Lollipop's Mom
<font color=teal>Special trip with your little one
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2004
First, I will say we had a much-needed vacation and time away. Overall we had a good time. Was it our best trip to Disney ever? No. But I also can’t complain because I was able to get away during the pandemic and enjoy a week with no work.
We left on the 18th and Covid tested at YVR on the 17th (I posted about this). The airport on the day we left was empty and we were at check-in for 8 AM as they told us to be three hours ahead. We were actually thorigh everything in at our gate by 8:25 AM. Had no trouble at customs. They asked where we were headed we said Los Angeles and I asked why, we said Disneyland and they said have fun. Flight was uneventful. If you were flying into LAX don’t forget there is a form you have to fill out on the LAX website before flying in there.
A lot of people didn’t know this and they were handing out the QR code at the gate to make sure everyone had filled out the form. We hired a towncar from Lansky. I can’t say enough good things about them. It was 325 for the return trip and that included meet and greet inside the airport. It was good for peace of mind and the vehicle was spotless. It did include a grocery or fast food stop but we decided we wanted to just get straight to Disneyland.
We checked into the Disneyland Hotel and I found the cast member working the front desk checking us in to be really rude, short And grumpy. Maybe she was just having a bad day? I was having trouble with my credit card being declined and couldn’t figure out why. I logged into my credit card statement and saw that the Fairmont Vancouver Hotel had accidentally charged or put through for holds on my $250 parking charge. So this extra thousand dollars on there was making my card be declined by Disney.
I was actually being declined by probably only about $100 so I asked if I could just give them cash and put the rest on my card. She refused to and said that the Disneyland Hotel does not except cash payments for rooms. I told her I wanted to pay for the bulk with the card but just make up the rest in cash. She refused to do that and just put through the room for $100 less than what we were supposed to be paying pay. And then the hundred dollars will be charged in a couple of days. I actually was disappointed because I had about $900 US cash that I had and wanted to apply to my room for incidentals, charges etc. but they refused to take my cash.
When she got our keys she got a weird look on her face and then said oh it looks like you got a magical upgrade to a suite! It turns out we somehow went from our standard accessible view room to an accessible one bedroom family suite on the 11th floor in the Adventureland tower. When we got off of the elevator we could see the club access and thought that our suite also came with club access. Things like this don’t usually happen to us and we were pretty over the moon excited. We had to ceiling to floor windows, one in the bedroom and one in the living room, with a full view of all of the parks and Anaheim.
Our room was directly next-door to the Miki suite and across from the adventure sweet. All of the fancy theme suites we’re right around us. We did say what was apparently a very famous basketball player staying in one of the suites with his family, but we had no clue who he was. We went to the club and our key cards didn’t work and the cast member let us in. We grab some lemonade and cookies, as nothing else was out yet and he was going to add the club service to a room key. It turns out that suite doesn’t come with club service. No big deal as we weren’t expecting it anyway and he told us to load up a bunch of stuff and take it with us! We didn’t, we just grabbed a cold lemonade and a couple cookies.
The Club was gorgeous with a beautiful view that was the same as our room. I looked up a room online because I was curious to see what it was worth and it goes for about $1000 a night. I am completely shocked that a suite that is $1000 a night does not include club service. It wasn’t just because of a free upgrade, but on the website it’s not a club level room. There are $800 club level rooms I think on floor 10 but the fancy suites do not include club service!I can’t even imagine spending $1000 a night and not at least getting some free water! LOL.
I would imagine any VIPs that rent those sweets get a club service included. I’ve heard the Kardashians often rent out the Mickey suite. None of the sweets really seem to be occupied but we did see inside the Miki suite because they were preparing it on the day we left for the arrival of someone they were putting flowers and some fancy bottled water in the room.
Overall Disney was not super super busy, but also not what I would call empty. The first weekend we were there was gay days and it was amazing and fun to see all of the red shirts and happy pride people. We did Disneyland as our first park on Sunday and then went over to DCA for the afternoon. I was up at 6:55 AM and on the app and was unable to get any ROTR passes. At noon I tried and was able to get number 293.We are not Star Wars fans I don’t know much about it but the ride completely blew us away.
