When Can We Do This Again? A TCD Disneyland Double Dip

[Beckers 1,136]

Oh and the Elsa deal, I think the white hair looks awful and none of the Elsa I saw looked great. Honestly the best Elsa I ever saw was Holly Madison who was a playboy bunny. And no, she was not "being a bunny" while dresses as Elsa.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2814852/Holly-Madison-little-princess-Rainbow-Aurora-wear-matching-Frozen-costumes-pumpkin-patch-Las-Vegas.html

[bhall 115]

Oh and the Elsa deal, I think the white hair looks awful and none of the Elsa I saw looked great. Honestly the best Elsa I ever saw was Holly Madison who was a playboy bunny. And no, she was not "being a bunny" while dresses as Elsa.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2814852/Holly-Madison-little-princess-Rainbow-Aurora-wear-matching-Frozen-costumes-pumpkin-patch-Las-Vegas.html

 

I thought Katja Glieson nailed it on the Princess Rap Battle on Youtube

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Great post and I have some comments.

 

I'll work in reverse order.

 

We skipped MK that Friday but were there on Saturday.  

 

At one point after dark we wanted to use the by pass and it was closed, which we thought was real strange, another time they were only letting people walk one direction (out). 

 

We also had quick trips with bag check at MK that week, like you said they had the gates full staffed and we never waited in line there.  Epcot had the only slow bag check i can remember and it wasn't too bad.

 

The quiet pool at the Wilderness Lodge Villas is completely gone a long with quite a few trees, we walked by it twice and W loves to point out the tractors/excavators.

 

We used the extra MB trick at MK also and were able to score some great FPs on the same day during Thanksgiving week.  Of course I did it before 10am both mornings but still we were even able to get 7DMT and Space Mountain.  Using the trick, our official ones, and rider swap passes we had tons of FP+.  It got to the point where one day I had to write them down to keep track, lol.  

 

We also "wasted" a FP+ on Wishes Saturday night and we are now big fans!  CP didn't even want to stay for Wishes but then I told her about being able to sit on the fake grass so she agreed to try it and it turned out great!

 

WBI

 

Thanks for sharing all of that.  I find it all interesting.

 

I think the issue with the bypass not being open at certain times is one of staffing.  They need to have CM's available to direct traffic in there, and if they don't have CM's scheduled to do that, then they don't open it- even when it really needs to be open.  Very dumb on their part.  But, what else is new?

 

Wow, I didn't know they were ripping out the whole quiet pool at the Lodge. That pool was pretty nice.  I suppose they're going to be building a nicer one as an amenity to help sell those new time share units they're building.

 

Good job with the FP hacks. I am surprised that there were still day-of FP+'s for Mine Train, but it also shows that they do hold some back.

 

I still say it's a big waste of a FP+ choice to use one for Wishes.  But, if you have some you can waste, it is really nice to be in that controlled area instead of out in the mob.

 

I'm sorry that I didn't get to see you and the fam.  I thought about stopping by the Fort for a quick look around, but we just didn't have time on this trip.

 

 

I forgot to comment on this.  Because of all my FP+ management I had to use my phone a lot this trip (in Magic Kingdom) and I hated it!  We used to have a no phone rule in DisneyWorld but now that's gone.   Because of DIsney andthe fact that we wanted to maximize our FP and ride expereince we had to use mine for MDE.  

 

To CP's credit she didn't bring her phone in the parks.

 

I can honestly say there were a few times I was standing next to something awesome staring at my phone trying to adjust FP.  That was not fun and I remember catching myself and putting the phone away so I could enjoy the moment and not worry about the next ride. 

 

But you are right add Disney's MDE on top of people's already digital world and people are going to be staring at phones a lot!

It's gotten really bad with people and their phones. A new pet peeve of mine is the folks who slowly plow forward pushing strollers while looking at their phones. They slow down traffic, and are apt to run into other guests. But, they have the stroller to hold on to, so it's not going to hurt them.

 

 

 

I'm guessing she's a Skywalker, Luke's daughter.  There was a toy picture leaked today...

 

WBI

I kind of thought that too. That she would be part of the Skywalker bloodline. I think some character will be. And, I didn't think that African American young man looked like he was half Skywalker. 

 

But the twins pointed out to me that if her mom is Princess Leia, and her dad Han Solo, then she is part of the Skywalker bloodline.

We will all know if a few days.

Parking at a resort to skip out on paying parking wrong. If your annual pass covers parking, I don't see it as wrong.

They didn't have the bypass open every night we were there and the one night it really needed to be. Plus we assumed it would be, fought our way over and it was closed. I wasn't saying very magical things at that point.

