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3/17/23 - Disneyland Resort - St Patrick's Day
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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.

3/17/23 - Disneyland Resort - St Patrick's Day

Hello Everyone!

Friday was a relaxing visit to the Disneyland Resort. I spent some time at the Disneyland Hotel, Downtown Disney and the remainder of my visit at the two parks.  The parks felt busy but not grid locked.  Given the nice weather and spring break season it was about excepted.  The weather was among the best days in quite a while.  The sun came out and temps rose to around 70 before diving back down with no rain. 

Thoughts and Observations:

  • The Villas at the Disneyland Hotel are scheduled to open Sept 28th.  I started my visit today walking through the hotel to check out the project.  It looks like almost all the windows and much of the exterior has been installed.  The edges and entrance area are still awaiting elements.  The scaffolding should start to come down soon and give us a good view of the people.   It is going to be rather different than the other towers in color scheme and appearance so curious how it will look.   I also found it interesting after quite a while of having a wall up at the baggage area in front of the main lobby they have removed it and revealed a plain wall for the most part. 

  • I did not have time to ride the Monorail today to check in on the Downtown Disney west side work, from ground level you really cannot see much.  The other projects seem to be moving slowly.  The rain has really slowed progress on most fronts it appeared.  With a storm a week they do not get a lot of time to work.

  • The annual Eggstravaganza egg hunts started last week and run through April 9th this year.   There are three hunts again each consisting of twelve eggs.   I enjoy roaming the parks and trying to find the eggs.  A couple of the placements/clues were more challenging this year and were a little bit of a head scratcher as to what the clue was referencing, for example the Festival Marketplace one that was very generic vs others that were very specific like the two in Grizzly Recreation area.  I saw some guests participating but not very large numbers like I have in previous years.  Maybe I just did not notice them.  I feel like they have some missed opportunities to make some more unique eggs vs re-using so many in all three hunts.   For example you have Monsters Inc, Star Wars and Avengers that are not represented.  Or maybe some Disneyland characters like something from the Haunted Mansion or Pirates? 

  • I was surprised to see almost references to St. Patrick's day around the resort.   I was expecting Downtown Disney to do something, but nope... unless the Mariachi Divas added bagpipes (I did not hike out to see their set).  Inside the parks the Dapper Dans sported green for the day but no songs in the set I listened to were added.   I did see a balloon vendor selling all green balloons at one point and found a  krispie treat shamrock for sale but other than that not much going on.  I did stop by to see the Little Man of Disneyland.

  • Toontown opened on Sunday the 19th, so Friday teams were busy applying finishing touches throughout the day and into the evening.  Most of the area looked ready to go but some facade work and odds and ends were not going to be part of opening day.   Some lights were on in the evening so it was nice to spend some time there and see the area without a massive crowd.   I look forward to seeing the finished product on my next visit.  I found it interesting the Goofy Water replacement that I saw last visit was not there this week.

  • Paid a visit to the EngineEar Souvenirs gift shop that had opened since my last visit. This is in Toontown at the exit to Mickey & Minnie's Runaway Railway. The store was busy when I stopped by with the constant flow of guests exiting the attraction. Much of the new merchandise specific to the land and attraction was not out yet. I really enjoyed looking around the store. There are a lot of fun details and a model train that runs around the store too. The footprint is substantially smaller than the Gag Factory store that anchored Toontown but the detail was great.

  • I caught the 6:30pm performance of Magic Happens.  This time of year that time of days is a tad awkward. The sun is mostly set but its not dark enough for the lights to really have any impact.  So the parade does not look its best.  I think the lighting adds a lot to the parade, and if you cannot have that the bright sunlight makes for a different viewing experience.  This half and half time of year is not ideal.

  • While in Toontown there were a lot of guests milling around and all the tables were full even though no dining locations were open.  Realized that Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway was down.  After a few minutes they started to let guests queue up and almost instantly the area cleared out with everyone rushing to get in line.  We decided to join the masses and were ushered into the El Capitoon and then just shy of the second room we stopped.  The Lightning Lane return line was out the door and moving. Our line did not move at all. After about 10 minutes and moving only a couple steps (and that was due to people in further in front of us leaving) we decided to do the same and bailed out.  Seemed the decision to reopen meant for LL Return only.

  • The Pixar Pals Dance Party has returned to Tomorrowland for another run.  It featured four different sets of characters rotating through with two different hosts.  It runs from 7-11pm.    The characters are still only on the stage, they do not roam through audience. There were a good number of kids and other guests on the dance floor this week.  I still prefer live bands there in the evenings but this is better than nothing and kids seem to really enjoy it. 

  • I closed out my evening with Wondrous Journeys. I opted to watch from Main Street USA because I wanted to get going right after as I had an early day on Saturday planned.   This was my second viewing of the show. Overall my first impression still holds. It is a solid show but I would not put it in the top tier.

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

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.

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