only1mouse
Annual Passholder Disneyland Resort
- Joined
- May 20, 2004
My Disney friend and I have been planning a trip to WDW for about a year. Yesterday we arrived home from an amazing 9 day Disney vacation which included one day at Disneyland and 8 at Disneyworld.
I'm an AP holder at DLR and go regularly however my friend lives in Oregon and she had not seen the 60th anniversary layover so we left a day early to spend the day at Disneyland.
Day 1. Disneyland resort, my home resort, and as always I loved it. We rode HM, IASW, and pirates to name a few. And so we could compare. Missed the parades and fireworks because of our flight but I will say Paint the Night is amazing and if you haven't had an opportunity to see it you're truly missing something spectacular.
We took a red eye to Orlando from LAX. The flight was horrible because of the massive storm that was hitting the east coast but we landed safely, rented our car and headed to The Art of Animation. Arrived at the hotel and sort of knew we would not be able to get into our room but did let them know we were there and fell fast asleep in the car in the parking lot only to be awakened by a text saying our room was ready. Yay. We got building 7 (little mermaid) with a view of the lake and the pop century resort. Side note - I lost my magic band, did I mention I cannot sleep on planes so I was overly tired and had no idea where I could have dropped it, but knew somewhere at AoA. When we got to our room there was a message the someone had turned in my magic band. Vacation can now officially begin!
Our first day we were going to spend relaxing at blizzard beach. After a long night on the plane we thought this would be wonderful. However, due to that storm I mentioned earlier Orlando temperature was 50 degrees, windy and therefore blizzard beach was closed. Ugh. Oh well we'd go later in the week. We bought magic your way tickets so decided to go play mini golf and the Fantasia golf course. Cold but we had a great time. We had dinner reservations at Mickeys backyard bbq and so we headed over to wilderness campground around 4:30. Guy at the security booth was NOT helpful told us to park to the right. So we park and start walking and walking and walking only to realize we have no idea where we are going. We head back to the car and start to drive and again have no idea where we are going. Finally we stop someone and they mention we need to take a bus. Would have been REALLY nice for the guy at security to tell us. Argh. We don't arrive until 6pm and I'm surprised they held our reservation that long. Dinner was very tasty and the show was fun I just don't like feeling rushed.
Day 2 Hollywood Studios is on the agenda. Nows a good point for me to mention we reserved our fast pass+ rides as soon as we were able to and being that DLR does not have this we were curious if we would like it. I really like the magicband and being able to reserve rides in advance. It's difficult because you can't fast pass anything until you've used those three. But it was fine. We took advantage of extra hours each opportunity we could. We were able to ride HM and rock n roller coaster twice. Once during extra hours and another using our fast passes. Love both of these rides. Toy story mania was listed as closed during our scheduling but it had opened up and so we decided after our third fast pass was done we'd try for TSMM. Ha ha ha. Went to the Indiana Jones show(final fast pass) and went to find the machines. Yep you guessed it no FP available so we go get in the 110 min wait stand by line. It took a little over 110 min and we were finally able to ride. Love this in DCA and it's exactly the same at WDW. we also walked through one mans dream. Saw a sneak preview of zootopia, rode little mermaid, the great movie ride, muppet vision 3D, watched the fireworks had dinner at the brown derby Yummo and had reserved seating for Fantasmic. I love the seating options at WDW but have to say the show is better at DLR. weather was very cold still but we made the best of it as we knew we would.
Day 3 Animal kingdom. Love this park. We rode expedition Everest twice , dinasour (which is similar to DLR Indy ride), and the Kilimanjaro safari (fp). We found ourselves zig zagging a lot in this park just because we really didn't do a good job of planning but still had a blast. We went on the train, we did the walking tour, saw both Nemo and the Lion King. During the safari ride this father kept standing up to take pictures it got so bad the driver had to move forward and then brake to finally get him to sit down during his third standing occurrence. After this we drove to the contemporary for the Pirates and pals cruise. We wanted to be extra early because of what had happened the night before. Have to say this show from start to finish was amazing. Our pirate was hilarious the fireworks were spectacular and the food choices were great. I would definitely do this event again!!!
