* 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 trip to the Disneyland Resort. The crowds were mild as was the weather. Most wait times at DCA were under 30 minutes throughout the afternoon and at Disneyland most of the long lines were approaching an hour but many closer to the 30 minute mark. Even Nemo seemed to be just over an hour the couple times I walked by.

Jason

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

Disneyland & DCA Thoughts and Observations:

• I caught the High School Musical 2: School's Out!- show that rolls through DCA three times a day right now. The crowd was fairly strong and into the show and a good half hour before the show there was a healthy crowd milling around. The format for this show is very similar to the Pep Rally that was running before. A dozen or so performers come out via the rolling stage, walking, or a golf cart. They then go through abbreviated versions of many of the songs from the popular Disney Channel movie. There were a couple of times throughout the show where they pulled kids out of the audience to participate. I think audience participation is a nice touch but these seemed very rushed and the performers were working hard to corral the kids and then a couple minutes later had to do it again and then again... Overall this is a very high energy show and if you are a fan of the film you will probably enjoy the show. I think the timing/subject matter is a bit odd. The theme song is "School's Out" and the course is about it being summer, this seems like it would have been better timed to have been released back in June and run all summer instead of debuting the middle of August just in time for Back to School.
  
  
• I found it a bit amusing that the Spiel at the Monorail station was still the old one that includes the comments about moving away from the moving ramp (the old speed ramps), which are long gone now with the remodel and had not really been running much before.
  
  
• We ate dinner at Storytellers Cafe and I would call this the worst meal I have had there. I found the service to be slow, they managed to goof up my order (which was a well done hamburger and the one I received was pretty much rare, not even medium well) and to top it off they mis-charged us. For those of you who order the cheeseburger/hamburger watch your bill. Seems the computer thinks its $11.50 but the menu says $10.50. The waiter made it right for us but we had to ask, again. This is the third time its happened over the past few months which seems really poor to me that they cannot either update their menu or their computer. One other random comment, has anyone ever received warm corn muffins? The bread is always warm and fresh but the corn muffins seem to be cool to cold and just not that good and I am curious if anyone has had warm/hot ones and if they are better, seems like they would be? Last observation, it was getting a little ridiculous Friday in terms of birthday celebrations. We think over the course of our dinner every table on our side of the restaurant had a birthday celebration. I understand people celebrating, but this just seemed a bit over the top for us....
  
  
• A guest of the site checked in with this interesting report:
  "I was on the 14th floor of the Paradise Pier hotel last week after the park's closing. We were able to see some of the fountain testing for the Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. They had those main set of fountains on in the middle of the barges and the white rings that you can see in your shots from the sun wheel are the up lights for each of the fountains. They also had 2 Fantasmic-like water screens running (they looked bigger than the ones for Fantasmic) with a white rectangle of light on one of them (projector testing I'm assuming). The one screen was between the fountains and the sun wheel and the other one was to the west of the fountains between the fountains and the orange stinger. "
  
  
  Request: If anyone is staying in the Paradise Pier Hotel and able to get any shots of the testing, I have had several requests so anything you would be willing to share I know would be appreciated by other guests of the site.

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