it's a small world at Christmas

What is your favorite thing to see and enjoy at Disneyland during the Christmas season? It is the giant Christmas tree on Main St. with all the accompanying Main St. decorations? Is it the lighting of the winter castle and seeing it "snow"? Is it seeing A Christmas Fantasy Parade"? Perhaps it is taking your child to see Santa at Disneyland within the confines of the Reindeer Roundup. How about the charm and detail of the exquisitely decorated New Orleans Square? You need to see all of them during a holiday visit of course but for me, tops on the list, is standing in amazement before the dazzling light display of it's a small world in the cool of a December evening then making my way down to the boats for journey of wonderful holiday cheer.

They shut down iasw for 3 weeks to install the holiday overlay, usually the last week or so of October and the first part of November. The time the ride is down is a small price to pay for what can be seen and marveled at once it returns in all its festive Christmas glory. Disney Parks Blog posted a video of cast members working on the overlay installation and you can see their attention to detail

For most of the year, it's a small world, sits as a majestic iconic Disneyland attraction - important but just not enough there to make it into anyone's top 5 or maybe even top 10 favorite Disneyland attractions. Some people avoid the thing altogether because the insipid song that plays for all 13 minutes of the ride can be beat head against the wall time when the ride is through.  But it all changes during the holidays when it's a small world transform into wondrous holiday magic not to be missed or experienced.

A Vicarious DCA Moment Through Texting

Remember when (and I'm talking only about 10 or 15 years ago) you couldn't wait to get back home from a trip to Disneyland to share your fun, memories, and experiences with your friends and family members. You brought back pictures (once they were developed), maybe some home videos, and assorted park souvenirs to share your adventures in Disneyland with others.

I'm sitting here at home last Sunday night watching The Simpsons and my cell phone makes its little sound when it gets text message. It was from my niece and her daughter "We're just got in line for the Tower of Terror and were just thinking of you". It was my niece who first got me to go on the TOT several years ago when every instinct in me said "No way man....". We had a great fall down the elevator shaft, screaming and laughing all the way. Anyway, I checked MouseWaits on my phone told her the wait time was 38 minutes and to "have a nice scream". So here I am, 434 miles away, and living my normal life when I get to share vicariously a Disneyland moment with my niece and her daughter. Nice.

Heck, when my friend Mike went to Disneyland back in September, he would text me back pictures at work of him just standing in line. I told him to. I haven't figured out if asking to text you back pictures of you standing in line for a ride is some kind of sickness or not.

Are You Sure About This Cars Land Thing?

Disney has got several hundred million bucks invested in this Cars Land expansion and without a doubt the pictures that are still coming out of the soon to be opened land (June 2012) show a level of detail that is second to none. A reasonably close rendition of Radiator Springs will spring to life but is Disney sure about hitching something that is supposed to last generations to the Cars movie franchise?

I watched Cars 2 on blu-ray last night. Without a doubt, it is the worst thing from Pixar that I have seen (my previous Pixar low water mark was Finding Nemo). Now to be fair, the computer generated graphics and especially the use of color, light, and reflection are eye popping but there is a movie behind dazzling colors and that movie isn't very good. I could go on and on about why I didn't like it but it comes down to too much Larry the Cable Guy and taking the simple charm of the original Cars on a globe trotting spy chase almost seems like something that would come out of an old copy of Mad Magazine.

It was fun to see the Radiator Springs on the screen (what little of it there was) and compare it to what is being built in Southern California but building a land on the movie franchise where its last effort was horrid seems a bit of a head scratcher. The original concept of Cars land wasn't based on the movie at all but the original Route 66 that wound its way half way across this country once upon a time. But Disney in their never ending quest to tie their brands and franchises together in profitable packages moved into the Pixar Cars realm. Hopefully Cars Land comes together better than Cars 2 the movie.

