Chicago526
<font color=red>Any dream will do...<br><font colo
- Joined
- May 6, 2003
Cast of Characters:
Me: A 27 year old single girl who's just trying to re-live her childhood.
Mom: A 50-mumble mother of 3 who's taking her youngest child and only daughter to DL as a bribe to visit her parents in Phoenix before the trip to Disney.
Day 1: After spending the first 4 days of my week long vacation in Phoenix with my parents (and being sick most of the time!), my mother and I flew to Orange County on Southwest Wednesday (Feb. 25) morning. The flight was un-remarkable, Super Shuttle was waiting after we claimed my bag, and we were whisked away to the Grand Californian for a 3 night stay.
The lobby was beautiful, reminding me very much of the Wilderness Lodge at WDW (same designers, or so I've heard) only instead of a woodland retreat, this was decked out in a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired design. I loved all the Tiffany lamps! Check in was painless, and while there we had our first encounter with Pixie dust, although second hand. The family checking in next to us must have mentioned it was their 3 year old's birthday. The clerk gave the boy 3 balloons, and then 1 balloon to each of his siblings so they wouldn't get jealous. Very nice touch!
Speaking of great CM's, all of the Disney staff were fantastic! I'd heard that the CA CM's weren't as good or nice as the FL one's, but that was not my experience at all. Every CM we interacted with were friendly, helpful, and competent.
The room was very nice, I loved every detail except one. They have the ugliest bedspreads I've every seen. I'm not kidding, they were hideous! But the view out the window more than made up for it. We had a "standard" view room, but there was nothing standard about it! We were at the very end of the building that is closest to the park entrances, and our balcony had a view of the main gate of DL, basicly overlooking the Main Street train station and Space Mountain, and also the tip of the Matterhorn. Had there been fireworks (there weren't) I'd imagine we'd have been able to see them perfectly. Off in the distance there were mountains (we don't have those in flat old Illinois!) and a great view of the surrounding area.
So we stowed our stuff, changed into park-going clothes and headed out!
It was cloudy and cool, but not raining as we exited the hotel in Downtown Disney and walked about 3 minutes to the park gates. The DD area is very nice, but not much I'd care to bother with, I have all the same stores at home, and the restaurants weren't my kind of places. You can take the monorail to the park (in fact, it runs through the Californian, which I hadn't known. But unlike the Contemporary in WDW, there is no stop IN the hotel), but it's about a 5 minute walk, so it's faster just to stroll on over to the main entrance.
All the bulb flowers around Main Street were in full bloom, and the scent was just heavenly!!! We didn't really have a plan of attack, after all we had 2 and 1/2 days to explore both parks, so we just wandered off to the left (always to the left!) and made our first ride POTC
. My mother was nervous, she hates fast rides and any kind of drops, and all she knew was the ride in WDW and was uncertain of the DL version since it has 2 drops and not one. But we tamed that wild beast of a ride with no trouble. 
Then Haunted Mansion and some of the Fantasyland rides, including IASW--which I must say I love better in DL, it's 15 minutes long and the outer building is just fantastic. I had no idea it was a clock!
Then it was time for the 4:15 showing of Snow White at the Fantasyland theater. Great show, all the kids in the audience seemed to enjoy it. The lady who was SW had a beautiful voice, and so did the prince (but he couldn't act his way out of a paper bag-boy, talk about stiff!) and the dwarves and the queen did an excellent job too. Patrick Stewart does the voice of the mirror (great visual effect for the mirror!). My only complaint was that the show seemed to race through the story as if they were afraid if the pace dropped too slow all the kids would fall asleep. I'd add about 10 minutes (or even 5) and just slow the whole thing down a little. Not so much add to it, just slow down the pace. Otherwise, I find no fault with the show, it's worth the wait!
We were both wiped out (I had been sick earlier in the week) and so we just headed back to the hotel for dinner at White Water snacks and an early bed. Which lead us to our only real complaint about the GC, that night we had no hot water! My mother couldn't take her bath that night, and boy was she--well--upset, to use a polite word. She wanted to march down to the front desk and ask if Michael Eisner was too busy fending off attacks and forced buy-outs to pay the water bill. I talked her into waiting until my shower the next morning to see if it was still a problem. Fortunately this was an isolated incident, we had plenty of hot water the next day and for the rest of the stay.