I bought my parents a Christmas ornament at Starbucks, it was next to all the other Christmas labled things. I think people need to focus their time and energy on more useful things. However, the plain red cups are ugly.

Yeah, I can park at the parks for free with my AP, but we like to hop, and I'm not always sure if we will or not. I'd rather have my car at a resort rather than having to head back to a park to get it. Plus, I really do like to eat at the resort restaurants rather than the park quick serves. The prices are the same, but the resorts are so much calmer.

 

 

Oh and the Elsa deal, I think the white hair looks awful and none of the Elsa I saw looked great. Honestly the best Elsa I ever saw was Holly Madison who was a playboy bunny. And no, she was not "being a bunny" while dresses as Elsa.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2814852/Holly-Madison-little-princess-Rainbow-Aurora-wear-matching-Frozen-costumes-pumpkin-patch-Las-Vegas.html

Yeah, that's a better Elsa than you will see in the parks.

Frankly, it looks like they will hire any girl who will fit in the dress, and then slap a wig on her along with a lot of makeup and hope for the best.

 

 

I thought Katja Glieson nailed it on the Princess Rap Battle on Youtube

I have never heard of this, and don't understand it. But, it looks interesting.

TCD

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

I have one more batch of bonus photos to share, and then that will be it.

 

The twins will not be home from Disneyland until January 3, so there will be no more trips involving them for the rest of this year.

 

My oldest daughter has a week off starting on Christmas Eve, but thinks that she can work remotely for a few days next week, and may be home as early as this weekend.  IF that happens, then there may be a WDW trip to see the Christmas parade and Holiday Wishes this coming weekend.

 

But, for now, this is all I have left.

 

These are from Friday, November 27.

 

We are heading to use our first FP+ at the Mine Train.  Again, it is pretty remarkable that you can snag FP+'s for an attraction like this with very little lead time.  Now, we were a party of two.  I don't think it's likely to get FP+'s for larger parties during busy times with such short notice.

 

I like all the wide and open paths that have been created by the Hub expansion.  And, as you can see here, they've replaced some of the trees that they chopped down:

 

 

The work around the castle was still not quite done.  The ramp on the right side as you face the castle was still blocked off with these handy bushes on wheels:

 

 

But, those bushes on wheels are a sure sign that they're almost done. These usually show up at the very end of a project, and then are wheeled away to let guests in.  There were a lot of bushes on wheels around when they were finishing up all that New Fantasyland stuff.  And, I'll bet there will be lots of bushes on wheels around Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios in 2016.

 

Those bushes on wheels do not block the view so much.  Here's a look at the ramp taken through the bushes- you can see that there are a few things left to finish, and a couple of tool boxes are there on the left:

 

 

Here's a look at the front of the castle, as we walked across to the ramp on the other side.  You can see that there's some greenery across the front edge of the stage, but not much else in terms of holiday decorations.  Interestingly, 2e will be back here later in this very same post, and there will be some more to look at then:

 

 

It's been a while since we've been able to walk through the castle, and there are still some construction walls up top that block the view down Main Street, but I was able to catch this glimpse looking back down the street.  Main Street looks very short when you are looking from this direction-look how close the Christmas tree looks:

 

 

Now we're at the Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. If we didn't have FP+'s we'd be looking at an 80 minute wait here:

 

 

I have ridden the Mine Train a lot, but I think I've only been through the standby line three or so times.  And that was only late at night or early in the morning when waits were short.  I cannot imagine standing in that mess over there for over an hour and a half for such a short ride:

 

 

After the Mine Train, we were right on time for our Plaza ADR.  We arrived about 5 minutes early, and then waited a good ten minutes past our ADR time.  And, it wasn't even that busy inside.  I'm not sure what that was all about.  I have noticed, though, that all the CM's in the Plaza move at a very slow pace.

 

We got a nice window seat, and also had a bonus view of this family who loved their hats so much they left them on inside:

 

 

And speaking of guests with their noses buried in their phones, check out Bubba over there in his Camo hat- he's making the most of his time by playing Fruit Ninja while they wait for their meals.

 

We had a pretty sweet view out the window.  The castle show was going on while we were there, and here you can see the fireworks they shoot off during that show.  I wonder what Wishes would look like from here?  I'm thinking that people would stand in front of the windows, and you wouldn't get to see much:

 

 

I had the steak sandwich, and DD had the club.  The food here is really good, and reasonably priced by Disney standards:

 

 

And, it's so much more nice and peaceful to have a server and not have to fight the mobs in the park quick serve restaurants.

 

After a great dinner, it was time for us to ride some rides.  As mentioned earlier, I had some back to back FP+'s now for Pirates, Big Thunder, Jingle Cruise, and then Space Mountain, before we ended up back at the Hub for the fireworks.

