Thought I would post some random thoughts on our recent trip - in no particular order
This was the end of our trip, we had been travelling for over three weeks before arriving in LA, and had 1 day Universal / 2n Sheraton Universal and then 3 (part) days Disney / 2n Desert Inn & Suites before flying home to Australia.
Our party of 3 consisted of: myself, husband and 17yr old son.
Visited several times before but not since 2019 for my husband and me and it was 2017 when my son last travelled there with me.
In summary, should have skipped Universal and just done Anaheim. We've previously done Universal about 5 times but not since 2016. I've often heard it referred to as a 1/2 day park. That's never been the case for us and have always required the Express pass before but not the case this time. We did the 1hr early entry to get into Nintendo World - because of this I think the Express pass was pretty unnecessary. The only thing we really used it on was The SImpsons. We were done and 'over' the park by lunchtime. The Mario ride was meh. I've never played online/computer games (I'm 50) and basically just didn't get it!
Our 17yr old thought it was 'ok' but wasn't interested in riding again.
I was looking forward to the updated Jurassic ride and liked that. Basically I get motion sickness so don't do simulator rides. My husband and son went on HP, Simpsons, Mummy etc.. and enjoyed. I went on Minions but had to shut my eyes for a lot of it.
Basically, it was fine but I think we're done with it. We were done by noon and ready to leave. We didn't do Waterworld but have seen it so many times between here and the SIngapore park. Did the Studio tour which I usually enjoy but probably don't need to do it again.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing - at the very least we should have travelled down to Anaheim Thursday afternoon. That would have given us nearly 3 full days at DL as we had to leave for LAX at 7pm Sunday night.
As it was, we didn't end up getting down to Anaheim till after midday on Friday.
Desert Inn & Suites - stayed a couple of times before. We had the Executive Queen so having just a little more space was helpful.
Didn't have the basic B/F but it is included and available if you like. Room was clean and perfectly fine for us.
I booked the room through till Monday morning even though we were leaving Sunday night and was happy with that decision.
We had 3 day P/H's with Genie+ included, bought through Undercover Tourist - no issue with this, very easy to use.
Reservations for: Fri - DL / Sat - DL / Sun - DCA. I knew it was Bats day Sunday and thought it better to start at DCA that day, not sure it made much of a difference though. Wait times in DL were a lot better on Sunday rather than Saturday.
Arriving Friday afternoon we were still able to get a reasonable amount done. First we rode the RR a full loop and got off in NO.
Splash, HM, PotC, and so on. Can't remember what we did but were able to fill in our afternoon through to evening. It was quite a productive afternoon despite arriving so late.
I didn't have time to fully research G+ and particularly the 'fishing' for LL's that I've read about. I last used Maxpass in 2019 and have read Disboards the whole way through C19 so had a basic understanding how it all worked but was stressed about not having properly worked out the 'fishing' thing!
Turns out it was super easy to work out. It did take me a little bit to work out how to book a LL in the first place and I should probably have spent 5minutes prior to our trip working that out!!
But the 'fishing' was super easy and we rode so much over the 3 days using this method - for the uninitiated...
say you want to ride one of the higher demand attractions - book a LL for whenever you get, it could be out to 6.30pm, 8.30pm or later. After you book it then click through to 'My Day' and click on your LL and then 'modify plan'.
It then holds your current LL reservation whilst you can keep refreshing and earlier times will show up which you can then click on and change to an earlier time. You have to be quick, you don't have time to talk about it - especially on the higher priority attractions but we were able to ride everything we wanted using this method at a much earlier time than was originally available.
You do have to spend a bit of time on your phone but it wasn't terrible and we got what we were after EVERY TIME using this method.
I'm sure this is explained MUCH BETTER in the G+ sticky threads but it was so unbelievably easy to navigate. We weren't at the parks at opening any day and still rode everything we wanted except Indy but that was a whole different issue.
Fireworks - these were really great and watched from Refreshment corner just in front of the rope at the walkway they have there, we were about 3 people deep and had a great view of the castle and could see some of the projections on Main St.
Loved the new Disney 100 Wondrous Journeys show.
It was a shame that Fantasmic wasn't playing but helped in a way as I was trying to do both on the Friday night so made it easier just seeing the fwks. We got our place about 40mins before and it filled in very quickly behind us.
BTW - Disney never emailed me about the cancellation of Fantasmic and our 2nd show HB reservation. Luckily I'd read it here so I was fully aware before we got there. They just cancelled my booking automatically but I didn't receive the email that others did.
WOC DP on Saturday night - wrote about this on another WOC thread. Done a few times before. No real difference to previous.
Not sure, I might have preferred the previous show.
