Disneygeek - Geek Speaks - 7/19/19 - Thoughts and observations from Friday

The Geek Speaks:

Welcome to the disneygeek.com Geek Speaks section. In this section I will post my comments on trips to the parks or other Disney related events.

7/19/19 - Thoughts and observations from Friday

Hello everyone!

Friday was another relaxing day at the Disneyland Resort for me. I spent my time enjoying the entertainment and catching up with some friends. The parks felt more crowded than the previous couple of visits and wait times seemed to be up slightly. It seemed to be more of an average summer day. The weather was mild topping around 80 and cooling down to the 60s.

Thoughts and Observations:

My arrival parking experience today was average. The overpass was closed as is the norm now in the afternoon, but I only had to wait about half the cycle to cross Ball road. The toll booths had only a couple of cars in each lane, but of course I choose a slow moving line where it seemed every person was asking questions. Then after going through someone decided to stop and talk to the cast member directing traffic, guess they were trying to park on the ground level vs following directions so I sat there for another minute or two. I choose wisely on the ramp up to the floor and picked the line with less cars. The other one slowed down and there was no one in mine once on the floor.
On Wednesday Disneyland celebrated its 64th anniversary as well as the end of Mickey's Soundsational Parade. On Thursday a new offering called Mickey and Friends Band-Tastic Cavalcade started to roll through the park twice a day. This will run daily through August 1st. Then on August 2nd the Main Street Electrical Parade Returns. This character event includes about two dozen characters with many in their Get Your Ears On Celebration costumes, two Main Street vehicles and the Disneyland Band. The band provides the music as they march the parade route (the 1:30 performance starts at Small World and 3:30 in Town Square). They stop at several spots along the route for the characters to visit some guests and perform an additional song. Overall I thought this was a fun little cavalcade. It is not on par with a full parade but it is a well done event and a great way to see the characters. Having the band provide a live sound track was a great plus. My only complaint is I would have have liked to have seen them play some different songs at the stops vs the same one. It will be interesting to see if this gets extended to run during the day once MSEP takes over the night.
At Disney California Adventure the Red Car Trolley News Boys are performing their final shows. They are set to end their run on Tuesday the 23rd concluding a 7 year run (they were part of the Buena Vista Street opening in 2012). The show is still entertaining but it is missing something without the trolley. Will be interesting to see if they return once the Red Car does next year.
Speaking of the Red Car Trolley, while walking through Hollywood Land I noticed that the overhead cables have been removed from the end of the line to about mid way up Sunset Blvd. Also a construction wall now blocks off the street in front of Guardians of the Galaxy. I do not recall seeing any official announcement but it appears they may be altering the route for the trolleys. Guessing they may opt to go to the left vs the right by Guardians and follow the parade route vs heading toward the new Marvel area. Note due to this work the Standby entrance for Mission Breakout is on the left through the garden and the FastPass uses the sidewalk in front of the attraction.
Walking through Disney California Adventure the park felt more crowded than the past several visits. The walkways had a larger number of guests moving about and wait times were up. Also FastPass return queues seemed longer than usual too with a couple spilling out into the walkways.
Stopped by Smokejumpers Grill for dinner. Since I wanted to use a gift card I waited in the regular line, only one guest at each register so it was not a long wait to order. They were extremely slow filling orders from the kitchen though. I had to wait a good five minutes for my food, and I had a very simple order of chicken tenders and fries. They just seemed slow putting the orders together.
The 2019 Disneyland Resort All-American College Band has a slightly revised schedule now that there is no daytime parade. The 5:15pm set is now at 6:00pm in Town Square. They no longer march the parade route. I like the change from the perspective of no longer having to move up the street to see the performance. But it does mean there sets are in a more compact time frame now of 6:00, 6:45 and 7:35 for the three Main Street ones. They are still performing at the 4:30 Flag Retreat and an 8:45 concert in DCA too.
Friday was the first time in a while both Esmeralda and Fortune Red were both working with no hiccups. I was able to pick up cards at both on the first try.
In Tomorrowland a new drinking fountain has been installed near the stroller parking by the Autopia Exit path. In addition to the two standard fountains it has a water refill station in the middle. The refill station seems to be a big hit with guests when I walked by this one as well as the ones in Black Spire Outpost there was a fairly steady stream of guests using them, and very few using the regular fountains. The water is the same tap water, there appears to be no filters on any of them.
Spent some time on Batuu. My first pass through came in the mid afternoon. Black Spire Outpost had a fair number of guests walking around and the posted standby for Smugglers Run was around an hour. This was my first walk through where I did not spot any characters out and about. I was there for under an hour and just did one loop through the area so it may have just been a timing issue.
Returned to Batuu as the sun was just about set. This was my first visit after dark and seeing the lights on throughout the land. Overall the lighting scheme is well done from the perspective of feeling natural and being able to still see enough for a theme park environment. Some of the lights in the resistance area seemed a little awkward at times as well as some on the rocks over the falcon. The lighting of the rock work was less than Radiator Springs with them seeming more of a background element. Throughout the land the various panels and other elements light up as you would expect.
Decided to close out my visit watching Disneyland Forever from Black Spire Outpost. I started off near the Millennium Falcon then moved down to the First Order area as the show progressed to get a feel for it from a couple of vantage points. Being close to the shells with a different setting in the foreground was great. Without a sound track through the show definitely looses something for me.
As the fireworks were wrapping up I headed for the park exit. Since I was in the back of the park I was expecting a long, slow walk and a backup at the tram. I was guess I was walking fast enough that this did not happen. I had no slow downs in Frontierland and only a minor one at the choke point reaching the hub. I opted to use the west side by pass for Main Street and then joined the tram queue and kept walking right onto a waiting tram. So all in all it added only a few minutes onto my normal exit time.
This evening the traffic on my floor was flowing better than last week. There were a fair number of cars but no long stops. I did not see anyone trying to back out from the last row and there seemed to be less guests crossing so that seemed to make a big difference. The one problem I did encounter though was they were forcing the 3rd and 4th floors onto Disneyland Drive and you had to go through the Ball Road light. This backed things up to the overpass ramp. I really wish they would give you the option of the overpass. That light is so long and it just backs everything up. My assumption is this is done to keep traffic flowing out of the structure better but it sure seemed as if it was going to back up to the structure at the rate it was growing when I left.