PTR: Let's try that again. Jan/Star Wars run

[bumbershoot]

OK, we're giving it another shot.

I don't even know where my attempt at a report from July/August is. It wasn't long at all, and it was complainy. We didn't have a good trip. Even time isn't healing this "wound" in me (DH and DS are fine). Oh well.

Well before July we had already gotten entries (bibs) to the Star Wars 5K and 10K. So we have to go. Before we stepped foot inside the parks in July we bought APs. So it's done. We're going.

I'm having a hard time getting excited, but I owe it to myself (and to the dudes that trail along in my travels) to actually RESEARCH this time. Too much has changed, it seems. (too much disney, too much)

So this is my attempt at "writing down" the research, the plans, and asking for lots of help, should any wonderful readers care to help me out.



Background: I'm Molly, hubby is Robert, son is Eamon ("ay-mun"). We've been going to DLR since DS was 17 months old. When he was 6.5 we branched out to WDW, fell madly in love with Universal Orlando, and, it seems, we sort of neglected the Anaheim side of things enough so that my knowledge was lacking just way too much for July and the 60th celebrations.


THIS trip!

We had a hotel planned and booked, and specific dates planned obviously...and then I started looking at airfare, and then looked at the hotel for extra nights and the price freaked me out, then other hotels with lower prices...and now for a total of $100 more (than it would have been with original hotels and dates and the airfare it would have been for that trip) we get two more nights (1 extra day) and free breakfasts and we're just a tad closer to the parks. Done and done.

Desert Palms, 13-19th. DH and DS are doing the 5K, and I'm doing the 10K. Those are the basics!

 

[bumbershoot]

(not so) Secret fear. Also an exaggeration.

Is EVERYTHING going to be closed in January?

Apart from the horrid awful no no no (IMO) holiday iasw?



iasw = my favorite ride EVER.

Jingle Bells iasw = an abomination that should end immediately.

IMO.



But really, will anything be open?


OK, back to reading my Unofficial Guide. And I should set up the Touringplans touring plan.

 

[bumbershoot]

Wow, I'm thrilling.


Two changes in hotel situations later, and we are now...

4 nights Anabella concierge, 2 nights PPH club level. Anabella was a whopping $20 total more than the previous change I'd made from DP to Ana, so even if we only make the time for one breakfast, we're at least even. And once I'd convinced myself to move to PPH for two nights with the AP special, the change to club level was justified with a page of math telling me that (since we'll have access to the lounge on checkin and checkout days plus the day in between) we just each need to utilize $20 of services each day, and we're even. Couple lattes, some cut up fruit (that's expensive at restaurants!), a cookie or two, and we've made it.

We've booked the Blue Bayou Paint the Night package. I'm not thrilled about the expense, but this one's for DH. He wants to see the parade and we all really dislike waiting for ages for a parade. I"m hoping the food is good (I haven't, in the past, liked their vegetarian entree), I'm hoping my son EATS it (last time we went he had the kid's meal, and he even hated THAT! their mac and cheese was nuclear orange and he's not used to such fake-color mac, and it was not pretty, LOL), I'm hoping the standing area is good...etc.

I've worked out a loose schedule on touringplans, which really keeps things light and easy. But having a plan is good; I had NO plan last July, and it didn't go well. (thought my oh-so-extensive-knowledge-and-experience would save me...it didn't, too much had changed, and/or I don't have as oh-so-extensive-knowledge as I thought I did!) So this is good.

I might sound cynical, but it's a decent place for ME to come from. If my expectations are too high, I have nowhere to go but tumble to the depths of despair. It's not how many people work (I have soooo many superawesomehyperOPTIMISTIC friends), but it works for me! I now revel in it.


Now we just have to figure out transportation! We usually rent a car, but with parking fees for both Anabella and PPH that irks me. So I have to do all the math for a car + parking vs shuttle/uber from and to SNA plus a r/t journey to a store. Or even just renting as needed instead of uber for the store.

 

[Casey's Mommie]

Hi Bumbershoot. I hope you enjoy it more than your last trip. We are going at the end of the month. Thanks for writing. I've always enjoyed your trip reports.

 

[bumbershoot]

Thank you.

So far it's a much better trip than July. Whew. We're not moving very fast, though tomorrow we have some plans.

We moved over to PPH today. Booked a standard view, club level, room, and we were upgraded to a family suite. Woo! We really have the BEST luck at PPH in terms of upgraded rooms.