Day 4. EPCOT. Last time we had gone to Epcot was 7 years earlier and the kids were not having it in the rain and were not interested in seeing world showcase. So since it was just the two of us we were going to spend our time checking out world showcase. But rides first. Test track twice. Once as a single rider. We didn't get the fp so it was our first destination. This is completely different than it was 8 years earlier. But still a ton of fun. Again we found ourselves zig zagging. We also did mission space, and spaceship earth. We saw Nemo and got our pictures taken at both the visa meet and greet and the Epcot meet and greet via fp. Yes we did buy the memory maker and really enjoyed having that available to us too. The world showcase was amazing. We had lunch in France and really went through every land. It was wonderful. We had no special reservations this day and had dinner back at our hotel went in the pool and relaxed a little.
Day 5 Magic kingdom. First was breakfast in the castle. Lovely. And very helpful when my friend did not enjoy her meal they were very accommodating. However it was raining and raining hard at times. Forecast was 100% chance of rain but hey isn't that the best time to go to Disney? We had a blast at MK. Saw mickeys philharmagic rode haunted mansion, Pirates, jungle cruise, big thunder, IASW, speedway, the people mover , SDMT, space mountain, saw the hall of presidents, all and all a great rainy day. Big thunder imho was better at wdw but the rest I believe dlr has the upper hand.
Day 6. Another very wet and rainy day. We decided to do the backstage magic tour which is the 7 hour tour through all four parks. We had a fabulous time and got to see a ton of backstage stuff. We ate lunch at the whispering canyon cafe in wilderness lodge and received a cool pin at the end of the tour. I don't want to give too much away if you haven't done this tour but if you like the tours this one really has it all.
Day 7 finally beautiful weather. But blizzard beach is still closed. No summit plummet this time. Boo. So we went shopping instead. We also toured the hotels we hadn't yet seen. During this night we had reservations for the dessert show with illuminations and while I love the show I would not do the dessert party again. Our seats were fine, but we're not drinkers nor were we really into stuff that sweet.
After a long few days we now had to pack up our belongings and all of our purchases and get ready for our final day.
Day 8. Unfortunately the airline changed our flight to a very early morning flight 7 am departure. We left AoA at 430. Hard to say goodbye. We had a wonderful time and already cannot wait to go back. Though it will probably be another 8 years.
Favorite park. Epcot, favorite ride Kilimanjaro safaris best show pirates and pal.
Gas being 1.73/gallon blew my mind. We are paying 3.35 here.
Dlr really needs magicband or something similar.
Thanks Florida for having us until next time.....
I'm an AP holder at DLR and go regularly however my friend lives in Oregon and she had not seen the 60th anniversary layover so we left a day early to spend the day at Disneyland.
Day 1. Disneyland resort, my home resort, and as always I loved it. We rode HM, IASW, and pirates to name a few. And so we could compare. Missed the parades and fireworks because of our flight but I will say Paint the Night is amazing and if you haven't had an opportunity to see it you're truly missing something spectacular.
We took a red eye to Orlando from LAX. The flight was horrible because of the massive storm that was hitting the east coast but we landed safely, rented our car and headed to The Art of Animation. Arrived at the hotel and sort of knew we would not be able to get into our room but did let them know we were there and fell fast asleep in the car in the parking lot only to be awakened by a text saying our room was ready. Yay. We got building 7 (little mermaid) with a view of the lake and the pop century resort. Side note - I lost my magic band, did I mention I cannot sleep on planes so I was overly tired and had no idea where I could have dropped it, but knew somewhere at AoA. When we got to our room there was a message the someone had turned in my magic band. Vacation can now officially begin!
Our first day we were going to spend relaxing at blizzard beach. After a long night on the plane we thought this would be wonderful. However, due to that storm I mentioned earlier Orlando temperature was 50 degrees, windy and therefore blizzard beach was closed. Ugh. Oh well we'd go later in the week. We bought magic your way tickets so decided to go play mini golf and the Fantasia golf course. Cold but we had a great time. We had dinner reservations at Mickeys backyard bbq and so we headed over to wilderness campground around 4:30. Guy at the security booth was NOT helpful told us to park to the right. So we park and start walking and walking and walking only to realize we have no idea where we are going. We head back to the car and start to drive and again have no idea where we are going. Finally we stop someone and they mention we need to take a bus. Would have been REALLY nice for the guy at security to tell us. Argh. We don't arrive until 6pm and I'm surprised they held our reservation that long. Dinner was very tasty and the show was fun I just don't like feeling rushed.
