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A very windy and nice day at the Disneyland Resort. The crowds were healthy in both parks. I was very surprised to see that the park guide books make no mention of the new Pooh attraction or Playhouse Disney yet. The DCA map still has the Soap Bistro on it...

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

Disneyland Items:

• Disneyland had a good size crowd, for example Splash Mountain was over an hour almost the entire afternoon/evening, 2 hours for the early part of it.
• There seemed to be a lot of attractions down in the park: Jungle Cruise, Small World, and Pooh were all down around 8pm when we were looking for somehting to do.
• Speaking of the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, we were pleased to see it up and running. The attraction was also listed on the line board on Main Street and Fastpass was working for it.
• There was no need for Fastpass, the longest line we saw was 15 minutes.
• The attraction itself can be summed up as a disappointment. The highlight of the ride for me was looking up to see the 3 mounted heads from the Country Bear show, which by the way I miss and had to go on at WDW...
• The rocking of the ride vechicle occurs throughout most of the ride and can best be summed up as a rocking ship. It grew annoying after a while and the Lazygeek commented that if he road the ride several times in a row he could get sea sick probably. I thought the bouncing effect that lasts for a short time down at WDW was much better.
• The ride vechicles themselves seemed too big for me. I understand they were trying to boast the number of guests per hour, but it just does not seem as nice.
• They went way overboard on the safety, but I guess that is expected in today's world. For the most part it does not take away from the show. I mean it has doors, safetbars, load gates, and warning signs. All for a slow moving dark ride that bobs a little.
• I have two big problems with the attraction, that have nothing to do with it really. The first is that they closed down an attraction I really liked to make room for one I do not. The second is this is the first attraction added to Disneyland in several years and it has very very little in the "wow" factor. It seemed more like an attraction that should be added to a land when it is rehabbed or something and not a new experience for guests.
• I also do not understand why the load/unload area has next to no protection from wind/rain/heat. I know it rains like a week a year here in LA, but still it seems like poor planning.
• The fastpass distribution area seemed out of place to us. First it is a ways away from the attraction which could lead to some confusion. The did very little to the area except change the sign and change the tickets. It really does not have a Pooh theme, and if the Briar Patch ever reopens it will seem totally out of place. I also did like how they had a rope up and you have to enter the FP area near the exit and walk all the way around. I guess its easy to control the crowd, but it seemed out of the way to us.
• So I guess to summarize my thoughts I found it to be a "B-ticket" attraction at best. Which by itself is not that bad, but due to the facts that it replaced a great attraction and it the only new attraction in Disneyland in the past several years its a major disappointment to me. I was surprised that Disneyland did not at least get a clone of Disney World's version. I knew hoping for Tokyo's version was out of the question... oh well at least it will give young kids something to do while their older siblings ride Splash.

DCA Items:

• Not much going on at DCA. Playhouse Disney's exterior/queue still has a ways to go to be complete.
• The park was not too crowded, there was a fair number of people though, probably more than recent visits.
• Aladdin is still pulling in full houses, which is nice to see.

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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