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

Hello all,

Friday was a nice relaxing day at the parks. The weather was picture perfect and the crowds were mild. Most E-tickets were well under an hour most of the afternoon and evening. During the early afternoon most were near walkons which was great for a change. As you saw in the pictorial update work is progressing rapidly on the Tom Sawyer Island work with just over 3 weeks to go before opening. The Subs on the other hand had very little visible progress as much of the work is going on in the cave where you cannot see it.

Jason

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

Disneyland & DCA Thoughts and Observations:

• When entering the parking garage today the CM at the toll booth was looking at Annual Passes then waving you through, no receipt or waiting and the line was moving nicely. I was curious if this was a new policy or a test or something else. When the lazygeek showed up later in the afternoon he received a receipt so whatever was going on was over by then. The line really seemed to move faster since it seemed most of the cars were passholders and the others were credit card payment which goes quickly.
  
  
• The monorail load/unload process was going really slow on Friday, well not so much the process as they seemed to be holding the trains at the stations for several minutes. No announcements were made and they did this on both ends. Wonder if it was a crowd control measure since it was so light to load up the trains a bit more. For example the car I was in coming back to the park consisted of three people including myself.
  
  
• While riding the monorail back into Disneyland and taking pictures a "small world moment" happened. I was snapping away as I normally do and as we were getting ready to exit the monorail the other two guests asked me if I ran a Disney website. I sheepishly answered yes, not knowing where this was going. Then they followed up with do you run Disneygeek.com... I was quite surprised by this and after hesitating answered yes... it was great to chat with them and meet a guest of the site. Thank you for visiting the site.
  
  
• Over at DCA the Food and Wine Weekends kicked off on Sunday. This year there seemed to be a couple areas set up, but not a great amount of growth for this second edition. The crowd seemed a bit on the light side, but it could just be due to it being the first day or my timing. Since I do not drink alcohol and I am not a huge fan of food it really does not interest me too much so I did not wait to see any of the demonstrations or pay for any of the events. The ones I did see going on or lines waiting for looked fairly full (but then again it should be noted these are small venues too). If anyone participated in any of the events and wants to share a trip report of the experience drop me an email... I would like to hear about it and I am sure others would too.
  
  
• I went for a spin around the sun on the Sun Wheel to get some pictures of the Toy Story Mania construction and the load/unloading seemed to be even slower than usual. There were almost a dozen CMs around the area, not sure if it was a shift change or training new CMs but most seemed to just be there, not doing much. There was also a cleanup needed in one of the swinging cars and instead of the custodial CM going for a ride and cleaning it up they held up the load process until it was cleaned, which meant almost a 10 minute pause (which would not have been too bad if I was up higher but this happened in the group of cars right behind me so I was just barely above ground. I thought it was a little poor that no announcement was made or any indication for the long delay.
  
  
• Ate dinner at the Taste Pilots Grill and noticed one table was reserved. Two guests showed up and had their own CM wait on them and their table had a table cloth and all. We are assuming they won one of the dreams. I did not get a good picture of the set up unfortunately, but they were seated at the table to the right as you walk in, wonder if this is a regular occurrence?
  
  
• As we walked over to ride Buzz I noticed that the pathway from Partners to the hub was roped off and two CMs were stationed there keeping guests out. There were no signs or anything so not sure what was going on. My best guess is this was reserved seating for a dessert package or a Dream.. the reason I say dessert package where they usually do the Junior Chefs I saw a dessert spread out and a blocked off area too I think (but it was hard to tell through the crowd).
  
  
• Buzz Lightyear could really use a rehab, I know I mentioned this before but wanted to again. There were quite a few props not moving and targets not operating/functioning. I know I am not that good of a shot but having to figure out if its the target or me makes it even harder...
  
  
• We were trying to get from Buzz over to Pirates and had to cut through the hub, this was about 9:00pm and the Remember crowd was in full force. For some reason Friday they were not using the regular crowd control method of a giant round about but instead there seemed to be no system in place, or at least no coherent system. We entered what we hoped was the round about and quickly realized it was going no where and the guests were being funneled toward the Matterhorn instead of in front of the Castle, so we made a U turn and headed back into Tomorrowland and tried going the other way (which is against the normal flow) and found it to be moving at a snails pace, but we did eventually get through to a gap in the middle of the street and circled around to Adventureland and cut through some guests and made it there. Not sure why the normally efficient round about they have been using for the past year or so was not operating, it would have been helpful to have.
  
  

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