We've had decent food, I got applause at DTD Starbucks when my Mobile Pay drink order was ready after the 10K (which restored some faith in humanity after the 10K where there was lots of crowding and no one following the rules of etiquette for walk/jog), and discovered that I'm perfectly pleasant in a crowd after a drink with cognac in it (vs how I wanted to behave after rum drinks at Trader Sams in July LOL).

OK gotta get to sleep so we have a chance at our "last full day" plans tomorrow!

 

[bumbershoot]

Home now.

Just gotta say....booking Standard (club level) view and getting a Family Suite with a view of DCA and we could see the fireworks...was awesome! They sent the room text and I was all "8th floor, say what? we gotta go stop in at the desk because it should be almost the top floor or floor 3", and the CM said "no, it's correct, I mean, you got a family suite, so yeah, that's right."

And I went kerthunk on the floor. Well, in my mind at least.

So I'd rather be there now.

Except that they changed the chocolates for turndown service, and the chocolate is horrid now. I know, this is some serious stuff.

bwa ha ha ha ha.

More later.

 

[Luckymommatoo]

Hope this trip helped erase some of the July awfulness! Looking forward to reading more.

 

[LinderInWonderland]

Can't wait to hear about the Paint The Night package! I think that parade is stunning.

 

[bumbershoot]

Hi guys, sorry!

January 13th.

We flew in at night, which was a little crazed because of our schedules, but it all worked out.

Here is part of SNA at night. The emptiness and the straight-shot-ness of it is what causes people to recommend the airport. I find it "meh". I know it's closer than LAX but LAX is somehow easier to me. It feels like an airport.

But hey, SNA now has Starbucks and McDonalds at BOTH ends of it.

We were thinking "Uber". Totally Uber. I don't think DH has ever used it, and there was some nervousness. For some reason, Robert got squirrelly about it all of a sudden, and literally as we're standing across the street from the big shuttle area he starts asking deep questions about if we want to walk "all the way" to where the Uber app says the pickup area is (he hadn't ordered a car, but in the process it tells you where you will have to go). Ugh, we're tired, we're malleable, I say "let's just go to the shuttles". I'd had a decent experince with them a few years before, after all.

And...oh no no nonononono. Got into a rust bucket (it was night, we were tired, we weren't making the best decisions) with several other people, find out after we're on our way that it's cash only (the dude that told us how much it was didn't mention that). Robert sat up in the front and was watching the speedometer. 90 mph on the highway, not much slower on the flyovers. He only shared that with me after we were at the hotel and out of the vehicle by the way. And the driver was yawning the WHOLE way. It was terrifying.

The shuttle had signs all over it giving the name of the company and the website, but the website doesn't exist. SuperSaveShuttle. Do NOT get onboard that shuttle.

If your arrival schedule looks like this, it's not good.

Landed at 10:20pm
At the first hotel, Castle Inn, at 10:49pm.

NO NO NO. This is TOO FAST.

Left Castle at 10:51pm
Arrived Anaheim Plaza 10:51pm (to be fair it's the same parking lot)
Guest needed ATM so we left that motel at 10:56pm
Arrived at Anabella 10:59pm


We got to Anabella and I just exited that vehicle as fast as I could. I didn't know (and still don't know) what DH was going to say to the dude and wanted to just get inside. OK so I got my bags first and THEN scooted inside. The checkin employee was great, loved him. He went above and beyond, especially in the "listening to the really freaked out lady in front of me" part of his evening. We had booked Club level at Anabella, and it comes with 2 breakfasts each morning; he gave us 3. Fabulous. Thank you, dude.

Here is a picture of the container of bar-soap in our room.

We had snacked at the airport and then had "tapas" boxes on the airplane, so we didn't need to nosh anymore, and went to bed. Checkin dude had moved us from the concierge room (which has a queen bed and a sofabed) to a I-can't-recall-the-name-of-the room which has an actual little bitty second bedroom for the twin bed. We were on the 2nd floor, which was a first for us at Anabella.


January 14th.

The next morning we had some really decent breakfast in their restaurant, and went on our way to the race expo. Here is a picture of the walk we were about to take.

 

[bumbershoot]

January 14th.



Got up, got ready to go.

Picture of the shower, for those who are interested.

Downstairs, there's a cute little seating area. It's stuff like this that makes me love the place.

And there was a cute cat. Sturdy as anything; one of those semi-feral Disneyland-area cats, I imagine.

Drat, blurry.

We had our included breakfasts, which we thought was a continental or this dish (we don't eat meat so it's not there).

We also ordered this stack o' pancakes because we thought we could do them justice.

