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We have free RT flights, where do we go? Disneyland! July '13 TR~ (NEW!!!-12/16)

The Dinner

After our flight over California, Frances expressed her need to take a break. She never expected that we would walk so much and didn't bring the right kind of shoes. I had wanted to try out the new Starbucks anyways, so we took a short break and drank our Frappucinos while sitting outside Fiddler, Fifer & Practical Cafe and people watched while discussing our next move.


I love these cups!!!


Unlike our next two days, the only thing I had planned for today was our dinner at Carthay Circle. The rest of the day I would leave up to my group. Frances's dogs were really barking so we talked about where we might be able to find more appropriate shoes. I knew they sold Crocs in World of Disney so I suggested we take a trip to DtD before our dinner reservation. That was met with unanimous agreement so off we went!





Again, I was blown away by how close everything is! Downtown Disney is just a short walk away from the front of the parks! It was a pretty cool yet surreal feeling as a WDW vet.



Before going into WoD, we tried to scope out other places that might sell suitable shoes. My sister didn't want to go for Crocs right away even if I SWEAR by them. We went into the Sanuks store and even though their flip flops feel like you're walking on a cloud, they were just not enough support for her so we passed on them. I was really tempted to get a pair though....I already have two pairs of their yoga mat flip flops and two different colours, haha.

Eventually, we landed in WoD. I liked that the store was just one long store which made it easier to find each other if we split up. My sister tried on every pair of Crocs they had and settled for the pink Athens with Mickeys on the straps. These flip flops are comfy and great for the arches but the thong between the toes are just TOO thick for our little Asian feet. Even though her feet felt a lot better, her toes started to hurt but she was willing to deal with that. We wrapped some moleskin around it to prevent the rubbing that hurt so much.

We didn't spend much time browsing and just headed right back into the park for our 8pm reservation at Carthay Circle. Before our trip, I had heard of the wonders of the World of Colour show and knew we couldn't miss it. I also knew I wanted us to have a prime viewing spot because we just didn't have the time to stake one out before hand.

I looked at all the dinner packages and settled on Carthay Circle. I have heard so many great things about this restaurant and I wanted to treat my family to a nice dinner.

After we checked in, we were asked to take a seat in the lounge to wait for our table to be called. It was a very welcome rest and we talked about our day so far.

When we were called, the CM asked if we wanted the stairs or the elevator. We chose the elevator and decided we could take the stairs on the way down. On our way up, the CM told us about the Carthay Circle restaurant and its significance in Disney history. She also pointed out little Snow White touches that had been added throughout the restaurant. My favourite was the image of the Evil Queen that was etched in the wood pattern on our table.

After we were seated, our server came around and introduced herself and asked if we wanted something to drink. My sister, the one who rarely drinks alcohol, was feeling adventurous and ordered a Godiva chocolate martini (that Andrew ended up finishing up...). The rest of us got waters and sodas.

I asked about the dinner package and was told that it had changed since I made our reservation. Instead of being able to order anything on the menu, there was now a prix fixe menu. The main reason I chose Carthay Circle was because we didn't have to be restricted to a certain menu. Our server talked to the Head Server and said they would honor the previous arrangement of when I first made the reservation. We were so happy!

One thing we loved was the great service. Our server was funny and attentive and always there when we needed her.

To get into the prime viewing area, we each needed to order 1 entree and an appetizer or dessert. Since there were 4 of us, we decided to order 2 appetizers and 2 desserts to share.

For our starters, we had the Signature Fire Cracker Duck Wings - With Soy, lime and Sriracha Chili sauce and the Ginger Pork Pot Stickers - accented with Lemon Grass and Mango Voodoo Sauce



Sorry for the blurry pictures. My camera doesn't work well in low lighting.

According to my group, they were both delicious. I have an allergy to cilantro and both these starters were not only covered in it, they were marinated in it which meant I couldn't eat them.

Unlike at WDW, no chef came out to talk to us when we asked about the possibility of cilantro in the food.

