Our 2006 Grand Californian Resort trip report

[grimley1968]

Hello all.

I have been working on a trip report from our just completed trip to the Grand Californian Resort. I am not going to post it on the DIS, because I recently had a bunch of posts deleted by a mod who decided to delete a thread that got out of control because of 2 other posters. Instead of just locking or closing it, and just deleting the offending the posts, they poofed the whole thing. I don't want to risk that here.

Also, there is some language on there that might get asterisked out on here, and I also have a daily section where I vent about something or other, which tends to earn flames on here. So it just made the most sense to keep it off here, but provide a link to anyone who's really interested in reading it.

So here is a link to my little website I made for our trip report. I hope you enjoy it.

Keep in mind that it is still a work in progress. I only have pictures up for the first 5 days of the trip, with 4 more days to go. But the verbiage is pretty much complete for the entire vacation.

I hope you enjoy it!

 

[stagemomx3]

Hmmm I've read day one, and I find it interesting that you would choose to rant about a woman who was bothered by your own child's rude behavior. I'm around kids a lot and if a child was kicking my chair on a four hour flight I would do more than turn around and look.

 

[AspiringCindy]

I LOVED your very honest trip report! It was both entertaining and informative! I know what you mean about woman without children...I'll leave it at that! I would love to see some of your GC pictures because we will be staying there in two weeks!!

 

[krismom]

Loved the report! Finally, an honest account of a week at Disney- 4 letter words and all! And I'm so glad my kids aren't the only ones who have meltdowns and have to leave restaurants due to them. I loved the report style also- easy to read and the pics are great, what a beautiful family!
A few questions....
~Did the time difference have a bad effect on the kids the first few days? we are flying from NY -CA and I'm worried...
~What is the deal with the swim test in the pool at the GC? Do they really make the kid do a lap across before using the big slide? What If I'm there to "catch" her?
~Do you really need 6 park days? We are planning on 4 and a half in October- just at DL and CA though.
~ What in the heck contained you on Indy? I hate when people think they are "helping" my kids by talking them out of something-
~ I love your response to being called Jesus. Is that the best she could do?

Thanks again for a great report!

 

[deekaypee]

Great TR. Funny, though, I didn't find it all that controversial. I'm sort of new here--does even a little criticism of Disney really evoke flames?

 

[Minniespal]

Enjoyed reading your report ~ Thanx for sharing.

 

[disneymouse]

Your report was alot fun to read. our kids are the same age so i can relate to alot of things things you talked about. it's not easy all the time but i think you guys have a sense of humor which helps
glad to hear about the SoCal weather..sounds great. we went to WDW around last month and were HOT and melting in the florida sun.
sorry to hear about your blue bayou experience too.

 

[grimley1968]

Great TR. Funny, though, I didn't find it all that controversial. I'm sort of new here--does even a little criticism of Disney really evoke flames?

Yep. Read the post above by stagemom who criticizes my remarks about the woman who looked at all the people with kids who were loud now and then. Not one comment about any of the rest of the 9 days, where I did some ranting, but also some praise of different aspects of SoCal and Disneyland and the resort. Also, she apparently didn't read my remarks very well. The woman wasn't just looking at my kids, but also any kid on the plane who made any sort of noise whatsoever. I think it's also unfair to characterize my children's behavior as "rude." That's not how I characterized it. I was honest in my report about what they were doing. If you've ever sat in front of a 2 YO on a flight, you know they kick. We try as much as possible to prevent it, but it's impossible to stop it completely. That's the nature of 2 YO's, but that still is not "rude", IMHO.

So stagemom, did you only notice my one rant about the staring woman on the flight? Or was there anything else at all in the 9 days of trip report I painstakingly wrote that you found the least bit comment-worthy?

That, my friends, is a perfect illustration of why I put it off of the DIS and only linked it from here.

 

[grimley1968]

Loved the report! Finally, an honest account of a week at Disney- 4 letter words and all! And I'm so glad my kids aren't the only ones who have meltdowns and have to leave restaurants due to them. I loved the report style also- easy to read and the pics are great, what a beautiful family!
A few questions....
~Did the time difference have a bad effect on the kids the first few days? we are flying from NY -CA and I'm worried...
~What is the deal with the swim test in the pool at the GC? Do they really make the kid do a lap across before using the big slide? What If I'm there to "catch" her?
~Do you really need 6 park days? We are planning on 4 and a half in October- just at DL and CA though.
~ What in the heck contained you on Indy? I hate when people think they are "helping" my kids by talking them out of something-
~ I love your response to being called Jesus. Is that the best she could do?