 

Pirates was first, so we headed off to Adventureland-  I noticed that this wreath has fake fruit in it- that's a lemon up near the top, and there's an orange over there to the right.  These are in the Hub.  What's with the fake fruit?:

 

 

We walked past the location of the new Skipper's Canteen restaurant.  The construction walls were still up, and I couldn't reach my arms over them for any photos.  But, we did see this balcony:

 

 

That might have been more interesting if I had posted it back in November.  Over this past weekend, they soft opened the restaurant, and the internet is now swamped with photos of the new restaurant.   It looks good.

 

We got to Pirates in plenty of time.

 

Only to find a wall of CM's at the front, and the ride down.

 

In theory, I should have received an email telling me this.

 

But, of course, I didn't:

 

 

The CM's had signs they were holding telling guests where they could use their FP+'s.  The list was kind of lame- Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion, Small World, Little Mermaid, or Buzz.  We already had Jingle Cruise FP+'s, so that didn't help us.  Of course, we could still try to ride Pirates later, too, and that's what we decided we would do.

 

For now, we could head over to Big Thunder, and we did:

 

 

After Big Thunder, we stopped back by Pirates, but it was still closed. We were past our FP+ time now, and I still had not received the email.

 

Our Jingle Cruise FP+'s were good, though, so we rode that.  Our Skipper was very good.  The MK version is not as good as Disneyland's but it's still worth a ride.

 

After Jingle Cruise, we tried Pirates one last time, and it was still down.

 

From what I've heard, this is still an almost daily occurrence.  And, this is after the ride was down all summer to be refurbished.  Bad show.

 

Next up was Space Mountain.

 

So, we headed that way.

 

We wanted to avoid the crowded Hub, so we headed through Fantasyland.  As we walked by Small World, I asked DD if she wanted to use our FP on that.  Normally, I never would, but I didn't think we would want to walk back to Pirates again, and we were right here, so we did.

 

I wish that MK would do a holiday overlay here like Disneyland does.  Our ride is so blah compared to theirs.

 

When we were in Disneyland Paris, DD and I laughed at the stereotypes of Americans that they showed in their Small World ride.  DD pointed out to me that there are some possible offensive stereotypes in our version too.  Like, check out this Eskimo (sorry, I know that word is offensive to Eskimos) holding a fish.  Really?:

 

 

Small World was really crowed, and we had to wait quite a bit at the end just for our boat to finally get to the exit.  What a mess.

 

When we emerged back in the park, it was obviously still really crowded, and we assessed our situation.  We still wanted to go to the Osborne Lights, and we would be heading back home tonight.  Plus, we would be up early in the morning to drive to Gainesville to see a football game that I don't want to talk about.  So, we decided to skip our Space Mountain FP, and also our Wishes FP, and instead head over to DHS now.

 

As we made our way out, though, we realized that it was almost time for the Frozen Holiday Wish Castle Lighting show, and DD had not seen that yet this year.  It would only take us a few minutes to stop and watch, so we did.

 

We got a good spot.  Well, as good as could be expected.  You can see that there is an iPad photographer on the left, and a KOS (Kid on Shoulders) on the right.  But, still, not bad:

 

 

We met someone new this time around, though.  ALTFPOK.  That's Annoying Lady Taking Flash Photos of Kid.  She was turned around, looking toward us, and her flash was going off right in our eyes:

 

 

But, the show started, and we could see pretty good.  Right up until we got this KOS nearly right in front of us blocking our view of the right part of the stage:

 

 

Oh well, we're used to it.

 

This photo of the actual lighting still came out pretty cool:

 

BTW- did you notice how there are Christmas trees and garland on the castle stage when that stuff wasn't there earlier in the afternoon? They had stagehands set that all up after the last regular castle show. Seems like a lot of extra work to me, but I guess those props don't fit in with the regular show, so they set it up and take it down every night.

 

We then bussed it over to DHS.

 

It wasn't too bad.  There was already a small group of folks at the bus stop when we got there.  That's actually a good sign, as it meant we didn't just miss a bus.

 

The lights were busy, as they have been all year this year:

 

 

We looked around for the black cat, and couldn't find it initially.  We did find the Arkansas Razorback:

 

 

And then we found the cat:

 

 

And some puppies:

 

 

There was a bit of space that made us feel less claustrophobic at the end of the street with the canopy:

 

 

I've always liked this snowman:

 

 

And, I really like the canopy:

 

 

It wouldn't be a TCD TR without a bad selfie, would it?:

 

 

This wagon is down at the end of the street near those Dalmatian puppies- I never noticed the names written on the sidewalk before.  I'm sure there is some significance to these names, but I don't what these names mean:

 

 

There are things that I've noticed this year that I've never noticed before.  Like, over here on this ledge, there's a light-up Kermit the Frog.  I don't recall ever seeing him before:

 

 

And this window features two light sabers and some kind of Star Wars insignia:

 

 

After this, we headed out, got back to the car, and headed west.