We didn’t ride much on Sunday as there were a lot of long lines. I am a wheelchair user so we were able to get return times for things like haunted mansion. We were able to get on guardians a couple times, as this is our most favourite ride. The next day we did DCA and didn’t even bother hopping over to Disneyland at all. We were able to get a Spiderman boarding group that morning and were in A very early group of number 35.
When we got there the ride was down and we were told to just keep checking back. The ride didn’t go up until later on that afternoon and we lucked out to catch it going up and be about five minutes away and got on it really fast. The line after that got really crazy. It was good, but I wasn’t blown away. It just reminded me of Toy story Midway mania but upgraded. It was fun, But we didn’t really worry about getting a boarding group again for the rest of the trip.
We focussed more on getting ROTR groups. On Tuesday we spent a good part of the day at the pool. We ordered lunch and it was really good. It wasn’t busy and we had a nice nap by the pool. We did have a Cabana Box but decided to cancel it on Sunday, as we saw the pool loungers were comfy and we also had Oogie boogie tickets that night so we didn’t want to lose part of our cabana day. We got to Oogie boogie about 4 PM and entered Via GC. I highly recommend doing this to beat lines.
Oogie Boogie was definitely a big highlight of the trip. It was extremely well done and all lines moved quite quickly. I loved being able to see the characters this way as everyone was able to get a quick interaction and see them, rather than lining up for two hours. Villains Grove was very disappointing and not worth it at all. There were no characters in there, just a lot of fog and lights. We thought we wasted a half hour lining up and doing this and wouldn’t recommend bothering with it. We did the 10 PM parade and found a spot about 930 and it was great.
The next morning we had our Covid tests and used Covid test courier. I highly recommend them. They kept in touch via text days leading up to it and that morning. They came right to the hotel and met us in the lobby. We could have them go to our room or just stay in the lobby and we chose just to do it in the lobby. The guy that tested us was incredible and friendly and it was a very non-invasiveTest.
He was really friendly and the 149 each it cost was very very worth it. Our results came in at midnight. Then we were able to head out and enjoy the rest of our days at the park. We found lines hit and miss sometimes Peter Pan will be at 10 minutes and by the time we got there it was already at 40.
We missed fast pass a bit but it didn’t make too big of a difference for us as we were able to use the regular line for most attractions with the wheelchair and a few we had where we got a return time. We really were not a fan of the boarding group process as we found we are constantly having to plan our day around getting up for 7 AM and being online again at noon.
We typically are the type of vacationers that sleep in every morning and head out to the parks around 11 and stay until close. We ended up doingThis for the last couple of days. On the Second last day we got ROTR passes and when we went to use some of the ride was down. The ride seem to be down all of the time.
I was getting too much sun and really feeling it and decided to go back to the hotel and have a nap and my daughter got on ROTR herself. It broke down while she was on it and she had to walk off. It’s a good thing I was not on that one because there were a ton of stairs that I would not of been able to do. They gave her a new pass that was good for anytime until 9 PM and it also ended up applying to my past that I didn’t use.
The ride was down all day and then finally came up again around 8 PM. We were just getting in line and the ride went down again. We decided just to not bother and did other things and then went back to the hotel.
we never got a radiator as every time we got in line it broke down. Or it was broken down when we got to it. It seemed like rides were constantly going down all over the two parks. There are many things we didn’t get to ride because of this and decided not to stand in long lines for some of them.
I found merchandise prices way up from what they normally would’ve been and also I found a lot of the food prices were a lot higher than I remember two years ago. I was expecting this because they have to recoup their losses. Some of the ears are now $50 a pair and that is just insane!
On our last day we were unable to get passes again for ROTR and decided to go to guest services. We told them we We’re from Vancouver and only able to get on the ride once in five days. We told them how it was broken down constantly and we couldn’t even use our passes.
She happily Give us two passes to get on the ride and we were able to go on it one last time! It’s hard to see all of the Instagram and magic key holders showing off their boarding group passes every day, and the regular folks can’t get them. LOL. But we figured we would ask and turned out to be a good thing!
We had lots of yummy things to eat but the big stand out was the Nutella funnel cake at stage door café. That is a do not miss! Also the Montecristo sandwich at smokejumpers taste exactly the same as blue bayou and it’s only $11! We didn’t bother with dining reservations and stuff on this trip.
