during Christmas. The youtube vids look great. Unfortunately, DL execs decided to pull the plug on it and replace it with the cheapest fireworks they could find during this celebration of refurbs. I live for Disney night time entertainment, but I'll probably be skipping it in a few weeks.

I wasn't into Wishes at all.

 

[GatorChris]

I wasn't into Wishes at all.

If your not into Wishes, then you're probably not into Remember. Remember rips directly from Wishes from the beginning and ending, only instead of referencing Disney movies in the middle, it's a recap of your day in the park. Both shows are very similar. I'm guessing you saw it before you saw Wishes, based on your park history.

 

[ClaraOswald]

I love Remember. Mainly because I love all of the Disneyland attractions stuff. I am sad that it's gone.

 

[DahliaRW]

Did we just find the one person in the universe who doesn't like "Wishes"? Man, that fireworks show is incredible! I can't even fathom how someone could see it and think it's anything but amazing.

As for Remember, I was really hoping to see it on our next trip as our last two trips have been during Christmas. The youtube vids look great. Unfortunately, DL execs decided to pull the plug on it and replace it with the cheapest fireworks they could find during this celebration of refurbs. I live for Disney night time entertainment, but I'll probably be skipping it in a few weeks.

I didn't say I didn't like it, I said I wasn't all that impressed. Wishes was ok. But I loved the lighting and "tour" around DLR that goes with RDCT. It's just that much more impressive in theming and implementation, IMO. I'be seen RDCT a number of times, Wishes and the holiday fireworks I've never felt the need to see more than once. I hope that the new show is better than RDCT, because then it would be truly amazing.

 

[GatorChris]

I love Remember. Mainly because I love all of the Disneyland attractions stuff. I am sad that it's gone.

I'm sad, too. Only got to see some videos of it. This next trip was supposed to be my chance, and then they do something stupid like bring back Fantasy. Disappointing.

 

[ClaraOswald]

Well, Fantasy is only temporary. Maybe the 60th show will be good.

 

[figment_jii]

If your not into Wishes, then you're probably not into Remember. Remember rips directly from Wishes from the beginning and ending, only instead of referencing Disney movies in the middle, it's a recap of your day in the park. Both shows are very similar. I'm guessing you saw it before you saw Wishes, based on your park history.

I don't completely agree agree with this...

I didn't say I didn't like it, I said I wasn't all that impressed. Wishes was ok. But I loved the lighting and "tour" around DLR that goes with RDCT. It's just that much more impressive in theming and implementation, IMO.

Me too! I liked Wishes well enough, but I like RDCT better. Overall, I've liked DL's fireworks shows (Halloween Screams, RDCT, Magical, Believe, Believe Holiday) better than WDW's (Wishes, Holiday Wishes, HalloWishes).

 

[Chuckers]

One thing DL has over WDW is they change their parades and fireworks shows almost yearly. Wishes has been around for at least 10 years. DL caters to the locals much more than WDW. WDW makes their money on the tourist who visits once a year. DL has to update things so the locals will keep coming back.

Also, the DL Disney Bubble is there... It just has a hard stop at the edge of the parks. I spent 4 years as a DL AP and I have been there over 200 times. I LOVE DL.... But I also love WDW for different reasons. And that's okay. I think I am taking a break from WDW until they update some more. Epcot, HS, and AK are getting stale and are not worth the effort to get around in. DL tries to keep things more interesting and they're both easier parks to traverse. Plus, DTD is a lot easier to get to at DL.

This year is DLP for me and next year, I hope to be able to catch the end of the 60th celebration.

 

[CAmommy]

Sorry, I disagree about Buzz Lightyear. We actually greatly disliked the one at WDW. We felt that the guns were nearly impossible to maneuver, especially for younger passengers. The only positive (for my 4 year old!) was that zurg wasn't huge and scary like at Disneyland.

