Larissa
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 31, 2011
- Messages
- 164
Hi, everyone!
My best friend and I both love Disney.
Our families went to Disneyland together during the 50th anniversary, when we were in elementary school, and we have been talking about going back together ever since! Since we're both attending the same university now, we have similar schedules. We had a few days off so we spontaneously decided to go back! She texted me on December 25th saying we should go, and the next day we booked our trip. More on that and the deals we got in my pre-trip report.
We flew in Friday and figured we'd arrive at the hotel around lunch time. Our flight left Monday evening and we planned on leaving the park around 2pm. We didn't think we'd get a lot done, but boy were we wrong! I've been to Disneyland quite a few times, and I think this was my most productive trip ever.
On Saturday we managed to ride every open ride in the park (some more than once), watch Aladdin, catch the parade, the 5&Dime show, and Red Car Trolley show, visit Animation Academy, and have a fairly leisurely dinner at Flo's. We were pretty impressed with ourselves.
Through our whole trip, we never waited more than thirty-five minutes for anything. Not bad, hey?
Now,
I love lists, so I was listing everything we did meticulously in my journal as we went along. I figured I'd just put the lists here, as a sort of touring-plan guide.
We took the Disneyland Resort Express from LAX and arrived at theTropicana Hotel around 11ish. I had never stayed there before and I will say I was VERY pleased. I actually sent them a little thank-you email. The staff were very friendly, the room was a good size, it had two queen beds and lots of counter space. Not to mention the fact that we could get from our room at the back of the hotel and INTO DISNEYLAND in like, 500 steps. I know because we were really into counting steps throughout this trip because my new phone has a built-in step counter that I was obsessively turning off and on before every ride.
Check-in wasn't until four, but our room was ready, so that was nice. The groceries we ordered from Vons for our lunches had also arrived and our perishables had been kept in the fridge. We also got three tomatoes that we hadn’t ordered, so I guess that was cool. I like tomatoes; I made a midnight (ok, 2am) snack out of them. We ditched our stuff in the room, stored our groceries, and headed over to Earl of Sandwich in DTD for our free sandwiches (thank you, Sandwich Club).
The sandwiches were really good, but everything tastes better when it's free. Especially to two university students.
Anyway.
Here's what we did in Disneyland on Friday
:
1. Monorail from DTD to Tomorrowland
2. Thor: Treasures of Asgard (because I wanted to get an Avengers comic book signed for my boyfriend)
3. Finding Nemo
4. Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters
5. Star Tours (I think this was our longest wait)
6. Pirates
7. Tiana in New Orleans square (virtually no wait to se her, too)
8. Big Thunder , with a fastpass (I should have written down when we got the fastpasses, but I didn't, sorry).
9. Indiana Jones
10. Jungle Cruise
11. Tarzan's Treehouse
12. Dole Whip Float (not quite as good as the hype, if you ask me)
13. SOUNDsational parade
14. Haunted Mansion (NO WAIT. We sort of speed-walked there from the parade and walked right in).
15. Royal Street Veranda's clam chowder
16. Space Mountain, with fastpass
17. Mad Tea Party (virtually no wait)
18. Fireworks from the worst spot in the park. If you see an empty space on a bench on the right side of the castle, it's empty for a reason. The tree blocked the whole show. Oh well.
19. Small World
20. Canal boats
21. Toad Hall (What is with that ride?)
22. Pinocchio
23. Snow White
24. King Arthur's Carousel
25. Dumbo
16,446 steps, 11.9km, and 412 calories (which is probably less than that Dole Whip)
Disney California Adventure, Saturday:
Gates opened at 8am, but we got there a bit early for rope drop (we left the hotel at 7:25, I think, and were in the rope-drop crowd at like 7:30)
1. Radiator Springs Racers, no wait at all. Just keep left, then merge right
2. Lightning McQueen by his ride
3. Toy Story Midway Mania (15min)
4. Screamin' (15min)
5. Tower oft Terror (25min)
6. For the First Time in Forever Frozen Sing-Along (20min, standby. Depends on when you get in line in relation to showtimes, of course)
7. Luigi's (which the website said would be closed. Apparently it has no closed forever. Sort of sad, but it'll be neat to see what goes in there)
8. Radiator Springs Racers, with fastpass (5min)
9. Tower of Terror, with fastpass that I think we got after riding it the first time, or before. (15min)
10. Aladdin show (12:40 showing). We ate lunch in line. My friend held a spot while I ran to Goofy's Sky School for fastpasses. Turned out to be futile because I got back just as they were letting people into the queue anyway.