Minnie's B/F at Plaza Inn - pretty good as usual. Expensive for us with our terrible AUD. It was $200 AUD for us 3 - worth that? Probably not but no issues with it. Got to see a good array of characters and the food is just fine.
Magic Happens Parade - very nice parade, pretty good viewing spot and fairly last minute at the walkway near the Matterhorn, across from Pixie Hollow I think.
Individual LL - Rise / RSR / MMRR - I had hoped not to do this but ended up doing all 3. It was the only way to ride together and without a very long wait. In our case, first trip in a very long time and quite possibly our last trip to DL.
SWGE was open when my husband and I went in 2019 but not Rise. My son hadn't seen SWGE.
We are not SW fans particularly, especially me who has never seen a SW film. I thought it was 'ok', other 2 thought it was great. Looking back I guess I could say it was pretty impressive but knowing nothing about it I wasn't as impressed as others I fear.
I didn't ride Smugglers but they did. Said it wasn't that great as they had 2 small children as pilots.
Had a midday booking at Oga's, we were seated at a booth with 3 other parties. This was fine but weren't keen to hang around.
I only booked it so my son could see as he obviously hadn't before. My husband and I visited in 2019.
Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway - thought this was amazing - really liked it and would have loved to do it again but only got on it about an hour before we had to leave to fly home. I should have prioritised it on our previous 2 days.
Doing ILL means missing some of the queue but could see some of it walking through. Brilliant attraction, so well done!
There were quite a few prolonged breakdowns during our days there. Indy / Splash / GRR / TSMM to name some of them - we never got on Indy, we had at least 3 LL's for it but broke down every time and multiple times again when we went to re-ride it.
Splash broke down briefly whilst we were on it but they got it going again but it was down for extended periods. We still managed to ride it twice though.
GRR broke down all 3 days for extended periods of time - a big part of Saturday afternoon and again most of Sunday morning. We finally got on it around midday on Sunday just before we were going to hop to DL. Managed to 'fish' an immediate LL return so got changed to go ride it as my son had really wanted to do it.
Got on but it broke down again whilst we were on it - we'd gone through quite a few of the rapids and I 'think' we were just before the big drop. Had to wait 20 - 30 mins whilst they drained the ride and then got us out with a ladder and walked us off.
Got us one free multi experience although frankly I thought it was probably worth one or two more for that. It was pretty inconvenient and disappointing.
One bonus - we did get to see the friendly cat near GRR that I've seen before on previous trips. I think the cats name is Snickers or Francisco from memory but I could be wrong. I'll try and post some photos below and someone might know for sure.
Food: ate at various places. Used mobile order most of the time, when I remembered to do it! No real problem with it.
Worst - probably Bengal BBQ - had read such good things. The food was ok but I guess the value wasn't. It cost us $100 AUD for a few skewers (which are pretty small), breadstick and pineapple spear.
Best - I'd definitely say our meal at Flo's V8 Cafe - Famous Fried Chicken / Cheeseburger / Club s/w / drinks & Lemon Chiffon Pie - really nice food and about the same price as Bengal BBQ but MUCH better value for us.
Lots of other things like Churro's / Dole Whip / Soup bowls / Popcorn / Beignets etc etc.. all great as usual.
Didn't buy much - as WK has mentioned in his posts, postcards almost impossible to find. I usually get the yearly Lenticular one with the current year on it (at the photo shop) but I believe it's N/A and I certainly never found the photo shop - it's apparently moved but we never found it. I did buy a vintage postcard at Disneyana but it's not the same as the one I usually like to get each year that we are there.
I collect the SB mugs but they had nothing I wanted, I have soooo many anyway! They were all SW which I'm not interested in. Most likely only SW due to it being SW Day the day before we got there.
I did buy the 'Disney100 Stainless Steel Tumbler' at Jolly Holiday just before we left - I thought it was really nice ($28.99)
So, all in all we had a pretty good visit. Did most things we wanted to do even though we weren't there at rope drop.
Friday - after midday, Saturday - about 8.30am I guess and Sunday was around 9 - 9.30am I guess. Left park at 5.30pm on Sunday.
Our Aus dollar is only worth .66c against the USD at the moment so it ended up being a very expensive trip for us. We were in Hawaii for a few days before LA. Very, very $$$$
I've never travelled to the US when our dollar was that low and probably wouldn't do so again, I haven't added up what we spent and probably won't. I didn't really have a budget but this one went way beyond what we've spent on previous trips for sure.
If we had our time again I would have skipped Universal and gone straight down to DL for 4 days - live and learn.
As always, thank you to everyone who posts on Disboards. I've read almost daily over the last 3 years since our last time there and lived vicariously through everyone's posts and photos from the parks and gained lots of useful tips and information that was helpful on our trip.
