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05/18/12 - My thoughts and observations from Friday at the Disneyland Resort.
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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.

05/18/12 - My thoughts and observations from Friday at the Disneyland Resort.

Hello all,

The goal Friday was to explore the parks and mark four weeks till the big June 15th grand openings. I have been keeping a running list of opening dates in the Geek's Blog if you are interested. Also Friday marked the first day you could meet Merida from the upcoming film Brave at Disneyland. The parks both felt fairly crowded Friday considering it is mid May. I think the new way they are handling Grad Nite led to this and as the evening went on the lines did swell at some of the more popular attractions with the Grad Nite demographic. For example Tower of Terror had a posted 120 minute wait. I cannot remember the last time I saw that during a non holiday time. Over at Disneyland waits seemed more mild with most under an hour the couple of times I checked.

Jason

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

Thoughts and Observations:

  • As I entered the park the Omnibus was loading and it was not crowded so I hopped on for a ride up Main Street. I wanted a better view of the Carnation Cafe work since it is slated to open June 13th. You could hear workers behind the wall all day and well into the evening, so it seems the final push is underway to hit the opening date.

  • My first stop of the day was to visit the Brave meet and greet. As you saw in the pictures they have several activities in addition to the opportunity to take your picture with Merida and the bears. I did not see a wait time posted but it looked to be a good half hour or so the couple of times I walked by. I thought it was great how they were allowing time for Merida to interact with each group. I know this adds to the wait time but those couple minutes vs a quick signature and photo I think are huge pluses. I thought it was interesting that a majority of the groups I noticed had no kids in them. Seems that Pixar and Disney fans really wanted to meet her. I am sure as the release date approaches and more kids learn about the film this will change. One note to make about this is it runs for limited hours. On the weekend it is 8:30am to 3:00pm and weekdays it is 9:30am to 4:30pm for this week, and I am guessing this will be the template going forward.

  • At the Tomorrowland Terrace they now have LCD menu boards. I think this is a great change and something that WDW has been doing in recent years. With the addition of these boards Disney can better display/highlight the food offerings. They work well in Tomorrowland. Wonder if they will find their way into other locations around the parks?

  • The Disneyland Monorail Fleet has been taken over once again to promote something. This time the Cars Land opening. The wrap/overlay is very limited and not over the top like the Nemo or Year of a Million Dreams (To see past wraps check out this posting I have on the Geek's Blog). It consists of a mouth and eyes on the nose cone and new spiels inside. I enjoyed the concept of giving each Monorail its own personality. You have Manny (Red), Mona (Orange) and Mandy (Blue) in the fleet. Friday Manny and Mona were both on the beam way and I was able to experience both. I thought the puns in the spiels were just ok. I was a little disappointed with the audio, I was looking for something more engaging.

    Wonder if any other modes of transportation are going to be taking on personalities? The parking lot trams would make sense to me.

    Here are links to my videos if you would like to hear any of them:
  • The Matterhorn is nearing completion and they were cycling bobsleds throughout the afternoon. The scheduled reopening is June 15th. The mountain is looking great and I thought the new lighting at night was fun to try and capture. Curious to see if this is the final package or if there is more to come still as they continue to tweak it.

  • Stopped by the Big Thunder Ranch Jamboree and the crowd out there was really sparse again. There is a blurb on the time schedule but nothing on the park maps and no real signage anywhere else. Also they do not post a schedule of upcoming groups so you have no idea the schedule, beyond the two cowboy round ups on the time guide. Seems it could benefit from some advertisement elsewhere in the park.

  • Over at Disney California Adventure the final push is on the way with only four weeks till the grand openings. With each visit more and more details are emerging at both Cars Land and Buena Vista Street. The more I see of Buena Vista Street the more impressed I am of the time and detail going into it. I think this will make a world of difference and hope the average guest appreciates the vast changes in philosophy the street represents. Cars Land continues to impress with its level of detail and immersion.

  • Equally impressive is the set up for the Mad T Party in the Hollywood Studios portion of Hollywood Land. The stages, bars, and lighting packages are really coming together and it should be interesting to see how it all plays out. On a first glance this event looks to be much more elaborate than its two predecessors and have more lights, etc.. but then again it is confined to a much smaller area so the quantity may seemed skewed because of that. The official opening is slated for June 15th but there are rumors of a soft opening for the upcoming holiday weekend.

  • This is a good lead into Grad Nite. Traditionally Grad Nite meant that after graduation local (or somewhat local) schools loaded onto buses and descended upon the Disneyland Resort as the sun set for an overnight party. Your buses arrived as the park was closing and once cleared you and several thousand other grads were let loose inside Disneyland from around midnight till day break. In recent years they added a blast off party in California Adventure and tried to stretch the evening out. This year they have taken a new approach and the grads can arrive at any time and receive park hopper tickets good all day then after Disneyland closes regular guests are asked to leave and the grads stay behind and have their party (this is done using wrist bands to filter out the regular day guests, just like other after hours parties). Also they have added more dates this year including some Friday nights. This means that throughout the day bus loads of grads are joining the regular day guests and by evening there are a large number of grads throughout the two parks. Friday was my first experience of this. It definitely changed the wait time patterns, for example Tower was 2 hours and even Splash Mountain had a substantial wait during Fantasmic. You also encountered large groups of kids having a good time. Sometimes this meant cheering, other times randomly yelling, etc...

    I have been to several grad nites over the years, starting with my own then continuing on to a handful as a chaperone. As the years have passed the dress code disappeared, the tight control disappeared, and the live bands/entertainment disappeared. I swore each year I went that the crowds/number of grads increased too. From a logistics standpoint as a chaperone I am curious how this years format is working. With the buses arriving throughout the day there is no more tight security screening for the grads. Also with grads having free roam of the Resort wonder if any have ventured off to a local motel or other locations.

  • On May 13th Fantasmic turned 20 years old. That seems hard to believe that this favorite has been around that long. I still remember my first experience with the show. I was able to go during that first summer. I had read all about the show in the Disney News (or was it Disney Magazine back then.. I forget now) and was really excited. We showed up early and waited quite a while. We were crammed in somewhere toward Haunted Mansion but I do not recall exactly. This was back when there were still planters and it was not as well defined of a viewing area. I remember standing there watching the first show then saw the mass of guests trying to leave the area and we stuck around for the second show too that evening. To honor the anniversary Disneyland has been hosting several Annual Passholder events featuring special food, merchandise, and of course the show. I opted not to attend because of the long drive and late hours of the events. So I marked the anniversary this trip by watching the show during its regular run. This time around Flotsam and Jetsam were not in the show. If you would like to see some pictures from over the years, check out this collection I posted last week. If anyone would like to contribute a guest column of their experience at the event drop me an email.

  • Last week I stopped by a great exhibit at the University of Southern California featuring several props and costumes from the Avengers. I posted a quick set of pictures in DGeeksTravels section

  • The big news this past weekend were the price increases at the Disneyland Resort. Here is a direct link to the Parks Blog listing of prices that went into effect Sunday. Ticket prices increased substantially and you may be in for some sticker shock on your next visit. For example the Premium Annual Pass went from $500 to $650.

  • I continued to test and evaluate a new method of posting images as I roamed the park. I am now posting directly to the Geeks Blog So those of you who do not use twitter or follow us, you can see the images too. Any thoughts? Is this better/worse/the same as the way I was posting before? If you were not aware as I roam the parks I post some thoughts/pictures throughout the visit. So follow me @disneygeekcom

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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