We did end up going to GOofys kitchen one night on a whim and they were taking walk-ins. The food was really good and better than expected for a Buffet. We were a little bit scared of eating at a Buffet in the pandemic but kept hand sanitizer on our table and use that every time we sat down after going. The meal came to about $140 for two of us with the mandatory 18% tip. If I were to do it over I would not do it as it was not worth about $170 Canadian for a Buffet we were at for about an hour! The characters came out about every 15 or 20 minutes and danced around and post for pictures but didn’t really interact all that much. Again wish we hadn’t spent the money on that, but still had some yummy PB and J pizza!
Process of checking in at LAX was fast. Make sure you have your Arrive can app filled out before you check in for your flight at the podium. No one ever checked our negative vaccine test. We found that really odd.
When we arrived in Canada and got off the plane we found out that WestJet had broken my mobility scooter into about four pieces! And I don’t mean taking it apart, I mean literally broken. It was totaled! I’ve travelled with the scooter many many times and never had a problem. It looks like somebody dropped it from somewhere. I was extremely impressed with WestJet customer service. They were completely on the ball.
They brought a wheelchair for me and then transferred us to a golf cart. They had the scooter pieces waiting for us at baggage and an amazing woman they are took care of us putting in the claim. This woman was so amazing she even helped my daughter load up the broken scooter and our baggage onto a cart, get me a wheelchair, and then accompanied us all the way to our car in the parking lot! She was incredible. I got her name and tipped her $20 so I can put in a good word with WestJet about her.
We had barely driven out of the parking lot and I got a call from a scooter rental place asking if I wanted one delivered to my house that night. I told him it was fine As i just want to get home and go to bed. They gave me a claim number and I can call them to get a rental delivered anytime I want and also they are sending out a technician on Monday to pick up my scooter to assess the damage and costs to replace. WestJet also told me we will probably get two free round-trip tickets for the trouble!
Oh also at customs coming back into Canada they checked our full vaccine status and never did ask for our negative Covid tests, which I found a really odd.
Once I got home and in my throat started feeling really scratchy and dry. I thought it was from wearing a mask all day but woke up in the night with 103 fever. Coughing, achy, headache, runny nose and really unwell. I am double vaccinated and it feels like a bad head cold but I have booked a Covid test for tomorrow.
My daughter has started with a sore throat tonight! If we are sick, I am really glad we are back in Canada before symptoms started, but it’s also pretty scary. I didn’t find Disney to be overly worried about Covid. There are always tons of people at the tables at eating establishments, and people waiting for a table. Then when I family would be done another family would sit down and nothing was cleaned properly between them. This kind of grossed me out.
We carried Clorox wipes with us and anytime we sat down to eat we thoroughly wiped down the tables. We had to hand sanitizers on our neck lanyard that we used constantly. We went through about seven of the bath and Bodyworks hand sanitizers in six days.
I don’t know what else we could’ve done to stay healthy. We were masks 85% of the time. If we were walking along and it wasn’t busy outside we were put our mask down but we’re very diligent about wearing it in the crowds and indoors. We also used towels on the lounge chairs at the pool. So I don’t know how I managed to get sick with whether this is just a bad head cold or a mild Covid case, it just shows you no matter how diligent you are you can still pick it up.
I saw people constantly picking up and putting down all of the merchandise kids hugging stuffy‘s and putting them back on the rack, people drinking directly out of the water fountains with their mouth right near the fountain part. We also saw people pick up drinks and put them back on the shelf, etc. so it’s really very very difficult to not come in contact with something if it’s there to come in contact with.
Disney had no social distancing, for example at haunted mansion they still packed the elevator room and at all other preshow rides they packed the rooms in shoulder to shoulder. In hindsight I’m still glad we went as it’s been a rough couple of years and I was so thrilled to be away. But I’m feeling so sick right now part of me wishes we didn’t go. I am going to self quarantine for at least 10 to 14 days even if my test is negative, and so is my daughter.
