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

Hello all,

The goal of this trip was to see how this year's holiday decorations look. We were expecting the parks to be more crowded than last week, but we were way off. This week seemed substantially lighter. Whether you looked at the less than 20 minute wait for Haunted Mansion Holiday most of the evening (actually it was a walk on both times we went by and the time we road). Pirates, Indy, Small World Holiday were all under 30 minutes everytime we walked by. Over at DCA it seemed about the same. Tower had a posted 20 minute wait at sunset, but it was really a walk on. Soarin' actually had a bit of line, probably 15-20 minutes the two times we passed by.

Both parks had new guidebooks out and the entertainment schedule was only for this one weekend, which seemed weird. We found it interesting that the Disneyland book has what appears to be an updated castle shot while the DCA book has a generic holiday shot of Mickey and Minnie, you cannot even tell that it is at DCA...

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

Disneyland:

• Disneyland was decked out for the Holidays and looking great. Some more of the rehab work around the park had wrapped up and the buildings looking almost new. Main Street looked incredible with the bright clean paint jobs and the holiday decorations.

• Small World Holiday opened on Friday so we took a spin. The ride through seemed to be about the same as last year. Nothing really jumped out at us as being changed from previous years. We were kind of surprised that we walked down the ramp to the load area and no one was around, got in the boat and we were held for several minutes as groups were filled in the rows behind us. And of course the last group took forever to get in then decided to sing loud and off key the entire ride.. I cannot believe how rude some guests can be. The family behind us had a young child and this seemed like it might have been their first time on the attraction and the loud group in the back of the boat really ruined it for them. Also suprising the group was not what you would have thought, teenagers.. no it was middle aged parents and their kids.. with the parents being worse than the kids.

• We cuaght a set and a half of the 80s All Starz out at Club Buzz.. as we sat there listening to the group we still do not understand what happened to the really good groups that used to be brought in for the stage, such as Barrage, the Fab Five, or even the Neil Diamond & Elvis acts. The show qaulity seems to have really gone downhill in recent years.. we could not remember the last time we saw a group that we really wanted to see or thought was really outstanding. We have seen a song here or a song there that was good, but no really memorable sets or groups.

• The highlight of the day was Believe in Holiday Magic. The show is back and is better than ever. We couldn't tell for sure, but we thought the show seemed bigger (larger fireworks) and slightly more shells than we remembered. This might be because of the scaled down Image show that has been playing. The crowd really seemed into the show and Main Street was fairly crowded (not as bad as it will be in December though)..
  
  

DCA:

• The focus of DCA's Holidays is Santa's Beach Party. Santa as well as Disney characters were out most of the day for pictures and entertainment. We missed the live band, assuming there was one. The line for Santa was probably around a half dozen groups deep only, the line for characters was actually less.

• Speaking of characters we ran into three from the Incredibles on the Backlot out front of the Hyperion. They were posing for photographs and signing autographs. Something just seemed strange with the outfits to us, not sure what though.. we guess they look like the movie, but something just seemed off..
  
  
• As we roamed the park looking for entertainment, holiday decorations, or other interesting things we managed to find nothing. The park seemed quite to us and we ended up spending probably around 30 minutes when you add our two visits up.

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