Yet Another Happiest Place on Earth Report Disneyland, June 9-15th, 2008

SusanEllen

DIS Veteran
Joined
May 24, 2004
This report was originally posted on the DIS UK Trip Report board even though I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.A. The explanation for that is in the Pre-trip report that follows below. If you've read reports on the UK board you are aware that the majority of British Disney fans visit WDW, though more and more are traveling the extra three thousand miles to experience Disneyland. Some of my remarks were written with those who haven't made the trip to Anaheim yet in mind.

Pre-trip

Is it time for me to jump on the Disneyland band wagon? It seems that suddenly there’s a fair bit more mention of the first Disney park among this group than usual--Laur’s did such a good report of her recent trip there, Danauk and Wickesy have both posted their pre-trip reports just today, and I recall that a few others (Lizzy Lemon among them) have told us that they’ll be going to Disneyland soon. So perhaps now is the time to add my name to the list. I will be in Disneyland for 7 days/6 nights, from June 9 through June 15th. I know this is cutting it close for posting a pre-trip report, but besides the predictable excuses of having been too busy/too lazy I have had two fears—the first fear, that filing a pre-trip report would obligate me to write a full report (see earlier reference to being lazy) and second fear, that announcing plans is a sure way to tempt Fate to mess with those plans. Here’s hoping that Fate is looking the other way right now.

I suppose I should begin with an explanation of why, since I live in Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S. A., I’m posting on the UK board and not the US. The fact is I don’t know anyone on the US board while I do have many dear friends on this one. A few years back I was lucky enough to be adopted by Kevin and Tammy Stringer and have had four lovely Disney vacations with them—one in California and three in Florida (two of those with Debbie and Matt Churchill, too). In fact, I must tell you that vacationing with the Stringers is the ideal way to produce a wonderful trip report without lifting a finger, as Kevin is a master travel journalist and all I usually do is send links to his web page to all my friends with a note saying “See how much fun I had!” I have had one tiny experience writing a three day add-on trip report in 2006 to tell of my weekend at WDW after the Stringers returned home and left the Churchills and me to fend for ourselves. Debbie and Matt went to a new hotel offsite to give it a try and I checked in to my beloved Wilderness Lodge. Matt and I both wrote mini TRs, more or less epilogues to Kevin’s report. My offerings were kindly accepted by UK DIS readers and encouraged by that (and without Kevin along this time to do the work for me) I have decided to write again.

I used to go every year to Disneyland and to Walt Disney World. Actually, that was my late husband Scott’s routine and when we met I quickly and happily fell in line. Since his death in 2001 the pattern has changed and though I’ve managed to get to one Disney place or the other each year, only one year in the past seven have I been able to get to both. My most recent trip to Disneyland was in 2005 with the Stringers and it was starting to feel like I’d been too long away. I decided to go, but then who was there to go with me? In addition to attaching myself to the Stringers and the Churchills for a number of trips, I’ve gone through the list of my dearest friends (which includes my sister) to find trip companions and co-conspirators (some of them for more than one trip, bless their hearts) and afraid I’ve gotten to the end of the list and am out of friends! Well, not really, but no one seemed available when I started thinking about a trip this summer. I decided to do a solo trip, something I’d done once before—a trip to Disneyland, which was wonderful in its own way. That might sound a little lonely or desperate, but honestly, I never felt alone there. No doubt the many happy memories of things that Scott and I did there carried me through, but in addition to that I always had people to talk to, laugh with, and ride with anytime I wanted. You know the sense of security and camaraderie you feel when you’re at Disney? Well, anytime I wanted a little company or conversation, there were always guests or cast members willing to oblige. I stayed at the Grand Californian which made me feel right at home--it looks so much like the Wilderness Lodge (designed by the same architect)--and opening right into Disney’s California Adventure it couldn’t have been handier or safer for me. Having had such a good experience that time I decided to go solo again—but then I didn’t have to. My sister’s very good friend Sharon who lives in northern California got wind of my plan and asked if she could go along. Sharon is funny and bright and very enthusiastic about Disneyland, so a perfect pal for this trip. Sharon has been to Disneyland many times through the years as her husband’s business often takes him to LA. But precious man though he is, Howard has one fault (but it’s a big one)—a very low tolerance for Disneyland. A few hours there and he’s ready to go. The thought of staying for a week is beyond his comprehension, but he’s willing to send Sharon with her brand new Disney VISA with his good wishes. So there you have us. Two ladies of a certain age with a love of Disneyland and with VISA cards—and no one telling us what we can’t do!

Having already talked your ear off, I’m not going to go through the itinerary day by day. I will tell you:

Where we’re staying: Paradise Pier with park view. The Stringers and I stayed at PP and thought it was a lovely place and convenient for our needs. Sharon and I decided that the hundred dollars a day difference from the cost of Grand Californian would go along way to paying for some of our other extravagances and that we would have the GC experience when we ate at Napa Rose, got massages at the Mandara Spa, and had breakfast at the Storytellers Café.

Where we’re eating: In addition to the Napa Rose (exhibition kitchen seating), we have ADRs (still called PSs in CA) at Hooke’s Pointe (Disneyland Hotel), Catal (DTD), Steakhouse 55 (Disneyland Hotel), and Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen (DTD). If you know Disneyland, you may have noticed the absence of Blue Bayou among the PSs. It was one of Scott’s favorite places (back in the day when it was the only table service restaurant at Disneyland) and is still one of my favorites. We will go there for a lunch, just not sure which day yet. Also will try to work in The Vineyard room in DCA and Carnation Café on Main Street.

What we’ll be doing: Besides the usual attractions, shows, rides, parades, and fireworks, we are going to do A Walk in Walt’s Footsteps tour of Disneyland and Cruzin’ California segway tour of DCA. We have massages scheduled at the GC Mandara Spa. We have riverside seating with the dessert treats for Fantasmic.

What we’re looking forward to most: For me--Being there. The new submarine ride. Toy Story Mania. The Indiana Jones ride enhancements and the new crowd interactions. For Sharon—shopping as long as she wants, in as many places as she wants, for days and days and days.

