** After you read this report you may want to check out the pictorial updates in our Disneyland Resort Pictorial Update section

Wow another year has started. This was our first trip to the resort of this new year. It should be an interesting year with Winnie the Pooh opening at Disneyland, Playhouse Disney at DCA, work continuing on Tower, and who knows what else will be going on. In looking back at last year there were definitely some great times down at the resort. (FYI we had 29 trips to the resort and subsequent updates on the site last year).

This was a great Friday at the parks... the weather was a bit cool, but not cold. It drizzled a bit, but nothing major... the crowds were normal off season, which means not too bad either.

First just a rant about the great LA freeways... I only had to go a little over 30 miles to get to Disneyland from USC.. normally it takes around 45 minutes... this Friday it decided to take just short of 2 hours... at least the 70+ miles to get home only took a little over an hour, 10 minutes...

We have moved our trip rundowns and mileage reports to our Park Miles section.

Disneyland Items:

• Disneyland is starting to feel like a construction site again... The Rivers of America are drained and walled off. Haunted Mansion is being changed to the regular show, Matterhorn is still being worked on as is the Carrousel.
• It was nice to get on Its a Small World Holiday again...
• The Rivers of America are drained and you can get some fairly good views of it while walking around due to the fence they used. Unfortunately some of my pictures were blurry, but I will go again and retake them... one interesting note is that the river area had a fairly annoying smell coming from it... Guess its the left over water and no circulation plus the stuff that had built up on the bottom.
• Tomorrowland seemed deserted when we walked through at around 8:30... I wish they would bring back Friday night entertainment at the stage.

DCA Items:

• DCA was fairly dead as usual, but it seemed a little larger than last off season. I think Aladdin is helping. We arrived as they were starting to let people into the queue for the 4:45 show, it was around 4:10 and the line stretched over towards Muppets. The AP pickup line stretched for a while too.
• Nothing else major to report from DCA. Tower appears to be moving along. We were surprised to see them working past 6pm on a Friday. The Redwood recreation area is closed down for maintanence
• We went to the 6:15pm AP preview and set up in the Mezzanine level on the right hand side. I thought the idea of AP only shows was a great way to promote the show. The Aladdin stickers they gave out to each person were ok, wish it would have been a button or something a little more substantial... or maybe a poster... or something that you would put up and talk about the show to others.. heck they did not even say to keep the fastpasses as a momento of the AP event...
• The show itself was a little better than I thought it was going to be. It is definitely on the long side for a theme park show, 45min, but I think it works for DCA. One of the biggest problems with DCA is finding enough to fill a whole day if you cannot or do not ride the thrill rides. This offers something to plug that hole and give DCA something unique.
• I did not find the show all that earth shattering. It was great to have live performers actually singing. I think it would be awesome if they would get a live orchestra too, playing it off tape is kind of annoying. But I know they are constrained and that would cost quite a bit more... but hey, we can dream.
• The other problem I have with the show is that they invested so much money in it that it will be with us for a long long time probably... hopefully not as long as some of the shows in WDW have been around (like B&B down there has been there forever, probably 7 or 8 years).
• There were two items in the show that bugged me.. one is the stunt doubles did not even look close to the lead actors and the second is the effects they used for the trap doors. From ground level I am sure it looked good but from where we were it was not that good and I bet the Balcony was not good too.
• I thought it was cool that the flying carpet was eye level with us, it really brings the show to those who are not in the orchestra level.

Be sure to check out the picture update that goes with this Geekspeak column, it can be found in our Disneyland Resort Pictorial Update section

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