flightBOS
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2015
- Messages
- 104
In July, I took my family on their first ever trip to the Disneyland Resort. We're from the east coast (BOS area), so its a long journey out. That being said, my little sister is headed off to college, so I thought one last vacation would be nice.
Packed all the luggage the day before and woke them all up at 3:30am on Saturday (7/18) as a surprise--they definitely had no clue it was coming. The four of us piled into the car and off we went.
The flight was long (6+ hours), but relatively painless. When we got to LAX, everything went pretty smooth. We are long-time WDW visitors, so I wanted to emulate that experience as much as possible. I paid for BagsVIP (https://www.maketraveleasier.com/bagsvip) to take our luggage directly to the resort; couldn't have been easier. Disneyland Resort Express was prepaid using the $10 off/pp coupon. Easy as 1, 2, 3. Though the DLRE was a bit late showing up at the airport...
Getting to the resort, I had told them we were staying at the Candy Cane Inn. Decided to opt for the DLH though, as it was our first/possibly only time visiting DLR. Staff was great at check-in. Got an upgrade from a standard view room to a deluxe view room/view of DTD and the parks. Not too shabby. Room wasn't ready yet, so they used the text message alert system. Everything worked flawlessly.
Somehow, with July historically raining 0.00", we had rain on the first two days of the vacation... Didn't bother us too much, but just surprising! Had groceries delivered by Amazon Fresh on Saturday night, along with our luggage. Everything went perfect, no complaints! Bell staff was particularly well trained/helpful. Overall, the room was nice. Didn't really like that the hotel lacked a lobby/main building like all of the deluxe's at WDW. But it was nice just the same.
Hit DL early the next morning (park opening). Instantly the line for Peter Pan was 45 minutes. Naturally we avoided this and chose to begin our vacation with an extremely busy attraction...the walk up into/through the castle haha. Followed by Small World. Clearly we made good use of the early rising.
Actually, Matterhorn was down, which is why we opted for Small World.
A quick note...rides seemed to go down a lot more often at DLR than at WDW. I was really surprised. Other than the occasional Test Track or Space Mountain outage, WDW rides rarely ever go down in my experience. Just surprising is all.
Visited Radiator Springs/Cars Land that afternoon for the first time. It was amazing. So immersive. They did a great job with it.
The parks were all busy, but not terrible, particularly in the mornings. Five days in the parks overall, with PH addon.
Other highlights from the trip include:
On our way!
Photo of us checking in! Very Contemporary-ish lobby.
Awesome head boards in the room. Probably the best design I've ever seen for a Disney headboard.
Not a bad upgrade, considering I paid for a parking lot view. Too bad I never got to see the fireworks from the window.
Awesome theme-ing at Car's Land. With the shouldn't-be-there-because-its-always-sunny rain clouds overhead, kinda gives it an ominous look.
Naturally this deserves its own picture...
Packed all the luggage the day before and woke them all up at 3:30am on Saturday (7/18) as a surprise--they definitely had no clue it was coming. The four of us piled into the car and off we went.
The flight was long (6+ hours), but relatively painless. When we got to LAX, everything went pretty smooth. We are long-time WDW visitors, so I wanted to emulate that experience as much as possible. I paid for BagsVIP (https://www.maketraveleasier.com/bagsvip) to take our luggage directly to the resort; couldn't have been easier. Disneyland Resort Express was prepaid using the $10 off/pp coupon. Easy as 1, 2, 3. Though the DLRE was a bit late showing up at the airport...
Getting to the resort, I had told them we were staying at the Candy Cane Inn. Decided to opt for the DLH though, as it was our first/possibly only time visiting DLR. Staff was great at check-in. Got an upgrade from a standard view room to a deluxe view room/view of DTD and the parks. Not too shabby. Room wasn't ready yet, so they used the text message alert system. Everything worked flawlessly.
Somehow, with July historically raining 0.00", we had rain on the first two days of the vacation... Didn't bother us too much, but just surprising! Had groceries delivered by Amazon Fresh on Saturday night, along with our luggage. Everything went perfect, no complaints! Bell staff was particularly well trained/helpful. Overall, the room was nice. Didn't really like that the hotel lacked a lobby/main building like all of the deluxe's at WDW. But it was nice just the same.
Hit DL early the next morning (park opening). Instantly the line for Peter Pan was 45 minutes. Naturally we avoided this and chose to begin our vacation with an extremely busy attraction...the walk up into/through the castle haha. Followed by Small World. Clearly we made good use of the early rising.
Actually, Matterhorn was down, which is why we opted for Small World.A quick note...rides seemed to go down a lot more often at DLR than at WDW. I was really surprised. Other than the occasional Test Track or Space Mountain outage, WDW rides rarely ever go down in my experience. Just surprising is all.
Visited Radiator Springs/Cars Land that afternoon for the first time. It was amazing. So immersive. They did a great job with it.
The parks were all busy, but not terrible, particularly in the mornings. Five days in the parks overall, with PH addon.
Other highlights from the trip include:
- Every ride ridden (except ToT and River Rapids...didn't want to spend my days wet & ToT is a frequent ride at WDW, but not my favorite)
- Rode in the Tender seats on the train. This was pretty awesome.
- Rode in the Lilly Belle - This was probably the highlight of the trip. Went every morning to get a reservation and finally on the last day, we got the opportunity to ride on the Lilly Belle. I'll see if I can post pictures below for everyone to see. It was pretty amazing.
- At at the Blue Bayou. With Pirates being my favorite ride at WDW, I was really excited. It didn't disappoint. Expensive, but worth it in my opinion.
- Got issued a re-add pass for any ride (up to 6 people). Was able to use it on Peter Pan, Submarines, and Indy before a cast member actually took it from us. As a group of four, we always found a party of two to take on with us (so they wouldn't have to wait in line)...so perhaps the cast members not taking the pass was karma... Either way, it felt awesome to make a mother/little girl's vacation by telling them they wouldn't have to wait two hours for Peter.
- 0 minute wait for TSMM. Multiple times. (Coming from WDW, this is unheard of.)
- Dole Whip
On our way!
Photo of us checking in! Very Contemporary-ish lobby.
Awesome head boards in the room. Probably the best design I've ever seen for a Disney headboard.
Not a bad upgrade, considering I paid for a parking lot view. Too bad I never got to see the fireworks from the window.
Awesome theme-ing at Car's Land. With the shouldn't-be-there-because-its-always-sunny rain clouds overhead, kinda gives it an ominous look.
Naturally this deserves its own picture...