Also, sure, WDW felt like you were far removed from reality, but it wasn't worth the long bus rides everywhere to get that feeling. Small World was a HUGE disappointment and Space Mountain nearly gave me a migraine!

I guess you could say I'm happy I'm a Californian.

 

[MissKIA]

Update, someone sent me a video link to the Remember Dreams show and it is better than Wishes. So disappointed the show was not playing during the holidays.

Yes Remember Dreams Come True is SO MUCH better than Wishes! I hope it's not gone for good. It's probably my favourite thing between all of the parks.

I love both WDW and DLR. They are the same, yet different. I think I prefer WDW as a whole, but I prefer the individual parks at DLR. Either way I'm happy just to be at Disney, no matter which one it is!

 

[TexasErin]

You make some great points. And as you have drawn the box defining "vastly superior" you are entirely correct.

However...

Others can and do draw different boxes. Some of those boxes include:

• weather
• minimal need for transportation so that time spent in the parks is maximized and ease of taking breaks
  
• quality of high end shows (World of Color, Fantasmic, fireworks shows, Aladdin)
• investment in new experiences (such as CarsLand at DLR) vs. investment in infrastructure like Magic Bands and FP+
• other activities outside the Disney resort boundaries such as Hollywood, white water rafting, snow skiing, mountains, deserts, awesome national parks (Yosemite/Sequoia/Grand Canyon), Las Vegas, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Since I personally have never treated any Disney trip as a "vacation" then much of the WDW advantages do not have as strong an appeal for me. With that said, WDW does indeed have many cool things DLR just cannot do. So I continue to love both of them somewhat equally - but for different reasons!

The first four bullets are the reason we are returning to DLR instead of WDW. We have been to WDW at least 15 times and went to DLR for the first time last summer. Our last trip to WDW was in 2013, so we haven't been since FP+.

But WDW is just so much work and so much more hassle involved than DLR:

• FP+ (which again we haven't tried yet),
• daily rain & high humidity,
• MASSIVE TRANSPORTATION TIME & STANDING ON BUSSES OR BROKEN-DOWN MONORAILS OR DIRTY BOATS

Plus DLR has:

• WOC
• Carsland
• The nostalgia of Walt having walked DL

Although to appease DS (12), we will go to WDW 2016. And I do want to get to ride Snow White's mine train (whatever it's called, lol, since I haven't been since it opened).

 

[singingpixie]

My Disney Park experience is a bit odd- I'm a east coaster who grew up (in the 80s and 90s) with grandparents in SoCal- so we took pretty much annual daytrips to Disneyland until I was 9. When I was 10, we took a week vacation to WDW. I took one more day trip to DL at about 13, and a couple more trips to WDW in the years since. I've always (since I was old enough to think of such things, at least) had a vague feeling of disappointment after my WDW trips- like somehow I feel like I should have more fun than I really had.

I'd always attributed it to getting older and more jaded- that Disney was great as a kid, but as an adult it's more about appreciating things done really well (theming, etc) and dealing with the drawbacks. As I get ready for another quickie trip to Disneyland (the first in 16 years) and am doing some reading about DL vs. WDW, I wonder if some of what I'm feeling is more concrete- if I am actually just more of a Disneyland person than I am geared toward WDW!

WDW often feels too saccharine for me; I have a hard time buying into the whole "Disney bubble" idea, and I don't necessarily want a polished version of the real world when I could instead visit real places with all their complexity. I appreciate Disney from a theatrical design perspective- how much they commit to a story and the thoughtfulness that goes into the details. I like Epcot because it's a pleasant place to stroll and have dinner and a few beverages- not because it transports me halfway around the world. I like the Animal Kingdom because of the storytelling of the architecture, landscape, shows, animal enclosures, etc. (For the record, purely for the animal experience, the SD Zoo can't be beat!). I just really don't feel like I fully fit with the target audience at WDW. I don't want to be transported- I want to appreciate all the work that went into making it a good show.

