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2/23/18 - Thoughts and observations from Friday at the Disneyland Resort.
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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.

2/23/18 - Thoughts and observations from Friday at the Disneyland Resort.

Friday was a cool and breezy day at the Disneyland Resort. The temperatures only crept into the low 60s and there was a healthy breeze throughout the afternoon. Luckily as night fell the breeze let up as it cooled down to the lower 50s. The parks felt busy and wait times were higher than I would have expected with the cold weather and a non holiday Friday in February with nothing going on. The parks are in between Lunar New Year that wrapped up last week and Food & Wine Festival which starts next weekend.

Thoughts and Observations:

  • Arrived at the Disneyland Resort and found the Ball Road overpass closed. Luckily the structure was not blocked off. Tollbooths only had a couple of cars in each lane so the process was quick. Was directed up to the roof and into a spot with no real delays. The roof was probably 2/3 full already and all the other levels had cars on them too.

  • First stop was to check out the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge construction. This visit more steel and wire mesh for rock work was visible throughout the site. Beyond that though very little visible change with the large show buildings blocking most of the view from outside the park.

  • The Pinocchio Parking lot is now closed and demolition work is underway as preparations for the new parking structure are picking up. The Mickey and Friends tram stop looks to be ready to be reconfigured. Two new stops are marked off and fences have started to be re-aligned. It is going to be interesting how the new stop is configured and where the security check points are moved to. I would expect this to happen very soon based on how it looked Friday.

  • Since my last visit the new Disney Home store has opened in Downtown Disney. This replaced D-Street. I walked through on Friday and took some pictures. There was a healthy crowd inside and a small line at the registers. Across the walkway the two new restaurants have no real visible progress, assuming there is work going on inside but with the windows covered you cannot see.

  • The World of Disney renovation project has started. The story will be completely redone inside. It is slated to be finished in the Fall (October time frame). Right now half the store, from the center point to the door by Starbucks is walled off and being worked on. Around July the walls will switch and the other half will be worked on. No concept art or indication of the new look is posted. The new wall that was installed is interesting. It is a floor to ceiling structure that looks like a regular wall (not a construction wall).

  • Inside Disneyland the walls have been removed from Town Square and the hub and the new brickwork and streetcar tracks are unveiled. The straight part of the street and the spur line are still behind walls. The brickwork looks ok for the most part, it reminds me of the Red Car track at Disney California Adventure more than say the bricks in Paris or Hong Kong Main Street because it is a ribbon of brick and not the entire street. At some points it looked a little odd to me with several types of bricks and patterns coming together. The rails were easier to walk on.

  • This past week Disney announced that Aladdin's Oasis will be going away and a new Tropical Hideaway will replace it. No time frame or details were given. As of Friday no visible signs of construction yet, but a permit has been filed for the work so it should be starting soon. The one piece of concept art Disney unveiled showed outdoor seating for a quick service location with an open view of the Jungle Cruise once again.

  • The Black Panther is now meeting guests in Hollywood Land at Disney California Adventure. He has taken over the lobby of Stage 17. He meets just inside the door and to arrive and exit he uses the truck from the Summer of Heroes that Black Widow used. So right now Hollywood Land has a handful of Marvel super hero meet and greets including the Black Panther, Spider Man, Captain America, Thor, Loki, and Groot. Plus Star-Lord and Gamara at the Dance Off.

  • The Paradise Pier to Pixar Pier transition continues to roll along. This visit more scaffolding up on the coaster as they start to repaint it and continue to enclose the tubes. Elsewhere around the Pier more removal/preparation work on the various structures for their new looks.

  • Preparations for the upcoming Food and Wine Festival at Disney California Adventure are underway. Marketplaces are up throughout the park. The locations look to be the same as previous festivals. As of Friday names were installed on them all, but no menus yet. The festival begins Friday the 2nd.

  • I ran into a streak of bad luck this evening. My original plan was to grab dinner at the Pacific Wharf Cafe, but when I walked up cast members were outside and all the doors had trash cans in front of them. Seems something happened and they had an unexpected closure and no idea when or if they would reopen. I walked by two more times and same story. So ended up at La Brea Bakery instead. Then at Disneyland I had wanted to visit Small World and Pirates. The posted wait for both was mild but when I reached Small World it was longer than I wanted to wait so I opted to walk over to Pirates.. but when I arrived there it was down on the first pass and then longer than I wanted to wait the second pass.

  • Stopped by the Golden Horseshoe around 7:30pm to catch the Silver Dollar Six set (and warm up). Inside it felt like the lunch rush with a good size line for food and guests waiting for tables. It was great to see live entertainment into the evening, it has been quite a while. Looking at the schedule this was really your only choice for entertainment this evening. There are no bands at Tomorrowland and the Main Street groups were done for the day already.

  • I decided to watch Fantasmic! After a couple passes through the area I decided to go find a stand by spot on the far side near the Tom Sawyer Island raft exit. The area was nearly empty 10 minutes before show time. Other areas on the upper terraces and toward Frontierland were full as usual. For the show my area was at most three deep.

Here are some recent posts to the Geek's Blog:

Geek’s Blog Postings Recap February 1-14, 2018

Disney Related Press Releases

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

Trip logs and mileage reports are in the Park Miles section.

Send comments, questions, any other email to: disneygeek@disneygeek.com
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