Vala
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2008
- Messages
- 3,520
Ill try to write a real trip report soon, but I thought Ill post a quick summary of my trip impressions here.
First of all the question I have been worried about most: my SLR camera and the 300 mm lens. The answer to that was simple: nobody cared.
It may have been because I looked like the role model of a tourist. But during our 8 days at the park only once a CM at bag check even commented on my camera. And that was "oh, you got a camera in there too." Not a word about the lens. The other days my pin bag was way more interesting than the camera. I was carrying both openly in my bag pack.
The Disneyland Hotel is really a long walk back from the parks. We stayed in the Wonder tower, and even me whos used to the distance was tired in the end. I was not disappointed, it was pretty much what I expected. I can see why some people think the hotel is over glorified though.
But the service was stellar.
They not did give us our room at 8 AM the day of arrival so we could go to the parks right away, they also helped me sorting out some things with packages that friends sent me.
And most important: I had managed to somehow screw my foot up at the park. No idea what happened. My ankle developed a swelling the size of a tennis ball and after an X-Ray I was diagnosed with a sprained foot. We tried the parks with a complimentary wheelchair from Disney (again stellar service here). But I am not exactly a pixie, so my friends couldnt push me around forever. Within 30 minutes Disneyland Hotel had organised an ECV rental for me, and that was at 9 PM.
My apologies to anybody who was in the park from November 3 who almost got run over with an ECV by a woman with a strange accent. I have never driven one of these before. But there were no casualties to the best of my knowledge.
Our other hotels in the area where Motel 6 (the one that was formerly the Red Roof Inn) and the Ramada Limited North Main Gate.
Going from own experience: be careful about Motel 6. We had no problems, but during Check In we witnessed that they had assigned people to occupied rooms, and it looked like they completely lost track of who was in what room at one point.
Ramada was absolutely okay for the price we paid. There were some sticky parts on the carpet, but thankfully I was wearing shoes when I stepped on there. So no harm done.
Halloween in the parks was great. So many villains in Hollywood backlot. I set up camp there temporarily for several hours over the weekend. Didnt see Maleficent, but Don Carnage from Tailspin, the Old Hag and even Prince John among others.
Altogether I saw way more characters than on the previous two trips combined.
Im still a little torn about Mickeys Halloween Treat. Overall I loved it, but especially on Halloween itself it seemed oversold and really crowded.
Also the number of rude people seemed to steadily increase, especially every night at the event. I thought some of the character photo lines definitely needed more crowd control.
There were several families trying to push in front of our groups of adults. One mother even had the guts to try to reason with us I paid lots of money so my son could meet the characters. Well, so did I, but my mom didnt help.
It really was annoying after a while when you kept seeing the same parents pushing their kids towards characters, completely ignoring the existing lines. That pattern somehow continued all week.
Pixie Hollow was cute, I think its really nicely done. Tink and the other characters are great. I would recommend doing it in the early morning. Theres not much shade in the queue area. We had wait times of 30 to 45 minutes and that was just enough.
I finally did Princess Fantasy Fair and honestly speaking next time its just Ariels for me. The lines seemed really short as it was a weekday. Overall I guess I didn't wait too long, but I did get to meet the stunning number of 3 princesses.
We actually saw the princesses out in front of the floral Mickey before the afternoon parade one day. But the place was a mob scene, so we didn't try to meet them there.
I have a new record on Buzz: 447,000 something points. I started around 60,000 which was my average from last year, but steadily climbed up to an average about 100,000. When I hit 175,000 points on the second day a CM was so amused by my happy dance that he gave me one of those Tink pins.
Definitely Disney magic here. I had got one before by a CM in California Adventure who thought my cheerful bubbly tourist pin trader self was amusing.
When we were looking at the pin books in front of Westward Ho one day a CM came out and gave everyone around free of those promotional year of a million dreams Mickey pins. That was a nice touch.
Oh, and we got dreamed. On our very last day.
I had at least twice daily seen people with Dream Fast Passes and other things coming out of a certain direction, but I had never been able to make out where the Dream Team was.
Then on our last day we were heading back from Nemo through Fantasyland to pick up our tickets from California Adventure for the Fantasmic Premium viewing we had booked. Viewing was totally worth the price, it was November 7 and it was so crowded. We got in line an hour early and just got in for first row. Unfortunately fireworks got cancelled that night.
Anyway so I saw this mass of people coming out of one direction unfolding dream ears. This time I could make out where they came from: the area of Snow White/Pinocchio. I was on the ECV at that point, so we could go in through the exit of Pinocchio. And there they were: the Dream Team.
My poor friends so could not understand my suddenly new found love for Pinocchio, but followed me on the ride. It wouldnt have exactly been a smart thing to yell The Dream Team all across Fantasyland, right?
