Fly or Drive to Disneyland?

As the crow flies, we live 434 miles away from the Disneyland front gates. I've checked. Many times. Driving, it takes me and Mrs. DisneylandTraveler about 6 and a half hours with minimal stops for the basics - food, bathroom, gas. In the air, its a little over an hour flying time but when you factor in getting to the airport, getting there early, and getting from the John Wayne airport to Disneyland (by shuttle), that 1 hour easily becomes 3. We've done it both ways but for the last half dozen trips or so we've driven it.

The Pro's of Driving:
No restrictions on what you can bring. Bring all the clothes you want. If you run out of room in the suitcase, toss them in a plastic Wal-Mart bag. No matter how many clothes Mrs. DLT brings, she'll always have to do laundry at the hotel so we bring the laundry detergent and fabric softener as well. Bring all the food and drinks you want. We also bring coffee, sweetenter, cream, and a real coffee maker. The standard room in our favorite little hotel does not have a microwave. We don't bring a microwave but we certainly could. We do bring a table fan. No restrictions. Lesson learned: if you bring a lot of stuff, be sure to request a ground floor room with a minimum walk from where you park to the front door of your room. Also with driving out go time constraints, leave early, arrive late, whatever - it's your schedule not the airlines.

The Con's of Driving:
Since we live in California's central valley, we are primarily drive Interstate 5 from Sacramento to Anaheim and back again. It is the most god-awful boring drive this side of west Texas (which is way worse). There's nothing worth seeing 80% of the trip. Then there is the Grapevine, the mountain you climb over to get into the L.A. basin - it snows up there. And then there is the L.A. traffic - it's the nightmare everyone has heard about but only worse. Somewhere on an L.A freeway, day or night, you WILL coming to a complete stop. If you're lucky, it only happens once or twice.  It's horrible (until you get to Anaheim where everything seems to improve). Yes, its only 6 and a half hours but between boredom and anxiety by the time you get to your hotel room, you're pretty much spent.

The Pro's of Flying:
It's hard to get in a car accident in the air. It's just plain easier on the nerves and the flight we usually take gets us to our hotel and then into Disneyland by 10:00am. Not a bad deal. Other than making flight times, a lot of stress is taken out because the transportation work is pretty much left to professionals. Show up to the right place at the right time and let everyone else take care of the work. Doesn't happen as much anymore but you use to be able to get some pretty good discount air faires from time to time. Now the expense of flying is probably just a bit more than than the driving.

The Con's of Flying:
Well you are limited to what and how much you can bring and it gets more limiting (and costly) all the time. Packing takes more time and consideration. And then there's Mrs. DLT, not one of the world's great fliers. Once you are on the ground in Anaheim, your are at the mercy of the infamous airport shuttle. They're pretty reliable but some of the shuttle operations seem to "run by the seat of their pants".

Conclusion:
Well after thinking about it, if I was going down to Disneyland for a short or weekend type trip, I think I would opt for flying. Did that a few years ago where we flew down on a Saturday morning then came back on Monday evening. It worked out well. But if me and Mrs. DLT are going down to Disneyland, we are usually in it  for the long haul - at least 5 or 6 days. In that case we drive because we can take everything but the kitchen sink and set up camp.

The World of Color or My Aching Feet

Disney California Adventure's World of Color water show has pretty much run non-stop for over a year now (except when my sister went to see it and it shut down after about 2 minutes because of "technical difficulties").  Everything you have seen or read about the show is true - it is spectacular and a must-see for any visitor to the Disneyland Resort.  At 25 minutes long, the large grid of fountains, fire, and digital animation projections bring you the world of Disney as it's never been seen before.  Walt would have been proud of this one because of the creativity and technical achievements of the show.

BUT....

Here is where the Disneyland Traveler may run into some trouble.  There is no real story in World of Color so it doesn't build to anything in particular.  The film clips show classic Disney (and Pixar) scenes but they look assembled rather than flowing cohesively.  World of Color meanders with some segments too long, others too short, and in some cases, a segment which should have been left out entirely (the Mufasa death scene from the Lion King). These are quibbles.  It's a great show, but it really could be better.

AND....

So you've just spent all day at the park and you're dead tired.  Now it comes to time to line up for the World of Color show and then be escorted into your viewing area where you stand and wait and wait.  Some people hit the ground and sit on the concrete but at our age, me and Mrs. DisneylandTraveler know that sitting for any length of time on the concrete ground is a risky proposition.  So you continue to stand and wait and wait while it gets more crowded, and more crowded.  But then, the misery in waiting quickly dissipates once the show begins and the fountains of color show their stuff.

Once I get back to my hotel room, the shoes come off in world record time and I am stretched out on the bed.  I tell my feet "it'll be ok, you'll feel better in the morning."  My feet tell me "shut up and get some Advil and don't do that to us again."  The feet have a strong argument for awhile but they'll be back waiting for the World of Color again some day.  The eyes insist on it.