 

I am hoping to see the Osborne Lights another time or two before they end this year.

 

But, that's all I have for now.

 

And I guess this is really the end of this TR.

 

TCD

[ependydad...Doug 176]

And then we found the cat:

 

I was always terrible with those "look and find" books... but man, I'm not seeing the cat.

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

I was always terrible with those "look and find" books... but man, I'm not seeing the cat.

You need to know what you're looking for.

This is the cat in another location:

 

:

 

 

Now, look to the right of the police scooter, along the wall in this photo- do you see the cat now?  Surely you can see its orange eyes and mouth?:

 

TCD

[ependydad...Doug 176]

Thanks, TCD. I see it now.

[ependydad...Doug 176]

Thanks, TCD. I see it now.

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Thanks, TCD. I see it now.

 

Good man.

 

By the way, I meant to ask if Where's Waldo is still a thing?

 

Man, I HATED those books.  Stupid Waldo.  Who cares where he is, let's get on with it.

 

TCD

[ependydad...Doug 176]

Good man.

 

By the way, I meant to ask if Where's Waldo is still a thing?

 

Man, I HATED those books.  Stupid Waldo.  Who cares where he is, let's get on with it.

 

TCD

Not sure if they specifically are a thing, but we have a variety of "Find it" books- mostly Disney-related. My wife is remarkably good and can usually pickout things in moments. My 3 year old is actually quite adept at them. My daughter and I.. yeah, not so much!

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

The Plaza Restaurant is one of my favorite places to eat.  That steak sandwich looks great.  Will have to try it sometime.

[Krynnalynn 0]

Hi TCD.  I'm a little late to your trip report but feel the need to respond so I can get my post count up to four now!  It was really nice meeting you. 

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Hi TCD.  I'm a little late to your trip report but feel the need to respond so I can get my post count up to four now!  It was really nice meeting you. 

 

Awesome!

 

Four posts!

 

And, it was great to meet you too.

 

Do you have any more Run Disney events planned for 2016?

 

TCD

[fowlandfishmommy 10]

Hi, I'm still reading back on page 6 but had some questions.  Our littlest guy will need ear reconstruction surgery in a few years and we are pretty sure we will be using a surgeon in LA. Most likely we will all go there for the two week stay and daddy will go home after a few days and I'll be there with the kids. I know LA is an hour away, but I thought we could taxi it or something for our one appointment before we leave for home. I want to stay somewhere that we can walk everywhere and have plenty to do when it is just the boys and I.  I'm thinking this is might be a good idea. And those bunk beds would be perfect for us. Although the rates I saw there were $200 a night. So do you think us walking around from Downtown Disney to the Park Vue at night would be safe for us? Any other ideas of stuff to do right there? Although since we will be in LA for four weeks total that year I'm not opposed to annual passes. ?

[mouseketab.....Carol 1,261]

There are literally thousands of tourists walking around the area just like yourself at all hours of the day and night. The area is very pedestrian friendly. If you are willing to drive at all, there are also many rental car places right around the hotels there, where you could walk to, rent a car for a day, go to your appt, then turn in the car.

[keith_h 420]

Carol's has a good idea on renting a car. You are also pretty close to many of the SoCal beaches but you will need a car to get to them. You are also about 2 hours away from San Diego which has a great zoo and would be worth considering driving down for a couple of nights so you aren't spending 2 hours driving back in the car with the kids after a long day. The only thing to keep in mind if you do decide to do some driving is that the freeways become parking lots during certain times of day or after accidents so plan any trips accordingly. 

[fowlandfishmommy 10]

Thanks.  I think I prefer to do the driving trips with my husband there.  I really don't want to rent a car and drive on the free way in LA by myself with three kids.  I know I can do it, I just don't want to.  :)  I think we would have plenty to do in the Disney Land area and swimming in the hotel pool.  It will be a very expensive year but it just might be a good idea to get the season tickets.  We'll see.  Thanks for the input. 

[mouseketab.....Carol 1,261]

In that case, just use Uber for your appointment.

[AC in A2......Aaron 693]

Finally read this TR.

 

Another nice addition to the TCD TR library!

[caveat lector 181]

22 hours ago, AC in A2 said:

Finally read this TR.

 

Another nice addition to the TCD TR library!

Agreed. The man puts out a quality product.