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Hello all,

I was a little un-sure what to expect Friday. With the 4th of July Holiday falling mid week next week I was not sure if this would be the "busy" weekend or next. The crowds Friday at the parks were what I would call average summer. There were a lot of people and waits did exist but it was not wall to wall people as you get during the holidays. Most attractions were under an hour with Splash Mountain and the Subs being the two out standers. The subs peaked at a posted time of 180 minutes that we saw during the lunch hour but as the heat of the day kicked in the line dwindled to a mere 90 minutes most of the late afternoon.

Jason

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

Disneyland & DCA Thoughts and Observations:

• I noticed several vending carts along the Nemo line now selling Nemo related snacks, popcorn buckets, etc.. I am not sure if this is good or bad... at least its themed and meeting a need, but I still think some of the merchandising/food is over the top and I do not know how much fun it would be if your stuck in line around a child whose parents said no to one of the treats.. that could make for a long long wait.
  
  
• We took in the first Billy Hill show of the day and as usual it was a good performance. They had some technical difficulties, namely a guitar strap broke and the guitar went crashing down and broke a string, but after a couple minutes they recovered. Always fun to see where the show goes, that is one of the great things about live shows.
  
  
• I do not have too much to report from California Adventure as I was only in the park for a little over an hour. I basically ate lunch, walked the Pier, road the Sun Wheel and headed out. Speaking of the Pier the Midway games were still open, I thought I read they were closing the 20th of June... maybe it was July. The Toy Story Mania building is taking shape as most of the roof steal is now down as you saw in the pictures.
  
  
• Went for a journey on the Mark Twain and the boat is looking great. The decking and paint work really show. The new Spiel works, its interesting to hear what has changed, such as the cabin part and the Indian part, as well as all references to the Island. Its kind of sad to go around the Island and no longer see the fort out in the woods...
  
  
• I hopped off the train in Tomorrowland to grab some Fastpasses for Buzz and noticed the smoking area is now located right along the walkway from the Train into Tomorrowland. This really makes no sense to me at all on several levels. The first is for us non-smokers to have to walk right through the smoking area. There is no alternative route and this is a medium traffic area I would say. Secondly for the smokers they are stuck out in a walkway dealing with the mass of people every 5 minutes coming off the train and its a narrow walkway to begin with. Wonder if this is temporary or permanent and how long it will last there (did this just come into being when they closed down the one for the Nemo queue area out where the Fantasyland Autopia used to be near the Matterhorn)? Seems to me this needs to be moved somewhere else.
  
  
• The 2nd Parade of Dreams was delayed a good 15 minutes or so. Not sure what happened but noticed the people who are usually on the vines for the Lion King Unit were not out for the second parade. I did not see anything else out of the ordinary. Does anyone know what happened? It was kind of odd the pre-parade rolled as usual then come parade time nothing... about 5-10 minutes late an announcement came on saying the parade was late then about 5 minutes later or so it started and ran as usual.
  
  

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