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

Hello all,

This was a short trip to the Disneyland Resort to see any last minute holiday changes and to do some Christmas shopping. The parks were fairly crowded with most D and E ticket attractions at Disneyland over an hour (except for Pirates which was about 30 minutes). Over at DCA there were also quite a few guests milling around and in line. Both parks seemed alive with Holiday cheer and in full swing. The weather was windy and cool, changing to downright cold as the evening went on.

I met some friends for lunch at Rain Forest before heading to Disney. I decided to follow the rules and move my car to the garage after eating instead of taking advantage of gthe 5 hours of free parking. This seemed like a good idea considering that the entrance to the lot across from DD was open. Well it ended up taking almost 30 minutes to get parked. Going up the ramp to the 5th floor the cars stopped about half way up and then after a few minutes started to crawl. I have no idea what the hold up was, only it was taking forever.. What happened to the old days when Eisner bragged about the number of cars per minute, something like one every 5 seconds.. guess that went out the window years ago with the re-stripping that for the life of me I still cannot understand..

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

Disneyland & DCA:

• While walking around Disneyland nothing really jumped out at me as being new. As you saw in the photo update some walls are down, the test sub is gone, and some other random projects are moving along.

• Went to see Billy Hill, for two reasons, one to get out of the wind and secondly because I enjoy the show. Showed up 10 minutes to show time and got one of the last seats in the balcony (no table though). The show was great as usual. More holiday songs than I remembered from years past.

• Upon enterting DCA you immediately felt something was different.. yep the park had a healthy crowd and guests were everywhere. Still really surprised no Christmas tree to be found. Even inside the Animation Building the room felt full.

• Speaking of the Animation Building I need to correct a previous comment I made. The Screening Room is still running, you enter and exit through the same door. And the princess meet and greet takes up the old entrance. This is now marked and seemed to be running smoothly.. wonder when a new film will arrive..

• When it was time to head out to meet others for dinner I arrived at the tram stop and saw more guests in line than I have on exits after the fireworks on previous visits. It was probably a 3-4 tram wait, which seemed really long considering it was around 5pm only. While waiting we saw something we have not seen for a while. A manager took initiative and left the crowd control, grabbed another CM and went and pulled another tram online to help with the crowd. That was much more effective than what they usually do which is to talk to the crowd or just stand off to the side. I thought it was great to see them hussle over, start it up, and pull into the stop, which had an immediate impact on the crowd.
  

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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