We had a Disney December, Bahamian Xmas, NYC NYE and then some!! COMPLETED!

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Mickey and the Magical Map

We then rode the Disneyland railroad at some stage I cant remember exactly when. We ten watched Mickey and the Magical Map show. It was a great show and we got to see one of my favourite childhood characters King Louie from The Jungle Book.

We spotted the Evil queen when we were walking around. Don't think she liked being snapped!

I rode Splash Mountain and got soaked and then we went back to the hotel for some relaxation time before our dinner at Goofy Kitchen.

 

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Goofy's Kitchen and Ice skating in DTD

Goofy’s kitchen meal was nice, buffet again. The characters were a little underdone compared to last time we thought. It’s definitely geared and suitable for younger kids with some of the dishes they have in the buffet, but equally there was plenty of choice for older also. I remember they had a crème brulee on the dessert buffet which right about now as my favourite dessert so I was really enjoying this.

After dinner we made it back for the Ice Skating session. We had planned on ice skating when we were in New York and when we saw that they had an ice skating rink here at DTD , DS really wanted to do it. I can’t remember how much it was, I think maybe $15-$20 per person from memory. Just as an aside, when I got our travel insurance, we had to add the whole Winter sports pack(for an extra premium), to be covered for the ice skating we were planning to do in NYC. The Winter sports pack covered skiing tobogganing and ice skating of course, and without it we would have had no cover had anything happened while undertaking the short ice skating escapade!

Back to this trip, DS & DW skated while I minded our stuff. They both really enjoyed it. DS had never ice skated before but had a ball. There were some kids who had clearly done it before and were carving it up. I got talking to a guy from CA who had been out to Australia 30 years earlier and loved it and thought Australians were the nicest people in the world. We had a good chat for about 45mins, by the end he had introduced me to his wife and was saying to her to here is another example of why I like Australian’s so much!

 

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DCA at night

We walked around for a bit more and headed back into into DCA as we were heading over to Toy Story Mania for a late ride.

We came to a Photopass photographer the Christmas tree and he said they were trying something new and wanted some feedback if we wanted to get our photo taken. We though sure. Here is the photo he took. You may notice the lights in the background are Mickey shaped! A neat effect by adding a Mickey shaped mask to the lens.

 

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Is getting reservations at DL as tricky as getting them at WDW? I want to do Blue Bayou one night as well. Is it a 'book the day reservations open' type prospect?

It wasn't as hard. I only started trying a month out and got most of what we wanted. Only one we couldn't get was a Fantasmic! Dining and Blue Bayou. I didnt try just a regular dining at Blue Bayou till we were actually there. DTD was easy to get walk ins at most places, though The Pizzeria, I think it was called Naples??, was the only place we booked one day out because we couldn't get a walk in one day or at least there was a long wait.

Edit: that was my 500th post on Dis!

 

[Travel Mum]

Glad to see you took a photo of the Maori doll with the kiwis

 

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World of Color view from the Bridge

On our way over to Toy Story we saw that everyone was in place for another WoC show. Walking over the bridge and there was a prime vacant spot, and it was about to start in 10mins. So we waited and had a fantastic view, probably even better than the view from The Carthay Circle Reserved area. We were just lucky, it's great when things like that just happen!

This was the spot!

Last 5 mins of WoC from the Star Wars part!

(5 mins)

After this we did go over to Toy Story for a 15min wait. Such a great ride. We would have gone on it again but the park had just passed closing time when we came off it sop they had closed the line.

One more Disneyland day to come...

 

[Aussie Wendy]

Oh they do IASW so pretty for the holidays! Loved them all.

 

[Aussie Wendy]

Also now viewing your other new posts - more great pics. I like the Mickey effect lens and some great WoC fountain pics. Wrt ice skating - I was so excited when I went ice skating for the first time after I learnt to roller blade (I could always roller skate), again with my DD, that I could suddenly ice skate whereas before I really struggled. It was just so exciting to glide around the ice. Now I haven't done either for another 7 or more years I'll probably fall flat on my face!

 

[wsssup]

Great reading your trip.
Brings back memories of our June 2015 trip and has gotten me excited to start planning for our Melbourne to Disneyland 2016 christmas trip.
Great pics mate.

 

[lffam]

Great reading your trip.
Brings back memories of our June 2015 trip and has gotten me excited to start planning for our Melbourne to Disneyland 2016 christmas trip.
Great pics mate.

Thanks ! I've been a bit occupied so haven't updated for a little while. I hope to get to the end of universal this week, but still have one last day at Disneyland to go which has been on the simmer for a while now lol

 

[ColinA]

Good TR so far. Waiting for the next installment!

 

[Travel Mum]

Yes looking forward to WDW and particularly BWV

 

[Montanabel]

Great photos

 

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Day 6 - Last day at Disneyland - Cars Land

Well it has been a while since my last update..my apologies. I hope I can keep them more frequent from now...

Our last day at Disneyland saw us head over to DCA and to Cars Land in the morning. We rode some more rides there including Mater's Junkyard Jamboree. I attempted to do single rider on RSR but the wait was 40mins for single rider, so I decided to skip it.

I love this photo of DW & DS.

 

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Silly Symphony Swings & ¡Viva Navidad! Street Party/Parade

We went back over to Paradise Pier for a few more rides. DW really liked the Silly Symphony Swings. She rode it a few more times. We also saw the ¡Viva Navidad! Street Party/Parade which was great full of colour, song and dance.

