Hello all,

I made a rare midweek journey down to the Disneyland Resort to visit with some friends that were in for the holidays from the east coast. I was pleasantly surprised by the crowd. I was expecting it to be worse than Friday but thanks to the cold/windy weather the crowds were management and most of the attractions we wanted to visit had normal wait times with just a few exceptions. The one that pops to mind is the Fun Wheel. The non swinging line was starting to creep up the final straight away of the exit ramp. By evening the crowds actually felt like they had stopped building (where as Friday they seemed to just keep pouring into the park). The weather was in the low 60s with a fairly constant wind and some chilling gusts. This really did not seem to stop people or activities (I am guessing if it kept blowing it stopped the Fireworks).

Jason

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

Disneyland & DCA Thoughts and Observations:

• I was lucky enough to park in the garage again with no line at all, pulled right up and showed my pass. The other lanes on the far side were backed-up maybe 10-15 cars. I took the Ball Road overpass to get into the garage. The tram lines were long, probably close to two trams worth of people on both sides.
  
  
• The new boats at the Rain Forest Cafe that you can pay to drive around look rather dinky to me. Its an interesting idea but the area you have to drive is very small and there is not anything too interesting to do with the boats, unlike the mini Jungle Boats at the Disneyland Hotel (and in Adventureland at the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World). New Rain Forest boats interesting.. I walked by twice and both times saw no one in the area, except the cast member working there.
  
  
• Due to the cool/cold weather the lines at the Wharf Cafe were long for lunch, it was over 20 minutes to get your food.
  
  
• Not much happening in DCA.. even from an entertainment was cut back since it was a Tuesday (no Aladdin, no High School Musical). The wait times seemed to peak in the early afternoon with Toy Story having a posted time of 45 min, the Fun Wheel was 45 for either the non swinging or the swinging cars. Monsters Inc even had a 40 min posting in the mid afternoon (we walked on later in the evening with no wait).
  
  
• We missed the Tuba Christmas concert in Downtown Disney. The Disneyland website said it was from 2-5pm in Downtown Disney, we showed up around 3:30 and they were already cleaning up. We were able to hear a couple songs during their rehearsal out in the parking lot and they sounded great! Moral of the story is if you want to see something you better confirm the times and not trust the website... I knew this but was too lazy to seek out a CM to verify the time when we first arrived.
  
  
• Over at Disneyland we headed out to the Rivers of America because some in the group had not seen the Showboat show and I wanted them to see it to compare to the WDW version. There were quite a few CMs working the crowd trying to keep things moving. They even had a rope up on the lowest level to allow for a walkway and viewing area. This worked great during the show but as soon as the show ended things ground to a halt as everyone scattered and ran into each other, the Pirates line, and the stroller parking. The biggest problem seemed to be they wanted the lower walkway to be one way heading toward Haunted Mansion but those watching the show had their strollers parked in front of Pirates so they wanted to go that way. This caused a collision of the crowds and the CMs were stuck in the middle.
  
  
• Those that had seen both WDW and Disneyland agreed with me that the Disneyland one just seemed to work better. It was a combination of things ranging from the better venue (easier to view, built in sound system, and for our late showing even lighting), fitting in with the surrounding area much better, the live singing, and even some of the staging. The Mark Twain just seemed to work better thank the Liberty Belle to me.
  
  
• As you saw in the pictures they were working with the World of Color projectors in the evening. I really enjoy watching the work and listening to the reactions of the other guests as they see the Bay and testing. The one thing I could tell for sure is there are a lot of projectors and projection surfaces. Unfortunately I did not get to see any full scale tests, just a couple of piecemeal tests in the half hour or so I was in the area.
  
  
• Stopped by to see Great Moments again. The theater was about 3/4ths full and the audience really seemed to enjoy the show. It was great to see!
  
  
• The trams leaving were a little out of sync. We waited quite a while and two trams showed up and both stopped at the first station to load wheel chairs, then some regular guests jumped on and they pulled out and left.. not stopping at the load zone where everyone was waiting.
  
  
  
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