11. Goofy's Sky School with fastpass that expired at...I want to say 1:45. It was just as the show ended, whatever it was, and we squeezed in a few minutes late.
12. Little Mermaid (5-10 minutes)
13. King Triton's Carousel (walk on)
14. Mater's (10min)
15. Cinderella Sneak Peak (6min) Super lame...a commercial with a few after-though effects like mice that run under your bum. We only did it because we had time and wanted to make a point of doing it all.
16. Screamin', with a fastpass we got en route to Sky School, I think.
17. We staked out a spot for the parade and Red Car Trolley show at 4:30 outside Carthay. Ate Churro bites from Cozy Cone as we waited. Spilled chocolate on my pants. Abandoned the spot for the 5 and Dime show at 4:05.
18. Returned to spot only to leave it again for the Red Car Trolley boys since we were on the wrong side of the trolley (4:30)
19. Returned to spot. Waited a bit for the parade. Ate some carrots from Vons and pretended we were healthy. Caught the 5:15 parade in an awesome spot next to the most adorable family ever.
20. Animation Academy - Marshmallow
21. Francis' Ladybug Boogie (5min)
22. Flick's Flyers (5min)
23. Tuck N' Roll (5min)
24. Heimlich's (10min because they kept sending half-empty caterpillars out. Grr.)
25. Dinner at Flo's. Since we never really ate a real lunch through this trip and only snacked throughout the day, and since we'd split churros at 4ish, we weren't that hungry. Shared a sandwich (a club?) and chocolate mud pie. Just enough. Now, I love chocolate but that pie was pretty sweet and I actually think half was the perfect amount. I could have done a whole. But I didn't need to.
26. Monster's Inc. (10min?)
27. Golden Zephyr (5min)
28. Jumpin' Jellyfish (10min)
29. Silly Symphony (10-15min)
30. Fun Wheel (15min)
31. Shopping on Buena Vista Street
32. Souvenir shopping in DTD. Got $3 off Jamba Juice with a coupon and BOGO pretzel bites from Wetzels with a coupon. Then we went to World of Disney, which closed at 12 despite the website saying it closed at 2am. They didn't kick us out, but they had shut the doors and the CMs said they did that at midnight. So beware.
22,566 steps, 161.1km, and553 calories
Sunday, Disneyland:
1. Snow White, Cinderella, and Belle at Royal Hall (with only one family of the most adorable sisters dressed as Minnie in front of us)
2. Alice and the Mad Hatter, who were standing outside the teacups
3. Peter Pan, who was hanging out by himself at Snow White's Grotto
4. Alice in Wonderland ride (5min)
6. Main Street Trolley
7. Mary and Bert outside the photopass store. We actually saw them from the Trolley and ran back to see them.
8. Ariel at the front gates
9. Pluto
10. Dale
11. Goofy (9-11 on Mainstreet)
12. Autopia, the lamest ride ever (15min) Even when I couldn't drive real cars I couldn't understand why people line up for this ride. Again, we only did it because we wanted to do everything for the sake of doing everything.
13. Roger Rabbit (5min). Side note, the fastpass return time was for the same time it actually was, so that was funny.
14. Minnie Mouse at her house (or more accurately, in her gazebo)
15. Mickey Mouse as Sorcerer Mickey in his movie barn
16. Gadget's, where I got sprayed in the mouth (5min)
17. Casey Jr. Train (20min). This is where I got my best picture of Arendale on the Canal Boats, since we road the boats at night. Ireally wanted that picture.
18. Merida at Fantasyland Faire (3min, because we asked when to come back and see her and were told either her or Rapunzel would be there by that time).
19. Star Tours with fastpass
and then it was 11:15 (just as a general time marker)
20. Mickey's Magical Map for the 12:15 show (we wasted a WHOLE BUNCH OF TIME because we were told Merida and Rapunzel alternated. So we came back and waited...but Ariel showed up....or did we go to confirm and learn Ariel was coming? Can't remember. Anyway, we left and caught the map show).