I ordered the Sauteed Short Rib Raviolis - Portobello Mushrooms, Red Pepper and Cabernet Jus

It was not bad. I really enjoyed all the sauteed veggies under the ravioli though.

Beans ordered the Sauteed Shrimp - Summer Corn, Zucchini, Applewood Bacon and Basil Pesto

He loved it and felt it was very filling.

Both Andrew and Frances ordered the Grilled Rib Eye - Sautéed Mushrooms Ragu, Red Flame Grapes and Blue Cheese

This was an incredibly good steak. Frances didn't care for the blue cheese but Andrew relished it. He said it was one of the best steaks he's ever had.

For dessert, we ordered the Rocky Road Brownie and Lemon Pound Cake.

Oh, it looks like we devoured the brownie without taking a picture!

I was really stuffed by then but I tried my best to get through the dessert. That lemon pound cake....was heavenly. I wished I could eat more but my stomach was just not having it. It was fluffy and light and sweet but not too sweet and just melted in my mouth. I lament over the fact that I couldn't finish it. Everyone else preferred the brownie but the lemon pound cake is where it's at.

A lovely group picture in the beautiful restaurant.

We really enjoyed our dinner there and I was looking forward to the show! I highly recommend doing the dinner package here, if money allows. Carthay Circle has one of the best viewing spots for the show.

When we wandered out of the restaurant with our tummies all full, night had fallen and the park was all lit up and beautiful. We casually walked towards Paradise Pier, talking about the great dinner we just had. This is the (Disney) life!

Up next: The World of Color


 
Sorry about your sisters feet. But such a good idea that you thought of DTD to shop for a replacement.

Your dinner looks so good. I have not done much research for California yet (we have been a few times, but it has been a few years) so your tip to try Carthay Circle has been taken down.
Can't wait for your report on World of Colour! :thumbsup2

Thanks for your PM. I hope to get to the PO at the weekend. :goodvibes
 
Sorry about your sisters feet. But such a good idea that you thought of DTD to shop for a replacement.

Your dinner looks so good. I have not done much research for California yet (we have been a few times, but it has been a few years) so your tip to try Carthay Circle has been taken down.
Can't wait for your report on World of Colour! :thumbsup2

Thanks for your PM. I hope to get to the PO at the weekend. :goodvibes

Yeah, I'm sorry for her feet too. I should've warned her about the amount of walking we would be doing. It was only day 1!

Oh my gosh, Carthay Circle was great. The ambiance and perfect and the service was wonderful. It's a can't-miss on your next trip.

Thanks Karin, I really hope the package is able to make it! China Post is notorious for losing mail...
 
Your Carthay Circle dinner looks and sounds wonderful! I am toying with booking a WOC dinner - I'm glad to hear that this one was so good. I may just have to take us there! Thanks for the great update!
 


Joining in! I'm hoping to go to DLR next year for the first time, after many WDW trips, so I love reading about first time trips there! :thumbsup2 Your TR is great so far, Soarin' and ToT are my 2 favorite rides in WDW so it's weird to see how different they are in DLR!

I have a question about one of your pictures, in one of the DTD pics, that building that is right behind/next to La Brea Bakery...what is that? Is that one of the Disney resorts? If so, I want to stay there! :rotfl:

Yum, your dinner looks amazing! I wish I could book a trip right now!!!

Can't wait to read more!
 
The World of Color

It's hard to fight the urge to type "colour". #CanadianProblems

It has been a while since I last left you. Internet in China is unreliable and sometimes The DIS doesn't even load... #ChinaProblems. Ok, enough of those hashtags #LAME

Walking towards Paradise Pier from Carthay Circle was really beautiful. Unfortunately, all of our photos of the walk over are SUPER blurry so I shall spare you folks and probably urge you to google them if you really want to see.

We saw a bit more of Carsland as we passed by and it's so pretty! Definitely a must-do. Some thing we noticed about Anaheim is that even though the sun was BURNING in the early afternoon, as soon as the sun is gone, it is immediately MUCH cooler.

