threepiecesuit
Earning My Ears
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2020
Hi folks,
Long-time DIS boards reader, but new to posting. Just thought I'd try and pay something back to the community after finding all of your reports so insightful. Thank you to everyone who's been posting here the past few months, all the little details really improved our trip.
Context
We (my wife and I) recently came back from a trip to LA (we're based in the UK) which included two days at Disneyland/California Adventure. We'd been very keen to visit Disneyland for a few years, and were originally supposed to go in March 2020. Of course, we didn't, but better late than never! Our days were Monday, December 6th and Wednesday, December 8th (yes, the ill-fated Genie+ launch day).
Fairly vital context is that our attraction preferences were quite different from most, because we were really focused on the California exclusives, along with Rise of the Resistance (we visited Galaxy's Edge in Florida before it opened there). So that accounts for some of the seemingly peculiar choices we made.
Key 'strategy'/logistics experiences/observations
- We stayed at the Suncoast Park Hotel, which is an easy recommend. I think it's a pretty well-known hotel, but it certainly met our expectations. I know some folks expressed concern about noise because it's so close to the highway, but we couldn't hear a thing outside of our room. It is a bit of a walk compared to the other super local hotels, but their estimate is fair (12 minutes).
- We rope-dropped Disneyland both days (we had park hopper tickets, but at the time I made the park reservations in November the ROTR virtual queue was still operating, and I wanted to give myself more bites at the apple... in the event there was only standby – had I known I would have rope-dropped CA on one of the days) arriving at around 6.50am, where we stood in line for security, according to the timestamps on my photos we were queuing up at the turnstiles by about 7.18am, onto Main Street USA by 7.33am.
- We heeded the advice not to bother rope-dropping Rise of the Resistance (unlike almost everyone else, it seemed – my guess is that 95%+ of everyone in front of the castle on the left-hand side went for Rise... I guess there was also a small group that was going for Tomorrowland first, I'm not sure what their plan was) on the basis that it doesn't always open with the park, and instead peeled off towards Fantasyland to try out some key dark rides (Mr. Toad, Alice in Wonderland, Snow White) and the Matterhorn. No regrets re: this strategy, as we got an unreal amount of things done with absolutely no lines (I'll post the full list of attractions we experienced and wait times below).
- Although it was a wrench to leave the crowds to 'beat us' to ROTR early in the day, it all turned out fine in the end – we headed over to Galaxy's Edge I think just before 12, posted time was 75 minutes, but we were somehow on in 40! Miraculous, and obviously an incredible ride. Unforgettable, extraordinary use of technology, and very ambitious. Loved the use of cast members, the different sections... very clever indeed. For what it's worth, we love Galaxy's Edge, love Smugglers Run, love the new movies, think the whole thing is amazing. I read a lot of criticism of the land and the movies, but I don't agree at all. I guess things could always be improved a little, but Disney made a lot of great decisions.
- We did manage to get a reservation for Trader Sam's at 2.30. Because we'd only booked our trip three weeks in advance, however, this wasn't easy to get – I had to pay MouseWatchers to monitor my preferred dates, and then watch my emails like a hawk (they don't send the alerts to non-US phone numbers, for some reason). After 7 or 8 attempts (I would always be beaten to it) I somehow managed to get the reservation. It was well worth it though, my wife loved it and we came home with a couple of weighty tiki mugs.
- We headed over to California Adventure at around 4, and found the queues to be fairly light, outside of Avengers Campus. Loved walking around and experiencing something that felt very different to any other Disney park.
- Avengers Campus was our priority, and we were pleased to see that Guardians only had a 25 minute posted wait at around 6.30pm – in the event we only queued for 15 minutes. Loved that attraction, a great use of the ride system. We also did WEB Slingers, which I think was posted as 50 minutes, and in the event we waited around 45. That ride wasn't necessarily very impressive, but still worth doing, particularly if you're any sort of Marvel fan.
