Thank you to all....

[Aby]

...who gave me all the wonderful tips for our first trip to Disneyland!

In summary:

1. The Grand Californian was awesome! Secret stairway to Downtown Disney was used a lot! DCA entrance was very convenient! Seeing the monorail, tower of terror, condor flats and the grizzly river run bear from our balcony - priceless!

2. Magic Mornings - used 2/3 - great way to see the park empty and ride with no waits! On Saturday of President's Day Weekend, we were able to ride Star Tours 5x in a row with no wait!

3. Park Hopping - thank you for the advice to not take the 1 park/day mentality! It was great. We actually preferred DCA over Disneyland so usually started in Disneyland and hopped over to DCA when it got too busy for us.

4. FOOD! - great variety and stayed within our budget. Based on advice from various people here, I made sure to try the Tigger Tails, the Dole Whip, Blue Bayou waterside, and the Big Thunder Mountain BBQ - ALL YUMMMM!

5. World of Color - a must see. Lined up early on the advice of those here and got a great spot.

6. Fireworks - saw twice - once from a not so great spot in the hub and once from the flowerbeds in front of the train station - I much preferred the view from farther back as it was more all encompassing and a lot less crowded!

7. Rope drop at DCA - definitely worth it for Toy Story Midway Mania - the lines even on the slow days were 40+ minutes so it was great to get it done early. It was one reason we skipped a magic morning at Disneyland and it was well worth it for us!

Overall we had a great time and we hope to go back someday. Sadly our vacations are pretty much planned for the next 3-4 years but I'm glad we got to take this trip! Hopefully our Disney Cruise next August will give us our Disney fill until we can get back again. Thanks again everyone for helping out with the planning!

If anyone is interested in pictures, feel free to check out my Flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/smileydogphotography/

Aby

 

[vettegirl]

Glad to hear it! The GCH is a wonderful place to stay

 

[soaringirl]

Very nice pics!!! I hope my camara would shoot pics as good as yours!!
I also stayed at the Grand in our first visit, awesome!!!

 

[soaringirl]

sorry double post

 

[SGDisneyFam]

Glad you had a great time, we leave in 12 sleeps. I think I'm more excited than our kids are.

 

[Susie63]

Great pics! I will have to remember to ride the stationary car on my next trip.

 

[WebmasterMaryJo]

Glad you had such a good trip!

 

[mommamonster]

Your photographs came out beautiful! I definitely hope to stay at the GCH some time in the future! Thanks for the heads up about the wait times for Toy Story Midway Mania, I now know to go first thing when the park opens, because my oldest son definitely wants to ride that one!

 

[Butterfly123]

Beautiful pictures!!!

 

[boltfan]

If you don't mind my asking, what kind of camera did you use? Your pictures are great

 

[Aby]

I use a Canon T1i and most of the shots were taken with the kit lens 18-55mm. I did a bit of tweaking in Aperture but not much. I am quite pleased with most of the shots!

Aby

 

[bakerudall]

That is awesome about the 5X Star Tours morning. I was thinking about using most of my MM for Star Tours this year to check out the new variations. Did you get some variety going one time after another?

I think we're going try hitting Fantasyland at night this time for a different experience.

 

[Aby]

We got quite a bit of variety in the 8 times total we rode Star Tours. We saw 2 different openings, 3 different planets, and 3 different endings. We did get the same combination at least twice, but we still enjoyed it immensely. On that Magic Morning day that we did it 5 times, we probably could have done it at least one or two more times with only a 5-15 minute wait, but we decided that 5 times was enough and that we would rather go head to Buzz 2x before everyone else showed up. It was a great hour!

Aby

 

[DharmaLou]

great photos!

 

[MNRMommy]

Aby, on your MM that you did Star Tours. Did you go in the main entrance or use the tomorrow land entrance.

 

[Aby]

We used the main entrance. We were through security and lined up around 6:40am (mm opening was at 7am) and we were the 2nd in one of the lines. Although our line was the slowest to start letting through, we just power walked over to Tomorrowland and headed straight in. After each ride we'd just exit through the store, head around the corner and get back in line.

Thanks for all the comments on my photos! I'm very happy with the DSLR and although I was worried about lugging it around the park and on the rides it worked out great.

Aby