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6/17/22 - 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.

6/17/22 - Disneyland Resort

Hello Everyone!

I spent a full day at the Disneyland Resort on Friday arriving at the parking structure just at 7am and pulling out just after 10pm. The weather was pleasant starting off cool and overcast and warming up to the 70s with a nice breeze in the afternoon before cooling back down to the 60s. The crowds were on the moderate side. Attraction wait times were scattered but with some luck and timing you could visit most throughout the day without major headaches. Today my traveling group included my two young nephews and my parents so we had a wide age spectrum as we moved around the parks. When we picked the day we had hoped that the All-American College Band would be starting their summer season, but no such luck. They have not started their park performances yet. Hopefully next trip I will be able to enjoy their music.

Thoughts and Observations:

  • We were unsure how the day was going to start. My youngest nephew turned three since our last visit. His mother called Disneyland several weeks before our planned visit to find out about getting him a Magic Key to match the rest of the family. After two hours on hold and a couple of transfers she spoke with a guest relations person who told her they cannot sell a pass over the phone but they made a note and she just has to go to a ticket window to buy it. She then asked about a park reservations and was told if there was availability she could book one. If not she was out of luck. This seemed rather poor and we decided vs making a special trip just to purchase the ticket (since its a 75 mile drive) we would show up and see what happens. They went to the ticket window while I parked the car. The purchase process went smoothly and the cast member said they could add a reservation for him no problem (turned out there was plenty of availability but even if there was not she said they can usually accommodate the request). The process did take some time and was slow but the cast member was friendly and there were no hiccups. Sometimes Disney makes it so hard to spend $1,000.
  • Speaking of parking I had bad luck today and was parked in the Pixar Pals garage past the final marked column of a row, only a couple cars from the end. This meant a nice long walk to/from the car in the garage. On the positive side the entrance line was short and parking was quick. Also leaving was not a problem.
  • We did not really have a big game plan for the morning. Our goal was to let the nephews pick some attractions and just enjoy the park. The crowds were manageable and we were able to visit seven attractions by 11am when we stopped for an early lunch. So in three hours we visited: Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion, Buzz Lightyear, Storybookland, it's a small world, Star Tours and Monorail. Of which about 40 minutes of 180 was devoted to Star Tours.
  • Speaking of Star Tours. When we looked at the Disneyland App Star Tours had a 45 min wait and Rise of the Resistance 35 minutes. My 5 year old nephew recently watched Star Wars and wanted to visit C3PO. So we headed that way to the longer wait for the aging attraction. Turned out to be a shorter wait and our total time was around 40 minutes from entrance to exit.
  • For lunch I mobile ordered from the Stage Door Cafe. The return time was about 20 minutes out from my order time which seemed odd for the time of day. Showed up in Frontierland and saw no line. Said I was there and it took almost another 10 minutes before it told me I could pick up our order. Not sure what was going on while I waited no other mobile orders went inside and there was no wait for the register queue either. Eating there seems hit and miss.
  • Tale of the Lion King is back to regular performances with a handful per day Thursday through Monday (they are dark Tuesday and Wednesday, regular show times right now are 12:30 PM, 1:40 PM, 2:50 PM, 4:50 PM & 6:00 PM). This was my first opportunity to see the show due to a delayed opening with a couple of weeks of shows cancelled. The show is very similar to the original that was performed at Disney California Adventure during the summer of 2019. This time though they have a more elaborate set and are in a proper theater vs on the stage by Paradise Bay which lacked seating and shade. I enjoyed the show and the nephews did too. The only complaint everyone had in the group was the audio was too loud. It was to the point where it was distorted. I am not sure why shows in the Fantasyland Theatre seem to suffer from this. Do the sound techs there really believe the levels need to be that high? Or is there some other reason? We saw this with Magical Map at times too.