Day 2 Hollywood Studios is on the agenda. Nows a good point for me to mention we reserved our fast pass+ rides as soon as we were able to and being that DLR does not have this we were curious if we would like it. I really like the magicband and being able to reserve rides in advance. It's difficult because you can't fast pass anything until you've used those three. But it was fine. We took advantage of extra hours each opportunity we could. We were able to ride HM and rock n roller coaster twice. Once during extra hours and another using our fast passes. Love both of these rides. Toy story mania was listed as closed during our scheduling but it had opened up and so we decided after our third fast pass was done we'd try for TSMM. Ha ha ha. Went to the Indiana Jones show(final fast pass) and went to find the machines. Yep you guessed it no FP available so we go get in the 110 min wait stand by line. It took a little over 110 min and we were finally able to ride. Love this in DCA and it's exactly the same at WDW. we also walked through one mans dream. Saw a sneak preview of zootopia, rode little mermaid, the great movie ride, muppet vision 3D, watched the fireworks had dinner at the brown derby Yummo and had reserved seating for Fantasmic. I love the seating options at WDW but have to say the show is better at DLR. weather was very cold still but we made the best of it as we knew we would.
Day 3 Animal kingdom. Love this park. We rode expedition Everest twice , dinasour (which is similar to DLR Indy ride), and the Kilimanjaro safari (fp). We found ourselves zig zagging a lot in this park just because we really didn't do a good job of planning but still had a blast. We went on the train, we did the walking tour, saw both Nemo and the Lion King. During the safari ride this father kept standing up to take pictures it got so bad the driver had to move forward and then brake to finally get him to sit down during his third standing occurrence. After this we drove to the contemporary for the Pirates and pals cruise. We wanted to be extra early because of what had happened the night before. Have to say this show from start to finish was amazing. Our pirate was hilarious the fireworks were spectacular and the food choices were great. I would definitely do this event again!!!
Day 4. EPCOT. Last time we had gone to Epcot was 7 years earlier and the kids were not having it in the rain and were not interested in seeing world showcase. So since it was just the two of us we were going to spend our time checking out world showcase. But rides first. Test track twice. Once as a single rider. We didn't get the fp so it was our first destination. This is completely different than it was 8 years earlier. But still a ton of fun. Again we found ourselves zig zagging. We also did mission space, and spaceship earth. We saw Nemo and got our pictures taken at both the visa meet and greet and the Epcot meet and greet via fp. Yes we did buy the memory maker and really enjoyed having that available to us too. The world showcase was amazing. We had lunch in France and really went through every land. It was wonderful. We had no special reservations this day and had dinner back at our hotel went in the pool and relaxed a little.
Day 5 Magic kingdom. First was breakfast in the castle. Lovely. And very helpful when my friend did not enjoy her meal they were very accommodating. However it was raining and raining hard at times. Forecast was 100% chance of rain but hey isn't that the best time to go to Disney? We had a blast at MK. Saw mickeys philharmagic rode haunted mansion, Pirates, jungle cruise, big thunder, IASW, speedway, the people mover , SDMT, space mountain, saw the hall of presidents, all and all a great rainy day. Big thunder imho was better at wdw but the rest I believe dlr has the upper hand.
Day 6. Another very wet and rainy day. We decided to do the backstage magic tour which is the 7 hour tour through all four parks. We had a fabulous time and got to see a ton of backstage stuff. We ate lunch at the whispering canyon cafe in wilderness lodge and received a cool pin at the end of the tour. I don't want to give too much away if you haven't done this tour but if you like the tours this one really has it all.
Day 7 finally beautiful weather. But blizzard beach is still closed. No summit plummet this time. Boo. So we went shopping instead. We also toured the hotels we hadn't yet seen. During this night we had reservations for the dessert show with illuminations and while I love the show I would not do the dessert party again. Our seats were fine, but we're not drinkers nor were we really into stuff that sweet.
After a long few days we now had to pack up our belongings and all of our purchases and get ready for our final day.
Day 8. Unfortunately the airline changed our flight to a very early morning flight 7 am departure. We left AoA at 430. Hard to say goodbye. We had a wonderful time and already cannot wait to go back. Though it will probably be another 8 years.
Favorite park. Epcot, favorite ride Kilimanjaro safaris best show pirates and pal.
Gas being 1.73/gallon blew my mind. We are paying 3.35 here.
Dlr really needs magicband or something similar.
Thanks Florida for having us until next time.....
