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04/15/11 - My thoughts and observations from Fridays visit to the parks
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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.

04/15/11 - My thoughts and observations from Fridays visit to the parks

Hello all,

What better way to celebrate tax day (yeah I know they were not due till Monday but the 15th is still tax day in my head) than to spend a great afternoon/evening at the Disneyland Resort. The weather was picture perfect and the crowds were on the light side. I was expecting it to be worse than the last visit since we are closer to Easter and many local school districts are going on spring break, maybe everyone was home doing their taxes or just not wanting to venture out with gas prices where they are. The wait times were about average for a Friday, maybe even on the light side of average given the great weather. For example I waited only about 10 minutes for the Fun Wheel. Screamin was about the same. Even Soarin had a posted time under 30 minutes a couple of the times I walked by. Over at Disneyland the same story with just about everything under 30 minutes most of the afternoon. I was surprised to see Fastpasses for the 10:15 World of Color still available after 6:00pm.

Jason

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

Disneyland & DCA Thoughts and Observations:

  • I keep telling myself to try the Toy Story parking lot but then the habit of parking in the Mickey and Friends garage kicks in and I found myself almost as far as you can get from the escalators again. Everyone that I have talked to has said the surface lot is a lot easier, but to me exiting the garage and taking the over pass onto the freeway is very simple to head North and home. Maybe someday I will give it a shot, till then I will just gripe about my bad luck.

  • As you saw in the pictures the construction at DCA is moving along at a fast clip with the entrance and Carthay theater hitting their stride while the Little Mermaid is on the final details phase. The dining area seems to be behind to me, no doubt because of all the rain we had, but still a solid month to go till opening. Disney had a press release over the weekend listing the Summer openings and it says the Sky School will open on June 3rd. Click here to read the release.

  • I heard some of the Disney Channel Rocks show while taking pictures for of the Mermaid building. Wonder if they are going to switch out any of the songs and push the new Disney Channel film that premiered last week. The show had a very small audience which seems to be the norm. Also it looked like they have cut back on some of the staging. I did not see the light rigs that were out in the audience/planters. Also did not notice the lifts. And no World of Color fountains used either, but to be fair on this count they were working on that platform this afternoon.

  • Not much to report from Disneyland. Seemed like a normal spring afternoon. The park seemed a little on the relaxed side to me, or maybe it was just me. I even opted to go for a ride on the Mark Twain and as you saw in the one picture at one point about half way around I had the entire rail to myself which felt odd once I noticed it.

  • I caught the kick off of ElecTRONica. I was curious how it worked at mid block. It was ok, but I thought entering the Backlot right after the countdown was more dramatic. Also kind of interesting I showed up a couple minutes before show time and as you entered the Backlot CMs were passing out flyers and Fastpasses for arcade tokens. I thought this made sense earlier in the day to get guests to come back but giving it to those already heading down the street a few minutes before show time seemed odd. Speaking of odd when the show ended and you were supposed to head back toward the DJ area everyone just kind of paused to see if there would be more show. Kind of an awkward moment. ElecTRONica still seems to be drawing a decent crowd.

  • Decided to take a walk around the Pier to check out the new Park at Night and was pleasantly surprised by how nice it was. Guess some of it was because of how peaceful it was without Screamin Running. I think it could use some more benches though.

  • Was able to get some ok shots into the Mermaid building since they had the lights on, but had to do it from across the Bay thanks to World of Color having the near side blocked off. The lobby area looked fairly impressive from that vantage point.

Interesting Web Finds/Notes:
Below are some interesting links, notes, and rumors I found/stumble across/or have been informed of since the last Geekspeaks column.

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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