If you’ve read this far (a great favor to me I assure you), please, do one more favor for me. Keep your fingers crossed for the next few days, making the wish that Fate doesn’t find out about my plan.


Day One, Monday, June 9th

[The pre-trip report I posted on May 31 was not so much about travel journaling or even sharing planning tips with other Disney enthusiasts as it was about making a commitment to do a full blown trip report in a manner that wouldn’t allow me to wiggle out of the job once the vacation was over.. So, as promised, here is the first installment of the report about my trip to Disneyland. Fate was kind (or looking the other way) and things went as planned—or close enough to make me happy.]

Monday, June 9th
In the end it’s often the little things that bring us joy, isn’t it? What put a smile on my face that first day was the ticket for a non-stop flight to California that I carried with me to the airport. Of course, I was thrilled to be returning to Disneyland after a three year hiatus, but it was how I was getting there this time that made my smile a little wider. In a dozen California trips over the past decade and a half I’d never had the opportunity to fly direct. Tulsa, Oklahoma is close to the geographic center of the US (excluding, if they’ll forgive me for doing so, Alaska and Hawaii) and is about 1,400 miles from both Anaheim and Orlando. Living here and being equidistant to Disneyland and Walt Disney World is in many ways a good thing. On the other hand, living here in a medium size Midwestern city means all flights to anywhere require flying first to a “hub city” and usually having a layover and a plane change, all of which doubles travel time, and that’s not a good thing. Recently Express Jet, a west coast regional airline, came to Tulsa offering non-stop flights to California--to LA/Ontario, which is in Orange County and half an hour closer to Disneyland than LAX is. So it was all good and something new, to be flying into Ontario instead of the usual LAX or John Wayne/Santa Ana. [For your travel planning file: John Wayne is the closest of the three airports, 15 miles from Disneyland.] Not only did a non-stop flight mean avoiding a layover or a mad dash between terminals in Dallas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City or St. Louis (which is bizarrely in the opposite direction from California), it meant total time in the air would be less than 3 hours. Changing my watch for the two hour time difference felt like I was adding bonus hours to my Disney time. The plane left Tulsa at 3 PM and just one hour later at 4 (according to my watch) I was in California.

I’m going to back up a little here to tell you what happened to me at the Tulsa Airport when I handed the first Security person my precious non-stop ticket. For reasons only known to Express Jet and/or the Department of Homeland Security, my ticket was marked for “Special Screening.” For those of you who don’t know me, perhaps I should tell you that I’m a 61 years old woman (an elementary school librarian for goodness sake), not quite 5’1”, and always wear my Disney proudly—clothes and jewelry—which I was doing that day in addition to pulling along my Mickey and Minnie covered luggage with Mickey tags dangling. Pretty scary, huh? Not wanting to end up on a permanent No Fly list, I cooperated as cheerfully as I could, but have to say that I avoided eye contact with all the other passengers on the other side of the clear glass walls who were moving along unimpeded as in clear view I was being patted down (which by the way, is not as much fun as it looks on Law and Order ). Everything in my bags was removed and scrutinized and all electronics and the bags they were stored in were swabbed and the swabs were tested. This was all more disturbing than interesting. It was probably only the state of shock I was in that kept me quiet and out of trouble. I can’t be sure, but my theory as to why Express Jet chose me for this (and airport security assured me it was the airline’s choice, not theirs) is that the airline wanted to demonstrate in the most over the top way possible that the people they screen are not profiled on the basis of nationality, race, gender, ability to overpower anyone larger than a third grader (which I CAN do) or cultural background (unless they have something against Disney lovers)

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Davy Crock-cat is inspecting my terrifying luggage and now that you’ve seen it I’m sure you can understand why I was picked for Special Security Screening.

Now back to the airport in California:
The pick up spot for the Super Shuttle was just a few steps out the door from baggage claim, which reminded me that a small airport can be very convenient. My transfers with Super Shuttle were arranged by Disney Travel, but make no mistake about it, this isn’t Disney Transportation, at least not as we know it at WDW. Since Disneyland was created as a day park and functioned as such for its first 45 years, amenities in place for multiple parks and resorts that we’re used to in Florida either don’t exist or are still in the beta testing phase in California. So, it was not a CM/driver who expressed his shock, horror, and disgust at having to drive a single passenger (me!) to Disneyland, a 35 minute trip. He waited at the shuttle sign for a few minutes and then circled the airport terminal once in the hopes that another Disney bound passenger would materialize. No one did. I felt very eco-unfriendly, then felt even worse when I learned that the driver had just driven another single passenger from Hollywood to the Ontario Airport (over an hour drive) and as I was his last fare of the day he’d be heading home from Anaheim—an 85 mile drive. What?! Could I feel worse? As a matter of fact, yes. I learned that drivers working for Super Shuttle own and maintain their own vehicles and with gas at $5 a gallon this man could not have made any money driving me. All those miles, all that gas just to get me less then 30 miles down the road to Disneyland. By then I was feeling largely responsible for the country’s gasoline problems. Finally we came to the Ball Road Exit. Ball is one of the streets bordering Disneyland, so I knew we were getting close. As we approached Harbor Avenue (another border street) I saw the enormous iridescent green and blue Disneyland office building and decided I’d felt guilty long enough. To assuage the last of my guilt—at least as it pertained to the plight of my driver—along with my Disney Travel transfer voucher I handed over twice the tip I would have given if there had been other riders sharing the trip. Guilt free I walked in to the lobby of the Paradise Pier Hotel.

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This was my second stay at Paradise Pier, having been here with the Stringers in 2005. Looking around as I waited my turn at the registry desk, I could easily picture them all—Tammy and Kevin sitting just here; India and Georgia hanging onto the large statue of Surfing Goofy over there. You’ve probably experienced this, too—memories from previous trips overlapping the current one. Those memories are why I’ve never felt alone the few times I’ve found myself on my own at a Disney place. And on my own was how I was to be for the next few hours until my friend Sharon arrived from Northern California the next morning.

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Goofy without his pals India and Georgia.