21. Rapunzel (we waited in the Ariel line for 20-30 minutes before she left and Rapunzel came because we really wanted to see her)
22. Big Thunder, with fastpass
23. Aladdin, Jasmine, Genie outside Aladdin's Oasis
24. Tiki Room
26. Astro Orbiter
And then we'd finished all the open rides in DL between Friday and Sunday.
27. Captain America (for the comic book, again)
28. Frozen lemonade in Tomorrowland, because it was HOT and I was wearing jeans and a black shirt.
29. Jungle Cruise (20min)
30. Pirates (25min)
31. Mark Twain Riverboat
32. Dinner at Jolly Holiday, where we caught the last bit of the parade again.
33. We headed to the blue meeting area for the Fantasmic fastpass (which we grabbed after BTM because we had forgotten until then. We'd originally wanted the late show and thought we'd do fireworks first, but then we forgot to go back. We thought by the time we remembered they might be out...but we actually got the early show.) Just so you know, the organization system for Fantasmic fastpass returning is so awful compared to WOC. Anyway, we ended up on the left side with a decent view.
34. After the show ended we immediately high-tailed it to the castle to see if we could catch the fireworks. We didn't think we'd make it but we actually got a great spot JUST as the music started. Crazy good luck. We were somewhere near the entrance to...Frontierland? Adventureland? Frontierland, I think, and the Jolly Holiday. And we slipped right into the back of the crowd in that little area and had a great view. Seriously good luck.
35. High-tailed to Haunted Mansion - no wait
36. Pirates (5-10min)
37. Shopping on Main Street
38. Storybookland (15min). No good pictures of Arendale in the dark, unfortunately, which was what I wanted. But I got one from the Casey Jr. train earlier so it was OK.
39. Space Mountain with fastpass
40. Mad Tea Party (<5min)
41. Carousel (<5min)
27,423 steps, 19.4km, and 676 calories.
Monday, Disney California Adventure:
1. Wandering through DTD and Disney hotels since we got there early for an 8:00 opening...but the park opened at 9. So did DTD, actually, except for a cafe or something, so we explored the hotels.
2. Radiator, single rider, walked on. The standby line was already 60 minutes because of Magic Morning.
3. Screamin' (10min)
4. Toy Story Midway Mania (28min)
5. Shops in Cars Land. The Route 66 store has twice as many different postcards as in the whole of Disneyland. #moreyouknow
6. Little Mermaid
7. King Triton's Carousel
8. Monster's Inc. (walk on, since we just got there as it re-opened after a breakdown or something)
9. Radiator Springs, single rider. (25 min)
10. Toy Story Midway Mania (40min)
11. Screamin' with fastpass
12. Cry. Then we left to go back to LAX, where we had to eat a underdressed salad out of a box because our whole terminal was tarped up (kind of like the castle...seemed to be a theme).
Somewhere in there we saw Pluto on Buena Vista Street and Oswald in the bushy area across from his store. We asked a bunch of CMs who didn't know when Oswald was coming out and gave us wrong info, so we wasted some time there. Eventually we just asked the front desk and got a straig[GALLERY=][/GALLERY]ht answer. Should have done that first.
21, 757 steps, 15.7km, and 542 calories.
I just want to say again how perfect the Tropicana was. It was SO CLOSE. I think it’s the closest I’ve ever been, but Castle or Carousel may be of similar distance. The Tropicana, though, was actually a very nice hotel. I was surprised because other hotels of comparable proximity (I’m thinking of you, Carousel and Castle Inn) had weirdly bumpy floors, tiny bathrooms with seedy lighting, and lumpy pillows and beds. The Tropicana had none of those things. Plus it had a sink and counter separate from the bathtub and toilet, which we liked. There was also a LOT of counter space at that sink, which we needed. We were able to keep all our groceries on the set of drawers with the TV, my bag and souvenirs on the desk, and my friends stuff on the table. The staff were very friendly, too. And we got a good flight/hotel deal through Priceline.
I also want to note again that our groceries from Vons were delivered in good order. We ordered lunch foods four three days plus breakfast for four for $47USD ($60 Canadian, thanks to the lovely timing on the dollar-drop). I think I’m going to do another post on saving money that will have more on that later.