Those were really long 3.5 minutes on the ride, but the Dream Team was still there when we got out. And when they told us Congratulations, my friends understood as well. We wore those ears with pride. At least I know I did.
I did Toy Story Mania twice, no wait thanks to the single riders line. It is a fun ride, but I would never spend 2 hours in line for it. Overall I really prefer Buzz.
We had tried during the Halloween party with wait times of 20 minutes posted, but gave up in the end after maybe 10 minutes. It just got too much for us. Several parents around us insisted on dragging their kids through the ride with them wailing and crying and wanting to go trick or treating.
This may be a cultural difference. But if your kid so obviously wants to be elsewhere at the moment this is not the right time to make him do what you want, at least not in my eyes.
We did several character meals, with Goofy being our clear favourite here. We had originally planned for brunch and dinner there, but my friends liked it so much that we went back for an impromptu goodbye dinner during our last day in Anaheim.
We saw Goofy, Chip & Dale and Pluto every time we were there.
The first brunch also had Jasmine, Aurora and Baloo.
As I said in another post, I got really excited about seeing Baloo. When I get excited I turn into a 3 year old on sugar rush, so I really squealed his name through the waiting area. Some cast members heard, asked me what the deal was and even got Baloo back to our table for special time. I was really impressed.
I celebrated my birthday late there silly me had forgotten to take off the button from my actual celebration at Ariels. I got a cupcake with a special button, and the CMs and Aurora sang to me. We witnesses several celebrations and they always took great care in making sure that there was a character around to congratulate.
At our first dinner we saw Mulan instead of Aurora and Baloo was replaced with Minnie.
Had good character interaction both times, Jasmine even remembered me. Overall I liked the food better at dinner, but I guess this is a matter of taste.
Our good bye dinner exceeded all expectations though. The CMs couldnt have been nicer. One woman saw I was a pin trader and even ran backstage to get her lanyard because she had seen that she had several things I needed. Our waiter helped us cutting the tablecloth so we could take home the messages Chip and Dale wrote for our scrap books. They even offered to get me what I wanted from the buffet so my friends wouldnt have to carry my plate too.
Characters were Goofy, Chip and Dale, Pluto, Mulan, Minnie and Aladdin.
Mulan didnt come to our table, but we were not around for too long, so that was okay.
My second favourite was Chip & Dales. Delicious food and I just loved the setting. We had a 7 AM seating, so we had the characters to ourselves a long time. We saw Kenai and Koda from Brother Bear, Chip & Dale of course, Terk from Tarzan and Meeko.
I think some kids may not enjoy it that much because they dont know the characters. Some younger adults came in a while after us, and they thought Terk was Baloo.
Ariels has definitely improved since last year. The food is very good, and they even bring you refills for the starter and the dessert shared plates. I absolutely loved the little chocolate cakes, and my chicken was delicious.
We saw Ariel there, Jasmine, Aurora, Snow White and Cinderella.
The character meal I liked least by far was Minnies Breakfast.
We had a 10.15 AM seating on an Early Entry day. We thought that this was the perfect timing, but unfortunately not so much.
When we got in there was no character there in the picture area, so they tried to sell me a photo package of me holding Tinker Bell for $ 30. Erm sorry, not going to happen.
Food was cafeteria style and mostly cold. I had been warned by friends and thankfully our experience was not as bad as theirs, but still I am not sure if I will ever come back there.
Characters were Minnie, Captain Hook, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Chip & Dale.
Winnie came through our area only once and completely ignored our table. Stuff like that can happen, but it should not happen if each character actually has a handler with him. They should make sure nobody gets skipped. I complained. Winnie didnt come back though.
Chip and Dale also left for the castle celebration at 10.50 AM. We were told they would be back and wed still get to meet them. Well, we met Chip but again not thanks to the CMs but due to me being the overexcited tourist again and yelling Chip and his German character name all across the room. Dale completely skipped us.
I was really, really not impressed. Thankfully this was our first character meal and things got a lot better at the others.
This was one of our two negative experiences with CMs during the trip.
The second one actually was at City Hall. It has been recommended on here so often that you can ask when characters come out there. I tried twice. My friend who was with me loves Chip & Dale, and we did not see them at all during our first two days.
The people at City Hall could not tell me when/where Chip and Dale would be out. They kept handing me the programme saying where characters would appear and told me to look there. Not exactly helpful in this case. We did track Chip & Dale down on our third day and all went out well, but that was a really surprising unhelpful experience.
Okay, I guess I better stop rambling now or there will be nothing left for a trip report. LOL Any questions, please feel free to ask.