Check-in went quickly. I tried to listen carefully to the information from the CM, as it’s easy to treat some of this as we do the pre-flight info as the airplane is taxing down the runway—we’ve heard it before! But I knew I needed to understand what she was saying as similar things are often just a beat off from what’s familiar at WDW. It might be helpful for anyone staying at a Disneyland Resort hotel for the first time to know that things aren’t done exactly as they are at WDW. This can be a little confusing if you’re used to WDW ways. As the resort/hotel business is new and on a much smaller scale here, there are some things they’re still trying to work out. For instance, if you have a package vacation at WDW, a single plastic card will function as the room key, the card that allows you to charge to the room, and your parkhopper. Here I was given (and needed) a plastic card for my room, a second plastic card for my parkhopper, and a tiny piece of paper that would allow us to charge things to the room. I was cautioned in a rather scolding non-CM sort of way to take great care of them as the park pass and the charge paper were absolutely irreplaceable. When pressed in a good natured way, she quietly admitted that the parkhopper could be reissued. [A little Disneyland history: Remembering Scott’s explanation of Disneyland’s You Lose Your Ticket—Tough Luck! policy I know it comes from nearly a half century of being a day trip single park and was instituted in the attempt to keep carloads of visitors from sashaying in and out of Disneyland to the parking lot and back to the gate having added someone else to the group and declaring that they’d lost their admission ticket when they’d hadn’t bought a ticket at all. Hand stamps helped, but still people conned CMs and Disney reckoned they lost barrels of money and that’s not something Disney takes lightly.]

Excellent news about my room that the CM seemed delighted to give to me as it gave her the chance to recover her welcoming demeanor—the additional night I’d booked in a standard view room for this first night (tomorrow being the beginning of the 6 day parkhopper) had been upgraded to the park view that we would have for the rest of the week so I wouldn’t have to move the next morning and I had the preferred view tonight at a standard view price. This is one preferred view that actually gives you something very special for the money. When this hotel was the Pan Pacific, before Disney bought it in their effort to Resort-ize Disneyland when Disney’s California Adventure was built, the view from my 14th floor window would have been only the back half of the Disneyland parking lot and the Anaheim Convention Center which is only separated from Disney property by Katella Avenue (another street bordering Disneyland). But now with most of the old parking lot covered over by the new park, my view was the entire Paradise Pier portion of DCA.

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Just above the Orange Stinger (India, Georgia, and I renamed it the Orange Stringer) you can see all that's left of the original Disneyland parking lot. That's the corner of Katella and Harbor and that little patch of asphalt covered ground must be the most valuable land in the country.

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This is the very back of DCA. That’s California Screamin’ on the left, the parade barn with the door partially open in the middle, and the Anaheim Convention Center, the big arch-y building, just beyond the Royal Palms that line Katella Avenue.

I admired my room, took some photos, unpacked my bags, and then headed out for Downtown Disney.

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You can see my luggage standing at attention in my new front hall.

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A room with a View


I crossed Disneyland Drive and walked through the lobby of the Grand Californian, through the hotel courtyard, and out the DTD gate, following the familiar path forged by Kevin in 2005.

Downtown Disney is smaller but more densely packed with shops and restaurants than DTD at WDW, another example of making the most of limited space here. This means you can see and do a lot with fewer steps and that has its advantages. I decided to try Tortillo Jo’s for dinner. This corner restaurant used to house Y Aribba, Y Aribba, a place I always enjoyed--excellent tapas and good music. The Tortilla Jo's incarnation seemed very crowded, but I didn’t have to wait for a table because I was willing to be seated at the indoor bar. The bartender was friendly and gave me as much attention as she could while mixing drink after drink, so fast that she was a show herself. She made a good “handcrafted Margarita,” which she explained to me (and many others over the course of the next hour) was a Margarita made from scratch using no pre-measured mix. I ordered her menu recommendation, a spicy Mayan salmon. It was mediocre at best (yet pricey) and I philosophically decided that this would be a dinner that would serve as a relative low point against which to judge all the fine meals we had ahead of us this week. I continued my stroll through DTD. I bought a giant peanut butter cookie at the La Brea Bakery, made a quick pass through the World of Disney store, and then made my way back to the hotel via the Grand Californian route.

The night view of the park was gorgeous in a whole different way from the day view. I had accidentally timed my return for the start of Disney’s Electrical Parade (formerly—and for 22 years—the Main Street Electrical Parade in Disneyland before it traveled to Paris, spent some time at WDW, and then returned to be the night time parade at the then brand new DCA). Lights along the parade route were dimmed as were the ones on the construction site of Grand Californian Villas being built for the DVC. I was able to see that beautiful parade that I’ve seen so often from a unique point of view, a hundred and forty feet above. I could see the entire parade all at one time. Watching the Electrical Parade from that vantage was worth the price of the park view. I could see the huge open door of the parade barn and when the parade made its loop and returned to the barn I watched as they parked the lead float closest to that opening, the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio, her lights still flashing.
 
Day Two, Tuesday, June 10th

[Before this vacation started I thought I knew what I’d be telling you in this trip report--if not the actual words, I was fairly certain I knew all the subjects I was going to cover. I thought I would follow the day by day list of tours, shows and restaurants, making pithy and entertaining comments about each. I feel fortunate to have had 10 previous trips to Disneyland and 11 to Walt Disney World in the past fourteen years, so I thought I’d be able to point out similarities and differences between the two American Disney places and make insightful comments about them. (It's all right if you laughed at my use of the words "pithy," "entertaining," and "insightful". I did.) I thought I knew pretty much everything I was going to be writing about, until I woke very early on Day Two and something that wasn’t on our carefully crafted itinerary happened, something so splendid that it’s now close to the top of my all-time best Disney experiences—and I never even left the hotel room. A lot of today’s report concerns that surprise. Here’s how it started:]

