** After you read this report you may want to check out the pictorial updates in our Disneyland Resort Pictorial Update section

The Disneyland Resort is transforming for its Annual Holiday celebration. Disneyland is almost all Decorated and DCA is well on its way.

Disneyland Items:

• The crowd was really weird. It felt like there were a lot of people in the park, but the lines were really short. I guess there were a lot of AP people in the park and they were just roaming around. For example we walked right on Haunted Mansion Holiday around 8:30pm.
• A bulk of the holiday decorations were up in the park. Most of Main Street and New Orleans square were done. The hub, castle forecourt, and Toontown are still left to do.
• The Believe in Holiday Magic show was great. It seemed bigger this year. Meaning the fireworks seemed higher and larger. Could have just been our angle and bad memories though. The Snow effect is still a crowd pleaser and a great effect too.
• The new Minnie's Christmas Party show in the Fantasyland theater was much better than what I had expected. It was not as good as the old Christmas shows they had in the theater, but I would say its about the same as the shows they used to have in Carnation (well maybe slightly better). The premise of the show is Minnie is having a Christmas Party and the whole gang is invited. The show has several musical numbers and some great one liners by the characters (Chip and Dale especially). I would definitely recommend this show as something to see. Especially if you have kids with you, I think they will really enjoy it. It is so much better than the last new show they added to the park (Buzz Lightyear).
• The holiday decorations on Main Street look great this year so far. The garlands hanging across the street appeared new to us. There are now bells on it and it was pointed out by one of our guests that the lights were mostly white and brighter.
• If you visited our pictorial update you saw the surreal pictures of Main Street with most of the lights off. It was really strange. Most people did not seem to notice, or if they did were not talking about it. Heck it took us about 1/4 the way down the street to realize what was different. Wonder what happened?

DCA Items:

• The crowd at DCA was its normal disappointing light. I think the light crowds are really spoiling us and if real crowds ever appear we will be complaining about that too. Its great to be able to walk around the park and pick and choose attractions based on mood and not the length of the line.
• Had a rare situation occur on the Sun Wheel. We walked down to get on and there was no line for either swinging load area, and a two car wait for the stationary one (which we had to wait for to get pictures). Usually its the other way around.
• We got to see them set up and test many of the LuminAria show elements. Visit our pictorial update from 11/2 to see the visuals. My general impression is this could be a great show. There are quite a few show elements that will come into play and I am really excited to see how it all works.
• I was a little disappointed in the size of the screens for the cards. I was thinking of something larger, but then again I guess you don't want to enlarge the images too much.
• The number of barrages involved in the show is quite large for the small lagoon and the proximity of where you will be standing to them is close, so it should be a great effect.
• We are still curious if everything will be removable or retractable so during the day the lagoon will appear "normal". We know the main barges will be moved out, but what about the "docking" hooks for them? Or the large central area.
• We spend some time walking around the lagoon trying to see what else we can see. We noticed quite a few lights now on almost all the buildings and trees around the lagoon.
• Also we spotted several fireworks launchers located in the lagoon near the edges pointing inwards. Hopefully that will be a great effect like EPCOT has. These tubes were much smaller than those at EPCOT, our guess is because the lagoon is much smaller than EPCOTs.
• We thought the garlands in the Bay Area and at the entrance to the Hollywood Backlot appeared a bit over the top, but that might have been the goal.
• The lights on the Golden Gate bridge looked awesome at night, but really tacky during the day. I wisht they would have embedded them in the initial design vs. using cheap wireties to hold them on. What really would have been awesome would have been fiberoptics so they colors could have changed, maybe with the season or something.
• The walkway by GRR was under construction again. The new sitting area was completely torn up. No idea why, but it appeared they were replacing several of the boards and making the railings higher maybe. They were working on it late into the evening.

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

Send comments, questions, any other email to: disneygeek@disneygeek.com