First trip to DL, California from New Yorkers

[Mary Anne]

I’m not going to do a day by day but break it down by areas. For the record though, our days were:

Day 1 Sat - Travel; Downtown Disney

Day 2 Sun - Baseball, Anaheim Angels vs. Dodger @ Anaheim Stadium

Day 3 Mon - Disneyland

Day 4 Tues - Disneyland

Day 5 Wed - Disneyland

Day 6 Thurs- Disneyland

Day 7 Friday - Baseball - Dodgers Vs. Arizona Diamondbacks

Day 8 - Sat - Disneyland

Day 9 - Sun - Travel home


Jet Blue Airlines - I can’t say enough good things about this airline. The seats are wider then any other; they have TV’s with 36 channels on the back of every seat so you can watch TV while you fly. The channels that I remember off the top of my head were; CNBC, about 3 or 4 ESPN channels, TVLand, Hallmark, Cartoon, one or two movie channels, NBC, weather, Animal Planet, Food Network, Shopping Channel, A&E, History.... and then some. As you can see more then enough to keep you busy on a 5 hour flight and something for everyone. They served two snacks one about 1 hour into the flight and the second 1 1/2 hours before we landed.

Long Beach Airport - great airport to fly in and out of. However, when you get off the plan you need to walk down steps of the plane. You don’t go right into the airport and are connected. That is the first time, we’ve ever done that and I had no idea it was even done anymore. I thought that went out in the 60’s as I’ve only seen it done on old movies and TV clips. We only do carry on so we had 4 bags and were off the plane and on our way in minutes both ways.

National Car Rental - was on site, you walk right out of the airport and it’s right there. Only problem was they do not have an Emerald Aisle at this airport and you must stand on line to get the paperwork completed on your car. Ours went pretty fast as we are part of the Emerald Club but it still took much longer then in Orlando since you had to stand on a general line and they just didn’t move very fast in general. Much better in Orlando where you just go pick out your car and then drive off. No problem with the car, have no idea what model it was but it was white and had 4 doors, I think we only did about 125 miles on it if that for the week.

Embassy Suites - There was good and bad with this hotel.

THE GOOD
It was clean, I’ll give it that.
The “free” breakfast was pretty good. Although after about 3 or 4 days of omelets, I had had enough eggs.
The bagels, muffins and English muffins were OK, but you had to toast them yourself.
The juices were pretty good. I particularly enjoyed the Cranberry juice every morning.

I thought the coffee was the worst I’ve had in a long time. I didn’t even enjoy the one that they gave you to make in the room. However, the free wine, beer and mixed drinks in the evening from 5:30 to 7:30 were very nice. they also had soft drinks for the kids and popcorn. Some nights there were light warm snacks. You could also buy pizza for $1.75 a slice. I didn't eat it, but it did look good and many were buying.

The suite was a nice size for two adults and two smaller children; it was definitely much too small for two adults and two teenage, almost adult, children. From now on we need two rooms period, or one suite type room and one normal room., if for nothing else then two bathrooms. Even with half the group taking showers at night, most nights, it took forever in the morning. There was also not enough drawer space and that is coming from someone who only does carry on. I have no idea where people who bring steamer trunks put all their stuff.

The Bad
THE BEDS. WORST, WORST Beds I have ever slept in ever in a hotel. That alone will keep me from ever booking another room with them anywhere.

No in room safe. I’m so used to DVC Disney on-site where I feel safe (maybe falsely, but safe enough to put my personal stuff in it and lock it) I think they did have lock boxes in the lobby but I wasn’t comfortable doing that either, so I ended up carrying my life around with me for a week. The bag got heavy very quickly and I got tired of toting it everywhere.

They were terrible about cleaning up the room each day. Again, part of our frustration with this is we're used to DVC and no maid service, we've gotten used to that and now resent having people come in the room. It was always done but we’d be out early most days, yet day after day when we get back at 5 pm to relax they’d just be doing it. I did complain but was told they had till 6 pm to clean the room. I found that unacceptable. They also did not have a please make up room sign but I think would have made it much easier for them to see who had left early.

Transportation from the Hotel to Disneyland and back - There was NO GOOD in this, only BAD.

Anaheim Resort Transportation or ART - we preferred to call it Animal Resort Transportation, because that was just how you were treated like an animal and the people that rode it generally had little or no manners. We thought it was terrible. Again, we are far to spoiled with Disney Transportation. They are the size of trolley type cars. Very small, terrible seats and really scary for traveling with small children. On top of all they charge you $3.00 per day or $12.00 if you buy a 5 day ticket. So for a family of 4, it cost $48 just to go back and forth to the park if you have a 5 day ticket. Granted you go and come as many times each day as you wanted but someday we just went and stayed, so it was no great saving. We then found that the public transportation, that ran the exact same route was $1.25 per way, so instead of paying $3.00 you could have done the same trip for $2.50 if you weren’t going to come back during the day. However, when we first asked about it no one person in the hotel or ART could give us an answer on how much it cost to use public transportation. Finally, I flagged down one of the buses and the driver told us. Disney Parking if you drove was $10.00 per day, but you parked in a parking lot and they used trams to bring you to the entrance. Also, you could drive to downtown Disney and park for free for 3 hours or up to 5 if you ate in DTD. Again, an option if you were just going there on a non-park day and going to spend just a few hours. Sadly, we didn’t realize this until after we’d paid for the ART transportation. ART needs to get its act together if they are going to be transporting people for the 50th Anniversary. The drivers were rude and they need to put more buses on at closing, every twenty minutes just doesn’t cut it.