The call that woke me at 5:45 (AM!!!) was a wrong number, but of course, I didn’t know that when I bolted out of bed and stumbled to the desk, feeling for my phone in the dark. Since only a handful of people have my cell number, I was afraid this early morning call meant trouble—either an emergency back in Oklahoma or a change in Sharon’s flight plans. Happy to say it was neither. I was so relieved that this call hadn’t ended the vacation before it had begun that when the person on the other end apologized for disturbing me, I said, “That’s all right. Really.” and I meant it! Whether it was the adrenalin still in my system or the bump on my leg that I got when I tangled with a chair during my dash to the phone, I was wide awake now. I began thinking about our plans for the week and once that started there was no chance of getting back to sleep. Though six was earlier than I’d intended to start the day (thinking I’d bank a little extra rest for the long, full days ahead and rise just in time to dress and meet Sharon in the lobby), I knew that Sharon had already started her day by this time, so it seemed only fair that I be up, too. With an 8 o’clock plane to catch, she and Howard were almost certainly on the way to the Sacramento airport. I hoped they’d allowed plenty of time in case Sharon ran into . . . well, you know . . .Special Screening! Her LA/Ontario ETA was 8:50 and now that I knew how long that trip took, I had some idea of when to expect her—10-ish and not before.

I realized that being up before the sun might be an opportunity to get a shot of my wonderful park view in the morning light. I opened the curtains to find Paradise Pier still lit with the park’s night lights. Dawn was just beginning to lighten the sky and one by one the lights on the rides and the neon signs snapped off. I pulled up a chair and for the next two hours sat watching Paradise Pier come alive. Trucks began to arrive—small ones moving down the midway and big eighteen wheelers pulling in behind the barrier that hides the utility road from guest areas. Before long the park would open and for the rest of the day thousands of guests would walk just there, only a few yards from the backstage they wouldn’t be able to see but that I could see now from my window. All those people stopping and watching friends on California Screamin’ or the Maliboomer would be unaware of the world of work going on so close to them. Tiny blue street cleaners (tiny from 14 stories up) that looked like Zambonis zipped around washing the walkways. There were vans, bicycles, trucks of various sizes and shapes—a big one pulling seven cars like a railroad train off its tracks, and vehicles like I’d never seen before, obviously designed for their specific jobs. Two boats crossed Paradise Bay heading for the Sun Wheel. Soon there were dozens of vehicles and hundreds of people moving all over the park and I felt like I was playing with the most deluxe version ever of a Disney Park game, complete with lots of miniature backstage Cast Members. A large crane pulled up and parked next to the Golden Zephyr ride and a man in a basket at the top of the crane began to replace light bulbs. (The Golden Zephyr has long cables lined with old fashioned amusement park light bulbs. Keeping them all lit must be a full time job—this man worked on them for nearly three hours.) As the Zephyr slowly rotated while the crane stayed in place, the man changed the burned out bulbs he could reach. Awhile later, the crane began to fold very slowly. Then it unfolded and when it was in its new lower position the man began to change bulbs at that level.

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This hazy view may look just like the pictures from Day One, but note the empty parking lot and the night lights decorating the rides still on. The red ride on the left is the Golden Zephyr.

Of course, I knew that it took thousands of people behind the scenes to keep Disney parks going, but knowing is one thing while seeing is something else entirely. What great luck to have awakened early today, to get to see all this. Tomorrow morning we’d be doing the Cruzin’ California segway tour in DCA at just about this time. For months I’ve been looking forward to the tour, to seeing DCA’s backstage activities as we move around the waking park. I realized that seeing those activities now from up here was adding a dimension (literally) to my understanding of what goes into getting a park ready for us—every day! I scanned all that was in my view hoping to see segways from today’s tour speeding down the walkways but knew that at 7:30 the tour group was probably in the midst of their segway training. It was time to get dressed, but every few minutes I returned to the window to look for the segways. Finally, just after 8, I spotted a lone segway that was obviously not part of the tour but a CM on a mission speeding from one side of Paradise Pier to the other. At 8:45 riderless coaster cars began moving along the Mulholland Madness track.

I believe I could have stayed at my window all day long and been entertained the whole time, but decided it was time to go downstairs. I knew Sharon’s plane had probably just landed and it would be an hour or so before she got here, but I thought perhaps it was time to break my wonderful window’s hypnotic spell—if I could.

. . . to be continued
 
Day Two, Part 2

[I have some fairly believable excuses for not posting this installment sooner, but the real reason is that I’ve been stalling, waiting for the PhotoPass CD to arrive with the best pictures taken on our first day in Disneyland. This is Part 2 of Day Two and as this report starts I was still inside Paradise Pier Hotel, but I promise I will actually get us all to a Disney park before the day is over.]

It was Tuesday, 9AM. I’d been in Orange County, California for 17 hours, at Disneyland Resort for nearly 16 hours, slept just across the street from Disney’s California Adventure and had watched early morning pre-opening work go on in DCA for nearly 3 hours, but hadn’t yet set foot inside a park. So close and yet so far. Once Sharon got here we would get this show on the road and that should be within the hour. I was too excited to stay in the room any longer. It felt like I could shorten the wait time if I shortened the distance, so I took the glass elevator that faces outside the hotel down to the lobby. The front desk was busy with several happy people checking in and a few who had the tell tale look of guests at the end of their stay. Knowing I had some time before Sharon arrived, I stepped into the Treasures in Paradise gift shop, only a few steps from the hotel’s front door. I waited my turn to speak to the CM behind the counter, to ask him if I could get a new battery for my park watch either here or at one of the jewelry shops on Main Street. He said, sorry, no, but suggested I might buy a new watch from him. That seemed like a good idea and since I had the time to kill, I looked at everything in the shop’s watch inventory twice before choosing one with a numberless dial and cute little cameos of Mickey and Friends placed at the even number positions. The helpful CM cut away the packaging and set the time and I buckled on my new watch right there at the cash register. I was thinking that Sharon, a champion level shopper, would be so proud of me. I walked out of the gift shop looking at my new watch and that’s when I realized it was only 10 minutes after 9!!! This wait seemed to be getting longer instead of shorter. DCA wasn’t open yet, but I knew Disneyland was. If Sharon were arriving a bit later, I would have gone to Disneyland right then, but there wasn’t enough time to get there and back, not if I wanted a picture of my friend stepping into Paradise Pier Hotel for the first time—and not if I wanted to continue our friendship. She’d kill me if I went into Disneyland before she did.