It was a GREAT trip! 
My best friend and I both love Disney.
Our families went to Disneyland together during the 50th anniversary, when we were in elementary school, and we have been talking about going back together ever since! Since we're both attending the same university now, we have similar schedules. We had a few days off so we spontaneously decided to go back! She texted me on December 25th saying we should go, and the next day we booked our trip. More on that and the deals we got in my pre-trip report.We flew in Friday and figured we'd arrive at the hotel around lunch time. Our flight left Monday evening and we planned on leaving the park around 2pm. We didn't think we'd get a lot done, but boy were we wrong! I've been to Disneyland quite a few times, and I think this was my most productive trip ever.
On Saturday we managed to ride every open ride in the park (some more than once), watch Aladdin, catch the parade, the 5&Dime show, and Red Car Trolley show, visit Animation Academy, and have a fairly leisurely dinner at Flo's. We were pretty impressed with ourselves.
Through our whole trip, we never waited more than thirty-five minutes for anything. Not bad, hey?Now,
I love lists, so I was listing everything we did meticulously in my journal as we went along. I figured I'd just put the lists here, as a sort of touring-plan guide.
We took the Disneyland Resort Express from LAX and arrived at theTropicana Hotel around 11ish. I had never stayed there before and I will say I was VERY pleased. I actually sent them a little thank-you email. The staff were very friendly, the room was a good size, it had two queen beds and lots of counter space. Not to mention the fact that we could get from our room at the back of the hotel and INTO DISNEYLAND in like, 500 steps. I know because we were really into counting steps throughout this trip because my new phone has a built-in step counter that I was obsessively turning off and on before every ride.
Check-in wasn't until four, but our room was ready, so that was nice. The groceries we ordered from Vons for our lunches had also arrived and our perishables had been kept in the fridge. We also got three tomatoes that we hadn’t ordered, so I guess that was cool. I like tomatoes; I made a midnight (ok, 2am) snack out of them. We ditched our stuff in the room, stored our groceries, and headed over to Earl of Sandwich in DTD for our free sandwiches (thank you, Sandwich Club).
The sandwiches were really good, but everything tastes better when it's free. Especially to two university students.
Anyway.
Here's what we did in Disneyland on Friday
:1. Monorail from DTD to Tomorrowland
2. Thor: Treasures of Asgard (because I wanted to get an Avengers comic book signed for my boyfriend)
3. Finding Nemo
4. Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters
5. Star Tours (I think this was our longest wait)
6. Pirates
7. Tiana in New Orleans square (virtually no wait to se her, too)
8. Big Thunder , with a fastpass (I should have written down when we got the fastpasses, but I didn't, sorry).
9. Indiana Jones
10. Jungle Cruise
11. Tarzan's Treehouse
12. Dole Whip Float (not quite as good as the hype, if you ask me)
13. SOUNDsational parade
14. Haunted Mansion (NO WAIT. We sort of speed-walked there from the parade and walked right in).
15. Royal Street Veranda's clam chowder
16. Space Mountain, with fastpass
17. Mad Tea Party (virtually no wait)
18. Fireworks from the worst spot in the park. If you see an empty space on a bench on the right side of the castle, it's empty for a reason. The tree blocked the whole show. Oh well.
19. Small World
20. Canal boats
21. Toad Hall (What is with that ride?)
22. Pinocchio
23. Snow White
24. King Arthur's Carousel
25. Dumbo
16,446 steps, 11.9km, and 412 calories (which is probably less than that Dole Whip)
Disney California Adventure, Saturday:
Gates opened at 8am, but we got there a bit early for rope drop (we left the hotel at 7:25, I think, and were in the rope-drop crowd at like 7:30)
1. Radiator Springs Racers, no wait at all. Just keep left, then merge right
2. Lightning McQueen by his ride
3. Toy Story Midway Mania (15min)
4. Screamin' (15min)
5. Tower oft Terror (25min)
6. For the First Time in Forever Frozen Sing-Along (20min, standby. Depends on when you get in line in relation to showtimes, of course)
7. Luigi's (which the website said would be closed. Apparently it has no closed forever. Sort of sad, but it'll be neat to see what goes in there)
8. Radiator Springs Racers, with fastpass (5min)
9. Tower of Terror, with fastpass that I think we got after riding it the first time, or before. (15min)
10. Aladdin show (12:40 showing). We ate lunch in line. My friend held a spot while I ran to Goofy's Sky School for fastpasses. Turned out to be futile because I got back just as they were letting people into the queue anyway.
