Sarah and I hadn’t been to Disneyland in more than five years. There has been a lot of changes since then. For starters, back then California Adventure was a big hole in the ground and I don’t even remember hearing anything about Downtown Disney back then. We also visited Medieval Times for dinner one night. Perhaps the biggest change on this trip is that we didn’t have a two year old with us 🙂 Running around the parks with Alice adds a whole new perspective.
Two things that I really wish I’d brought with me, sleeping bags (because hotel blankets really aren’t very soft) and something to sooth my throat (three days of screaming and talking over all the background noise). Other than everything was pretty well prepared on this trip. If only the traffic in LA hadn’t been as helpful 🙁
There were a lot of changes to Disneyland, some pretty big, some fairly small. Fast pass is a winner! Most of the time there was still a little bit of a line even when using fast pass, but it was always much faster than going with out one. With fast pass you go and pick up a ticket at a ride, the ticket gives you a time (an hour period) that you can return to the ride using the fast pass line, which by passes most of the waiting in line. Normally you can only get one fast pass ticket at a time. Once the hour period that your fast pass ticket is good for starts you can get another one. For some reason this restriction wasn’t in place one our first day, so at one point we had four fast pass tickets at one time. For the rest of the week the one pass restriction was in full force. I’m not sure why that happened, but we made good use of it on our first day 🙂
California Adventure has rides that are a little more serious, so if you are looking for more excitement with a little less “story” then you’ll be probably enough it more than Disneyland. The California Screaming roller-coaster is pretty fun, but I made the mistake of riding it right after lunch, not something that I would recommend. The most impressive ride award definitely goes to Soaring Over California. It really does look like you are flying through the air, a little too much for me at times. With the subtle additions of smell to the ride it was really, well, impressive. Tower of Terror is probably the most hyped ride around the park and it is really fun, though not as scary as I though it was going to be. The freakiest thing about that ride is that you can’t tell if you are going to suddenly drop into a free fall go up very, very fast.
Overall Alice seemed to have a pretty good time, though she probably needs another year or two before she can really appreciate Disneyland. Sometimes she was a little nervous and clung to us very closely, other times she was ready to run laps around the park. The morning of our first day there we went without her stroller, that was a mistake. It was much easier on everyone having the stroller, especially if we were in hurry. We never had a problem leaving the stroller out in ‘stroller parking’ outside the rides, it was always there, untouched, at the end of each ride. Alice slept really well during her naps and night time, Disneyland is great for wearing kids out!
I spent a few minutes on Google looking for a blog that focuses on Disneyland, maybe some pictures and notes about the changes that are going on. I couldn’t find any such beast though. So if someone who lives near to Disneyland is listening, I think this would make a great focus for a blog. Looks like disneylandwatch.com is still available.