So I sat and waited—and waited. I tried not to look at my watch all the time or get up more than once a minute to walk over to the big front doors to look at the driveway where shuttle after shuttle dropped off guests, but never Sharon. Sitting there that morning I learned that the stiller I sit the more I can worry. As the hands on my new watch crept toward 10 o’clock I started imagining reasons why Sharon wasn’t here yet. Of course, I was concerned for the well being of my friend, but more to the point, I was worried about the daylight we were losing! 10, 10:15, and 10:30 all came and went and still no Sharon. If her plane landed on time and the transfer took as long as my shuttle ride, she should have been here by 10. Wouldn’t she call if there were a delay somewhere along the way? That’s when I realized my cell phone was not in my hand bag, but still plugged into the charger on the desk in the room (where it was when its ring woke me at 5:45 this morning!). Sharon was late enough now to suspect something really had gone a bit wrong, but she was also late enough to think she could be here any minute, which meant if I left my post by the front door to go back to the room to get the phone, chances were good I’d miss getting that picture of her walking into the lobby for the first time. I had to chance it. I pressed the button on the glass elevator (which was about 15 feet closer to the front door than the other elevators and almost had a clear view of the door), then while waiting for the elevator car to get to the lobby level I ran to the front door to look one more time for arriving shuttles, then ran back as the elevator door opened. I jumped in, pressed the button for the 14th floor, then pressed it a couple of more times really hard to make it hurry! I flew out of the elevator as the door was still opening and raced down the hall (that I didn’t remember being so long) with my room key positioned to slam into the door as soon as I reached it. I was in the room, grabbed the phone, and was on my way back to the elevator in 12 seconds. You might think I was checking for messages as I ran back to the elevator, but here’s where I have to admit that my friend, Matt Churchill, has good reason to give me a bad time about not fully embracing current technology because I’d never bothered to have the voice mail set up on this phone (I’d only had it for three years!). So, if Sharon had called, I had no evidence. I could have tried calling her, but I didn’t have her number! Good grief!! I didn’t have her cell number!! So much for all my careful vacation planning. I could call my sister Sally back in Oklahoma. She and Sharon are best friends and they talk all the time and I knew she’d know Sharon’s number. The problem with this plan was that Sally teaches in a prison and every day she has to leave her mobile phone with the guards at the gate—a bureaucratic fact that wasn’t going to stop me from calling my sister. I called directory assistance which connected me with the prison operator who rang Sally’s classroom extension. I tell you all this so that you have an idea of the desperation level I’d worked myself into in just a few short minutes. I was talking to Sally at 11:05 when I saw Sharon’s shuttle pull up. A quick goodbye to Sally and I was out the door to greet our friend. This is the place I should show you the picture of Sharon entering the Paradise Pier lobby, the one that I’d been waiting all morning to take. I’d show you if I had one. In all the excitement and relief that came with Sharon’s arrival, I didn’t take a picture! It’s all right, though. This extraordinarily long preamble is over and now the Disney adventure begins—finally. (I’ll bet you’re thinking that, too.).


Sharon practically skipped through the lobby she was so excited to be staying at a real Disney hotel. When she agreed to do this trip with me, the only non-negotiable request she made was that we stay at a “real” Disney hotel (not a problem since that was my plan anyway). Sharon lives in Northern California and through the years has been to Disneyland many times, often when she has accompanied Howard to LA on business trips and then managed to finagle jaunts to Anaheim. Many of those trips were pre-DCA and all were day trips only. Howard, sweet (and wise) man that he is, lets Sharon have her way just about all the time, but he has a low tolerance for the crowds of Disneyland and Sharon never gets to stay as long as she wants—or shop as much as she wants. Even the trip she made with Sally and me and our friends, the Bridwells, in June, 2001 (DCA’s first summer) was done as multiple day trips as we drove back and forth from our hotel in West Hollywood. So, though Sharon had been to Disneyland since its conversion to a resort, she hadn’t stayed onsite and experienced it as a resort. This became our inspiration to do as many resort things as possible. Howard wondered how we were going to find enough to do to fill six days; we wondered how we could fit it all in!

We muscled Sharon’s luggage into the elevator and up to the room, where she did a quick look around, marveled at the view, and was ready to go! Across Disneyland Drive and into the Grand Californian we went, through the lobby (that Sharon had seen before so we didn’t have to slow down), and out to the courtyard and the Storyteller’s Café where we found that, though we could be seated right away, we could only have food from the breakfast buffet or we could wait 10 minutes for the buffet to be cleared away, be seated and order from the lunch menu. (It was 11:20, fifteen minutes since Sharon’s shuttle had pulled up in front of the Paradise Pier. This might give you an idea of just how close to each other the hotels at Disneyland are.) We were eager to get to the park, but reckoned we wouldn’t get there any faster by going on to a DTD restaurant, so decided to wait for Storyteller’s lunch. We moseyed down the walk to the Napa Rose for Sharon to take a look. We’d be having dinner there Thursday evening. A little further down the walk we found the Mandara Spa, where we had an appointment on Friday, and opened the door for a peek inside. Then we walked back to Storyteller’s. It was 11:25! See, I wasn’t kidding—things really are that close. Five minutes seemed entirely too long to wait, so we asked the CM at the podium if we could still choose things from the breakfast bar and were told, “Certainly.” Now this is where I think you can take the measure of the quality of a theme park restaurant. Storyteller’s Café had just spent the previous five hours or so feeding hundreds of guests from their breakfast bar and it was now less than five minutes until the bar closed. You would never have guessed it was the last few minutes by looking at that bar or tasting that food. Serving platters might not have been heaping full but there was plenty of everything offered and we had lots of tasty choices. We watched Chip and Dale and two of the Brother Bear bears posing with the last of the families who’d come for the character breakfast.