11. Goofy's Sky School with fastpass that expired at...I want to say 1:45. It was just as the show ended, whatever it was, and we squeezed in a few minutes late.
12. Little Mermaid (5-10 minutes)
13. King Triton's Carousel (walk on)
14. Mater's (10min)
15. Cinderella Sneak Peak (6min) Super lame...a commercial with a few after-though effects like mice that run under your bum. We only did it because we had time and wanted to make a point of doing it all.
16. Screamin', with a fastpass we got en route to Sky School, I think.
17. We staked out a spot for the parade and Red Car Trolley show at 4:30 outside Carthay. Ate Churro bites from Cozy Cone as we waited. Spilled chocolate on my pants. Abandoned the spot for the 5 and Dime show at 4:05.
18. Returned to spot only to leave it again for the Red Car Trolley boys since we were on the wrong side of the trolley (4:30)
19. Returned to spot. Waited a bit for the parade. Ate some carrots from Vons and pretended we were healthy. Caught the 5:15 parade in an awesome spot next to the most adorable family ever.
20. Animation Academy - Marshmallow
21. Francis' Ladybug Boogie (5min)
22. Flick's Flyers (5min)
23. Tuck N' Roll (5min)
24. Heimlich's (10min because they kept sending half-empty caterpillars out. Grr.)
25. Dinner at Flo's. Since we never really ate a real lunch through this trip and only snacked throughout the day, and since we'd split churros at 4ish, we weren't that hungry. Shared a sandwich (a club?) and chocolate mud pie. Just enough. Now, I love chocolate but that pie was pretty sweet and I actually think half was the perfect amount. I could have done a whole. But I didn't need to.
26. Monster's Inc. (10min?)
27. Golden Zephyr (5min)
28. Jumpin' Jellyfish (10min)
29. Silly Symphony (10-15min)
30. Fun Wheel (15min)
31. Shopping on Buena Vista Street
32. Souvenir shopping in DTD. Got $3 off Jamba Juice with a coupon and BOGO pretzel bites from Wetzels with a coupon. Then we went to World of Disney, which closed at 12 despite the website saying it closed at 2am. They didn't kick us out, but they had shut the doors and the CMs said they did that at midnight. So beware.
22,566 steps, 161.1km, and553 calories
Sunday, Disneyland:
1. Snow White, Cinderella, and Belle at Royal Hall (with only one family of the most adorable sisters dressed as Minnie in front of us)
2. Alice and the Mad Hatter, who were standing outside the teacups
3. Peter Pan, who was hanging out by himself at Snow White's Grotto
4. Alice in Wonderland ride (5min)
6. Main Street Trolley
7. Mary and Bert outside the photopass store. We actually saw them from the Trolley and ran back to see them.
8. Ariel at the front gates
9. Pluto
10. Dale
11. Goofy (9-11 on Mainstreet)
12. Autopia, the lamest ride ever (15min) Even when I couldn't drive real cars I couldn't understand why people line up for this ride. Again, we only did it because we wanted to do everything for the sake of doing everything.
13. Roger Rabbit (5min). Side note, the fastpass return time was for the same time it actually was, so that was funny.
14. Minnie Mouse at her house (or more accurately, in her gazebo)
15. Mickey Mouse as Sorcerer Mickey in his movie barn
16. Gadget's, where I got sprayed in the mouth (5min)
17. Casey Jr. Train (20min). This is where I got my best picture of Arendale on the Canal Boats, since we road the boats at night. Ireally wanted that picture.
18. Merida at Fantasyland Faire (3min, because we asked when to come back and see her and were told either her or Rapunzel would be there by that time).
19. Star Tours with fastpass
and then it was 11:15 (just as a general time marker)
20. Mickey's Magical Map for the 12:15 show (we wasted a WHOLE BUNCH OF TIME because we were told Merida and Rapunzel alternated. So we came back and waited...but Ariel showed up....or did we go to confirm and learn Ariel was coming? Can't remember. Anyway, we left and caught the map show).