Thanks again for a great report!

- The time difference was a positive when we first got there. Sure, we were tired by 6 or 7 PM Pacific time at first, but we were also easily able to take advantage of Early Entry one day, and were able to be there right about at park opening time on a few other days. We were even able to get up early enough and drive to Carlsbad in plenty of time to be there when Legoland opened. After 4 or 5 days, we were pretty well adjusted to the time difference, though. It was much, much harder coming back, actually. I'm still staying up way too late for eastern time.

- There is no "swim test" really at the GC. But the lifeguard at the top of the slide told us that no one was allowed to "catch" their kids right at the slide exit. The kids would have to swim in 4' deep water over to shallower water maybe 20 feet away, or to the ladder that allows re-queuing to the slide. Also, no life vests were allowed. Maddy could have done it without any problems, but we just couldn't get her to try.

- If DL is not too crowded, you won't need 6 days. You can do 3-1 or 2-2 DL/CA. CA is very easy to get around and generally has fewer rides with long waits. DL is more jam-packed with rides and the park seems to always be more crowded. However, if you can adjust to Pacific time well, it's usually open until midnight in the summer. You can do just about everything in 4 days, probably. By our 5th or 6th day there, we were mostly repeating stuff we'd already done.

- What contained me on Indy was sheer embarassment. I'm sure the CM thought I was some of child abuser, although Maddy acted in the exact same way about Haunted Mansion, Rock n Roller Coaster, Goofy's Barnstormer, Space Mountain, Splash, BTMRR, etc. I found Indy to be less intense than many of those other rides I mentioned. She would have been fine. But I wasn't going to sit there and yell at the CM and hold up the ride for everyone else. I'm sure her intentions were good, but they were misplaced in our case.

I'm glad you found our report honest! We love Disney as much as anyone on these boards, but aren't going to whitewash the negative experiences of our vacation.

Also, my "Most Ridiculous Item of the Day" was meant for humor, partially, and also a way to rationalize a good rant. You'll notice some of those rants are pretty petty, but that's because I had to put something in there, since it is a daily feature.

 

[amw]

I loved the thoroughness of your report! You didn't have to use a "disclosure" for your account... I think this is why there were a few negative remarks. They were probably looking for the negatives.

Frankly, I love the way you are upfront about when parents have tantrums. We all get tired, and hungry, and hot -- especially at Disney. You took ownership of that behaviour, and made us laugh at ourselves.

Some of your rants were too much! Talk about memories that last a lifetime... spitting in a jacuzzi... stolen strollers... being thrown off rides.

Glad you liked Legoland. We're planning our first trip to the West Coast next year: one week in Anaheim, and one week in San Diego (including Legoland), and I can't wait... only seven more months

 

[stagemomx3]

I think it's also unfair to characterize my children's behavior as "rude." That's not how I characterized it. I was honest in my report about what they were doing. If you've ever sat in front of a 2 YO on a flight, you know they kick. We try as much as possible to prevent it, but it's impossible to stop it completely. That's the nature of 2 YO's, but that still is not "rude", IMHO.

Characterize it all you want as 2 year old behavior, it's still rude to kick someone's chair repeatedly. Yes that is what children, especially young ones, do. That doesn't make it less rude just because it is typical kid behavior. However to complain about a person who finds this irritating and has the *nerve* to look back at your wife and child, is unfair. Especially since you claimed that and the fact that she apparently "glared" at a family with a crying child ment she needed to spend more time around children. As if she was the one behaving badly. I think it took an enourmous amount of patience and tact not to make one comment to your child that they stop kicking her chair. I would have turned around and told your 2 year old to stop it if no one else was going to. If it was my child doing the kicking I would be apologizing profusely to the person.

So stagemom, did you only notice my one rant about the staring woman on the flight? Or was there anything else at all in the 9 days of trip report I painstakingly wrote that you found the least bit comment-worthy?