With brunch out of the way, we headed to the GC entry to DTD and straight to the Pin Trader cart for our lanyards and special issue pins (Daisy dressed as Belle), gifts to us for having the good sense to have Disney VISA Rewards cards. Then we scooted across the way to the Disney Travel office to pick up our Disneyland backpack. We were only supposed to get one for our vacation package, but Sharon has an irresistible smile and we managed to walk out each sporting a beautiful, blue ergonomically designed backpack decorated with classic Disneyland lettering and a tiny, tasteful appliqué of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.

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Mickey’s Sorcerer’s Hat and the Disneyland Hotel are at one end of Downtown Disney. Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure are at the other end.

It was 1 PM when we flashed our parkhoppers at the gate and finally entered the place where the Magic began.

We had decided to give PhotoPass a try and had our first pictures taken.

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Sharon, Susan, Tinker Bell
We would be seeing the Electrical Parade this evening, so it seemed right that I wear this shirt. I’ve had it since the parade’s farewell summer at Disneyland in 1996. Those of you who have had a black souvenir shirt know how hard it is to keep the black from dulling, so it is with pride that I show you the results of giving this shirt better laundry care than any other garment I own.

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Sharon, Tinker Bell, Susan

Under the Train Station and into Disneyland where we saw Mickey and Friends dressed in their Year of a Million Dreams formal attire posing for pictures in front of the Opera House.

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Then on to something I’ve never done before—shopping on Main Street on the very first day before even walking to the end of the street. For the next hour and a half we walked into whatever shop caught our fancy and stayed as long as we wanted. We didn’t buy a thing. We just looked and gathered information that would be useful as we went through all the shops ahead of us this week. We worked our way up one side of the street and down the other and that brought us back to the Opera House, where we stepped inside to look at the fascinating Disneyland through the years displays. There’s an enormous model of Disneyland as it looked in the early years, models of rides, photos, original art, and documents from the Disney Archives. When the auditorium doors opened we went in to watch the film Disneyland: The First 50 Magical Years. Somehow we’d missed this when I was here with the Stringers during the 50th Anniversary celebration. The film is not very long and it is very funny. Steve Martin, who grew up just a few miles from Disneyland and worked in the Main Street Magic Shop when he was a teenager, narrated.

We had a couple of hours before we were expected for dinner at Hook’s Pointe at the Disneyland Hotel, so decided that some rides were in order. Off to Adventureland where I think we very appropriately chose the Tiki Room to be the first ride/attraction we did after looking at those early days displays at the Opera House.

Indiana Jones had a long-ish standby line, so we backed up a few steps and got in the Jungle Cruise line. Still in a boat riding mood, we headed for New Orleans Square and the Pirates of Caribbean. That done, to the other side of the Square and into the Haunted Mansion. After that it was time to work our way through the park and to the other end of DTD for our dinner at Hook’s Pointe.
[FYI: ADRs are still called PSs in Disneyland. The restaurant business is still fairly new to these folks. In fact, until California Adventure and Downtown Disney opened in 2001, there was no Disney Dining and there were no dinner reservations—at all! In the olden days the only way to get a seating at the Blue Bayou, the one true table service restaurant in Disneyland (if you don’t count the little tables at Carnation Café) was to race to the Blue Bayou podium as soon as you entered the park and hope that you made it there before all the time slots were given away.]

I have happy memories of Hook’s Pointe, one of the few resort additions that Scott got to enjoy. This was a first for Sharon. I’ve read some scathing reviews of Hook’s Pointe that frankly puzzle me. Of course, tastes vary both in regards to food and ambience, but Hook’s Pointe gets high marks from me across the board. Matt Churchill had asked me to pleeeeeeease include no food pictures, so I'll just tell you that we had Hook’s Crab Spread as a starter, split the Steak and Shrimp dinner (perfectly prepared and delicious), and by splitting our entree we had a little space left for a very big chocolate chip cookie baked just for us and served with vanilla custard ice cream.

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And per Matt's request--a No Food photo. No food here or at least not much. This is all that was left of that warm chocolate chip cookie and ice cream.
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We ambled back to Paradise Pier to freshen up a bit. Then out the door, through the GC lobby to the hotel’s entrance to California Adventure, where we found a good viewing spot to watch from ground level the Electrical Parade I’d watched from 140 feet up the night before. No one does parades better than Disney and this one is my favorite. Now that it parades in DCA instead of Disneyland, it is no longer called the Main Street Electrical Parade. It's now Disney's Electrical Parade.

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To round off the day and make sure that Sharon believed that dreams really do come true, we spent an hour shopping in Greetings from California. At one point we wanted to get a closer look at a hoodie that was hanging far out of our reach and a CM that must have been closer to 7 feet tall than 6 suddenly appeared to help us. He didn’t sell us anything but he did tell us the first of many rumors we heard over the next few days about the billion and a half dollar DCA do-over. He told us that no part of the park would remain untouched, although some rides and attractions would be left as is. When it is all done, DCA will represent California as it was when Walt first arrived in the 1920s. As Disneyland reflects the California Walt knew when Disneyland opened in 1955 and is overseen by the Partners statue we all know so well, California Adventure will look like the Hollywood Walt saw when he stepped off the train at the start of his great adventure and that park will be overseen by a new Partners statue that’s being made of Walt and Mickey when they were very young. Seems right, doesn’t it?
 
Day Three, Wednesday, June 11th

[When I have Disney on the phone, either for information or to book a trip, I usually ask the CM helping me what his or her favorite restaurants are or what’s new in the parks or what they think is too good to miss and they always answer with what certainly sounds like genuine enthusiasm and usually with good and useful ideas. That’s how I found out about the Cruzin’ California segway tour of DCA, the first I'd heard of segways at a Disneyland park. I might not have known to this day that they were there if that friendly CM hadn’t taken an extra minute to talk with me. I knew a little about the EPCOT segway tour, but I’d never gotten around to finding out how to book it. Then this spring I learned that segways were no longer just in EPCOT when I read about Joh and Gary’s segway adventure at Fort Wilderness (Fred, Wilma and Family Do Disney, Day 2, posted April 30th). Joh’s report was fresh on my mind when I called Disneyland to book the Walk in Walt’s Footsteps Tour and when the CM helping me responded to my question, “Is there anything else we should do?” by telling me about segways in DCA, it only took a quick call to Sharon and I was calling back to book Cruzin’ California.]