I honestly will say if I had children who are not vaccinated I would not be taking them to Disney. I was shocked to see tons of infants and newborns there, as it is not a safe environment for them. That is just my opinion. If you have any questions let me know and also I did this is talk to text, so if anything is misspelled that is why.
We left on the 18th and Covid tested at YVR on the 17th (I posted about this). The airport on the day we left was empty and we were at check-in for 8 AM as they told us to be three hours ahead. We were actually thorigh everything in at our gate by 8:25 AM. Had no trouble at customs. They asked where we were headed we said Los Angeles and I asked why, we said Disneyland and they said have fun. Flight was uneventful. If you were flying into LAX don’t forget there is a form you have to fill out on the LAX website before flying in there.
A lot of people didn’t know this and they were handing out the QR code at the gate to make sure everyone had filled out the form. We hired a towncar from Lansky. I can’t say enough good things about them. It was 325 for the return trip and that included meet and greet inside the airport. It was good for peace of mind and the vehicle was spotless. It did include a grocery or fast food stop but we decided we wanted to just get straight to Disneyland.
We checked into the Disneyland Hotel and I found the cast member working the front desk checking us in to be really rude, short And grumpy. Maybe she was just having a bad day? I was having trouble with my credit card being declined and couldn’t figure out why. I logged into my credit card statement and saw that the Fairmont Vancouver Hotel had accidentally charged or put through for holds on my $250 parking charge. So this extra thousand dollars on there was making my card be declined by Disney.
I was actually being declined by probably only about $100 so I asked if I could just give them cash and put the rest on my card. She refused to and said that the Disneyland Hotel does not except cash payments for rooms. I told her I wanted to pay for the bulk with the card but just make up the rest in cash. She refused to do that and just put through the room for $100 less than what we were supposed to be paying pay. And then the hundred dollars will be charged in a couple of days. I actually was disappointed because I had about $900 US cash that I had and wanted to apply to my room for incidentals, charges etc. but they refused to take my cash.
When she got our keys she got a weird look on her face and then said oh it looks like you got a magical upgrade to a suite! It turns out we somehow went from our standard accessible view room to an accessible one bedroom family suite on the 11th floor in the Adventureland tower. When we got off of the elevator we could see the club access and thought that our suite also came with club access. Things like this don’t usually happen to us and we were pretty over the moon excited. We had to ceiling to floor windows, one in the bedroom and one in the living room, with a full view of all of the parks and Anaheim.
Our room was directly next-door to the Miki suite and across from the adventure sweet. All of the fancy theme suites we’re right around us. We did say what was apparently a very famous basketball player staying in one of the suites with his family, but we had no clue who he was. We went to the club and our key cards didn’t work and the cast member let us in. We grab some lemonade and cookies, as nothing else was out yet and he was going to add the club service to a room key. It turns out that suite doesn’t come with club service. No big deal as we weren’t expecting it anyway and he told us to load up a bunch of stuff and take it with us! We didn’t, we just grabbed a cold lemonade and a couple cookies.
The Club was gorgeous with a beautiful view that was the same as our room. I looked up a room online because I was curious to see what it was worth and it goes for about $1000 a night. I am completely shocked that a suite that is $1000 a night does not include club service. It wasn’t just because of a free upgrade, but on the website it’s not a club level room. There are $800 club level rooms I think on floor 10 but the fancy suites do not include club service!I can’t even imagine spending $1000 a night and not at least getting some free water! LOL.
I would imagine any VIPs that rent those sweets get a club service included. I’ve heard the Kardashians often rent out the Mickey suite. None of the sweets really seem to be occupied but we did see inside the Miki suite because they were preparing it on the day we left for the arrival of someone they were putting flowers and some fancy bottled water in the room.
Overall Disney was not super super busy, but also not what I would call empty. The first weekend we were there was gay days and it was amazing and fun to see all of the red shirts and happy pride people. We did Disneyland as our first park on Sunday and then went over to DCA for the afternoon. I was up at 6:55 AM and on the app and was unable to get any ROTR passes. At noon I tried and was able to get number 293.We are not Star Wars fans I don’t know much about it but the ride completely blew us away.