Actually I read all of your rantings, and the rest of your reports, I had only read the first day when I posted. It is obvious that you love your children and have a lot of patience with them when they are not behaving at their best. I liked your honesty that you should not have reacted the way you did with the CM on the Indy ride, I think we have all had those moments we wish we could do over at DL.

You have a very "in your face" style of writing, and a strong sense of self depricating humor that showed through clearly in your writing. Do you always intend to be as antagonistic as your post to me came across as?

 

[grimley1968]

If it was my child doing the kicking I would be apologizing profusely to the person.

Actually, we did, but she ignored us, but still glared at our kids and every other kid who acted like a kid on the plane. It was actually kind of comical and many people who did not even have kids were commenting on her. And it's also not as though my DD was raring back and kicking with all her might. It was more like little pushes, although those would still be annoying, I'm sure. I know, I've sat in front of kids like that. But I knew better than to just turn around and glare at those kids and all the other kids on the flight behaving like, well, children. I really did not want to get into a debate on whether my kids were rude, or whether this woman was. I'm still confused why you are continuing to push this point. If you don't want my honest opinions about people I've come across or my impressions of the trip, you're free to click away from my site.

Do you always intend to be as antagonistic as your post to me came across as?

I'm antagonistic towards you? Are you serious? Literally, the only thing you mentioned in your one post earlier was a criticism of my kids' "rude" behavior (your words, not mine), and a threat of doing more than turning around and looking if you came across them doing the same thing as on the plane, and you say I'm antagonizing you? That's rich. You can say you had only read one day of the report, but that doesn't mean you could not have read the rest of it before offering your opinion on my throw-away rant for that first day.

It still seems like you're only looking for the negative in my report. So are you going to next criticize my one petty rant about Legoland, even though 98% of the rest of that page was glowing in its praise of it?

 

[DisneyMommyMichelle]

Shout out to you Grimley! i'm lovin it! never being to DL, it's a good 'feel' for the park

I like everything out it! and it even drew out some out loud laughs !!

 

[grimley1968]

Shout out to you Grimley! i'm lovin it! never being to DL, it's a good 'feel' for the park

I like everything out it! and it even drew out some out loud laughs !!

Thanks, DMM. I fell into the usual trap on my trip report, where I compared it to WDW. It seems most trip reports about DL spend a lot of time comparing it to WDW, and I do the same. It's sort of unfair when you think about it, since DL is about 15 years senior to WDW. But the comparisons were impossible to avoid, since we're such long-time WDW goers.

I hope people get the humor in it. It's dry like a martini. I'm a gin and tonic man myself, so my humor is hopefully drier than my choice of drink.

Believe me, I'm working on the pics for days 6-9. I have them all ready to put on there, but my page editing software pretty much sucks, so it takes longer than it should. Also, I have to choose some pictures not to make the cut, and that's hard. I'd put them all in there, but I want the pages to load reasonably quickly. I've had some RL stuff to deal with, too, so I've not been able to work on it for a couple of days now.

 

[DisneyMommyMichelle]

well i hope your RL stuff gets better and it's okay, the words of the TR are enough color

i would have to say that i too would make comparisons if and when we go

 

[grimley1968]

well i hope your RL stuff gets better

Sorry, I didn't mean to give the impression anything was wrong. I've just been busy with mundane stuff. Nothing wrong, except that the vacation is over.

 

[Grumpy's Wife]

Hey Grimley, good report so far. It seems like the lady in the plane could use a pair of your pretty mood pants.

 

[disneymouse]

actually, i am impressed how well your 2 year old did on a four hour flight. the only way i could get my 2 year old to fly for that long is if she slept for most of the flight. way too much energy to sit still in her seat.
so grimley, yours sound like a little angel. the woman could have used one of your gin and tonics to help with the up-tightness abit.
looking foward to seeing your other photos!

 

[princesslibby]

Hey! I loved your TR. I'd give it:

On a scale of 1-5. With 5 being the best.

 

[Sthronds]

Hey Grimley! That was a great trip report. I'm sorry you had to deal with DL when it was so crowded but I am glad that you enjoyed it. I didn't much like the Blue Bayou either, so you are not alone. Anyway, A+ report! You have a beautiful family.