One of the best YouTube video's ever is Disney Park's World of Color Aerial View.  Enjoy WOC from this spectacular perspective.

A Blogger's Month in Review - July

Well it's August 1st - the dog days of summer as the saying goes. In July, there were 468 viewers of this blog (up about a hundred from June's 363 views). I don't know who you are in most cases but a sincere 'thank you' from The Disneyland Traveler. We covered a lot of topics, some serious, most of them not, but its all meant in a spirit of good fun that's what Disneyland is all about.

There are 31 days in July but somehow I found the time to write 41 blog entries. My shrub and tree trimming in the yard suffer because of it. I keep a little spreadsheet where I jot down Disney blog subjects. More things get added than I have time to write about so there is a whole vault of topics on my blogging agenda. I don't know if I can top 41 or even know if I want to try but The Disneyland Traveler moves on.

In August we have the D23 Expo coming up and that particular subject is a blogger's paradise because it is semi-controversial with strong opinions on both sides of Disney's D23 Membership. I know that will continue to get explored. So as the dog days of summer wind down, the Disneyland Traveler is just getting started. Welcome to August 2011.

Even a Pastor Needs a Disney History Lesson

I attend a church where the pastor uses real life examples to demonstrate a point. I'm not going to say he embellishes his examples, never mind, I will say it - he embellishes his examples from time to time. Now even a pastor can stand to learn a lesson here and there and in this pastor's case the lesson is never use Walt Disney or Disneyland as an example for anything unless you have your facts straight.

So I'm sitting there one Sunday and the pastor starts talking about a biography he is reading about the life of Walt Disney. His story went something like this..... Walt Disney would come home from work at night greet his young daughters with a kiss, eat dinner with them, read to them, and tuck them into bed - traditional American values of pretty much a bygone era. He didn't talk to them about his work or what he did. His time with them was their time. And all of this may be perfectly true but here is where the pastor's story takes a turn. He went on the stay, the next day his daughters would go off to school (using kindergarten in the story) where they would proceed to tell to tell their school friends about how their dad would read to them and tuck them into bed. The school friends of the Disney daughters would exclaim to them "we don't want to hear about that, tell us about Disneyland, your dad built Disneyland, tell us about the park and what's new". Well, as the story goes, the Disney daughters didn't really know how to react to their friends remarks because the dad they saw at night didn't talk about Disneyland or cartoon characters. He was a warm, kind, loving father who made his daughters feel like they were the special ones, not parks and cartoons. The Disney home may have been all of that. From what I know, the Disney daughters (only one of which is living) speak glowingly of life with their father (interestingly enough, Roy E. Disney, Walt's nephew, seemed to tell a little a different story).

But at the end of the pastor's story, my ears perked up and I began doing the math. Diane Disney Miller, Walt's daughter, is now in her later 70's. As of this writing, Disneyland is 56 years old which would make Diane in her early 20's at the time the park was built. So the pastor's example was an embellishment. It's a huge church (about 9000 people a week attend services) so the idea of me shaking the pastor's hand at the end of the service and gently correcting him on his facts wasn't going to happen. I thought about sending him an email, but someone in the staff probably would have intercepted it. But in a church that large there are probably hundreds of Disney fans and  I can only think that somewhere along the line, one of those fans pulled the pastor aside and told him that just maybe, you might have been a little off in your facts.

Nemo's Submarine Voyage or Missing the Boat

When it comes to taking pictures in Disneyland, few vistas offer better opportunities for memorable shots than Finding Nemo's Submarine Voyage. Bright yellow subs, blue water, Matterhorn in the background - yep, I have picture after picture of Nemo's subs making their trek around the lagoon. Everybody who goes to Disneyland has a bunch of Nemo pictures.

But the time comes when you actually "ride the ride" and here is where, for me and Mrs. DisneylandTraveler anyway, the submarine voyage misses the boat. Now granted, when the original sub ride closed down in the early 90's, it had seen its better days. The gray diesel subs had a look of "official Navy" about them but the water features had shown the years wear and neglect. It took years for Disney to figure out what to do with the prime park real estate but the massive success of Pixar's Finding Nemo movie gave Disney just the inspiration of what it needed to do to bring the subs back to life. Nemo is the second highest grossing Pixar film in terms of dollars of all their releases. For the life of me, I don't know why because it is my least favorite. Anyway, back to the ride.

First of all, get ready to wait and wait to get on. No fastpass here and the line is always long, usually 30 to 60 minutes even on slow days at the park. Then there is the sub seating. I think each sub holds about 40 people and the seats are small so you do feel crammed in unless there are a lot of small kids that take up less space. Me and Mrs. DLT hit the jackpot in a driving December rainstorm at the park, a 7 minute wait and a sub that was maybe only 2/3's full. It was the last time we bothered with the ride.

