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

Hello all,

I made a rare Thursday trip down to the Disneyland Resort this week to attend an information session and tour of the Disney Vacation Club addition to the Grand Californian. Then I spent the afternoon at the parks, since I drove down I could not visit. Overall the parks were busy, but not as bad as last Friday, but still felt like more of a summer or holiday crowd than a March/spring crowd. The lines are most of the E-ticket attractions were in the 45-60 minute range that I saw.

Jason

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

Disneyland & DCA Thoughts and Observations:

• As I discussed in the pictorial update I was able to attend an information session and tour of the model rooms and construction site of the Villas at Disneys Grand Californian Hotel and Spa (nice short name). This is a Disney Vacation Club property (http://disneyvacationclub.com)
  
  Stats:
  
  • This weekend the 26-29th was the Grand Disney Firsts event weekend to officially launch the sales of the newest Disney Vacation Club (the 10th one)
  • The expansion to the Grand Californian is scheduled to open late Fall of this year and sits on 2.5 acres adjacent to the Grand Californian on the site of the former valet parking lot.. There will be 200 new hotel rooms and 50 two-bedroom equivalent DVC Villas
  • There are four room types:
    • Studio - kitchenette, bathroom, sleeps four guests and a child in a crib
    • One Bedroom Vacation Home - two bathrooms, sleeps up to five guests plus one child in a crib, full kitchen
    • Two Bedroom Vacation Home - created by combining a Studio with a One Bedroom - three bathrooms, sleeps nine guests plus a child in a crib
    • Three Bedroom Grand Villa - two floors, four full bathrooms, accommodate up to 12 guests plus one child in a crib
  • The new wing will have 50 two-bedroom equivalents (which for comparison is about half the size of the Wilderness Lodge Villas which has 114 two-bedroom equivalents).
    
    
• As you saw in the pictorial update we were given a tour of the model rooms, which are located in a small building behind the Disneyland Hotel (and Paradise Pier Hotel). The rooms themselves are basically the same same layout as the other Disney Vacation Club properties. I thought they looked great and fit very well with the existing hotel rooms.
  
  
• There were no photos allowed on the hard hat tour, so here is my attempt to describe where we went, what we saw, etc.... We were escorted around the site by an Imagineer and the Construction Company manager (sorry I did not write down his title). We entered from the parking garage. This is a two story structure underneath the new wing. It will be used for valet parking only. There will be no guest access. Then we took the freight elevator up to the third floor(interesting note the same Construction Company did the Tower of Terror, our guide had worked on that project) and were taken down a hallway and shown a couple of regular hotel rooms then DVC rooms, all in various stages. The rooms that were furthest along had dry wall up and were receiving trim work. Others were still metal studs. Then we went back to the freight elevator (the guest elevators were not operating yet) and were taken up to look at the Grand Villas. There are two. One has an incredible view of DCA. From the balcony you are looking over the lighthouse and into Paradise Bay. Everyone commented on how it would be a perfect place to watch the World of Color show when it premieres next year. Then we walked around to the other side of the building and saw the second Grand Villa which overlooks the new pool complex. There is a new pool and spa and the area will be connected/flow seamlessly with the existing pool area. Speaking of connections on the first floor there will be an enclosed arcade connecting the DVC wing to the hotel and then on each guest floor there is a bridge (which you have seen in my pictorial updates). The view was nice, but the park view ranked higher with us. Then it was back to the elevator and up to the top floor and over to the Observation Deck. This area (which I took some pictures of from the park side after the tour) overlooks DCA and offers some great views of the park. They said it will be a restricted access area and will be available for private events too. I was surprised by how much space there was between the hotel and the park still. They said the current plan is to use some of the space as an access driveway for the DCA expansion projects (namely the Little Mermaid attraction) and no one really said what the long term plan was. One item that was discussed was the addition of more large trees blocking some of the backstage of DCA (right now its fairly ugly looking from the hotel). Overall there seems to be quite a bit of work left to do, but since its not scheduled to open until late Fall this year there is plenty of time still. As expected everyone says they are on track and moving right along. Currently they have approximately 250 people on site working on the expansion.
  
  
  
• We arrived at the park early, we were in line to park around 7:30ish. There was only one tollbooths open and there seemed to be a fair amount of confusion caused by this as guests tried to push/cut their way into the two lines(one for each side of the open booth). I am still surprised at how close to the booths the arrows indicating which are open are to the actual booths. Seems to me they should be out further along the entrance way..
  
  
• We spotted Monorail Orange on a test run early in the morning. At first it was hard to tell the color (due to me being directly underneath it). I think the orange looks relatively close to the red depending on the angle and lighting. It appeared to have the original windows, but it was moving rather quickly and I did not get a great view. Also to note on the monorail front we only saw red a couple of times throughout the day... it appeared the entire line was down for most of the day. Lastly anyone know what is going on with blue? Have not seen it out in several weeks.. is this by design, bad luck on our part, window changes, or some other issue?
  
  
• The entertainment choices at both parks were on the light side. I forgot that they are only running the Pixar Play Parade Friday -> Tuesday.. so no Wednesday or Thursday performances. There were fireworks though, but I was already on my way home by then due to work on Friday.
  
  
• Since we had a twenty month old with us for much of the day we spent some time visiting attractions for him. Its great to experience the park though them.. its quite different than how I usually visit. We saw the line for Dumbo looked relatively short, we guessed about 20 minutes. Turned out to be closer to 40 due to only one CM working for much of our wait and they were slow... the recycle time including the unload, load, safety check took forever with just one CM and a slow moving line moved even slower...
  
  
• I parked in the Pinocchio surface lot due to the early arrival and I have a question why when you park in the Pinocchio lot do they try and force you out by Downtown Disney now a days instead of allowing you to go through the garage and use the overpass as you traditionally could? Seems to me its better to direct people that way versus feeding the surface streets? Anyone know anything about this? From a driving perspective its a much quicker/easier way to get onto the I-5.. vs having to make the two lefts and wait at the long light at Ball.

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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