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09/22/17 - 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.

09/22/17 - Thoughts and observations from Friday at the Disneyland Resort.
I had a relaxing Friday afternoon/evening at the parks lined up with very few items on my to-do list and the plan to visit with friends and enjoy a second look at the Halloween Time festivities. For the most part I succeeded in this but thanks to the Halloween party I got to wade through thousands of extra guests and big crowds as the sunset. Crowds in the parks were moderate in the early afternoon and they continued to build. As Soundsational wrapped up at Disneyland the crowds shifted toward Disney California Adventure. Once Disneyland closed at 7pm for the party DCA felt extremely crowded just about everywhere you went.

Thoughts and Observations:

  • I was pleasantly surprised to arrive and encounter no parking headaches, I am sure those arriving later in the evening did not have the same luck. But I did notice that traffic going into Downtown Disney was flowing smoothly at 9pm which on some Fridays it is gridlock.

  • First stop was to check out the Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge work. In the past week only incremental progress was visible across the site. Nothing too drastically different or interesting jumped out to me.

  • My first park of the day was Disney California Adventure. Spent some time taking a second look at the Halloween decorations on Buena Vista Street and in Cars Land. Some minor additions had been made since last week, for example the Carthay Circle marquee was changed, witch hats along route 66, the Brakes Hotel moved across the lobby in the Cozy Cone, Stanley received a hat. Also this week I was able to see both Cruz Ramirez and Red in the car-stumes. Red is a clown and Cruz is a Pirate. Out of the 5 cars I thought the Cruz and Mater had the most interesting/best car-stumes.

  • Paid a visit to Haunted Mansion Holiday to use a FastPass. This week the return wait time was better than last week but there was still a lot of guests in the area, confusion, and delays. This week the issue was the return line stretch from the scanners down the main walkway toward the popcorn & DVC carts. The problem was this cut off the Standby line and guests could not figure out where to go. Also some that were returning sort of joined in (or tried to) the line vs hiking back to the end of it. The traffic flow in this area of the park could really use some help, but there just does not seem to be a lot of room to make changes to handle the large crowds.

  • Returned to Disney California Adventure for the Cars Land lighting moment again. This week it was closer to the time Disney said it would be but it was still delayed. Add in the very large crowd on Route 66 and it was not the best experience.

  • As many of you long time readers know one of my complaints over the years has been how they added Friday nights as Halloween Party nights. I have nothing against the concept of an after hours party or special event, but I think they should not impact the average guest experience who is paying a premium for their day too. Having parties on Friday nights has a huge negative impact on the average day guest's experience. Fridays are usually a busy evening at the resort with many locals making long weekends or stopping after work/school. To close Disneyland and force all those guests over to Disney California Adventure makes for an extremely crowded park and unpleasant experience after dark. This year party guests can park hop during the mix in period and many are enticed to do so with Cars Land, Buena Vista Street and Guardians of the Galaxy all celebrating Halloween. This only adds to the number of people in DCA.

  • Once I grew tired of the crowds at Disney California Adventure I decided to walk through Downtown Disney. It was crowded but did not feel any worse than many other Fridays. As usual my timing was fairly bad and I missed most of the entertainment, they all seemed to be between sets. I was disappointed to see the SCAREolers are only slated to perform on Wednesday and Thursdays this year. They have added quite a few Halloween/fall decorations throughout this year. Also noteworthy is the RideMakerz store has reduced hours on several days and closed others now.

Here are some recent posts to the Geek's Blog:

Geek’s Blog Postings Recap – September 6-20, 2017

Disney Related Press Releases

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

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

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