First of all the question I have been worried about most: my SLR camera and the 300 mm lens. The answer to that was simple: nobody cared.
It may have been because I looked like the role model of a tourist. But during our 8 days at the park only once a CM at bag check even commented on my camera. And that was "oh, you got a camera in there too." Not a word about the lens. The other days my pin bag was way more interesting than the camera. I was carrying both openly in my bag pack.
The Disneyland Hotel is really a long walk back from the parks. We stayed in the Wonder tower, and even me whos used to the distance was tired in the end. I was not disappointed, it was pretty much what I expected. I can see why some people think the hotel is over glorified though.
But the service was stellar.
They not did give us our room at 8 AM the day of arrival so we could go to the parks right away, they also helped me sorting out some things with packages that friends sent me.
And most important: I had managed to somehow screw my foot up at the park. No idea what happened. My ankle developed a swelling the size of a tennis ball and after an X-Ray I was diagnosed with a sprained foot. We tried the parks with a complimentary wheelchair from Disney (again stellar service here). But I am not exactly a pixie, so my friends couldnt push me around forever. Within 30 minutes Disneyland Hotel had organised an ECV rental for me, and that was at 9 PM.
My apologies to anybody who was in the park from November 3 who almost got run over with an ECV by a woman with a strange accent. I have never driven one of these before. But there were no casualties to the best of my knowledge.
Our other hotels in the area where Motel 6 (the one that was formerly the Red Roof Inn) and the Ramada Limited North Main Gate.
Going from own experience: be careful about Motel 6. We had no problems, but during Check In we witnessed that they had assigned people to occupied rooms, and it looked like they completely lost track of who was in what room at one point.
Ramada was absolutely okay for the price we paid. There were some sticky parts on the carpet, but thankfully I was wearing shoes when I stepped on there. So no harm done.
Halloween in the parks was great. So many villains in Hollywood backlot. I set up camp there temporarily for several hours over the weekend. Didnt see Maleficent, but Don Carnage from Tailspin, the Old Hag and even Prince John among others.
Altogether I saw way more characters than on the previous two trips combined.
Im still a little torn about Mickeys Halloween Treat. Overall I loved it, but especially on Halloween itself it seemed oversold and really crowded.
Also the number of rude people seemed to steadily increase, especially every night at the event. I thought some of the character photo lines definitely needed more crowd control.
There were several families trying to push in front of our groups of adults. One mother even had the guts to try to reason with us I paid lots of money so my son could meet the characters. Well, so did I, but my mom didnt help.
It really was annoying after a while when you kept seeing the same parents pushing their kids towards characters, completely ignoring the existing lines. That pattern somehow continued all week.
Pixie Hollow was cute, I think its really nicely done. Tink and the other characters are great. I would recommend doing it in the early morning. Theres not much shade in the queue area. We had wait times of 30 to 45 minutes and that was just enough.
I finally did Princess Fantasy Fair and honestly speaking next time its just Ariels for me. The lines seemed really short as it was a weekday. Overall I guess I didn't wait too long, but I did get to meet the stunning number of 3 princesses.
We actually saw the princesses out in front of the floral Mickey before the afternoon parade one day. But the place was a mob scene, so we didn't try to meet them there.
I have a new record on Buzz: 447,000 something points. I started around 60,000 which was my average from last year, but steadily climbed up to an average about 100,000. When I hit 175,000 points on the second day a CM was so amused by my happy dance that he gave me one of those Tink pins.
Definitely Disney magic here. I had got one before by a CM in California Adventure who thought my cheerful bubbly tourist pin trader self was amusing. When we were looking at the pin books in front of Westward Ho one day a CM came out and gave everyone around free of those promotional year of a million dreams Mickey pins. That was a nice touch.
Oh, and we got dreamed. On our very last day.
I had at least twice daily seen people with Dream Fast Passes and other things coming out of a certain direction, but I had never been able to make out where the Dream Team was.
Then on our last day we were heading back from Nemo through Fantasyland to pick up our tickets from California Adventure for the Fantasmic Premium viewing we had booked. Viewing was totally worth the price, it was November 7 and it was so crowded. We got in line an hour early and just got in for first row. Unfortunately fireworks got cancelled that night.
Anyway so I saw this mass of people coming out of one direction unfolding dream ears. This time I could make out where they came from: the area of Snow White/Pinocchio. I was on the ECV at that point, so we could go in through the exit of Pinocchio. And there they were: the Dream Team.
My poor friends so could not understand my suddenly new found love for Pinocchio, but followed me on the ride. It wouldnt have exactly been a smart thing to yell The Dream Team all across Fantasyland, right?