  • Downtown Disney summer plantings are in and a new set of Encanto-Inspired floral displays are set up throughout the area. These Silletas within Colombian culture are celebration of flowers. These Silletas represent different Business Employee Resource Group (BERG) at the Disneyland Resort and across The Walt Disney Company. For more on the displays and what they represent here is the Disney Parks Blog post on them. I thought these brought a lot of color to the district and were great to see as you walked through. They could use some signage describing what they are part of and some of the symbolism. Maybe that is still to come.
  • Cars Land at Disney California Adventure turned 10 this past week -- here is a post of my Disney California Adventure Re-launch coverage with links to all my pictures, videos, thoughts & observations from the multi day event - . To celebrate Cars Land has a couple special offerings. Guido is now out in front of Luigis for pictures. He is placed right next to the entrance sign/tower of tires and is integrated so well we overheard several people discussing how long he has been there and how they never noticed him before. There are also Tow Mater popcorn buckets available for purchase at the Cozy Cone.
  • The dedicated entrance/exit for Pixar Pier Hotel Guests has opened at Disney California Adventure. It is adjacent to Corn Dog Castle. The entrance is off the beaten path but a nice perk for hotel guests. Plus it saves them from having to go through the Grand Californian Hotel entrance and means quick entry to the park most likely. There were signs up saying hotel guests only so not sure if you could exit that way or not as a regular guest. I did not try. The exit leads to a path that goes along the DVC wing of the Grand Californian Hotel then to a gate near the driveway. This gate requires a hotel room key to enter. Then you can cross Disneyland Drive to the hotel.
  • My two nephews are huge Marvel fans and Spider-Man is near the top of their list. When asked what they wanted to ride today WEB Slingers was their number one answer. We started the day at Disneyland and after every ride the answer was Spider-Man. Park hopping hours are not able to be explained to a 3 and 5 year old! Then once we could park hop the wait time was more than our patience over an hour several times we checked. It dipped to 45 minutes and we headed there and hopped in line. Turned out to be well under and we were exiting the building under the 45 minute mark from when we entered the queue.
  • They also wanted to see several of their Avenger favorites. We made a point to see the shows (which they both know well by now). I was interested to try out the Disneyland App. I saw that it now included a character section. Well turns out that feature is basically useless. It lists only a subset of characters and gives their full time schedule not details. For example in Avengers Campus there were two listings. One for Spider-Man saying 8am to 10pm and one for Iron Man saying 9am to 5:30pm. Not overly helpful when the kid wants to see Black Panther and Black Widow.
  • I cannot complain about the Disneyland App without mentioning again how annoying it is to deal with park reservations. They still are not integrated so you have to use the website. I wanted to add my nephew onto the existing ones I have and had to do them all one by one (after I looked and noted down my dates and park) and now he is listed but separately so if I need to cancel he will be a separate process. So many extra clicks. I was able to get 4 of the 5 reservations to match up so at least availability was there. The one that did not was my furthest out one in August, after the block out for the lower tier passes ends.
  • Took a walk through the Super Store in Hollywood Land to see what was new. We saw the Ms. Marvel prop of Captain Marvel that was installed recently on the far wall by the photo ops. Its nice to see little pluses like this taking place.
  • We choose to go for a grand circle tour aboard the Disneyland Railroad around 7:45pm. I looked at the board and saw two trains on the tracks as I entered Main Street station. One in New Orleans and another in Tomorrowland. We wanted quite a while for the one to arrive and then we had to hold for several more minutes due to a red light. So not sure what was going on with the train ahead of us. Guessing it was taking on water in New Orleans or something. The overall trip was nearly 45 minutes from when I entered the station until I was back on Main Street USA.
  • The Main Street Electrical Parade made its first official run through Disneyland on June 17, 1972. So today was the 50th anniversary. Luckily one of my nephews wanted to see the parade so that convinced the group to stay and we were able to enjoy the milestone. It was not celebrated in any official capacity that I saw but we marked it.
  • My group was fading on me and wanted to leave as soon as the parade ended. The flags were blowing pretty good so I decided to follow them and head for the garage. Of course as we were in the Esplanade Disneyland Forever lit up the sky. So I watched some from there and some from the tram on the way back to the garage.



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