Wednesday morning we actually wanted to get up at 5:30. What would have been an ungodly hour for waking at home was just fine here because we had a brand new adventure ahead of us on this day--the before hours segway tour of Disney’s California Adventure, Cruzin’ California. Sharon had said “Yes!” without hesitation when I called to ask if she’d be interested in doing the tour. In fact, I think she answered before she was entirely clear on what a segway is, but once she knew she said “Yes! Yes! YES!” As for myself, I would have paid the money and carried the segway if I’d had to just to be inside DCA three hours before opening. So we were up before sunrise in order to be dressed, out of the hotel, across Disneyland Drive, through the Grand Californian, to the far end of Downtown Disney, to the Guest Services window (next to the Disneyland gates) by 7:00 to get our Cruzin’ California tickets and we couldn’t be late. It would have been far less worrisome if we could have gotten the tickets when we were at Disneyland the day before and spared ourselves the mad dash at the crack of dawn, but the rule for Cruzin’ California is that tickets can’t be picked up until the morning of the tour. Furthermore, the pick up had to be done in the fifteen minutes between the time Guest Services opened and the time we had to be at DCA to start our segway training. We got there just before the window opened and though there were a few other people in line ahead of us getting their special events tickets (though none for Cruzin’) we were still able to make it across the plaza separating Disneyland and DCA to the tour meeting place next to the DCA gate by the 7:15 report time. We introduced ourselves to the two other guests already waiting there. (I’m not sure how they got their tickets because they weren’t in line with us. Hmmm, I just realized that!). Our fellow tourists were Kim, a registered nurse (whose skills I thought might be handy if we needed some patching up before the end of the tour) and her strapping seventeen year old footballer grandson, Cody (who also might be handy if we needed help getting back on our feet after said patching up). We stood chatting until Jessica and Emily, the two CMs in charge of our tour, showed up and told us that there weren’t any other guests coming today and we could begin. We stowed our bags in lockers and then moved inside to a reception room for refreshments and the start of our training. It was obvious that the tour schedule was structured to accommodate far more than four people—the main clues being the enormous tray of fruit and giant muffins offered to us and the amount of time Jessica and Emily spent telling us personal stories about working for Disney and traveling Europe during their college years and seemingly anything else they could think of to tell us other than how to ride a segway. They clearly were vamping to consume some time. Because we would be zipping up and down streets and walkways where hundreds of people would be working to get the park ready for opening, it had to be important that groups of inexperienced segway riders be in certain areas at certain times so we wouldn’t be in the way. If we finished our training sooner than planned, I can see that it might be a problem. When enough time had been killed the training began in earnest. The short orientation film was shown, questions were answered, and finally we stepped outside to begin the fun. We were told that before the group began the tour of the park we would have to practice the maneuvers they were going to teach us and then one by one we'd each have to demonstrate we could do them all. It only took a few minutes to feel at home on the segways and once we each had done the obligatory checklist of maneuvers we were off to explore early morning DCA. The trivia we were given along the tour was fairly common knowledge among Disneyphiles but it was fun to hear anyway. The best part of Cruzin’ California—other than the fun of riding the segways—was watching the park being readied for guests. I saw a painter applying paint to a handrail that would be grabbed, held, and leaned on by countless guests entering Muppet Vision starting in less than two hours. When Jessica had a bit of trivia to relate she would give us a signal to pull over and once she stopped us a few yards from a construction team, a group of “suits” talking with guys in hardhats making notes on clipboards. Jessica cupped her ear and leaned toward them, then whispered to us that this was a Hardhat Alert. She told us that every time CMs in DCA saw a group like this they tried to hear as much as possible to learn about what was being added or dropped to the plans for the big makeover. We cruised in and out and around the Hollywood area, through Sunshine Plaza, into the Golden State where we circled Grizzly Peak and made our way through the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail. We took a break in Paradise Pier at the McDonald’s where we looked for the hidden Mickeys that were salted among the restaurant’s decorations. We zipped past all the rides on the Midway and got a look at the new Toy Story Midway Mania scheduled to open next week—after we’re gone! Then it was on to A Bug’s Land for a meander, then back to the Hollywood area where our tour began and ended. Would I do it again? In a minute! The backstage-before-the-park-opened part of the tour was everything I had hoped it would be and the segway riding was more fun than I imagined it could be. I missed my segway as soon as I stepped off of it. Cruzin’ California was understandably the more expensive of the two tours we did ($99), and even with the 20% discount we received for being Disney VISA card holders, it was a costly way to spend a few hours—but we agreed it was worth every penny.

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The tour ended at 10 (DCA’s opening time) and we were walked to the gate to have our passes put through the machine so that we could officially be counted for the day. We picked up our bags, I changed into a cooler shirt and we headed for Soarin’ for a Fast Pass. The standby line was short so we pocketed the FPs for later and walked on the ride. We hated to stop for breakfast as this seemed an excellent time to take advantage of short lines, so we grabbed a perfectly acceptable park breakfast on the run—a box of buttered popcorn for Sharon and caramel corn for me—and race walked to the Tower of Terror. ToT Hollywood Hotel here doesn’t have as much room for its courtyard as the one in WDW, but the real difference is to be experienced in the drops. I’m not going to compare the two ToTs as I hope you get to try them both some day, if you haven’t already, and I think you should step into the elevator expecting what you’ve always gotten at WDW and then be surprised. It’s not a case of one ToT being better than the other, they're just not exactly the same.

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On our walk back up Hollywood Boulevard we stopped to listen to the Delta Daddy-o’s, a terrific a cappella group who had no trouble drawing a crowd.


Next we did Monster’s Inc. It’s a cute ride and such an improvement over Superstars Limo (that it replaced) that it looks brilliant in comparison.