I would say I had to take out my cardigan every night, even though I was sweating through my clothes during the day. That's a nice little image isn't it?

First thing we did when we reached Paradise Pier was check to see where our viewing section was. It is smack dab in the middle!!!

Right across from it is the Voyage of the Little Mermaid so because we had about 20 mins before the show we thought we could jump in for a quick ride.

Our viewing area is virtually empty and stays uncrowded during the whole show. Of course, this is what you can always expect from 2nd showings ie. Fantasmic in HS

After winding through the LOOONG VotLM queue, we walked right onto a Clamobile and was ON OUR WAY when the belt stopped abruptly, right before we headed into the tunnel that brings us "under the sea".

CMs told us to stay in our seats and that the ride will be resuming soon. After sitting for about 5 minutes, we decided we didn't want to risk missing the show so we hopped out of the ride. We can come back to this ride later. I would say we experienced this on almost every ride we went on in DLR.

Arriving at the entrance to our viewing area, we showed the CM the vouchers we received at the end of our Carthay Circle dinner and headed right in. There are very little seats in these viewing areas and they are all reserved for guests with disabilities.

Our group didn't have a problem and just sat in front of a rail for one of the higher steps, with a bit of grass in front of us and little obstruction of our view. There are more steps in front of us and it leads you all the way down to the water.

In case you want to be soaked, you'd better stay a couple of steps back. Even though we were standing so far away, we still felt a good bit of the mist from the show.

This is our view.
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My sibs waiting in anticipation for the show.
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See those lamps? They're actually a part of the show!!! It kind of blew my mind when they started changing colours.

Now, I'm going to post some random shots we took of the show that is NOWHERE NEAR close to showing you just how AMAZING and BREATHTAKING and INCREDIBLE this show is.

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To be honest, we were took busy enjoying the show to take very many pictures.

If you want to be totally awestruck and surprised, DO NOT WATCH VIDEOS OF THIS SHOW. Up until our trip, I had only heard about this show and how great it is but I kept thinking it was going to be something like Fantasmic with more fireworks.

I was SO WRONG.

This show is a marvel of engineering that incorporates colourful lights and water effects that I never even knew were possible.

There are fireworks and loud music and it has a mish-mash of different themes, some of which made me cry. During the whole show my jaw was dropped and I could not stop saying "WOW!!!" over and over at every new thing that appeared.

My breath was taken away and my eyes were as wide as I could will them. I cried at more than one of the parts and the show left me with such a joyful feeling. All I could think of was, "I want my parents to see this."

I think World of Color is the best show I've ever seen. It far surpasses anything I've ever seen Disney do.

As much as I love Fantasmic, World of Color blows it out of the water.

Pun intended.

I would even dare to say that this show is worth the admission! (Don't tell Disney!)

I had planned on buying some Glow with the Show ears kind of lost interested in them. Although it WAS cool to watch the hats of the few people that had them during our show.

After the show, we walked with the last crowd of people leaving the parks and made it home around midnight. We chatted with our parents a bit via our WeChat app and finally hit the hay after being awake for about 24 hours.

Up next: Day 2
 
Your Carthay Circle dinner looks and sounds wonderful! I am toying with booking a WOC dinner - I'm glad to hear that this one was so good. I may just have to take us there! Thanks for the great update!

You should definitely book the dinner! The food, the service, and the ambiance are so worth it!

Joining in! I'm hoping to go to DLR next year for the first time, after many WDW trips, so I love reading about first time trips there! :thumbsup2 Your TR is great so far, Soarin' and ToT are my 2 favorite rides in WDW so it's weird to see how different they are in DLR!

I have a question about one of your pictures, in one of the DTD pics, that building that is right behind/next to La Brea Bakery...what is that? Is that one of the Disney resorts? If so, I want to stay there! :rotfl:

Yum, your dinner looks amazing! I wish I could book a trip right now!!!

Can't wait to read more!

So happy to have you join in!

ToT is my favourite ride. It felt so familiar but at the same time, really different! Especially the outside queue.

