Mome Rath
3 Decade Disney Traveler
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2014
- Messages
- 2,661
So, I'm just back from my first ever DL trip. Here were my threads leading up to the trip: Lilly Belle?, Taxi to and from SNA, and Balanced approach for first-timer WDW vets?
Those are just for reference sake to see how everything turned out. First, let me say we had a wonderful time and had ample time to do everything that we wanted to and more. This is kinda going to be another "comparison/anti-comparison" thread for the curious.
1) The planning; I actually did more planning for this trip than I normally do for WDW, since I've been so many times to Florida. Normally I'll pick perhaps one FP per day that I "have" to do and maybe one sit-down restaurant per trip to the World. With this first trip and being a WDW vet, there's no way to not plan IMO, as one feels the urge to plan even if one doesn't need to. (Ha!) However, I do feel my level of planning paid off. I used the 2016 Disneyland guide, Disboards, and Disneyland Daily to plan and it worked out really well. And, I think here is the comparison key; if I were to go back to DL then I would not have to plan nearly as much, and yes, it would be less than even my typical WDW vacation. If you are a first-timer though, I do think you need to plan.
1a) Absolute best advice: Go early... like 45 min before park open if you can manage. Just hanging out at the gate is fun.
2) The flight; we flew by way of Denver and Orange County (John Wayne Airport - SNA), and both airports and flights were enjoyable. I'm so very happy we chose SNA to fly into, and would highly recommend that. It was a little strange not to be flying into Orlando and taking the ME, and this is the first thing that reminded me of our "old school" trips before ME...
3) Transportation: Getting to the Grand Californian. So, we chose to stay at Grand Californian for many reasons, some of which I'll get to. After weighing all the options, we chose to grab a taxi and I'm extremely glad that we did. There were taxi's on hand, and ours was very clean, polite, professional, and proficient. It was $41.00 there without gratuity and we made it in 20 min, $40 voucher for return trip, made it in 20 min as well early in the morn. Clearly that is very different than my normal wait on ME, sitting on the bus, and 45 min to our hotel in WDW. We walked everywhere else.
4) The hotel; the Grand Californian was fantastic. We requested a renovated room and received it, standard view on the 6th floor. It was just as good or better than any level room I've stayed at in WDW save a Club level Castle view Poly. We had a view of the parking lot, but could see the Monorail go by and could glimpse DTD. Mousekeeping was excellent. The biggest difference that I saw here was in the hotel layout... because of where it was placed, it did kind of feel like a jigsaw puzzle piece with limited ways of maneuvering to where you wanted to go. It wasn't a "bad" thing necessarily but because of the placement restrictions it sometimes didn't feel like it had good "flow." Every light in our room had a dimmer, which I love, and the shower was fantastic, add to that I believe we were the first people to stay in our room since the reno and it was truly fabulous. I have to admit, I did miss having a food court.
5) The inevitable comparison; Ok, let me jump to the conclusion; IF I could swap DL with the Magic Kingdom I'd do it in a heart beat. The detail and layout are simply amazing. Main Street stole our hearts. Having said that, I'm not going to lie, everything everyone says about the castle is true... it is very wee. I say that with a lot of new found affection, but it is wee, there's no other word that so wonderfully captures it. It is disorienting for a WDW vet to not be able to just glance up and see the castle. Never-the-less, I'd steal DL. Notice, however, that I said I'd like to swap DL with MK and yes, put it in the rest of WDW. Why? I'll say up front; EPCOT is my park and is still my park, and if I could have DL with it, then I'd have perfection. lol I missed EPCOT.
6) The attractions; all the old-school rides were fantastic and we had a ball on all of them. I did love Carsland, and RSR's as well. Pirates was awesome, and definitely has one up on WDW. It was very cool to get off of one ride and go right on another in a matter of steps. To me, DCA was comparable to AK or DHS, it was never a full day park for us. We would “dip” into DCA, but spent the bulk of our time at DL (get park hoppers!).
7) The Characters; fantastic interactions. This was one of the most cool aspects; the characters would appear out of nowhere and not get swamped in an out of control way. At WDW everything is very orchestrated in a forced kind of way with the characters, here it was again "old school" and very neat. You’d turn a corner, and there would be Spiderman skipping down the street… literally.
8) Dining; IMO, the food in DL was superior to that in WDW. Getting in restaurants was a lot easier... and I will dream of a cherry malt and fried pickles from the Carnation Cafe. There were much more healthy choices as well, as I tend vegetarian/pescatarian.
9) Shopping; It was very similar to WDW, the only real difference was having DTD right there. Also they were really great about asking for anything that would give a discount, such as being an AP holder.