As for the ride itself, well the sub never really goes under the water, just the portholes. It starts off kind of cool in the lagoon but once the ride passes through the waterfall and you are in the actual show building, that porthole you have your face pressed up against seems more like a tv screen or computer monitor - kind of like watching the infamous aquarium screensaver. It follows the basic Nemo story of being lost and finding his way back with all the familiar characters, but it lacks charm. At one point in the ride when the underwater volcano explodes, the ride goes black for a few seconds which has been known to frighten the bejeezes out of some small children. Eventually Nemo and you find your way back home. Not a bad ride mind you but not a great one either in a setting that should have been great.

The original subs were definitely part of Tomorrowland. Finding Nemo's Submarine Voyage has nothing "tomorrow" about it. It's kind of cartoony and probably fits better now in the neighboring Fantasyland. Like other Disneyland and DCA attractions, I'll go on Nemo again someday but I won't go out of my way to do it and certainly won't wait an hour. My best chance of getting back in one of those subs is if someone asks, the line is fairly short, and I'm in a pretty good mood.

Last Man to the Pirates Party

Mrs. DisneylandTraveler and I saw an extended sneak peak of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides last March at a special preview that was shown weekends in Disneyland before the film was released Memorial Day weekend. It was about a 15 minute segment of the movie that was previewed and with all the other Pirate festivities that went on, the whole thing lasted about 25 minutes or so. Disney castmembers would heard waiting guests every 30 minutes into the cavernous Festival Arena area adjacent to Big Thunder Mountain. I remember the night well because I had to hold Mrs. DLT back from slapping a castmember silly because he told her everyone needed to sit down on the concrete to watch the proceedings. Turns out, there were some benches toward the rear that worked out fine. If there were no benches, I'm sure Mrs. DLT would have been down at Guest Relations giving someone the business because in the 45 minutes we waited for our turn, nobody ever said anything about having to sit on the ground.

Anyway, I guess we had intended to POTC: On Stranger Tides when it first came out and it was available in IMAX and 3D versions but for one excuse or another, we just never got around to it. Until today. It was my birthday and I took the day off so me and Mrs. DLT decided get a nice lunch and go see the movie before it completely leaves the theaters. It gets released on DVD and Blu-Ray in October. I thought we would be the only ones in the theater because by now, two months after its release, everybody had probably seen the movie. I was wrong. It wasn't playing in one of the huge theaters in the meglaplex but in our showing, the theater was relatively full. I guess the movie still has some legs.

What about the movie you ask? I think Mrs DLT and I both enjoyed it and I certainly thought it was better than the last installment which I didn't like at all. It was entertaining and if you had to nit-pick, I guess you could say the movie dragged in some places and was probably about 30 minutes too long. Just because you have the budget to make a long movie doesn't mean going that route is the wisest thing to do. Keep the movie focused and moving and people would be much happier.

Anyway, as mentioned in a previous post, Disney and Johnny Depp are negotiating for a fifth POTC movie mostly because they keep the fans happy and everyone makes money. Not a bad deal.

Pirates of the Caribbean - the ride - in Disneyland closes from Labor Day until Thanksgiving Day for refurbishment. Time to give this Pirate stuff a rest for awhile.

A fake Captain Jack - Disneyland - March 2011

The Story of a Mean Ol' Castmember

The little boy in the picture above is my great nephew at the Hungry Bear restaurant taken back in 2007. I think he had just turned 3 or 4 years old at the time. At some point during the trip, we stopped off at a bench near the hub to rest a bit. My great nephew asked if he could get some popcorn from the popcorn cart about 20 ft away from the bench we were sitting. The bench and the popcorn cart were in direct site of each other.

So I gave my great nephew some money and had my son walk over with him to get his box of popcorn. My great nephew gave the popcorn guy his money, got his popcorn and his change. They proceeded to walk back to the bench where we were sitting. Being a little on the short side at 3 or 4 years old, my great nephew had to hop up a bit to get on the bench. In process of hopping on the bench, his popcorn spilled. I told my son to take my great nephew back to the popcorn cart and see if the popcorn guy would refill it. The popcorn guy could plainly see the spilled box of popcorn all over the ground. They came back a minute later and said the popcorn guy told them "I'm not allowed to do that".

Now I have heard about Disneyland popcorn scammers, people who will buy popcorn, get out of view and eat it very quickly or dump it in another container only to go back and tell the popcorn castmember that they just bought it and dropped and ask for a refill. I have had people personally tell me this works. So in my case, I can see the point of the popcorn guy saying "I'm not all allowed to do that (refill a box)". He's a kid, probably his job, and just doing what he's told. But for the love a god, a little boy drops a box of popcorn in plain site and you won't give him a refill. As I said before, Disneyland castmembers are some the nicest friendliest employees anywhere. But not all of them. They took a bit of hit that day.