Me: A 27 year old single girl who's just trying to re-live her childhood.
Mom: A 50-mumble mother of 3 who's taking her youngest child and only daughter to DL as a bribe to visit her parents in Phoenix before the trip to Disney.
Day 1: After spending the first 4 days of my week long vacation in Phoenix with my parents (and being sick most of the time!), my mother and I flew to Orange County on Southwest Wednesday (Feb. 25) morning. The flight was un-remarkable, Super Shuttle was waiting after we claimed my bag, and we were whisked away to the Grand Californian for a 3 night stay.
The lobby was beautiful, reminding me very much of the Wilderness Lodge at WDW (same designers, or so I've heard) only instead of a woodland retreat, this was decked out in a Frank Lloyd Wright inspired design. I loved all the Tiffany lamps! Check in was painless, and while there we had our first encounter with Pixie dust, although second hand. The family checking in next to us must have mentioned it was their 3 year old's birthday. The clerk gave the boy 3 balloons, and then 1 balloon to each of his siblings so they wouldn't get jealous. Very nice touch!
Speaking of great CM's, all of the Disney staff were fantastic! I'd heard that the CA CM's weren't as good or nice as the FL one's, but that was not my experience at all. Every CM we interacted with were friendly, helpful, and competent.
The room was very nice, I loved every detail except one. They have the ugliest bedspreads I've every seen. I'm not kidding, they were hideous! But the view out the window more than made up for it. We had a "standard" view room, but there was nothing standard about it! We were at the very end of the building that is closest to the park entrances, and our balcony had a view of the main gate of DL, basicly overlooking the Main Street train station and Space Mountain, and also the tip of the Matterhorn. Had there been fireworks (there weren't) I'd imagine we'd have been able to see them perfectly. Off in the distance there were mountains (we don't have those in flat old Illinois!) and a great view of the surrounding area.
So we stowed our stuff, changed into park-going clothes and headed out!
It was cloudy and cool, but not raining as we exited the hotel in Downtown Disney and walked about 3 minutes to the park gates. The DD area is very nice, but not much I'd care to bother with, I have all the same stores at home, and the restaurants weren't my kind of places. You can take the monorail to the park (in fact, it runs through the Californian, which I hadn't known. But unlike the Contemporary in WDW, there is no stop IN the hotel), but it's about a 5 minute walk, so it's faster just to stroll on over to the main entrance.
All the bulb flowers around Main Street were in full bloom, and the scent was just heavenly!!! We didn't really have a plan of attack, after all we had 2 and 1/2 days to explore both parks, so we just wandered off to the left (always to the left!) and made our first ride POTC
. My mother was nervous, she hates fast rides and any kind of drops, and all she knew was the ride in WDW and was uncertain of the DL version since it has 2 drops and not one. But we tamed that wild beast of a ride with no trouble. Then Haunted Mansion and some of the Fantasyland rides, including IASW--which I must say I love better in DL, it's 15 minutes long and the outer building is just fantastic. I had no idea it was a clock!Then it was time for the 4:15 showing of Snow White at the Fantasyland theater. Great show, all the kids in the audience seemed to enjoy it. The lady who was SW had a beautiful voice, and so did the prince (but he couldn't act his way out of a paper bag-boy, talk about stiff!) and the dwarves and the queen did an excellent job too. Patrick Stewart does the voice of the mirror (great visual effect for the mirror!). My only complaint was that the show seemed to race through the story as if they were afraid if the pace dropped too slow all the kids would fall asleep. I'd add about 10 minutes (or even 5) and just slow the whole thing down a little. Not so much add to it, just slow down the pace. Otherwise, I find no fault with the show, it's worth the wait!
We were both wiped out (I had been sick earlier in the week) and so we just headed back to the hotel for dinner at White Water snacks and an early bed. Which lead us to our only real complaint about the GC, that night we had no hot water! My mother couldn't take her bath that night, and boy was she--well--upset, to use a polite word. She wanted to march down to the front desk and ask if Michael Eisner was too busy fending off attacks and forced buy-outs to pay the water bill. I talked her into waiting until my shower the next morning to see if it was still a problem. Fortunately this was an isolated incident, we had plenty of hot water the next day and for the rest of the stay.
