Measors West Coast Marathon - August 2011 - Day Five

[joandwayne]

West Coast Trip Report - Measors West Coast Marathon - August 2011 - Day Five - Disneyland


Me – Jo – 41 – I am absolutely mad about everything to do with Disney. We have had some of our best family holidays in Florida and I love theme parks and rides. We love travelling, as a family, and our holidays are our highlights of our year. I am the holiday organiser and planner and just let everybody else know where we are going.

DH – Wayne – 40 – DH celebrated his 40th birthday this year and so he wanted a couple of special holidays (like I did for my 40th last year). Loves Disney and Florida and rides like the rest of the family but will only agree to Florida every other year as he likes to visit other parts of the World in between. Doesn’t like to get involved in planning and organising – normally just pays for everything!

DS – Matt – 15 – Matt is the rollercoaster fan in the family. He knows all of the rollercoasters in the World and his ambition is to visit every Six Flags theme park in America. Having been to New Jersey Six Flags, this West Coast Trip promised to add another Six Flags to his list, which is Valencia in LA.

DD – Rachel – 12 – Rachel is another ride fanatic! She is not scared of anything and will ride anything that the rest of the family will do. Rachel also loves travelling and enjoys visiting historical places and Cities.


Woke up this morning and it was quite a cloudy day. It was a little bit cool too – although we soon realised this was a common theme being on the coast. Not much point in having a chill day around the pool if there was no sun so, WE WENT TO DISNEYLAND! YAYYYYY!

We had slept until quite late thinking we were not going anywhere today so it was about 11 before we set off to Disneyland. I had bought 5 day Park Hopper passes – we knew we would only use 3 days but it was only £6 extra each for a 5 day pass so I thought it made sense to get the extra days just incase we did need them.

I had read lots of Trip Reports saying Disneyland is very different to WDW and that the CM’s and other people were not as friendly so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I probably had made it worse in my mind than it actually needed to be. It was only a 15 minute drive to Anaheim and Disneyland from our hotel in Huntington Beach. First difference is car park – felt like we were at Universal Studios cos we parked in a huge multi-storey car park. Down the escalators and straight onto the trams which took you to one stop – the same stop for whether you were visiting Disneyland and Disney’s California Adventure. When we got off the tram we were surprised how close everything is to each other – DTD, DL and DCA all walking distance from each other.

Let me tell you now, that from this moment when I entered the gates to DL, I absolutely totally felt like I was in Disney. It felt just as magical, just as special and just as amazing as any time I have visited WDW. CM’s were excellent – more helpful and friendly than WDW. More details later but I want to go on record as saying Disneyland California and Disney’s California Adventure were super awesome. By now, all of the clouds had gone and it was a glorious sunny day - very warm!







First impressions, as everyone says, is that the castle is very small. But other than that everything is pretty much the same. This park seems like everything is closer together but it just felt like being in Magic Kingdom.






We have never visited Disney in Summer – we normally go in October to Florida – so we expected the parks to be horrendously busy. They were very very busy but manageable. We decided that the rides we would focus on would be those that we haven’t done at WDW. I wasn’t allowed to go on any of the Fantasyland ‘baby’ rides as my family call them – but we did sneek in a quick Winne the Pooh ride and a Snow White ride. First stop was Thunder Mountain railroad which only had a 30 minute wait. Grabbed a fastpass so we could go straight back on and then queued for the ride. This was every bit as good as WDW and we all enjoyed it.



Next we went to Splash Mountain which had a 120 minute queue – no way we were going to stand in that! At this point we had begun to notice that most of the ride queues were outside in the blazing sun. Not really like Florida where you can stand in line in a cool air conditioned building for lots of the rides. So we grabbed an early evening fastpass and grabbed some lunch.

Next we headed for Haunted Mansion which only had a 20 minute wait – great ride and pretty much the same as WDW only the actual building from the outside didn't look scary or haunted at all. The outside theming in WDW is much better than here - even though this building was quite beautiful - it just wasn't scary from the outside.



After that we headed to Pirates of the Caribbean - 20 minute wait time – so we rode this and absolutely loved it. Much better than the version at WDW. It was great!

Next on our list was Indiana Jones – we hadn’t been on this before and expected a ‘Dinsoaur’ type ride as you are in the same type of cars. Supposed to be a 40 minute wait (which is our limit, by the way – won’t queue longer than 40 minutes) but the ride broke down as we got nearer the front so we ended up queueing close to an hour. Still, it was worth it. This was a great ride and we really enjoyed it.



Next we headed to Tomorrowland and we were all disappointed to find that Space Mountain was broken and not running. So we decided to ride Buzz Lightyear – same as WDW but your laser guns are not attached to the car so you could get better scores.






Back to splash mountain by then to ride with our fastpasses and we still had a 20 minute queue with our fastpass! It was a great ride though – we all enjoyed it more than WDW.





Didn’t see any characters on our whole trip = having been to WDW last October, we didn’t feel the need to spend any time with characters.

By now we were tired and hot and were all very pleased with the number of rides we had done, given that we didn’t get to the park until lunchtime.



All in all, we had a great day at Disneyland – felt the only ride we didn’t do that we wanted to was Space Mountain so we would call back on our next visit to ride Space Mountain. DH called in one of the shops on Main Street for a coffee on the way out and had a particularly long wait and was served by a rather unpleasant person. He expressed his disappointment at City Hall on the way out of the park and they were amazing – they gave us 4 fastpasses each to be used on our next visit to the park – whether this was DL or DCA, it didn’t matter.

We stopped at Olive Garden on our way home for dinner – lovely meal but we were all too tired to really enjoy it.

To sum up = Disneyland is not all that different to WDW – we loved it!

[KarenG]

What a wonderful day. I'm really interested to see what you thought the differences were, pros and cons etc. I'm with you on all of them, I think.

We did the same with the five day tickets, and upgraded to six. We didn't use day six in the end but it was literally four pounds extra each, so well worth it "just in case"!

[MFras23]

Glad you enjoyed it as much as WDW. Can't imagine it somehow! The castle there does make me laugh though, but I guess it was the original!

[Cyclospora]

Really enjoying your trippy - it's bringing back lots of lovely memories

[Guest]

Another great report! Glad you enjoyed Disneyland, it looks really good!

[Guest]

with splash mountain and thunder mountain it looks not that disimilar to dl paris i liked the paris park but cannot abide the staff in paris so it's good to hear that the cast members here are mostly great, i have read a lot that they want you to have a magical day so i'm hoping it will be so for us, we really only have two days to do it all ? i'm hoping you come back and tell me it can be done in this time

again you have some lovely family pictures

[Alyson]

Glad you liked it, your day sounded like a lot of fun

[Shmee]

Sounds like you had a fun day.

[chrisdisney]

what a great trip report,we cant wait to visit disneyland next september though a little worried that you didnt see any charcters?

[joandwayne]

There were some characters around but it wasn't a priority fog us to stand in line for pictures with them - done that many times before and was in WDW Florida last October. Would have liked to see Mickey that talks with moving mouth but not enough time.