At DL, if my memory and research serves, it just seems like a much more no-BS experience. Maybe because it's more of a locals' park, more of it is geared toward an audience that might be in on the joke. It's densely packed with experiences and detail, without as much focus on convincing park-goers that they are princes and princesses or needing to be pampered or whatever. And while I certainly appreciate some of the benefits which the sheer size of the WDW resort provides (a variety of beautiful resort hotels, lovely natural areas), the trade-off with the ease of access to the parks, hopping, etc, does not make it worth ages-long waits in the humid sun or bus rides smushed up against a sweaty stranger.

Anyway, I'm excited to be able to report back- but it seems like at this point in my life, I may be a much better fit for the resort that's a half-day's plane flight away, instead of just a drive!

 

[Chuckers]

MK was built with crowds in mind, it's not a bad thing, it's just different. You just don't have the intimacy that DL has and it's especially evident in Fantasyland. In the MK, the rides in Fantasyland have huge awnings proclaiming what they are and they feel like they're the size of a Kmart. The rides in DL Fantasyland really fit the facade of the land. There's no jarring signage and they're right next to each other. Fantasyland in DL really feels like a magical town. That's where the "Disney Bubble" really lies for me.

 

[GoBears 1980]

So many interesting thoughts from people and some very different perspectives based on their exposure to the parks. For someone who thinks outside the "bubble" is ugly now, ought to see what it was like when it prompted Walt to think of a place like Disney World, where he could control everything. Here is Harbor Blvd circa 1960.

http://www.letthedogin.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/harborblvd.jpg

Here is how the same stretch looks today.

http://goo.gl/maps/JixiH

It is amazing how nice it looks compared to the "old days".

As to the person who thinks you can buy the hotels for "$10-15 million" has zero concept of So Cal land prices. The 300 room Anaheim Plaza just sold for $47 million ($157,00 per room); with that as a baseline, do the calculations on buying the hotels on Harbor Blvd & Katella. Ever since the fiasco of Hiroshi Fujishige, TWDC has been very low key in trying to force sales.

And don't blame Imagineering for DCA, that was all Eisner sans Frank Wells. With no Wells to whisper in his ear, Eisner was clueless. Tony Baxter almost bit his tongue off trying to not tell off the executive committee once they rejected WDI's ideas in favor of the out of the box rides. All of Baxter's predictions came true and TWDC has to spend double to halfway fix the disaster. Thank God for John Lasseter.


As to my Disney experience (NOT "MDE"!, just my experience) I grew up mostly in Orange County CA so trips to Disneyland were frequent. My father took the family on an early Christmas present to WDW in December 1971. That was the first of 44 (at last count) visits to WDW. No, I am not completely nuts, at least 25 of the trips were business trips/conferences to Orlando where I sneaked in a couple of days at WDW, but the rest were family vacations of one sort or another. As to Disneyland, I started there as a Cast Member at Christmas 1974 in Fantasy on Parade and transferred to operations starting Easter 1975 and stayed through Easter 1985. (PS, as a CM I would never, ever have said "have a magical day". What a completely trite, canned, automaton phrase that is. Smiling and pleasant, genuine conversation is much better than "did you want fries with that" like speech.)

After leaving the cast I became an annual pass holder (don't hate, I never start sentences with "I am an annual pass holder and.....") so this year is my 30th. My last WDW trip was fall of 2014 (on a conference trip) so I feel pretty up to date there as well. MDE (the other one) threatens to cut my number of trips to WDW. The idea that I have to decide 60 days out which rides I want to go on which day and which restaurants (ADRs) to eat at and then mesh the two is borderline insanity.

I would be very unhappy if DCA now became EPCOT lite. I would have loved WestCot (and Discovery Bay & Liberty Square), but its time has passed. DCA is on a good path and I think Lasseter has the juice to keep improving DLR and he has the right passion for it, unlike the soulless Eisner and Paul Pressler.