I'm actually not sure if it's one the the Disney resorts. IT sure looks nice though! I know one of the resort entrances is at the other end of DtD.
 


I have a question about one of your pictures, in one of the DTD pics, that building that is right behind/next to La Brea Bakery...what is that? Is that one of the Disney resorts? If so, I want to stay there! :rotfl:

I'm actually not sure if it's one the the Disney resorts. IT sure looks nice though! I know one of the resort entrances is at the other end of DtD.

That building is indeed a Disney resort. It's the Grand Californian Hotel. It has a direct entrance to DCA. :-) https://disneyland.disney.go.com/grand-californian-hotel/
 
The Magic Morning

We woke up at 6am this morning, were out the door by 7am and got to the parks by 7:30am, about 30 mins into Disneyland's Magic Morning. As a Commando park goer, I was a little bit miffed that my group couldn't get ready fast enough.

Even though we were off my tourings plans by that much, we decided to just stick with it and make a few calls on which rides we could save for later.

We walked as fast as we could, excited for our day in Disneyland!
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After passing through the turnstiles where our pictures were taken AGAIN because we had CITYPASS tickets, my sis and I couldn't pass up this chance to take a pic with Mulan.
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I love this picture of my sister.
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You can see my 2nd Disney-bounding outfit of the trip. Today, I was Oswald the Lucky Rabbit!

We basically made a beeline for the Matterhorn.

The first thing I noticed while walking was....

"Wow, their castle is REALLY small!"

I'm sure this has gone through the head of EVERY WDW veteran to walk through this park.

I mean, I'd heard that it was small and even seen pictures but boy....it's pretty tiny!

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We'll see you soon, Space Mountain.
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And you too, Nemo.
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By the time we got into the line, it was already 8am. There goes our only Magic Morning of the trip. Fortunately thanks to TouringPlans.com, we were able to get in everything we wanted to do anyways!

Hey Frances, we're taking a group shot here!
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Off we go!
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I love the next 3 shots Andrew took of himself. Really gives you a feel for the ride!
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The Matterhorn was a lot more exciting that we expected! And we definitely didn't know about the Yeti on this ride either. We wanted to go back on this ride but never got a chance to.

Next up are the Nemo submarines!!! I really had no idea what to expect from this ride so I was really excited for it.
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Playing my 3DS to make the line go faster.
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Andrew's trying to figure out what kind of ride this might be.
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Down down down we go...
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It was a very pleasant ride! I had a lot of fun but I think Beans fells asleep for a bit. My sister got scared when it got really dark. This turned out to be a recurring theme for her. She's afraid of the dark.

After our trip down under, we were in the mood for a trip into space. We heard Star Tours is the way to go.

We're ready for our trip!
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This was our first time on the new Star Tours ride and it was AWESOME!!! We loved the new 3-D glasses and the new adventures we could go on. I don't know the Star Wars universe well so I couldn't tell you where we went...A bit of me wanted to be picked as the rebel...

My notes for this morning aren't the best so I can't remember which 2 rides on the touring plan we skipped but I knew went to Adventureland next. Hooray for photos!

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Our destination? The Jungle Cruise! Andrew found a to keep McDuff on this shoulder but it didn't last long.
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We passed by the line for Dole Whips and I was PROMISED we would come back for some later. Did I get any Dole Whip this trip? Read on and find out!

The line was still fairly short (thank goodness!) so we hopped right in.
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We sat at the front, right next to the skipper so we could laugh loudly at all his puns.

Those elephants actually sprayed us!
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I think we laughed the loudest when he told us that granite joke so he just kept going! I love when skippers go off-routine and just throw their best at us.

I think he gave us every geology pun in the book and it left us in STITCHES. The rest of the boat looked fairly lost but we at the front were having a BLAST.

When we got off, we still had some time before our Reservation at the Plaza Inn so we hopped off towards Space Mountain to grab some FPs for after brunch.
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FPs obtained!
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Time to check into our brunch at the Plaza Inn with Minnie and Friends!
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Up next: The Plaza Inn
 
Great updates! I have resisted watching youtube videos of WOC but it is hard. Hoping to see it in person in 2015!
 