This was the end of our trip, we had been travelling for over three weeks before arriving in LA, and had 1 day Universal / 2n Sheraton Universal and then 3 (part) days Disney / 2n Desert Inn & Suites before flying home to Australia.
Our party of 3 consisted of: myself, husband and 17yr old son.
Visited several times before but not since 2019 for my husband and me and it was 2017 when my son last travelled there with me.
In summary, should have skipped Universal and just done Anaheim. We've previously done Universal about 5 times but not since 2016. I've often heard it referred to as a 1/2 day park. That's never been the case for us and have always required the Express pass before but not the case this time. We did the 1hr early entry to get into Nintendo World - because of this I think the Express pass was pretty unnecessary. The only thing we really used it on was The SImpsons. We were done and 'over' the park by lunchtime. The Mario ride was meh. I've never played online/computer games (I'm 50) and basically just didn't get it!
Our 17yr old thought it was 'ok' but wasn't interested in riding again.
I was looking forward to the updated Jurassic ride and liked that. Basically I get motion sickness so don't do simulator rides. My husband and son went on HP, Simpsons, Mummy etc.. and enjoyed. I went on Minions but had to shut my eyes for a lot of it.
Basically, it was fine but I think we're done with it. We were done by noon and ready to leave. We didn't do Waterworld but have seen it so many times between here and the SIngapore park. Did the Studio tour which I usually enjoy but probably don't need to do it again.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing - at the very least we should have travelled down to Anaheim Thursday afternoon. That would have given us nearly 3 full days at DL as we had to leave for LAX at 7pm Sunday night.
As it was, we didn't end up getting down to Anaheim till after midday on Friday.
Desert Inn & Suites - stayed a couple of times before. We had the Executive Queen so having just a little more space was helpful.
Didn't have the basic B/F but it is included and available if you like. Room was clean and perfectly fine for us.
I booked the room through till Monday morning even though we were leaving Sunday night and was happy with that decision.
We had 3 day P/H's with Genie+ included, bought through Undercover Tourist - no issue with this, very easy to use.
Reservations for: Fri - DL / Sat - DL / Sun - DCA. I knew it was Bats day Sunday and thought it better to start at DCA that day, not sure it made much of a difference though. Wait times in DL were a lot better on Sunday rather than Saturday.
Arriving Friday afternoon we were still able to get a reasonable amount done. First we rode the RR a full loop and got off in NO.
Splash, HM, PotC, and so on. Can't remember what we did but were able to fill in our afternoon through to evening. It was quite a productive afternoon despite arriving so late.
I didn't have time to fully research G+ and particularly the 'fishing' for LL's that I've read about. I last used Maxpass in 2019 and have read Disboards the whole way through C19 so had a basic understanding how it all worked but was stressed about not having properly worked out the 'fishing' thing!
Turns out it was super easy to work out. It did take me a little bit to work out how to book a LL in the first place and I should probably have spent 5minutes prior to our trip working that out!!
But the 'fishing' was super easy and we rode so much over the 3 days using this method - for the uninitiated...
say you want to ride one of the higher demand attractions - book a LL for whenever you get, it could be out to 6.30pm, 8.30pm or later. After you book it then click through to 'My Day' and click on your LL and then 'modify plan'.
It then holds your current LL reservation whilst you can keep refreshing and earlier times will show up which you can then click on and change to an earlier time. You have to be quick, you don't have time to talk about it - especially on the higher priority attractions but we were able to ride everything we wanted using this method at a much earlier time than was originally available.
You do have to spend a bit of time on your phone but it wasn't terrible and we got what we were after EVERY TIME using this method.
I'm sure this is explained MUCH BETTER in the G+ sticky threads but it was so unbelievably easy to navigate. We weren't at the parks at opening any day and still rode everything we wanted except Indy but that was a whole different issue.
Fireworks - these were really great and watched from Refreshment corner just in front of the rope at the walkway they have there, we were about 3 people deep and had a great view of the castle and could see some of the projections on Main St.
Loved the new Disney 100 Wondrous Journeys show.
It was a shame that Fantasmic wasn't playing but helped in a way as I was trying to do both on the Friday night so made it easier just seeing the fwks. We got our place about 40mins before and it filled in very quickly behind us.
BTW - Disney never emailed me about the cancellation of Fantasmic and our 2nd show HB reservation. Luckily I'd read it here so I was fully aware before we got there. They just cancelled my booking automatically but I didn't receive the email that others did.
WOC DP on Saturday night - wrote about this on another WOC thread. Done a few times before. No real difference to previous.
Not sure, I might have preferred the previous show.
Minnie's B/F at Plaza Inn - pretty good as usual. Expensive for us with our terrible AUD. It was $200 AUD for us 3 - worth that? Probably not but no issues with it. Got to see a good array of characters and the food is just fine.