- We opted to arrive relatively late for the fireworks, and so our viewing position wasn't very good – but it wasn't terrible. Having not seen any Disney fireworks since November 2019, we were thrilled to experience them.
- On day 2, we rope-dropped Indiana Jones. I have to say that this was a bit of a disappointment. We'd ridden the near-identical version in Tokyo DisneySea, and in its current state it didn't measure up – there were several (three?) quite long pitch-dark sections, which I presume indicated scenes/effects that were turned off – certainly I missed the boulder scene. Something to consider if you're visiting soon.
- Our day 2 also happened to be launch day for Genie+, and our experience was the same as everyone else's. Worked perfectly to begin with (we used it to book a near-instant return time on Smugglers Run) and then it fell over. Bit frustrating, but these things do happen. Something not often reported though was that it actually came back up at around 7pm, and we were able to use it to ride Big Thunder Mountain and Haunted Mansion Holiday in quick succession. The scanners seemed to work perfectly, once you were able to get your passes.
- We did single rider for Radiator Springs Racers, which worked incredibly well – posted wait time of 70 minutes and we were on it in 20.
- Food-wise, we did advance ordering at Pym Test Kitchen, which worked spectacularly well – we really appreciated the feature to adjust your return time, too, and we pushed ours by an hour so we didn't have to rush over from Pixar Pier. We didn't use it for Hungry Bear and probably should have – the wait was around 25 minutes even though we showed up only half an hour after it opened. Both meals were great, excellent quality (chicken burger at Pym, cheeseburger and funnel cake at Hungry Bear) and not wildly expensive.
My take on the Disneyland resort as a first-time visitor
- We were very impressed indeed with Alice in Wonderland (clearly upgraded relatively recently with new tech?) and loved the Matterhorn – one of our favourites is Thunder Mountain and we thought it easily outranked the Magic Kingdom version of that, at least.
- Haunted Mansion Holiday was probably my biggest positive surprise of the whole trip. I guess I should have known I'd love it, because we love the standard ride and the movie, but were still truly blown away. Astonishingly good. Before now, my favourite dark ride of all time was Mystic Manor at Hong Kong Disneyland, but now I'm calling it a draw!
- One of our favourite things was looking out for all of the different 'roastie toasties' in the popcorn carts – special shout out to the Oogie Boogie one near Haunted Mansion!
- We also just adored New Orleans Square – what a wonderful land, completely unlike anything at the other castle parks, and they're much the poorer for it! We really enjoyed some beignets from the Mint Julep Bar as a snack on our first day, plus had a great fruit plate from the French Market.
- Another special highlight was the 'Enchanted Tiki Garden' (my wife's favourite attraction is Enchanted Tiki Room), which we felt really added to the attraction – we also had a nice snack in the adjacent restaurant.
- Loath as I am to say it, Disneyland has the best version of Pirates of the Caribbean, taking the crown from Paris. Even longer and more atmospheric. Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain also comes the closest to toppling Paris, although it didn't quite get there.
- Overall, I loved that Disneyland was a smaller and more manageable park – everything was about 20% closer than I thought it would be. Loved the feeling that it was just overstuffed with rides, much more than you could ever do in a day. The fact that the two parks face each other, with retail very close nearby also... just fantastic. Very similar to the Paris setup, but done even better.
- Mickey's Toontown was the only bit of the park that didn't feel up to standard, and I can see why it's being reimagined. Between that and the addition of Runaway Railway, it'll serve to make an extraordinary park even better.
- We rode Star Tours and it had all Episode IX content, which we loved and hadn't seen before. Not sure if it's locked to this or we just got lucky? The little chat between C-3PO and Lando Calrissian was really nice.
- California Adventure is really underrated. We thought Grizzly Peak and Pixar Pier specifically felt really special and very different to any other Disney lands. Some fantastic attractions, too – e.g. Grizzly River Run is so much better than Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom it's unreal. The version of Little Mermaid is also an improvement on the Florida one.