¡Viva Navidad! Street Party/Parade (40 secs)

¡Viva Navidad! Street Party/Parade 2 (46 secs)

¡Viva Navidad! Street Party/Parade 3 (1m 25 sec)

And finally the Green Army Men

 

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Aladdin and a close to Disneyland

I had mentioned that on our arrival one of the CM at Cars Land had told us that Aladdin was finishing up at the Hyperion theatre. Well I saw yesterday that Frozen will start there in May 2016. Well we still hadn’t see Aladdin yet, but we were able to squeeze it in on this last day. It was so well worth it. The Genie really stole the show, which is what most people had said to us.

We went back to the hotel late afternoon and packed our luggage so we weren’t doing it that night. We had increased our luggage by 1 suitcase already and that was 1 week into our trip, so I was starting to get a bit concerned as to what things might be like at the end!

That evening we were able to see the Electrical Light Parade again and then we just wandered around Disneyland Main street for the last time. Back to the hotel and the lobby for the last time for some last pictures.

I settled the hotel bill that evening so I didn’t have to do it in the morning in case we were tight on time. Back up to our room and then we did the last checks to make sure we were ready for our early start the next morning for our flight to Orlando.

And that was Disneyland - 6 days down!

 

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Day 7 - Travel Day LAX to MCO

Our car pick up was at 6:30am for an 8:55am flight to. Our driver text us when we were still in our room saying he was waiting when ever we were ready. As I had already settled the room, there was nothing for us to do in reception so we just went straight out to the waiting driver with our luggage and he loaded us up. A pleasant drive to LAX on Sunday morning with little traffic about 40 mins. Pulled up to Virgin America and unloaded. All our car trips were prepaid, including tip, so less hassle to deal with getting in and out. Luggage checked in and through security. We had priority security which helped minimize our wait time. After we got through security we made our way to Virgin America Lounge, The Loft. I had heard mixed reviews of it. We had free access to it, but you can pay $30 per person to get access. My recommendation is that you don’t. It isn't worth it at all. There is very little on offer, which was most was required to be purchased, or at least there wasn't on this Sunday morning. I was going to go and buy some croissants to bring back for us to eat but was told that we weren't allowed to bring food from outside into the lounge.

“The Loft” @ LAX

We decided we would leave and go and get some breakfast from one of the eateries in the terminal. We had some breakfast and had a short wait before boarding.

Our Virgin America Bird taking us to Orlando

Time came to board and we were soon settled in our seats. Seating in our cabin was 2 x 2 We were originally all in same row 1 behind the bulk head we had Aisle (Me), Aisle(DW) and window(DS). After we took off I moved to vacant row 2 behind DW & DS.

Leg room from row 1. Legs fully extended just reach ledge.

When I moved to row 2. Couldn’t reach the seat in front with legs extended.

DS had bought a large packet of M&M’s for the Hostess and she was really quite happy that she gave it to him. She called the captain over and said look what this young man gave us. The Captain then took DS up to the cockpit and let him sit in his chair with the other co-pilot on the other side. I went up with him took a few photos and had a bit of chat to him.

Then the captain returned and gave DS a Virgin America “flight wing” pin.

It was a really nice experience, one that you don’t get very often these days. I know when I was a kid and travelled I had been able to go to the cockpit before when the plane was in flight, but of course that isn’t something that is allowed these days.

 

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LAX to MCO...cont.

We were a little delayed taking off as they were waiting for luggage to transfer from at he Virgin Australia Brisbane flight. As it turned out there was a large contingent of passengers transferring from that flight that were students and parents from a dance troupe from Brisbane which we later found out was performing at Universal Studios and WDW. More on that later.

The flight was very comfortable, we were very well looked after for food and drinks.

Seat & Entertainment controls.

Over the USA somewhere!

View across the aisle of cabin.

DS up the front

Approaching Orlando Airport

We all got some rest and 5 or so hours later we were arriving at Orlando airport. The First Cabin service was top notch. Virgin America First was a cabin I wanted to try out so when they had a sale, I was able to snap up three seats and am glad I did.

Then onto the tram and our driver was waiting at baggage pick up for us. Our bags were off quite quickly and into the shiny SUV we went on the way to our Hotel. It was about a 20 min trip.

We had considered three hotel for Universal. Royal Pacific Resort, where we had stayed in 2013, Portofino and Hard Rock Hotel. We ended up choosing Hard Rock Hotel. I think I mentioned either earlier in this thread or in the pre-trip report that after booking the hotel, we got a special promo offer from Loews which gave us a further $65 off per night, so we ended up with a deal we were really happy with. We chose a twin Queen room with Club Access. We loved it, it really suited our needs, was so convenient and was a nice extra touch to our stay. I’ll post some more about the room and the hotel in a later post.

 

[Travel Mum]

Oh yay, you're back on track again

 

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Hard Rock Hotel Check in - Club level twin Queen room

We went up to our room which was on the 7th floor. Here are some photos. If you notice that the beds don’t seem to be made quite as neatly as you might expect when you walk into your hotel room for the first time, you would be right. That isn’t a slight on housekeeping for this hotel, but rather these photos were actually taken the morning of us checking out, so we made them ourselves because I forgot to take photos when we arrived of the room!

Some Drum stick art on the wall or bathroom

View from the room

The mirror had the heights of different musical artists