Those were really long 3.5 minutes on the ride, but the Dream Team was still there when we got out. And when they told us Congratulations, my friends understood as well. We wore those ears with pride. At least I know I did.
I did Toy Story Mania twice, no wait thanks to the single riders line. It is a fun ride, but I would never spend 2 hours in line for it. Overall I really prefer Buzz.
We had tried during the Halloween party with wait times of 20 minutes posted, but gave up in the end after maybe 10 minutes. It just got too much for us. Several parents around us insisted on dragging their kids through the ride with them wailing and crying and wanting to go trick or treating.
This may be a cultural difference. But if your kid so obviously wants to be elsewhere at the moment this is not the right time to make him do what you want, at least not in my eyes.
We did several character meals, with Goofy being our clear favourite here. We had originally planned for brunch and dinner there, but my friends liked it so much that we went back for an impromptu goodbye dinner during our last day in Anaheim.
We saw Goofy, Chip & Dale and Pluto every time we were there.
The first brunch also had Jasmine, Aurora and Baloo.
As I said in another post, I got really excited about seeing Baloo. When I get excited I turn into a 3 year old on sugar rush, so I really squealed his name through the waiting area. Some cast members heard, asked me what the deal was and even got Baloo back to our table for special time. I was really impressed.
I celebrated my birthday late there silly me had forgotten to take off the button from my actual celebration at Ariels. I got a cupcake with a special button, and the CMs and Aurora sang to me. We witnesses several celebrations and they always took great care in making sure that there was a character around to congratulate.
At our first dinner we saw Mulan instead of Aurora and Baloo was replaced with Minnie.
Had good character interaction both times, Jasmine even remembered me. Overall I liked the food better at dinner, but I guess this is a matter of taste.
Our good bye dinner exceeded all expectations though. The CMs couldnt have been nicer. One woman saw I was a pin trader and even ran backstage to get her lanyard because she had seen that she had several things I needed. Our waiter helped us cutting the tablecloth so we could take home the messages Chip and Dale wrote for our scrap books. They even offered to get me what I wanted from the buffet so my friends wouldnt have to carry my plate too.
Characters were Goofy, Chip and Dale, Pluto, Mulan, Minnie and Aladdin.
Mulan didnt come to our table, but we were not around for too long, so that was okay.
My second favourite was Chip & Dales. Delicious food and I just loved the setting. We had a 7 AM seating, so we had the characters to ourselves a long time. We saw Kenai and Koda from Brother Bear, Chip & Dale of course, Terk from Tarzan and Meeko.
I think some kids may not enjoy it that much because they dont know the characters. Some younger adults came in a while after us, and they thought Terk was Baloo.
Ariels has definitely improved since last year. The food is very good, and they even bring you refills for the starter and the dessert shared plates. I absolutely loved the little chocolate cakes, and my chicken was delicious.
We saw Ariel there, Jasmine, Aurora, Snow White and Cinderella.
The character meal I liked least by far was Minnies Breakfast.
We had a 10.15 AM seating on an Early Entry day. We thought that this was the perfect timing, but unfortunately not so much.
When we got in there was no character there in the picture area, so they tried to sell me a photo package of me holding Tinker Bell for $ 30. Erm sorry, not going to happen.
Food was cafeteria style and mostly cold. I had been warned by friends and thankfully our experience was not as bad as theirs, but still I am not sure if I will ever come back there.
Characters were Minnie, Captain Hook, Winnie the Pooh, Tigger and Chip & Dale.
Winnie came through our area only once and completely ignored our table. Stuff like that can happen, but it should not happen if each character actually has a handler with him. They should make sure nobody gets skipped. I complained. Winnie didnt come back though.
Chip and Dale also left for the castle celebration at 10.50 AM. We were told they would be back and wed still get to meet them. Well, we met Chip but again not thanks to the CMs but due to me being the overexcited tourist again and yelling Chip and his German character name all across the room. Dale completely skipped us.
I was really, really not impressed. Thankfully this was our first character meal and things got a lot better at the others.
This was one of our two negative experiences with CMs during the trip.
The second one actually was at City Hall. It has been recommended on here so often that you can ask when characters come out there. I tried twice. My friend who was with me loves Chip & Dale, and we did not see them at all during our first two days.
The people at City Hall could not tell me when/where Chip and Dale would be out. They kept handing me the programme saying where characters would appear and told me to look there. Not exactly helpful in this case. We did track Chip & Dale down on our third day and all went out well, but that was a really surprising unhelpful experience.
Okay, I guess I better stop rambling now or there will be nothing left for a trip report. LOL Any questions, please feel free to ask.
)
(Sorry about your sprain though.)
I'm sometimes writing reports about science fiction events, and those always get to the size of War and Peace or something. So I was kid of worried. 