21. Rapunzel (we waited in the Ariel line for 20-30 minutes before she left and Rapunzel came because we really wanted to see her)
22. Big Thunder, with fastpass
23. Aladdin, Jasmine, Genie outside Aladdin's Oasis
24. Tiki Room
26. Astro Orbiter
And then we'd finished all the open rides in DL between Friday and Sunday.
27. Captain America (for the comic book, again)
28. Frozen lemonade in Tomorrowland, because it was HOT and I was wearing jeans and a black shirt.
29. Jungle Cruise (20min)
30. Pirates (25min)
31. Mark Twain Riverboat
32. Dinner at Jolly Holiday, where we caught the last bit of the parade again.
33. We headed to the blue meeting area for the Fantasmic fastpass (which we grabbed after BTM because we had forgotten until then. We'd originally wanted the late show and thought we'd do fireworks first, but then we forgot to go back. We thought by the time we remembered they might be out...but we actually got the early show.) Just so you know, the organization system for Fantasmic fastpass returning is so awful compared to WOC. Anyway, we ended up on the left side with a decent view.
34. After the show ended we immediately high-tailed it to the castle to see if we could catch the fireworks. We didn't think we'd make it but we actually got a great spot JUST as the music started. Crazy good luck. We were somewhere near the entrance to...Frontierland? Adventureland? Frontierland, I think, and the Jolly Holiday. And we slipped right into the back of the crowd in that little area and had a great view. Seriously good luck.
35. High-tailed to Haunted Mansion - no wait
36. Pirates (5-10min)
37. Shopping on Main Street
38. Storybookland (15min). No good pictures of Arendale in the dark, unfortunately, which was what I wanted. But I got one from the Casey Jr. train earlier so it was OK.
39. Space Mountain with fastpass
40. Mad Tea Party (<5min)
41. Carousel (<5min)
27,423 steps, 19.4km, and 676 calories.
Monday, Disney California Adventure:
1. Wandering through DTD and Disney hotels since we got there early for an 8:00 opening...but the park opened at 9. So did DTD, actually, except for a cafe or something, so we explored the hotels.
2. Radiator, single rider, walked on. The standby line was already 60 minutes because of Magic Morning.
3. Screamin' (10min)
4. Toy Story Midway Mania (28min)
5. Shops in Cars Land. The Route 66 store has twice as many different postcards as in the whole of Disneyland. #moreyouknow
6. Little Mermaid
7. King Triton's Carousel
8. Monster's Inc. (walk on, since we just got there as it re-opened after a breakdown or something)
9. Radiator Springs, single rider. (25 min)
10. Toy Story Midway Mania (40min)
11. Screamin' with fastpass
12. Cry. Then we left to go back to LAX, where we had to eat a underdressed salad out of a box because our whole terminal was tarped up (kind of like the castle...seemed to be a theme).
Somewhere in there we saw Pluto on Buena Vista Street and Oswald in the bushy area across from his store. We asked a bunch of CMs who didn't know when Oswald was coming out and gave us wrong info, so we wasted some time there. Eventually we just asked the front desk and got a straig[GALLERY=][/GALLERY]ht answer. Should have done that first.
21, 757 steps, 15.7km, and 542 calories.
I just want to say again how perfect the Tropicana was. It was SO CLOSE. I think it’s the closest I’ve ever been, but Castle or Carousel may be of similar distance. The Tropicana, though, was actually a very nice hotel. I was surprised because other hotels of comparable proximity (I’m thinking of you, Carousel and Castle Inn) had weirdly bumpy floors, tiny bathrooms with seedy lighting, and lumpy pillows and beds. The Tropicana had none of those things. Plus it had a sink and counter separate from the bathtub and toilet, which we liked. There was also a LOT of counter space at that sink, which we needed. We were able to keep all our groceries on the set of drawers with the TV, my bag and souvenirs on the desk, and my friends stuff on the table. The staff were very friendly, too. And we got a good flight/hotel deal through Priceline.
I also want to note again that our groceries from Vons were delivered in good order. We ordered lunch foods four three days plus breakfast for four for $47USD ($60 Canadian, thanks to the lovely timing on the dollar-drop). I think I’m going to do another post on saving money that will have more on that later.
It was a GREAT trip!
Last edited:
