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

Hello all,

Today was a very relaxing day at the parks. We arrived in the early afternoon and walked through DCA, the number of guests milling around seemed high, but the longest wait we saw was 20 minutes. Tower was listed as 13, but was really a walk on, Soarin' was at the top of the ramp only. The Beach Party Blast had a fair number of guests hanging around listening to the band. Over at Disneyland the crowds seemed light until the evening, the afternoon was comfortable. Haunted Mansion was between 30-45 minutes on our trips by. Smal World Holiday had no real wait, which was great. Most other attractions were in the 20-45 minute range.

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

Disneyland & DCA:

• As we wandered throughout DCA we were suprised not to find a large tree, either that or we are really blind.

• As you saw in the pictorial update, Princesses have taken over the queue to the Screening room and its been renamed. Not sure why they are not further back in the queue area, it seemed kind of weird for them to be right up front and the line stretching out into the main lobby area quite a ways and blocking traffic. Guess that means the old Animation film isn't coming back.. and probably the One Man's Dream film too.
  
  
• The park is almost all decked out for the Holidays. The Christmas Fantasy Parade started Friday, we caught the 4pm one and the parade was ok. Still not fond of the repeating music loop and the new reindeer outfits, the old classic ones with were better. The decorations on the castle are down, we heard rumors of 50th commercials being filmed, but all we saw were holiday spots being taped.
  
  
• We were excited to see a new group listed for Club Buzz, Blue Steel from the USAF Academy Band. We were hoping for a traditional college/academy band. Instead it was a traditional club band. They were ok overall. The music selections crisscrossed the band four or five decades of music history. Each of the two sets we saw consisted of one patriot song and a couple rock, a swing, and a slower one or two plus a couple other random songs thrown in. We were a little disappointed to not hear more traditional patriotic fair.
  
  
• Inbetween sets we stopped by Innoventions to see what was happening. One of the entrance pods was closed off and work was going on inside (we peaked through a curtain and looked straight at a CM working on the new set). Not much else going on. The Segways and Stitch were both closed for the evening, it was around 8pm. We gave a try to the aging kiosk to see what we would look like in 50 years.. not that impressive.. it showed me having three eyes and a blurred face that was puffed up. The lazy geek had his eye smear down to his mouth and same puffyness.. if we look like that in our late 70s that would not be good. Wonder what was going on, seemed like a software issue.
  
  
• Lined up for Believe around the area we usually do, down near the Cinema. The center area of the street was roped off and Goofy was in the middle with a bunch of CMs all around. They were filming a segment, we guess for the upcoming Christmas Parade TV program, with Goofy and Jackie Chan. They only wanted to get them in the Snow Fall with the crowd. During the fireworks portion of the show Goofy goofed around as you would expect. Right before the lights came on the ropes were taken down and CMs encircled the film shoot area and flowed with the movement of the scene and crowd up and down Main Street in the previously reoped off area (probably only 10-15 feet total).
  
  
• As Believe started there was an audio problem. There was a tone and scrambled audio. The fireworks shot off as queued for the start, but the audio went dead after about a minute. The show seemed to be paused right after the opening monologue for a minute or so then everything started up again and was fine the rest of the show.

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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