Magic Happens Parade - very nice parade, pretty good viewing spot and fairly last minute at the walkway near the Matterhorn, across from Pixie Hollow I think.
Individual LL - Rise / RSR / MMRR - I had hoped not to do this but ended up doing all 3. It was the only way to ride together and without a very long wait. In our case, first trip in a very long time and quite possibly our last trip to DL.
SWGE was open when my husband and I went in 2019 but not Rise. My son hadn't seen SWGE.
We are not SW fans particularly, especially me who has never seen a SW film. I thought it was 'ok', other 2 thought it was great. Looking back I guess I could say it was pretty impressive but knowing nothing about it I wasn't as impressed as others I fear.
I didn't ride Smugglers but they did. Said it wasn't that great as they had 2 small children as pilots.
Had a midday booking at Oga's, we were seated at a booth with 3 other parties. This was fine but weren't keen to hang around.
I only booked it so my son could see as he obviously hadn't before. My husband and I visited in 2019.
Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway - thought this was amazing - really liked it and would have loved to do it again but only got on it about an hour before we had to leave to fly home. I should have prioritised it on our previous 2 days.
Doing ILL means missing some of the queue but could see some of it walking through. Brilliant attraction, so well done!
There were quite a few prolonged breakdowns during our days there. Indy / Splash / GRR / TSMM to name some of them - we never got on Indy, we had at least 3 LL's for it but broke down every time and multiple times again when we went to re-ride it.
Splash broke down briefly whilst we were on it but they got it going again but it was down for extended periods. We still managed to ride it twice though.
GRR broke down all 3 days for extended periods of time - a big part of Saturday afternoon and again most of Sunday morning. We finally got on it around midday on Sunday just before we were going to hop to DL. Managed to 'fish' an immediate LL return so got changed to go ride it as my son had really wanted to do it.
Got on but it broke down again whilst we were on it - we'd gone through quite a few of the rapids and I 'think' we were just before the big drop. Had to wait 20 - 30 mins whilst they drained the ride and then got us out with a ladder and walked us off.
Got us one free multi experience although frankly I thought it was probably worth one or two more for that. It was pretty inconvenient and disappointing.
One bonus - we did get to see the friendly cat near GRR that I've seen before on previous trips. I think the cats name is Snickers or Francisco from memory but I could be wrong. I'll try and post some photos below and someone might know for sure.
Food: ate at various places. Used mobile order most of the time, when I remembered to do it! No real problem with it.
Worst - probably Bengal BBQ - had read such good things. The food was ok but I guess the value wasn't. It cost us $100 AUD for a few skewers (which are pretty small), breadstick and pineapple spear.
Best - I'd definitely say our meal at Flo's V8 Cafe - Famous Fried Chicken / Cheeseburger / Club s/w / drinks & Lemon Chiffon Pie - really nice food and about the same price as Bengal BBQ but MUCH better value for us.
Lots of other things like Churro's / Dole Whip / Soup bowls / Popcorn / Beignets etc etc.. all great as usual.
Didn't buy much - as WK has mentioned in his posts, postcards almost impossible to find. I usually get the yearly Lenticular one with the current year on it (at the photo shop) but I believe it's N/A and I certainly never found the photo shop - it's apparently moved but we never found it. I did buy a vintage postcard at Disneyana but it's not the same as the one I usually like to get each year that we are there.
I collect the SB mugs but they had nothing I wanted, I have soooo many anyway! They were all SW which I'm not interested in. Most likely only SW due to it being SW Day the day before we got there.
I did buy the 'Disney100 Stainless Steel Tumbler' at Jolly Holiday just before we left - I thought it was really nice ($28.99)
So, all in all we had a pretty good visit. Did most things we wanted to do even though we weren't there at rope drop.
Friday - after midday, Saturday - about 8.30am I guess and Sunday was around 9 - 9.30am I guess. Left park at 5.30pm on Sunday.
Our Aus dollar is only worth .66c against the USD at the moment so it ended up being a very expensive trip for us. We were in Hawaii for a few days before LA. Very, very $$$$
I've never travelled to the US when our dollar was that low and probably wouldn't do so again, I haven't added up what we spent and probably won't. I didn't really have a budget but this one went way beyond what we've spent on previous trips for sure.
If we had our time again I would have skipped Universal and gone straight down to DL for 4 days - live and learn.
As always, thank you to everyone who posts on Disboards. I've read almost daily over the last 3 years since our last time there and lived vicariously through everyone's posts and photos from the parks and gained lots of useful tips and information that was helpful on our trip.
Thank you for sharing with us in words and through great photos. Prayers you had a safe flight home and are able to enjoy another trip to DL in the future 