The Plaza Inn

We had a reservation at The Plaza Inn to have breakfast with Minnie and friends! This was our first ever character meal and TS breakfast so I was REALLY EXCITED!!!

I chose one of the latest breakfast times so it could act as more of a brunch. When listening to the DIS Unplugged's Disneyland team, I knew Minnie and friends was the best character experience. Only $25 a person too!

Since this was our first character meal we really didn't know what to expect. I mean, I knew characters would be walking up to our tables....but then what? Would their be CM handlers? What if we miss a character while we were at the buffet? Heaven forbid I miss Minnie Mouse!!!

After getting our picture taken at the front of the restaurant, we were lead to our table indoors, right next to the buffet.

Oh look there's Hook!
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One of the reasons why this character meal isn't the most popular despite its attractive pricing is because you never know who you'll meet.

Minnie Mouse is a guarantee but every other character is pretty random. All I wanted to meet was Minnie, so I was a very happy camper.

Read on to see who else we saw!

Our side of the dining room didn't have any characters when we arrived so we immediately went to get some food.

I wish I had taken pictures of the food cause everything looked soo good! Andrew especially liked the omelet station.

Look, it's Pluto on our way to the food!
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This is what I got on my first time up.
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These are Andrew's plates.
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As we sat down, we saw Max in the next room but he was on his way to the outside patio.
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Our first visitor was Tigger!
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I loved how playful he was with my sister.
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But he still behaved so we could get a good shot.
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After that, Chip came by! Look at us, old friends catching up on the good ol times.
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Can you tell we're total besties?
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And then we saw Minnie Mouse come out of the door!!!

She headed for the other side of the dining room.
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This picture Andrew took pretty much sums up how I felt as I waited for Minnie Mouse to get to our tables.
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Unfortunately, her rotation lead her out to the patio so I was left in waiting...

And then music started playing and Tigger and Eeyore started DANCING!!!

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As Tigger went to dance with some little girls. Eeyore continued to dance all by his lonesome. IT WAS SO CUTE, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW.

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Oh my god, it's Fairy God Mother!!! I really didn't expect to meet her here and I was SO EXCITED!!!
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Of course, where there is Chip there is also a Dale.
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And then oh wait, who's that behind me?
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IT'S MINNIE MOUSE!!!!!!!! AHHHH!!! I love her so much!!! I showed her all the Minnie stuff I had on me and then Duffy and then hugged her a million times. She's awesome.
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The only group photo we have with Minnie...and Andrew's eyes are closed.
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Continue onto the next page for more!
 
The Plaza Inn Cont'd

After we settled down from that, we finally had some time to eat our breakfast and go back for seconds before the characters came back.

This time, Chip and Dale showed up together!!!
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Oh Dale, you tell the funniest jokes!
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Beans was being a bore and unwilling to get up for pictures. Which is how we ended up with this gem!
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When Fairy Godmother came by, we talked about being from Canada how this was our first time in Disneyland. I can't recall what else we talked about. I just know we had a great time with her and she was just the sweetest!
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Pinocchio swung by a bit but only stayed long enough for a hug.
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Eeyore wanted a hug too, so my sister obliged.
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DAAWWWWW, so cute!

By then, we were pretty satisfied and a CM had given us a physical copy of the photo we took at the entrance. We loaded up our backpacks with chocolate milk, lemonade, and powerade and headed out to use our Space Mountain FPs and continue following the touring plan.

I had a great time at the Plaza Inn. The character interaction was so much fun. The food was really good. The pricing was excellent. I would definitely recommend this place for anyone considering a character breakfast and isn't picky about their characters. I will probably return during my next trip to DLR.


Up Next: The Afternoon

 
Great updates! I have resisted watching youtube videos of WOC but it is hard. Hoping to see it in person in 2015!

Thank you!

Yes, it IS hard to resist watching. But if you want your mind to be blown away, it's worth it :thumbsup2
 

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