I don’t know about where you live but here in NYC people line up to get on a bus, those on line the longest get on first. In Orlando, it is always orderly and professional. With ART it’s a free for all. If I was doing it over again, I would pick a hotel that was right outside of Disney so I could walk in and out of the parks right to the hotel and not have to deal with the transportation issue.

The Angels Stadium - Great Experience. Nice, new beautiful stadium. It was so great to be sitting in your seat and look out and see the mountains in the background. I will say they are very laid back workers here. You just didn’t see them, no ushers, no security, nothing. Do not buy any peanuts here. They TOSS them to you from two and three sections over. They hit the man in front of us right in the eye and not one person or security from the Angels come over. It was really scary. The guy could have had his eye really injured.
All, in all, we really enjoyed this game and visiting this stadium.

And then there is DODGER stadium. For what it’s worth Fenway Park just moved way up on our list of stadiums we’ve visited. It is no longer in last place. Dodger Stadium now has that honor.

To begin with, they do not even open the gates to go into the parking lot till exactly two hours before game time. Now you have to realize, when you go to any sporting event with my DH, if you are not there one hour BEFORE batting/infield practice, you’re late! So we sat, one hour outside on line to get into the parking field. Finally, they open up, we park and then find out you literally have to climb up the side of a mountain to get to the gates to get into the ballpark. My son said, “You now, now I know why we have never ever seen a picture on TV of the outside of this stadium” So we finally make it to the ticket gate and have to wait till one hour before game time till they then open those gates. Not to worry, now we’re at the top of the stadium, picture yourself at the top of your home baseball field, on the very top row, and you have to WALK DOWN the steps, long steep steps to get to your seat. It was a very big stadium, 55,000 seats and they said 44,000 were there that night. In defense of the stadium, my son did point out that it is in the top 5 of the oldest stadiums in use in baseball. Perhaps it's time to build a new one.

Where we ate:

The ESPN club at Downtown Disney - food was really good and the coupons were great to use. No problem using two $20 coupons at the same time. It was not even questioned.

The Blues Club at Downtown Disney - again really good food

The Blue Bayou in Disneyland - great meal here

Denny’s one lunch and one late night dinner after the Dodger game. The lunch was very good; the dinner was a disaster. We waited an hour for our food after we ordered. This was at midnight. Needless to say, Ward who is a very good tipper did not tip at all. Before anyone said that the waitress shouldn’t be held responsible for the kitchen the fact is not once in that hour did she come over and explain anything or even offer a refill on a drink, for that she deserved nothing.

We ate in a sandwich place in the California Adventure that was pretty good.

I tried one night to get some fast-food in Disney for dinner but after being on line a half an hour just to get to the doorway of the restaurant, I then found out it was at least another half hour wait to place an order. So I said forget it and just got a pretzel. We found that quiet often it was at least one hour wait for fast food in Disneyland, so we never really got anything. Also in the mornings, it was almost impossible to get a cold drink or bottle of water. They never had anything open.
We did do Jack-in-the-Box- take out a few times, since I had coupons from the Entertainment book. We enjoyed that as we do not have a Jack-in-the-Box in our area at home. The salads were really good.
There was also a Italian Restaurant right by the hotel that we ordered take out from. That was very good. It’s a chain place and there is one in Orlando that we are going to try sometime.

If you are DVC be sure to ask if you can get a DVC disount at any of the onsite Disney Eating places. Many of them gave it to us. Between 10 and 20%.


Disneyland itself, was very nice, and a true must see for Disney people. Comparing MK to MK and I have to agree that on the rides in California, especially Fantasy Land are so much better then Orlando. However, the park itself is so small, that when crowded, and it was very, very crowded all of last week, it is impossible to move.

Tuesday night even the local’s were commenting on they had never seen it as crowded on a weeknight and it was pretty much the same the whole week. I was really glad we had 5 day passes as if we only bought a three day pass, we never would have seen it all. I do admit, we didn’t use fasspass enough but we got tired of looking for the fastpass spots and what rides had them. Plus the linest to get them were very long, I enjoyed Fantasmic and the fireworks, but sadly never got to see the Electric parade that was in the California Adventure and I never made it back there in the evening. My biggest disappointment was not with Disneyland itself, as I was prepared for the difference in the parks and the size, but the attitude of the CM’s. I don’t think the California CM’s are prepared for the amount of visitors that are going to be coming through in the next 12 months or so, and they really need an attitude adjustment. When you ask a question the answer of “are the lines for fast food always this long” with “I have no idea what you are talking about” is just not acceptable. It just wasn’t one CM that seem to have a problem it was just about everyone we encountered. They just didn’t have any magic or go out of their way to make you feel special. The whole Disney experience was very lacking. In Florida, it is a whole vacation experience and they want you to come back, in California the feeling was they didn’t care that you chose them as your vacation destination and don’t bother coming back.