A Bug's Land Christmas

I've said it before in this blog and I'll say it again - it irks me to no end when a read in Disneyland discussion boards, forums, and blogs how they need to get rid of A Bug's Land and put in something better. When people post things like this what they usually mean is "I'm too old for anything in A Bug's Land to interest me - put in something that I might actually want to go on". Me, me, me.... it's the same old story. Stop it. A Bug's Land is fine for what it is and now that it's Christmas time the little land for small fries becomes even more charming as everyone gets reduced to "bug size" with all the oversized Christmas decorations. So forget about yourselves and for a few minutes to walk through A Bug's Land this Christmas season and look at the smiles and the joy of those who are just becoming familiar with the world around them. It's a land of sweetness and charm and occupies such a small space that it shouldn't cause anyone any grief and might actually bring some joy.

The Christmas Spirit - Disneyland Style

I think it was 2008 - Mrs. DisneylandTraveler and I made the trip down to Disneyland the week before Thanksgiving. I think it may have been one of our best trips ever. We love November at Disneyland - after the decorations go up but before the holiday crowds arrive. And maybe we have been lucky, the November weather at Disneyland for our trips that time of year has been very cooperative with warm days and cool nights, just as it should be. Anyway, we usually made our November trips with other family members but in 2008, it was just me and Mrs. DLT. It was perfect, we arrived on a Sunday afternoon, checked into our hotel, and headed over to Disneyland just before 3:00pm. We walked in right before the start of A Christmas Fantasy Parade and we were able to grap a great spot on the upper level of the train station. Could there be a better way to kick off your holiday season than to see A Christmas Fantasy Parade right when entering the park?

The whole trip was great that way and even though it was before Thanksgiving, everything was filled with the holiday spirit and so were we. I don't even remember us having the usual knock-down-drag-out argument over something stupid like we do on most of our Disneyland trips. The Christmas spirit abounded in so many ways that week.

We had such a good time that when we returned home, settled back, and took a look around at the situation we decided we had the time, the opportunity, and the finances to go back in December as well. We had annual passes, a very great rate was available from one of our favorite places to stay, and everything just seemed to point to going back and continuing our Disney Christmas journey. And so we did - we went back around mid-December before the start of Christmas week.

But we made one fatal error in our Disneyland Christmas Spirit thinking. In November, we went down early, with no real expectations, and the magic of Disneyland at Christmas just overtook in wondrous ways. When we went down a few weeks later in December, we carried the ill-advised plan of "why don't we do our Christmas shopping while down at Disneyland?". Most everyone is our family is some kind of Disney nut so picking up some gifts should be no problem, right? Here is my cautionary tale.

Disneyland is a great way to enhance the Christmas experience and if you let its magical arms wrap around you and carry you way Christmas nirvana. If you walk in there with a list of names, and a Christmas budget, and trudge from store to store looking at everything from top to bottom and checking price tags on everything, a lot of that magic is taken away by the shear commercialism of it all. It became a little unsettling for me. Not that we didn't have a good time but the fact that one of the reasons I was there was to shop, took away a bit from my Christmas Spirit. 

Did I also mention that the weather from the November trip a few week earlier and December trip took a 180 degree turn and turned rainy, cold, and miserable? Well, we could put up with that to a certain extent but its holding up some item in a store and debating for 10 minutes as to whether this would be a good gift for so and so proved be the trips downing moments. 

As it turned out, everyone loved their gifts. Mrs DLT and I had got so frustrated that at the end of the trip we ended up getting all kid's toys on our list at the now defunct Engine-Ears-Toys in DCA in about 30 minutes after spending hours on previous days trying to pick out the elusive perfect gift but it all worked out in the end. One of my new rules for Disneyland at Christmas is if you see something someone may like on a trip through a store - get it but do not make the purpose of a trip to Disneyland to Christmas shop - you'll be sorry. I was.

