Ok, I will respond in order to your comments for simplicity sake:
- It used to be a lot worse at the Grand Californian, but now that they require you to show your room key to enter from the street, it cut back a fair amount of this. Many of the people who are sleeping in the lobby are now people waiting for their rooms to be ready because Disney can't get their act together and get everyone's room ready by check in time. The Napa Rose breakfast is definitely not worth the price, I wouldn't even have suggested trying it, it is beyond CRT in price and you get even less bang for your buck. Best bang for your buck for character breakfasts is at Plaza Inn at Main Street.
- Many of us locals have actually liked California Adventure, even from the beginning, yes it needed work back then, which is has received, but really many of us liked the different feel of the park. I know there were also a lot that didn't, but the work that has been done has been nothing short of spectacular.
- While yes, wider walkways would be nice, we like the fact that our two parks combined have at least as many attractions (many times it is more) as all four parks at Disney World combined and given the substantially smaller amount of land to work with, that does indeed mean the attractions have to be closer together. CMs also tend to be a bit nicer at DL than WDW in my experience. As for the Matterhorn, it is quite literally the exact same track layout as Space Mountain at WDW, just the sides are flipped. Magicbands actually would be illegal in California, as they would violate state privacy laws due to the amount of tracking that they can do. It doesn't matter if they actually do track, but the ability is there and California would not permit that, especially since credit cards, etc. can be linked to them. But they do not need Magicbands to switch to a fingerprint system, remember WDW had a fingerprint system long before Magicbands. Also, due to the location of the parks, they can't eliminate the turnstiles, as the homeless population and locals without tickets would overrun the entry gates in seconds.
- I love the fact that I don't have to plan my FP around things, I simply get it when I decide I want to go on the attraction, there are very few attractions that run out of FPs at any point in the day, sometimes Gaurdians, Racers and very rarely Star Tours or Space.
As I said above, I tend to find the CMs much nicer and friendlier at
Disneyland, but I do wish they would go back to the days where costumes couldn't leave Disney property, I don't like driving in and seeing CMs in costumes waiting for a bus, etc.
But you are right, Disneyland is indeed more of a day park for locals than a vacation destination for tourists and Disney needs to wise up to that fact and stop eliminating entertainment and other elements that keep the locals returning.