10) Restrooms; I felt the cleanliness of the restrooms was the same, but the restrooms in DL take the prize for decor. (And, yes, our fam talks about Dis restrooms a lot LOL) Also, they were well marked, so plenty of signage you could spot...
Those are just for reference sake to see how everything turned out. First, let me say we had a wonderful time and had ample time to do everything that we wanted to and more. This is kinda going to be another "comparison/anti-comparison" thread for the curious.
1) The planning; I actually did more planning for this trip than I normally do for WDW, since I've been so many times to Florida. Normally I'll pick perhaps one FP per day that I "have" to do and maybe one sit-down restaurant per trip to the World. With this first trip and being a WDW vet, there's no way to not plan IMO, as one feels the urge to plan even if one doesn't need to. (Ha!) However, I do feel my level of planning paid off. I used the 2016 Disneyland guide, Disboards, and Disneyland Daily to plan and it worked out really well. And, I think here is the comparison key; if I were to go back to DL then I would not have to plan nearly as much, and yes, it would be less than even my typical WDW vacation. If you are a first-timer though, I do think you need to plan.
1a) Absolute best advice: Go early... like 45 min before park open if you can manage. Just hanging out at the gate is fun.
2) The flight; we flew by way of Denver and Orange County (John Wayne Airport - SNA), and both airports and flights were enjoyable. I'm so very happy we chose SNA to fly into, and would highly recommend that. It was a little strange not to be flying into Orlando and taking the ME, and this is the first thing that reminded me of our "old school" trips before ME...
3) Transportation: Getting to the Grand Californian. So, we chose to stay at Grand Californian for many reasons, some of which I'll get to. After weighing all the options, we chose to grab a taxi and I'm extremely glad that we did. There were taxi's on hand, and ours was very clean, polite, professional, and proficient. It was $41.00 there without gratuity and we made it in 20 min, $40 voucher for return trip, made it in 20 min as well early in the morn. Clearly that is very different than my normal wait on ME, sitting on the bus, and 45 min to our hotel in WDW. We walked everywhere else.
4) The hotel; the Grand Californian was fantastic. We requested a renovated room and received it, standard view on the 6th floor. It was just as good or better than any level room I've stayed at in WDW save a Club level Castle view Poly. We had a view of the parking lot, but could see the Monorail go by and could glimpse DTD. Mousekeeping was excellent. The biggest difference that I saw here was in the hotel layout... because of where it was placed, it did kind of feel like a jigsaw puzzle piece with limited ways of maneuvering to where you wanted to go. It wasn't a "bad" thing necessarily but because of the placement restrictions it sometimes didn't feel like it had good "flow." Every light in our room had a dimmer, which I love, and the shower was fantastic, add to that I believe we were the first people to stay in our room since the reno and it was truly fabulous. I have to admit, I did miss having a food court.
5) The inevitable comparison; Ok, let me jump to the conclusion; IF I could swap DL with the Magic Kingdom I'd do it in a heart beat. The detail and layout are simply amazing. Main Street stole our hearts. Having said that, I'm not going to lie, everything everyone says about the castle is true... it is very wee. I say that with a lot of new found affection, but it is wee, there's no other word that so wonderfully captures it. It is disorienting for a WDW vet to not be able to just glance up and see the castle. Never-the-less, I'd steal DL. Notice, however, that I said I'd like to swap DL with MK and yes, put it in the rest of WDW. Why? I'll say up front; EPCOT is my park and is still my park, and if I could have DL with it, then I'd have perfection. lol I missed EPCOT.
6) The attractions; all the old-school rides were fantastic and we had a ball on all of them. I did love Carsland, and RSR's as well. Pirates was awesome, and definitely has one up on WDW. It was very cool to get off of one ride and go right on another in a matter of steps. To me, DCA was comparable to AK or DHS, it was never a full day park for us. We would “dip” into DCA, but spent the bulk of our time at DL (get park hoppers!).
7) The Characters; fantastic interactions. This was one of the most cool aspects; the characters would appear out of nowhere and not get swamped in an out of control way. At WDW everything is very orchestrated in a forced kind of way with the characters, here it was again "old school" and very neat. You’d turn a corner, and there would be Spiderman skipping down the street… literally.
8) Dining; IMO, the food in DL was superior to that in WDW. Getting in restaurants was a lot easier... and I will dream of a cherry malt and fried pickles from the Carnation Cafe. There were much more healthy choices as well, as I tend vegetarian/pescatarian.
9) Shopping; It was very similar to WDW, the only real difference was having DTD right there. Also they were really great about asking for anything that would give a discount, such as being an AP holder.
10) Restrooms; I felt the cleanliness of the restrooms was the same, but the restrooms in DL take the prize for decor. (And, yes, our fam talks about Dis restrooms a lot LOL) Also, they were well marked, so plenty of signage you could spot...
