WDW Vets 1st Stay at the Disneyland Resort! Trip Report Started 9/13

[Belle Ella]

Sounds like you're having agreat time! Can't wait to hear all about it.

 

[KCmike]

Sounds like a great trip you've got planned. I'm on board and can't wait to hear the reviews. GC is awesome.

 

[Jenna319]

We are in San Diego and tomorrow is our last full day in SoCal.... Disney withdrawals are already kicking in..... we had an amazing time and will find it hard to stay anywhere other than GCH for the convenience of the location!!!! Report and many pictures to come when I return Thursday night!

 

[Jenna319]

Sorry its taking me a few days to report back yet! We got home late Thursday night and then the weekend I had a wedding that I was standing up in..... I will do a quick report now and add pics and more details tomorrow or Tuesday.....

My mom and I were in Vegas from Monday, August 30th through Thursday, September 2nd.... just a quick observation that, as a frequenter of Vegas the past few years, this trip was definitely the least crowded I have seen Las Vegas!! The cab we took one day said that we were only his 4th ride at 10am and he had been on the clock for 10 hours!! We stayed at Palazzo which is always fabulous, and went to see Divas Las Vegas, Gordie Brown, and The Lion King. Divas was very entertaining and a great start to the trip. Gordie Brown was hilarious and I LOVED Downtown Las Vegas!! So much fun and I will definitely try to stop by there every trip from now on! The Lion King was also really great! We played bingo and won every time we played, and I ended up only losing $150 for the entire time, which for me, is spectacular! I just could not WAIT to get to Disney....

I met my husband at Orange County Airport on Thursday, September 2nd, and surprised him with a Silver Camaro SS! Needless to say he was thrilled!


We headed straight for Downtown Disney even before checking in at the Grand Californian because we were starving.

Started out our Disney vacation with lunch at Brea Bakery.... unfortunately in my excitement and starvation, I forgot to take pics of the food here but we both had the grilled cheese and shared fries. As huge fans of grilled cheese, these were pretty good. I was disappointed that fries did not come with the sandwiches and that you had to pay separate for them. It was a pretty pricey first lunch for just fries and grilled cheese, over $20 and that was with a coupon I had printed and found from the disboards.... but no worries because we had plenty of Disney dollars to use!

The very first thing we noticed at DD was that DLR cast members are nowhere NEAR as friendly and magical as WDW cast members are. Some were just downright rude.

After lunch, we walked the short distance to GCH. By this time, I was just brimming with excitement!
Lobby of GCH

I got to the front desk, which this girl was one of the few that was very friendly, and right away welcomed me to Disney. I asked if they had a room with a king bed available because we had put in a request for this. She said she would check with her manager and that she was going in the back room and would be right back.... Right away, I thought omg, I'm going to get my 1st Disney upgrade! Maybe concierge! I never had someone at the desk leave to go in the back room so that is the first thing I thought would happen!

When the girl came back (at least 10 minutes later!), she was holding a bouquet of balloons and an envelope with a bday picture signed by Mickey and a bday pin for my husband! I thought that was really sweet. Unfortunately, we didn't receive an upgrade and she came back with the news that they didnt have any king beds with a park view so I decided to stick with the park view (that we had booked) because that was more important to me. I wasn't disappointed, I still had the best view at the DLR and I was back home at Disney!!!!! I had also booked the gift card package and was also given the discounted summer rate so I was worried they would give me a hard time giving me the $200 gift card but they gave us the cards with no problem.

When we got to our room (number 4242 i believe), I had heard reviews of people saying that the rooms are quite small and I have to agree. Compared to Poly at WDW, these seemed half the size. I really don't need a large room, but I did notice the size. The balcony and view were definitely the best part! We were looking right out at Paradise Pier and would have a perfect view of World of Color, which we preceded to watch EVERY night.



Bambi on the Shower Curtain


Large Balcony

View During Day

View at Night

View of World of Color from Balcony


Since we didn't have lunch until about 330pm, we were not hungry for our 7pm reservation at Naples so we decided to drive our beautiful camaro around LA and go to Universal CityWalk. That first night was absolutely FREEZING with the wind and I was in shorts and a t-shirt! I was not prepared at all with how beautiful the weather is during the day and how chilly it gets at night!

We headed back to our hotel around 9pm and decided to go to Naples after all since I had printed the Bday gift certificate that again, I found out about on the disboards. Again, forgot to take pics here in all the excitement, but we shared a Caesar Salad, I got the Pepperoni pizza, and DH got the skirt steak. This was probably our favorite dinner of the trip! The salad was one of the best Ive had, and although the pizza is not Chicago pizza (where we are from), the pizza was very tasty and DH enjoyed this steak better than his steak from Blue Bayou our last night!! We would definitely come here again and it was great using the $30 gift certificate!

I also had to get one of these before going to bed and it was, by far, my FAVORITE snack of the trip.... I liked these much more than the ever-praised Tigger Tails!


I will post more either tomorrow or Tuesday and add plenty of pics! Thanks for tuning in!

 

[BeautyAndTheBeast22]

You have a new follower.

We stayed at the GCH last November and loved it. I only had one complaint.. the lighting in the room was horrible! Did you notice this during your stay? I darn near poked both eyes out while putting on mascara over the course of the trip.
Other than that we loved it!

Can't wait for your next report!

 

[Jenna319]

Sorry it took me so long to continue this! Here it goes!

Our first morning, we spent in LA/Hollywood but we did start out with breakfast at White Water Snacks. I got the french toast sticks and DH got the Mickey waffles and we both shared the bacon.

I really wish we had time to eat here again because everything was delicious! One of my big regrets was not making the time to try the nachos from White Water Snacks. I am not a huge french toast fan but I really enjoyed these sticks and the bacon was very good! I would definitely eat here again and recommend to anyone.

We then headed to Hollywood where my husband enjoyed driving the camaro on Mulholland Drive and of course we had to take some pics of the car with such scenic views!

We ate lunch at Mel's Diner in Hollywood which has become somewhat of a tradition.... such yummy food and milkshakes and a great place to people watch!
We then walked along Hollywood Blvd where we had to take a few pics of the stars that stood out to us:

We were scheduled for a 3pm flight on the Goodyear Blimp, my friend from grade school is one of the pilots and had invited us to go for a ride which I gladly accepted! We were told to get there at 230pm and arrived at 250pm with 10 minutes to spare!!! Thanks to LA traffic!!!! I have to learn to give myself more time to get places! I am so glad we made it in time for the flight, it was soooo incredible and memorable!!! Definitely a highlight of our trip!





After the blimp ride, we headed straight to Dodger Stadium for a Dodgers/Giants game. Since my husband is a huge LA Dodgers fan (from Chicago!), this was the main purpose of our trip to SoCal. I made sure we got our Disney fix in by staying at DLR. The Dodgers won the night we went and we had great 2nd row seats in the outfield. After the game, we got to go on the field to watch the fireworks. It was a great ending to a perfect day!

And then when we returned to GCH, I realized WOC was on and we sat and watched it from our balcony, which I did pretty much every night. It was really awesome but definitely not the same as watching it from inside the park. That is a must-do.

I'm going to attempt to upload some videos now....