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11/06/15 - 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.

11/06/15 - Thoughts and observations from Friday at the Disneyland Resort

Hello everyone,

Friday was a relaxing day at the parks for me. I visited with some friends and just roamed around. It was an in between seasons date with Halloween wrapping up last week and Christmas not kicking off until next week. The crowd in the parks was average. Waits in the early afternoon were not bad but as night fell wait times crept up. Adding to the wait times were several key closures Space Mountain, Jungle Cruise, and Soarin so all the guests usually in line for those were dispersed elsewhere.

Jason

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

Thoughts and Observations:

  • I was happy to find the Ball Road overpass open when I arrived in the early afternoon. This made for a very quick parking experience. I talked to someone coming from the South and they had a much different experience since the Disneyland Drive entrance was closed. The new parking structure cannot come fast enough. Will be interesting to see how the holiday season goes this year. Based on the large crowds for the 60th and the traditionally large Christmas crowds then add in the Season of the Force and it has the recipe to be extremely crowded the rest of 2015 at the Disneyland Resort. Two other variables would be weather and the new annual pass pricing. Wonder if single day tickets will be going up, conventional wisdom is yes, for the holidays.

  • Stepping into Disneyland, Christmas is taking over the park as it does this time of year. The decorations on Main Street have blue touches to take the place of and work with the Diamond Anniversary decorations. A lot of the blue bunting has been removed for the holidays in both parks which is ok with me. As with Halloween the decorations on Main Street incorporate the diamonds and some of the 60th elements. More is still to come including the Christmas tree which was still backstage as of Friday. It will be interesting to see what else they do to the castle this year. I kind of miss the snow... I know I will miss the garlands that span Main Street, my understanding is due to Paint the Night those will not be installed this year.

  • The second to last Emporium window was unveiled this past week and it features Frozen. So now only one more to go. The pace has picked up a bit. As you saw or will see in my picture/video set the Frozen window features two scenes one with Anna, Kristoff and Sven and the other Elsa and Olaf. I could not hear the music on Friday so not sure if I had bad luck or it was not playing. As with the other windows the movement and transition are fun to see. I thought the projection/images for Olafs dream was great.

  • Star Wars Season of the Force will be taking over Tomorrowland starting on the 16th. Preparations are well underway with new signs, extended queues being readied and renovation work. It should be interesting how this normally congested area of the park fairs with a major promotion during the busiest time of the year. It really seems this should have kicked off in January. I understand the concept is to be have it when the film is premiering and some time leading up to it to generate excitement around the movie but it seems to me another recipe for massive crowds and wait times as annual passholders descend upon the park to experience this as the holiday season kicks into gear.

  • The upper level of the Tomorrowland Exposition Center (the former Innoventions building) will be a Super Hero HQ. I found it interesting no Marvel mention on the sign. Wonder why? Will there be other heros beyond Marvel there? Or in the future possibly?

  • it's a small world Holiday opened Friday for the 2015 Christmas season. I have always liked this overlay. The lights, costumes and music are a great dose of the holiday spirit. On my cruise Friday nothing too different or new jumped out to me. Same with the lights at night. I did not see a projection show on Friday so not sure if it was bad timing, not running yet, or not running this year.

  • The Big Thunder Ranch area was still celebrating Halloween. Guess they are waiting until the end to switch it to Christmas. No rush since Santa is slated to be in Critter Country this year.

  • Ate dinner out at Paradise Garden and stayed there to watch the Pixar Play Parade since it was starting when we were finished. I did not see the Inside Out Pre-parade. I figured it would still be running for the home video release. Has anyone seen it recently?

  • It was a breezy evening. As the time for Disneyland Forever approached I watched the flags and you could see them blowing pretty consistently. As expected they cancelled the fireworks after waiting 10 minutes or so. In their place they ran an abbreviated projection/light show with the main part of it being the Live the Magic sequence from the finale to Disneyland Forever. I thought this was a decent alternative. I would have liked to have seen something slightly longer this clocked in at just over 2.5 minutes. Also something more unique would be a nice touch.


  • Do you visit our pictorial updates using a mobile device? If so we would like your feedback. I have created a more mobile version of our Disneyland Picture sets at https://disneygeek.com/mobile Please give it a try and share your thoughts.

Interesting Web Finds/Notes:

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

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