We didn’t ride much on Sunday as there were a lot of long lines. I am a wheelchair user so we were able to get return times for things like haunted mansion. We were able to get on guardians a couple times, as this is our most favourite ride. The next day we did DCA and didn’t even bother hopping over to Disneyland at all. We were able to get a Spiderman boarding group that morning and were in A very early group of number 35.
When we got there the ride was down and we were told to just keep checking back. The ride didn’t go up until later on that afternoon and we lucked out to catch it going up and be about five minutes away and got on it really fast. The line after that got really crazy. It was good, but I wasn’t blown away. It just reminded me of Toy story Midway mania but upgraded. It was fun, But we didn’t really worry about getting a boarding group again for the rest of the trip.
We focussed more on getting ROTR groups. On Tuesday we spent a good part of the day at the pool. We ordered lunch and it was really good. It wasn’t busy and we had a nice nap by the pool. We did have a Cabana Box but decided to cancel it on Sunday, as we saw the pool loungers were comfy and we also had Oogie boogie tickets that night so we didn’t want to lose part of our cabana day. We got to Oogie boogie about 4 PM and entered Via GC. I highly recommend doing this to beat lines.
Oogie Boogie was definitely a big highlight of the trip. It was extremely well done and all lines moved quite quickly. I loved being able to see the characters this way as everyone was able to get a quick interaction and see them, rather than lining up for two hours. Villains Grove was very disappointing and not worth it at all. There were no characters in there, just a lot of fog and lights. We thought we wasted a half hour lining up and doing this and wouldn’t recommend bothering with it. We did the 10 PM parade and found a spot about 930 and it was great.
The next morning we had our Covid tests and used Covid test courier. I highly recommend them. They kept in touch via text days leading up to it and that morning. They came right to the hotel and met us in the lobby. We could have them go to our room or just stay in the lobby and we chose just to do it in the lobby. The guy that tested us was incredible and friendly and it was a very non-invasiveTest.
He was really friendly and the 149 each it cost was very very worth it. Our results came in at midnight. Then we were able to head out and enjoy the rest of our days at the park. We found lines hit and miss sometimes Peter Pan will be at 10 minutes and by the time we got there it was already at 40.
We missed fast pass a bit but it didn’t make too big of a difference for us as we were able to use the regular line for most attractions with the wheelchair and a few we had where we got a return time. We really were not a fan of the boarding group process as we found we are constantly having to plan our day around getting up for 7 AM and being online again at noon.
We typically are the type of vacationers that sleep in every morning and head out to the parks around 11 and stay until close. We ended up doingThis for the last couple of days. On the Second last day we got ROTR passes and when we went to use some of the ride was down. The ride seem to be down all of the time.
I was getting too much sun and really feeling it and decided to go back to the hotel and have a nap and my daughter got on ROTR herself. It broke down while she was on it and she had to walk off. It’s a good thing I was not on that one because there were a ton of stairs that I would not of been able to do. They gave her a new pass that was good for anytime until 9 PM and it also ended up applying to my past that I didn’t use.
The ride was down all day and then finally came up again around 8 PM. We were just getting in line and the ride went down again. We decided just to not bother and did other things and then went back to the hotel.
we never got a radiator as every time we got in line it broke down. Or it was broken down when we got to it. It seemed like rides were constantly going down all over the two parks. There are many things we didn’t get to ride because of this and decided not to stand in long lines for some of them.
I found merchandise prices way up from what they normally would’ve been and also I found a lot of the food prices were a lot higher than I remember two years ago. I was expecting this because they have to recoup their losses. Some of the ears are now $50 a pair and that is just insane!
On our last day we were unable to get passes again for ROTR and decided to go to guest services. We told them we We’re from Vancouver and only able to get on the ride once in five days. We told them how it was broken down constantly and we couldn’t even use our passes.
She happily Give us two passes to get on the ride and we were able to go on it one last time! It’s hard to see all of the Instagram and magic key holders showing off their boarding group passes every day, and the regular folks can’t get them. LOL. But we figured we would ask and turned out to be a good thing!
We had lots of yummy things to eat but the big stand out was the Nutella funnel cake at stage door café. That is a do not miss! Also the Montecristo sandwich at smokejumpers taste exactly the same as blue bayou and it’s only $11! We didn’t bother with dining reservations and stuff on this trip.
