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

I caved and went to Disneyland Friday afternoon/evening. I was not planning on going because I did not want to deal with the spring break crowds, but curiousity got the best of me. Both parks had healthy crowds. Disneyland felt much more crowded though on the whole.

As a general note we noticed that the rumors of no more handstamps required for APs appeared to be true. They did not even think of looking at our hands and we went between the two parks several times. Did not want to hold up the lines to find out if its an official policy though.

Disneyland Items:

• Disneyland felt like a good summer day crowd. Most attractions had a 30-60 minute wait. Indy and Space had almost 120 min lines most of the afternoon.
• We found FastPass to be extremely useful. It was great not to have to wait in any long lines and still get on a couple attractions.
• It was nice to see most of the park open again. Splash and the carrousel are the only two things still closed. Also there is no show in the Fantasyland theater yet.
• Speaking of that there is a sign up saying the show starts April 5th. We put a couple pictures up in the update and plan on going next weekend to see it.
• We went on Pirates to see if we could notice anything new or different. Nothing really jumped out at us.
• Spent some time on Tom Sawyer Island to see what's new out there. There really isn't anything going on. Except the island falling into worse shape. The fort looked fairly run down and empty. Both bridges are still closed with no signs of opening anywhere in the near future. The front of the island has the middle level of the stage blocked off. It was nice to get out there and get away from the crowds for a while.
• Went back to the Bank on Main Street to get a couple pressed pennies for some friends. They are now insisting that you use their pennies. Which is cool because theirs are "shiny" and come out looking better.
• In Tomorrowland they had two groups performing Spring Break Concerts in the evening. I had never heard of either (Lil' J or Jump5) but then again I listen to Country and Disney music mostly.... The one song I new was sung by the Jump5 group and it was Lee Greenwood's God Bless the USA. I only caught parts of one set for each group though...

DCA Items:

• DCA had a good size crowd. Lines were long for Soarin', Screamin', and MM, but the rest of the park was managable. Soarin' had all the FastPasses gone by 3pm.
• The Sun Wheel had a 45 min posted wait time for the swinging cars. We were able to walk on the stationary ones with no wait and actually got to just stay on and go around twice because there was no one waiting.
• We sat in the Balcony level to see Blast!. It was a slightly different perspective. One thing we liked was on the seats are more stadium style allowing you to easily see over the people in front of you. We did not like the railing each row had though. Over all it was not that bad. We also found it interesting how there is an escalator to take you up to the balcony from the Mez. level.
• We were surprised that they cut the drum number. The solos, dualing drums, and drum machine (forget what the actual number is called).
• We stopped to take some pictures of the construction from the stairways and talked to a CM along the way. He said the Tower hole is approx. 7 stories deep. He also said there were pictures somewhere on a website looking down in the hole. I have not seen those, if I find them I will post a link.
• One other interesting thing we noticed was during the morning/early afternoon on Mon-Thursday listed on the guidemap were tours of the Soap Opera Bistro.

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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