 

[HydroGuy]

So many interesting thoughts from people and some very different perspectives based on their exposure to the parks. For someone who thinks outside the "bubble" is ugly now, ought to see what it was like when it prompted Walt to think of a place like Disney World, where he could control everything. Here is Harbor Blvd circa 1960.

http://www.letthedogin.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/harborblvd.jpg

Here is how the same stretch looks today.

http://goo.gl/maps/JixiH

It is amazing how nice it looks compared to the "old days".

As to the person who thinks you can buy the hotels for "$10-15 million" has zero concept of So Cal land prices. The 300 room Anaheim Plaza just sold for $47 million ($157,00 per room); with that as a baseline, do the calculations on buying the hotels on Harbor Blvd & Katella. Ever since the fiasco of Hiroshi Fujishige, TWDC has been very low key in trying to force sales.

And don't blame Imagineering for DCA, that was all Eisner sans Frank Wells. With no Wells to whisper in his ear, Eisner was clueless. Tony Baxter almost bit his tongue off trying to not tell off the executive committee once they rejected WDI's ideas in favor of the out of the box rides. All of Baxter's predictions came true and TWDC has to spend double to halfway fix the disaster. Thank God for John Lasseter.


As to my Disney experience (NOT "MDE"!, just my experience) I grew up mostly in Orange County CA so trips to Disneyland were frequent. My father took the family on an early Christmas present to WDW in December 1971. That was the first of 44 (at last count) visits to WDW. No, I am not completely nuts, at least 25 of the trips were business trips/conferences to Orlando where I sneaked in a couple of days at WDW, but the rest were family vacations of one sort or another. As to Disneyland, I started there as a Cast Member at Christmas 1974 in Fantasy on Parade and transferred to operations starting Easter 1975 and stayed through Easter 1985. (PS, as a CM I would never, ever have said "have a magical day". What a completely trite, canned, automaton phrase that is. Smiling and pleasant, genuine conversation is much better than "did you want fries with that" like speech.)

After leaving the cast I became an annual pass holder (don't hate, I never start sentences with "I am an annual pass holder and.....") so this year is my 30th. My last WDW trip was fall of 2014 (on a conference trip) so I feel pretty up to date there as well. MDE (the other one) threatens to cut my number of trips to WDW. The idea that I have to decide 60 days out which rides I want to go on which day and which restaurants (ADRs) to eat at and then mesh the two is borderline insanity.

I would be very unhappy if DCA now became EPCOT lite. I would have loved WestCot (and Discovery Bay & Liberty Square), but its time has passed. DCA is on a good path and I think Lasseter has the juice to keep improving DLR and he has the right passion for it, unlike the soulless Eisner and Paul Pressler.

Very well said! And thanks for the photo link to Harbor Blvd. I remember when it used to look like that. Sort of.

I am taking my first WDW trip with MDE/FP+. In May. Moderate crowds so the impact will be less. In that I tend to be a planner, the FP+ is not huge. But I have four kids now in the college and post-college age frame and getting a trip to WDW planned 6 months in advance is impossible for us. That we are currently planning 3 months out is about as good as it gets. I have grown accustomed to ADRs (but not comfortable, just accustomed - I just accept it for what it is) and for the most part I was able to get the ADRs I want 3 months in advance. Including Le Cellier for a party of 6!.

But the trend at WDW to all the pre-planning is RIDICULOUS. There are daily wars of words over there especially about FP+. I hate how tied down I feel there and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how free DLR feels in comparison.

Cheers!

 

[bcrook]

7. Fast passes: This will shock those of you that have read my consistent complaints about Fast Pass +. While at DLR I missed the ease of using an app for fast passes. If WDW could fix the many glitches and tiering with FP+ then this system would be better. At this point, the FP- system used at DLR is better. At DLR, we were able to get FP’s for all headliner attractions multiple times.

I'm going for the first time too. I can assure you that missing FP+ won't be the case for me! lol