Remembering Roller Coaster Tycoon

Do you remember the computer game Roller Coaster Tycoon that was quite popular a few years back?  It was a game that gave everyone a chance to be a Walt Disney Imgineer and build their own theme parks.  Of course if you were a Disneyland fan, you always wanted to build your park with Disneyland as your template and try to outdo what Walt did even though the game was built more with the generic "Six Flags" theming rather than the copyrighted and patented (i.e. expensive) Disney theming.  Anyway, the first two versions of Roller Coaster Tycoon where quite fun and charming.  By the time they got to the the more complex and graphics intensive third version of the game, it seemed to have lost much of its charm. Funny how that happens.

Anyway, I bring the game up because there was a thread on the MousePlanet discussion board about just how terror inducing was Mickey's Fun Wheel, in particular the swing cars. It got me to think about my first trip on MFW a few years ago.  I avoided the ride for years because I do have a fear of heights and carnival type ferris wheels.  My sister finally talked me into going on it - just stay away from the swing cars and get on the fixed car side of the ride.  I did and surprisingly, really enjoyed my 3 spins around.  But while standing in line for the ride on a subsequent trip I glanced over at the car loading area and saw a custodial cast member apparently doing some clean up on the bottom of one of the non-swinging cars (pictured above).  Word was quickly passed through the line of guests waiting to get on that someone had deposited a rather large "mess" (i.e barfed) on the bottom of the car.  Even more surprising was the CM was in the car cleaning the residual so fast, the ride barely skipped a beat.  One can only assume that this happens quite often and someone from the custodial staff is always near the ride.

So what does this have to do with the Roller Coaster Tycoon computer game?  Anyone who ever played the games knew that you needed a small army of custodial workers built up as soon as you could afford to pay them.  Without them, the walkways became littered with little puddles of vomit near terror inducing rides.  As the number of puddles grew, the guests would begin complaining and your park rating would go down.

Now neither Disneyland or DCA have a plethora of vomit inducing coasters or thrill rides fortunately.  Mickey's Fun Wheel, though neither a coaster or a true "thrill" ride, may come the closest though some people have issues with the Tower of Terror, Californial Sceamin', Space Mountain, and the Tea Cups of all things.  But fortunately, Disneyland does have an army of custodial workers scouring the premises for any "deposits" one may accidently heave up.

The Return of the Disneyland Hotel

It's taken a few years but the construction walls have been taken down, the assorted bulldozers and cranes have been removed, and finally the new and improved Disneyland Hotel is back in full operation (almost).  Well there is that sticking point of an on premises laundry facility not quite ready just yet - a deal breaker for Mrs. DisneylandTraveler - but other than that, the venerable DLH is back in business and updated for the 21st century.

Gone are sliding doors and the mini-balconies, the romantic waterfalls, the koi pond, the remote control boats, the Lost Bar, the Peter Pan pool, the giant Mickey Mouse statue to greet you, and the remnants of Dancing Waters.  In their places come all new rooms and lobbies, new expanses of lawns and tropical landscaping, an E-Ticket pool with an adjoining monorail themed water-slide, Trader Sam's, and a host of new details and touches.  Is all this change for the good?  Probably.  Something needed to be done with the old hotel which started construction back in the 1950's.  It needed to be brought up-to-date and modernized for a new generation of high-rolling park vacationers.  But at the same time, many people had a special bond with the old Disneyland Hotel.  Me, Mrs. DLT, and other family members spend many fine days (and nights) at the old DLH.  My claim is that the DLH felt like much more of the magic of Disneyland itself rather than just a hotel.  It had much more Disney charm than even the more costlier, grander, and convenient Grand Californian.  If you could fit it your Disneyland budget, a stay at the DLH was something quite special.

Will the new DLH be the same?  Will it have the same charm and magic?  I think so far the reports are quite good about the changes to the rooms, restaurants, and grounds but it remains to be seen if the new and improved version of the DLH can match what made the old DLH so special for me and Mrs. DLT.  Hopefully we will get back there sometime.

Andrienne Vincent-Phoenix gives a tour of the the hotel in her latest Disneyland Resort Update on MousePlanet.  You can read what she has to say and pictures of the hotel here.