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Muppet Vision 3-D is the same show as at WDW though the façade is different.

Now seriously hungry after a very busy morning, we headed for Taste Pilot and a somewhat more substantial lunch than our popcorn breakfast. The food was just fine for a quick service meal, but we had the usual Taste Pilot problem—a shortage of places to sit. Finding no empty chairs inside, we stepped outside where we found a table in the shade. The table was large enough that we could offer to share it with a family of three who had no place to sit once all of the outside tables were taken. It isn’t an American custom to share restaurant tables with strangers and that’s kind of a shame. We had such a pleasant conversation with our lunch companions--a mom and dad and their eight year old son—on the first day of their first trip to Disneyland. They were from Hawaii and it occurred to me that though I’ve met people from many US states in Disney parks, these were the first ever from Hawaii. It seemed just a little odd that people who live in a place that most of the world thinks of as a marvelous vacation destination, would leave their island paradise to go somewhere else for their holiday, but then I suppose they want to leave home for their vacation like the rest of us. They were charming people and they made our quick lunch more of an occasion. The mom was an elementary school teacher (I am, too.) Small world, isn’t it?

Soarin’ is next door to Taste Pilot, so after lunch we took a few steps to our right with Fast Passes in hand and were on the ride in minutes. We had just enough time to make it to the next performance of Aladdin at the Hyperion Theater where we had preferred seating with our Disney Travel package. This is a great show without adding the disclaimer “for a theme park show.” The production values are the best—acting, music, sets, and special effects are Broadway show quality. The theater is a real theater. It’s amazing to me that a show like this is essentially free—if you’ve got a ticket for the park, you can see this show.

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The Animation Building is just down the street (Hollywood Boulevard) from the Hyperion Theater and our main reason for visiting there was to see Turtle Talk. Sharon hadn’t seen this yet but she’d read everything on the Disneyland website getting ready for this trip and so she knew that Crush interacted with the audience. Silly me, I started to explain about the instant animation software but she didn’t want to hear a word of it. After a morning of backstage revealed on the segway tour, Sharon was ready to just be amazed. Good old Crush did his thing and she was truly amazed.

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You can't tell how enormous the screens are in the lobby of the Animation Building in this shot. Take a look at the next picture and notice the size of the people below the screens.

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We’d both seen the other parts of the Animation Building on previous visits so we went directly to the one that most interested us—Off the Page, the animation store. After a quick look at the pretty things there, I left Sharon to choose the print of Beast she wanted (to be used in a process that creates something that looks very much like a painting on a stretched canvas when its all done) and headed across to Guest Services to pick up our tickets for tomorrow’s A Walk in Walt’s Footsteps tour and Friday night’s Fantasmic Dessert buffet, which I was supposed to have been able to get when I picked up the Cruzin’ tickets. However, for some reason the Guest Services CM couldn’t find our records on his computer this morning and of course, all the confirmation numbers for our paid reservations were safe in a folder back in the hotel room. I didn’t want to risk being late for Cruzin’ so I left it for later to sort. Maybe 7 AM was too early for the computer (or for the CM) because this afternoon the reservations were found immediately and I had the tickets in mere minutes—that is, I did once I finally got to the window. There were three windows open but about thirty people ahead of me, so Sharon was left in Off the Page for nearly half an hour. When I got back there she had ordered her Beast print (reluctantly allowing them to keep Belle in the picture), bought two DVDs (one for me as a thank you for the Fantasmic Dessert buffet, a surprise she’d only found out about when she got here), and had befriended two CMs who’d apparently been talking with her the entire time I had been gone. One of them offered to apply her employee discount to a pricey figurine of Beast that Sharon had been thinking about buying and the other one said he’d make Sharon a unique canvas print thingie from her own photo if she could snap one of the Beast in Disneyland. These were Cast Members at their most accommodating but I think they were going above and beyond their Disney training in response to Sharon’s enthusiasm.

We had just enough time to find a spot in Sunshine Plaza for the Pixar Play Parade.

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Roz was the baton twirling majorette for the parade.

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After the parade we crossed back to A Bug’s Land to see Tough to Be a Bug, the same show as at WDW but, of course, here there is no Tree of Life above the theater.

We had been in DCA for ten and a half hours and in addition to the fabulous segway tour we had done everything we wanted to do in the front part of the park except the Grizzly River Run that we intended to save for another day. It was time to start toward DTD and Catal where we had a 6:30 seating.

Catal is on my favorites list, but another new place for Sharon. We'd arrived a little early but only had to wait a few minutes before being seated. We were offered upstairs, downstairs, inside or out. We chose the balcony, overlooking the DTD promenade, which seemed like a good idea at the time. It was warm there in the sun at first, but it became increasingly chilly as we felt the effect of the desert night air moving in as the sun dipped toward the horizon. We ordered our starter from the Tapas menu, empanadas made of Spanish cheeses, Yukon Gold potatoes and a salsa verde. Sharon ordered the swordfish that she declared was excellent. She also said, as she had last night at Hook's Pointe, that she couldn't believe she was getting food like this at Disneyland. I knew what she meant, because I remembered the days (and they weren't so long ago) when a Monte Cristo sandwich at the Blue Bayou was a peak dining experience at Disneyland. The short ribs I ordered at Catal that night were so very good and just entirely too much food for me to eat it all after the filing empanadas. Though it was unlike us, we skipped dessert. I can assure you, though, it was not because we were being dainty eaters.

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I’m afraid that I haven’t conveyed just how special this restaurant is and so I’m referring you to Dan and Jackie Collison’s blog at http://danandjackievideo.blogspot.com/ where you can find Dan’s elegantly written Catal review in the list of archived restaurant reviews on the home page.

Our itinerary for today included a tiny bit of parkhopping to watch the Remember Dreams Come True fireworks in Disneyland, but at nearly thirteen hours from the time we’d left our hotel room this morning we were just too tired to consider it. We traded fireworks for a pass through the World of Disney store on the way back to the hotel, but a pass is really all it was as we were too tired to shop—and that, my friends, is just TOO tired!
 



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