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Hello all,

Friday was a very, very crowded day at the Disneyland Resort, probably the most crowded day this year (that we have gone). Due to it being Veterans day(well an observed holiday even though Veterans day was Saturday) and many schools/businesses were closed and it being the official start of the Holiday Season at the Resort and throw in picture perfect weather and it adds up to a very busy resort. Even though both parks were filled early and stayed full the entire afternoon/evening we had a great time and got to see quite a bit. Most attraction lines were quite long (well over an hour for E-tickets) but with some timing you could get on things with a shorter wait. For example we walked on the Jungle Cruise as well as Winnie the Pooh. On the flip side, Small World took an hour to get through and the Sun Wheel over at DCA actually took 25 minutes or so and we went on the non-swinging cars. The most ridiculous wait of the day was the parking garage. It took nearly 45 minutes from when I got off the freeway till I was parked in the garage (well really an hour but I took off 15 minutes for the stop at the gas station).

Did anyone go to the Christmas Parade taping on Saturday? If so any pictures or comments to share? I could not attend due to the USC game (yeah football trumps Disney... well USC football anyways...)

Jason

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

Notes:

• I want to start off ranting about the parking situation. For the life of me I don't understand why they cannot be more efficient and why the parking lines move so slow now a days. Even worse the lines up the ramps were jammed up too, just to get to your parking level. This just seems crazy to me that they can't figure it out after all this time. I thought the concept of the garage was speed parking.. well it isn't speedy, that's for sure. From what I saw/read it was worse later in the day and through the weekend too.
  
  
• We walked through Downtown Disney first and even that area was quite crowded for the middle of the afternoon... also we walked through the Hotels and there were no holiday decorations up yet.
  
  
• Not much new to report from DCA. The holiday decorations and festivities seemed about on par with last year. Nothing major stuck out as new or different.
  
  
• The preparation work for the still to be announced Midway Mania attraction is coming along and its interesting to see how they are clearing out the old buildings and being very careful to minimize the impact on Screamin. I bet its a big headache to do demo that carefully.
  
  
• Did anyone make it to the park on the weekend? Was the Lady Bug Buggie running at all? It looked like they were close on Friday to soft opening. Just curious how it was compared to the original version.
  
  
• We spent a majority of the afternoon/evening at Disneyland for two reasons. The first was there was more I wanted/needed to see there and secondly we were a bit afraid of getting locked out due to crowding, it appeared they kept the turn styles open all day, but closed single day admission sales extremely early in the day to make this happen.
  
  
• I was a little disappointed that the flag retreat did not do anything special for Veterans day (did they on Saturday instead?) It was the new and improved version of the retreat though, which is great to see sticking around.
  
  
• The Christmas decorations at Disneyland seemed about the same as last year too, nothing too new to report on. Only two major changes I noticed were no projections on Small World Holiday and the return of Believe in Holiday Magic (which if you have not seen it is one of the best Disneyland firework shows in my book). Other than that some minor tweaks here and there such as the Christmas tree returning to its traditional look, last year it was gold, also the wreaths on the gold lamp posts looked great. Also kind of sad no return of the garlands that stretched main street.. I would like to see them return.. wonder if they will after the Parade of Dreams stops running. Santas Reindeer Roundup returns again this year too.
  
  
• Speaking of kind of sad (a bit off topic) but Walt Disney World is not going to be running the Country Bears Christmas show this year.. it will be the regular show only... I took the time to write guest relations about this and complain that I really looked forward to this holiday tradition even more so now that Disneyland has been bearless for years... they actually took the time to write back and to call even to say the Christmas show may return next year. I did see several sites on the internet reporting that some CMs said may others said probably would not.. I really hope the show returns.
  
  
• Believe in Holiday Magic appears to be the same show more or less. There were some different/new effects used that the old show did not. For example the effects on the castle itself. Also I thought some of the shell sequences were different, but its been a couple years so it may just be my memory too. The soundtrack was the same, no noticeable changes. The snow effect worked good Friday but the machines closest to the tree did not go off, not sure if this was on purpose or not. I thought that all of Main Street had snow but the machines South of Disneyana/the Cinema did not appear to be on.
  
  
• Exiting the park was a breeze and there was no congestion or traffic problems to speak of (and with it being a holiday and Caltrans off the drive home was quicker than usual too).
  
  

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