Late February trip/WIWDF tour/Maxpass love

[LizzyS]

We spent this past Monday and Tuesday park hopping at DLR and we had a great time! We hadn't been to DLR in almost two years because we spent a week at WDW last year around the same time, so, needless to say, we were missing "home", as much as we did truly love WDW.

We have only visited the parks during weekdays on one other occasion, if I'm remembering correctly, so the crowd density we are used to is weekend crowds. It was busy, but we (husband and I) noticed a marked difference from what is "normal" to us, so that was a nice surprise.

I just have to say: I LOVE MAXPASS. The Disneyland app worked great on my phone and it was easy to stack up a few FPs, especially later in the day. I will never go and not buy MP for us ever again; it was that awesome. In the past, we would use a few FPs, but our strategy was mostly to get there early and hit the e-tickets first. We still kind of did that, but I was getting FPs for as much as possible via MP as well and it *really* maximized our time. LOVE IT.

One note is that the Matterhorn broke down right as we entered the FP line and, though the CM scanned our tickets when we were exiting the FP line, nothing ever showed up in the app for me and I didn't get an e mail, either. We went back to Matterhorn later when it was back up and the anytime FP wasn't there on our tickets. I explained what happened to the CM working the FP scanner and he let us go on, luckily. I just told him what time we were in line earlier in the afternoon when it went down and that the other CM did scan our tickets when we left the line.

The Walk in Walt's Disneyland Footsteps Tour was amazing and I'd recommend it to anyone that wants to see Walt's apartment over the fire station. I absolutely will never regret getting to go up there. I posted a little more detail in the fairly current thread for the tour in this forum and others have given great detail/photos in there as well.

The ONLY thing that made this trip not absolutely perfect was the hard fact that Space Mountain was down both of our days. I will also tell you that my opinion is that EMH/MM at Disneyland isn't that valuable when SM is down. The Matterhorn's line was pretty long and Fantasyland was packed that morning during EMH. We had our tour scheduled that day, so all we accomplished in the EMH was riding Mr. Toad's Wild Ride (one of my faves, so plenty valuable to me). I had hoped to ride Matterhorn and Mr. Toad during that hour, but it was pushing it too close for my liking to attempt both. The line management that morning also seemed to be a little off. The line for Mr. Toad was clogging up Fantasyland terribly before it was corrected and they let folks flow over into the usual line to the side of the attraction.

Anyway, thanks to everyone who has ever answered any of my questions on this board! You're all the best and I am happy to return the favor anytime!

 

[LizzyS]

Wow, I forgot to mention we stayed at the Disneyland Hotel for the first time ever in the Adventure Tower and we absolutely loved it!

They did do that thing where they shut off the water from 11pm-5am one of our nights, but I knew that happens sometimes thanks to the disboards, so we were understanding upon check-in and, it was either that or the fact that we said it was our anniversary, we weren't charged for parking our car during our stay at all, which was very nice. The CM at the front desk "took care of it".

I loved the hotel itself and the location cannot be beat. We had a standard room overlooking the pool area on the 5th floor and it was great.

We also had breakfast at Steakhouse 55 Wednesday morning before heading back home and that was absolutely delicious and awesome and I'd recommend doing it. I had the German apple pancake and my husband had the french toast; both were great. We had sausage and bacon added on a la carte and that was maybe the best bacon I've ever had in my life. It was thick, but not chewy or overly crispy, and just plain YUM.

 

[theluckyrabbit]

So glad you enjoyed your trip! I know you did a lot of research here -- sounds like it all paid off! We also like to end our trips with breakfast at S55 -- delicious!

 

[Cal-Pie]

Thank you for mentioning the effects that having Space down had on MM. I will be there next Saturday and hadn't considered how that would change things up in the early hours, I was more worried about the pressure it would put on other fast passes.

 

[LizzyS]

So glad you enjoyed your trip! I know you did a lot of research here -- sounds like it all paid off! We also like to end our trips with breakfast at S55 -- delicious!

disboards has helped me out immensely ever since before our first trip; it's really an invaluable resource to me.

Steakhouse 55 breakfast was awesome! It might become a new tradition for us!

 

[LizzyS]

Thank you for mentioning the effects that having Space down had on MM. I will be there next Saturday and hadn't considered how that would change things up in the early hours, I was more worried about the pressure it would put on other fast passes.

It honestly caught me off guard, but logically it makes sense. We always head to Space Mountain first when it's open, EMH/MM or not and I bet a lot of other people do, too. I did not notice a huge impact on FP availability throughout the day for other attractions with it being down, tbh.