- Avengers Campus is an excellent land, and we enjoyed the two attractions, the Dora Milaje show and Pym Test Kitchen, but it is clearly missing that big, E-ticket attraction/dark ride. Fingers crossed they announce something soon.
- I know a lot of folks are very fond of Cars Land, and it is fantastic, but for me it doesn't really measure up to Galaxy's Edge and Pandora, in terms of scale and attraction depth/quality, whereas I feel like a lot of folks feel that it does. Just my opinion, of course!
- We were really impressed by some of the singers from the Festival of Holidays. We also grabbed a Mickey gingerbread from one of the temporary food carts (we're not big into snacks but couldn't resist) and it was entirely delicious.
Full list of attractions experienced, with wait times in parentheses (no number equals a walk-on)
Disneyland/California Adventure day one
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
Alice in Wonderland
Matterhorn Bobsleds
Snow White (5)
Haunted Mansion Holiday (20)
Splash Mountain
Mark Twain Riverboat
Enchanted Tiki Room
Rise of the Resistance (40)
Sleeping Beauty Castle walkthrough
Soarin’ Around The World (25)
Grizzly River Run
The Little Mermaid (5)
Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout (15)
Spiderman WEB Slingers (45)
+ lunch at Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar
+ Dora Milaje show at Avengers Campus
+ fireworks
Disneyland/California Adventure day two
Indiana Jones
Pirates of the Caribbean
Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run x2 (10)
Winnie The Pooh
Tom Sawyer’s Island
Jungle Cruise (30)
Star Tours
Monorail Loop (5)
Matterhorn Bobsleds
Incredicoaster (5)
Jessie’s Critter Carousel
Radiator Springs Racers (20)
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Haunted Mansion Holiday
Enchanted Tiki Room
+ lunch at Hungry Bear
+ dinner at Pym Test Kitchen
Long-time DIS boards reader, but new to posting. Just thought I'd try and pay something back to the community after finding all of your reports so insightful. Thank you to everyone who's been posting here the past few months, all the little details really improved our trip.
Context
We (my wife and I) recently came back from a trip to LA (we're based in the UK) which included two days at Disneyland/California Adventure. We'd been very keen to visit Disneyland for a few years, and were originally supposed to go in March 2020. Of course, we didn't, but better late than never! Our days were Monday, December 6th and Wednesday, December 8th (yes, the ill-fated Genie+ launch day).
Fairly vital context is that our attraction preferences were quite different from most, because we were really focused on the California exclusives, along with Rise of the Resistance (we visited Galaxy's Edge in Florida before it opened there). So that accounts for some of the seemingly peculiar choices we made.
Key 'strategy'/logistics experiences/observations
- We stayed at the Suncoast Park Hotel, which is an easy recommend. I think it's a pretty well-known hotel, but it certainly met our expectations. I know some folks expressed concern about noise because it's so close to the highway, but we couldn't hear a thing outside of our room. It is a bit of a walk compared to the other super local hotels, but their estimate is fair (12 minutes).
- We rope-dropped Disneyland both days (we had park hopper tickets, but at the time I made the park reservations in November the ROTR virtual queue was still operating, and I wanted to give myself more bites at the apple... in the event there was only standby – had I known I would have rope-dropped CA on one of the days) arriving at around 6.50am, where we stood in line for security, according to the timestamps on my photos we were queuing up at the turnstiles by about 7.18am, onto Main Street USA by 7.33am.
- We heeded the advice not to bother rope-dropping Rise of the Resistance (unlike almost everyone else, it seemed – my guess is that 95%+ of everyone in front of the castle on the left-hand side went for Rise... I guess there was also a small group that was going for Tomorrowland first, I'm not sure what their plan was) on the basis that it doesn't always open with the park, and instead peeled off towards Fantasyland to try out some key dark rides (Mr. Toad, Alice in Wonderland, Snow White) and the Matterhorn. No regrets re: this strategy, as we got an unreal amount of things done with absolutely no lines (I'll post the full list of attractions we experienced and wait times below).