We did end up going to GOofys kitchen one night on a whim and they were taking walk-ins. The food was really good and better than expected for a Buffet. We were a little bit scared of eating at a Buffet in the pandemic but kept hand sanitizer on our table and use that every time we sat down after going. The meal came to about $140 for two of us with the mandatory 18% tip. If I were to do it over I would not do it as it was not worth about $170 Canadian for a Buffet we were at for about an hour! The characters came out about every 15 or 20 minutes and danced around and post for pictures but didn’t really interact all that much. Again wish we hadn’t spent the money on that, but still had some yummy PB and J pizza!
Process of checking in at LAX was fast. Make sure you have your Arrive can app filled out before you check in for your flight at the podium. No one ever checked our negative vaccine test. We found that really odd.
When we arrived in Canada and got off the plane we found out that WestJet had broken my mobility scooter into about four pieces! And I don’t mean taking it apart, I mean literally broken. It was totaled! I’ve travelled with the scooter many many times and never had a problem. It looks like somebody dropped it from somewhere. I was extremely impressed with WestJet customer service. They were completely on the ball.
They brought a wheelchair for me and then transferred us to a golf cart. They had the scooter pieces waiting for us at baggage and an amazing woman they are took care of us putting in the claim. This woman was so amazing she even helped my daughter load up the broken scooter and our baggage onto a cart, get me a wheelchair, and then accompanied us all the way to our car in the parking lot! She was incredible. I got her name and tipped her $20 so I can put in a good word with WestJet about her.
We had barely driven out of the parking lot and I got a call from a scooter rental place asking if I wanted one delivered to my house that night. I told him it was fine As i just want to get home and go to bed. They gave me a claim number and I can call them to get a rental delivered anytime I want and also they are sending out a technician on Monday to pick up my scooter to assess the damage and costs to replace. WestJet also told me we will probably get two free round-trip tickets for the trouble!
Oh also at customs coming back into Canada they checked our full vaccine status and never did ask for our negative Covid tests, which I found a really odd.
Once I got home and in my throat started feeling really scratchy and dry. I thought it was from wearing a mask all day but woke up in the night with 103 fever. Coughing, achy, headache, runny nose and really unwell. I am double vaccinated and it feels like a bad head cold but I have booked a Covid test for tomorrow.
My daughter has started with a sore throat tonight! If we are sick, I am really glad we are back in Canada before symptoms started, but it’s also pretty scary. I didn’t find Disney to be overly worried about Covid. There are always tons of people at the tables at eating establishments, and people waiting for a table. Then when I family would be done another family would sit down and nothing was cleaned properly between them. This kind of grossed me out.
We carried Clorox wipes with us and anytime we sat down to eat we thoroughly wiped down the tables. We had to hand sanitizers on our neck lanyard that we used constantly. We went through about seven of the bath and Bodyworks hand sanitizers in six days.
I don’t know what else we could’ve done to stay healthy. We were masks 85% of the time. If we were walking along and it wasn’t busy outside we were put our mask down but we’re very diligent about wearing it in the crowds and indoors. We also used towels on the lounge chairs at the pool. So I don’t know how I managed to get sick with whether this is just a bad head cold or a mild Covid case, it just shows you no matter how diligent you are you can still pick it up.
I saw people constantly picking up and putting down all of the merchandise kids hugging stuffy‘s and putting them back on the rack, people drinking directly out of the water fountains with their mouth right near the fountain part. We also saw people pick up drinks and put them back on the shelf, etc. so it’s really very very difficult to not come in contact with something if it’s there to come in contact with.
Disney had no social distancing, for example at haunted mansion they still packed the elevator room and at all other preshow rides they packed the rooms in shoulder to shoulder. In hindsight I’m still glad we went as it’s been a rough couple of years and I was so thrilled to be away. But I’m feeling so sick right now part of me wishes we didn’t go. I am going to self quarantine for at least 10 to 14 days even if my test is negative, and so is my daughter.
I honestly will say if I had children who are not vaccinated I would not be taking them to Disney. I was shocked to see tons of infants and newborns there, as it is not a safe environment for them. That is just my opinion. If you have any questions let me know and also I did this is talk to text, so if anything is misspelled that is why.
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