Most of the Query lines at Disneyland are out in the open, uncovered and not in the shade. The weather itself was beautiful last week. I hear they don’t get that much rain so the need for cover is not that important to them.

While Disneyworld is state of the art with admission tickets they are still in the stone age in Disneyland. they hand date stamped our pass every day we used it. AT first we thought it was a fluke but it went on all week. We couldn’t get over that.

There was always one of the Mountains down, so we were constantly backtracking to try and get a ride on one of tem. We did get lucky with a soft pre-opening to Space Mountain on Saturday. I thought it was a much nicer non jerky ride then the one in Orlando.

It was wonderful to be able to ride Mr. Toad again as well as see the original Tiki Birds.

I enjoyed Soarin over California but the rest of my group gave it a so-so. Something they wouldn’t do again unless it was a short or fast pass ride.

I really enjoyed Fantasyland, especially the different rides here that aren’t in the MK, like Alice in Wonderland. POC in Florida really got the short end of the stick, the California one is a much better ride, I enjoyed the subtle differences in HM as well as some of the other same attractions.

We did go into the Hotel California and it reminded us a lot of the Wilderness Lodge. You know you were in a Disney owned property. Sadly, we never did see the Disneyland hotel, just never made it over that way. We did speak with several of the DVC CM’s who were manning the DVC booths. They are selling very well out there, over $3,000,0000 in sales in the past 8 weeks. They also assured us that DVC has property to build on in California it is just a question of when. Take it for what it is worth, the DVC people also told us that Disney is in the process of buying up a lot of the land outside of the Disneyland gate (all the good neighbor hotels area) to put more Disney owned hotels. Interesting to us as the DVC people we spoke with were all transplants from Orlando and the only CM’s we found that were even interested in speaking with us. We even got a “Welcome Home” from them when they saw us in our DVC baseball caps. Ward and I both agreed the only way we’d ever stay in the Disneyland area again is in a DVC hotel.

Steps - why is it that lots and I mean lots of Disneyland attractions had steps that had to be climbed to get to or get out of. I’m sure they had to have a way for handicapped visitors but we didn’t see them. As a person who does not do steps well anymore, it really bothered me. I don’t need a wheelchair but my knees are really bad with steps and I try not to do them.

One of my biggest disappointments was you can't ride the monorail in Disneyland unless you use a day on your park ticket and go into the park. We are truly blessed in Orlando to be able to do so much for free without a park pass. Dollar for Dollar you get a much bigger bang for your buck in Orlando.

All in all it was a nice vacation. Would I specifically plan a trip out there again just to do Disney, no. I’ve seen it once and that’s enough for me. Would be go back to California to see other areas? That we would probably do. My boys now want to see the San Diego and San Francisco ball parks and the plane trip via Jet Blue was so enjoyable that my DH has agreed that he will now consider going to Hawaii. We can go into San Francisco spend a day or two there, then do a DVC Hawaii exchange, and come back via San Diego.

All in all a good trip and I'm glad we did it.

 

[lauraljp]

Thanks for your trip report. I really enjoyed your insight and opinions. We are going to be at DL the first week of August and are staying at ES Garden Grove. I assume that is the one you were at. We have been going back and forth over whether drive or do ART and still am not sure what to do. We are used to the WDW bus system and I will assume ART is not like that. My biggest concern is wasting alot of time waiting. Did this happen to you alot?

Thanks again for your information. It was very useful for me!

Laura

 

[Mary Anne]

Yes, we were at the ES in Garden Grove.

My personal opinion is that ART is no where nears what we are used to with Disney Transportation. It runs every 20 minutes period, no sending one sooner if there is a large crowd, you miss it or can't get on, you wait. There are no Disney type personnel to assist with anything or order more buses if they are needed. They are small jitney type buses (they look like trolley cars). My DH does not like driving but to be honest, if that is not the case with you , and depending on how many days you will be there driving might work better for you. Even using the parking lot, it might not be quicker but I'm thinking it'll be a lot less stressful. Again, if I had to do it over, I would have given up the free breakfast and taken a hotel across the street from DL and walked right in. I figure that free breakfast cost me $48 in ART transportation.

 

[iceskatejen]

Yes, there are ways to bypass all the steps if you have bad knees. They do have special assistance passes that let you bypass lines with stairs. I have friends with bad knees and they use them on Big Thunder, Splash, Indy, CA Screamin', and now Space Mountain (there are stairs at the exit as the old speed ramps are now gone). With BTM and Splash, we just go in through the exits and with Indy and CA screamin' we use the regular or FP line and use the elevators to go to the loading area. We use the wheelchair queue on Space.

Unfortunately, the food lines have been pretty bad. There are a lot of new CMs in that area and they're not yet working like a well oiled machine. I was there last Tuesday and I agree it was pretty nuts. I don't think I've ever seen a Tuesday that was that crowded.