- Although it was a wrench to leave the crowds to 'beat us' to ROTR early in the day, it all turned out fine in the end – we headed over to Galaxy's Edge I think just before 12, posted time was 75 minutes, but we were somehow on in 40! Miraculous, and obviously an incredible ride. Unforgettable, extraordinary use of technology, and very ambitious. Loved the use of cast members, the different sections... very clever indeed. For what it's worth, we love Galaxy's Edge, love Smugglers Run, love the new movies, think the whole thing is amazing. I read a lot of criticism of the land and the movies, but I don't agree at all. I guess things could always be improved a little, but Disney made a lot of great decisions.
- We did manage to get a reservation for Trader Sam's at 2.30. Because we'd only booked our trip three weeks in advance, however, this wasn't easy to get – I had to pay MouseWatchers to monitor my preferred dates, and then watch my emails like a hawk (they don't send the alerts to non-US phone numbers, for some reason). After 7 or 8 attempts (I would always be beaten to it) I somehow managed to get the reservation. It was well worth it though, my wife loved it and we came home with a couple of weighty tiki mugs.
- We headed over to California Adventure at around 4, and found the queues to be fairly light, outside of Avengers Campus. Loved walking around and experiencing something that felt very different to any other Disney park.
- Avengers Campus was our priority, and we were pleased to see that Guardians only had a 25 minute posted wait at around 6.30pm – in the event we only queued for 15 minutes. Loved that attraction, a great use of the ride system. We also did WEB Slingers, which I think was posted as 50 minutes, and in the event we waited around 45. That ride wasn't necessarily very impressive, but still worth doing, particularly if you're any sort of Marvel fan.
- We opted to arrive relatively late for the fireworks, and so our viewing position wasn't very good – but it wasn't terrible. Having not seen any Disney fireworks since November 2019, we were thrilled to experience them.
- On day 2, we rope-dropped Indiana Jones. I have to say that this was a bit of a disappointment. We'd ridden the near-identical version in Tokyo DisneySea, and in its current state it didn't measure up – there were several (three?) quite long pitch-dark sections, which I presume indicated scenes/effects that were turned off – certainly I missed the boulder scene. Something to consider if you're visiting soon.
- Our day 2 also happened to be launch day for Genie+, and our experience was the same as everyone else's. Worked perfectly to begin with (we used it to book a near-instant return time on Smugglers Run) and then it fell over. Bit frustrating, but these things do happen. Something not often reported though was that it actually came back up at around 7pm, and we were able to use it to ride Big Thunder Mountain and Haunted Mansion Holiday in quick succession. The scanners seemed to work perfectly, once you were able to get your passes.
- We did single rider for Radiator Springs Racers, which worked incredibly well – posted wait time of 70 minutes and we were on it in 20.
- Food-wise, we did advance ordering at Pym Test Kitchen, which worked spectacularly well – we really appreciated the feature to adjust your return time, too, and we pushed ours by an hour so we didn't have to rush over from Pixar Pier. We didn't use it for Hungry Bear and probably should have – the wait was around 25 minutes even though we showed up only half an hour after it opened. Both meals were great, excellent quality (chicken burger at Pym, cheeseburger and funnel cake at Hungry Bear) and not wildly expensive.
My take on the Disneyland resort as a first-time visitor
- We were very impressed indeed with Alice in Wonderland (clearly upgraded relatively recently with new tech?) and loved the Matterhorn – one of our favourites is Thunder Mountain and we thought it easily outranked the Magic Kingdom version of that, at least.