In case you're breakasting at Anabella and you have toast and you think "where's the darned butter?" Your answer is peeking out in that pancake picture. They put the pats of butter UNDER the toast and pancakes, so they warm up a bit. Brilliant! Those pancakes were tasty. Alas Robert wasn't eating them, and Eamon and I were too full to finish them all. Sad.


And so we began our walk as pictured previously.

Here's a shot to the right just a bit from the other picture.

They were already setting up barriers and such.

The black carpet was all ready for us.

The bib pickup is in the depths of the garage at DLH. I find it to be very unpleasant under there, mainly because of the quality of the light. I just can't see well in there. Printed the waivers, got the bibs, convinced E that there was truly nothing else to do down there, and went on upstairs to the main part of the expo.

Got our shirts. Did some shopping, got our ankles taped up at the KT tape place. The lady selling was having a bit of a tantrum, saying that everyone had to buy something. The lady taping said that if you wanted just one part taped then it's fine; more than one, please buy some tape. The taper was WAY better at her job than the seller was. Note! There are tape lines on the floor to show where the line is. If you do not notice this and are standing at the end of what seems to be a normal line of people, and you encounter people like we did, you will then be cut unapologetically because apparently you're not allowed to not notice things like lines on the ground. WE chose to TELL others around us that there were taped lines, and that's where the line was. But not them. They just cut. And were bad words about other things while waiting behind them (when we had been in line for 5 minutes before they showed up) for the next half an hour.



Robert said "ha, E looks like Bieber, take his picture". So I did. And he doesn't. But whatever.

At that point we were done. We hit many vendor booths while there. We avoided the rundisney merchandise booth entirely. I have no regrets about that.

I think we wasted a little time by going back to Anabella and dropping off our stuff, then we walked the other way on Katella towards Harbor, to grab waters from the CVS there. Walked up Harbor, had a decent little day in the parks. No pictures, no big problems or excitement, we were just back and cool with that.

But we had to be at DL by 4, so we could have our Blue Bayou early-dinner and PTN experience.

 

[bumbershoot]

A little aside about the corrals (for those reading about the rundisney stuff). When I pictured the corrals from the maps, I figured we would just walk across Katella and enter our corrals.

Oh heck no. How silly of me.

No, we had to walk alllll the way down past PPH (for the 5K, then for the 10K we went into the parking lot from before PPH and all the way around), all the way towards DLH, pass it, pass ESPN Zone, go out into the parking lot. Go through security there, such as it was, keep walking. Go into the entry area where they had the music and the DJs and the yelling people. Then exit through a certain spot, go along the road where Mickey and Friends is, walk an obnoxious distance that takes you under DTD, then you end up walking up that road and then cross into the corrals. At my corral for the 10K, I was directly in front of the Grand.

It. Was. Obnoxious.

That is all.

 

[bumbershoot]

I'm back.

We had a very early dinner at BB. All 3 of us are vegetarian so we had the portobello. The staff there seemed very confused about the whole PTN package, and tried to give us the normal menu. I asked, they checked to see that we had booked the package, they asked IF we wanted the PTN menu. Um, yes? Basically, in retrospect, I think they thought we knew more about it than they did, which is always a mistake. So we didn't know drinks were included, specifically mint juleps. When none of us ordered a drink she brought bottled Dasani (ick) waters for us to take away. At that point we knew beverages were included (though I still didn't know about the juleps until we got home) and hubby ordered coffee.

The kiddo, who has heretofore utterly rejected giant portobello caps with stuff inside of it, had THREE caps on his plate (as did DH...I only had 2, which was actually fine for my stomach, but irritated my mind), and ate it all. He was, of course, threatened that if he wanted to do this dinner (his was the second "pro" vote...my vote was "anti", so he swung the vote) that He Would Eat The Dinner. And he did.


Dessert.

Far prettier than it was tasty. I actually didn't finish mine, and I'm a chocolate cake person. Meh.


I like lights and I like pictures of lights. And I like New Orleans.

We got to the seating area for PTN at the time mentioned on the ticket. We were offered seats on the Carnation side or on the Starbucks side. Starbucks was less crowded so we went there! Curbside seats next to nice people. Couldn't be better. When DS and I needed the restroom we went to the CM and he handed us random tickets he had collected, and we went off. Came back, turned them back in, sat down again. Good seats for the show. Sorry about the blur.

Freaky:

There was a time that this dude would have sent my son into a tizzy of adoration.

Or this dude.

 

[bumbershoot]

This Belle isn't at all terrifyingly huge... No, not at all! Perhaps she should leave Beast and run away with the Triton above. Eek!

They told us that after PTN we could just get up and move towards the castle for the fireworks, but we chose to leave instead. We had an early morning of 5K participating and spectating ahead!