- Haunted Mansion Holiday was probably my biggest positive surprise of the whole trip. I guess I should have known I'd love it, because we love the standard ride and the movie, but were still truly blown away. Astonishingly good. Before now, my favourite dark ride of all time was Mystic Manor at Hong Kong Disneyland, but now I'm calling it a draw!
- One of our favourite things was looking out for all of the different 'roastie toasties' in the popcorn carts – special shout out to the Oogie Boogie one near Haunted Mansion!
- We also just adored New Orleans Square – what a wonderful land, completely unlike anything at the other castle parks, and they're much the poorer for it! We really enjoyed some beignets from the Mint Julep Bar as a snack on our first day, plus had a great fruit plate from the French Market.
- Another special highlight was the 'Enchanted Tiki Garden' (my wife's favourite attraction is Enchanted Tiki Room), which we felt really added to the attraction – we also had a nice snack in the adjacent restaurant.
- Loath as I am to say it, Disneyland has the best version of Pirates of the Caribbean, taking the crown from Paris. Even longer and more atmospheric. Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain also comes the closest to toppling Paris, although it didn't quite get there.
- Overall, I loved that Disneyland was a smaller and more manageable park – everything was about 20% closer than I thought it would be. Loved the feeling that it was just overstuffed with rides, much more than you could ever do in a day. The fact that the two parks face each other, with retail very close nearby also... just fantastic. Very similar to the Paris setup, but done even better.
- Mickey's Toontown was the only bit of the park that didn't feel up to standard, and I can see why it's being reimagined. Between that and the addition of Runaway Railway, it'll serve to make an extraordinary park even better.
- We rode Star Tours and it had all Episode IX content, which we loved and hadn't seen before. Not sure if it's locked to this or we just got lucky? The little chat between C-3PO and Lando Calrissian was really nice.
- California Adventure is really underrated. We thought Grizzly Peak and Pixar Pier specifically felt really special and very different to any other Disney lands. Some fantastic attractions, too – e.g. Grizzly River Run is so much better than Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom it's unreal. The version of Little Mermaid is also an improvement on the Florida one.
- Avengers Campus is an excellent land, and we enjoyed the two attractions, the Dora Milaje show and Pym Test Kitchen, but it is clearly missing that big, E-ticket attraction/dark ride. Fingers crossed they announce something soon.
- I know a lot of folks are very fond of Cars Land, and it is fantastic, but for me it doesn't really measure up to Galaxy's Edge and Pandora, in terms of scale and attraction depth/quality, whereas I feel like a lot of folks feel that it does. Just my opinion, of course!
- We were really impressed by some of the singers from the Festival of Holidays. We also grabbed a Mickey gingerbread from one of the temporary food carts (we're not big into snacks but couldn't resist) and it was entirely delicious.
Full list of attractions experienced, with wait times in parentheses (no number equals a walk-on)
Disneyland/California Adventure day one
Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride
Alice in Wonderland
Matterhorn Bobsleds
Snow White (5)
Haunted Mansion Holiday (20)
Splash Mountain
Mark Twain Riverboat
Enchanted Tiki Room
Rise of the Resistance (40)
Sleeping Beauty Castle walkthrough
Soarin’ Around The World (25)
Grizzly River Run
The Little Mermaid (5)
Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout (15)
Spiderman WEB Slingers (45)
+ lunch at Trader Sam’s Enchanted Tiki Bar
+ Dora Milaje show at Avengers Campus
+ fireworks
Disneyland/California Adventure day two
Indiana Jones
Pirates of the Caribbean
Millennium Falcon Smugglers Run x2 (10)
Winnie The Pooh
Tom Sawyer’s Island
Jungle Cruise (30)
Star Tours
Monorail Loop (5)
Matterhorn Bobsleds
Incredicoaster (5)
Jessie’s Critter Carousel
Radiator Springs Racers (20)
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
Haunted Mansion Holiday
Enchanted Tiki Room
+ lunch at Hungry Bear
+ dinner at Pym Test Kitchen
