Disneyland for beginners

[ependydad...Doug 176]

Nice updates.

 

Yous (did I spell that right?)  must have hit it just right with the crowds.  Matterhorn had a long wait the both of the times I went recently.

 

Your son's face on Splash is a keeper.  LOL.

 

LOL at your comments about Walt riding around the park on dinosaurs.

 

Good job.

 

TCD

The mid-week days were great. The weekend days were quite a bit busier, as would be expected. We avoided going on a Saturday and chose Sunday as her Touring Plans app said the wait times were slightly less.

If you look around my hands, my daughter is making the same basic face. But his is classic!

And DINOSAURS!

[bhall 115]

Did you know that people in southern/central PA say "yous" like it's the plural version of "you"? If you didn't, now you do.)

 

The fish face panting looks more like a Pepperidge Farm Goldfish then Nemo   Sorry you wasted money on that.  Hopefully your son like it.

 

As for the "yous" can't say I've heard that here.....ever.... and I'm 7-8 miles as the crow flies from the PA/MD border.   Maybe I need to interact with the locals more.

[ependydad...Doug 176]

The fish face panting looks more like a Pepperidge Farm Goldfish then Nemo   Sorry you wasted money on that.  Hopefully your son like it.

 

As for the "yous" can't say I've heard that here.....ever.... and I'm 7-8 miles as the crow flies from the PA/MD border.   Maybe I need to interact with the locals more.

Maybe the "yous" thing is a York, PA thing. I know my family and friends all said it- makes me crazy to hear it.

He liked it at first and then stopped liking it after it had to be redone (thanks Soak Mountain). Apparently the 2nd person didn't do it right! But still, I think it was something crazy like $16/each!

[sherryberry 35]

I agree about Matterhorn - ouch! I loved Pirates at Disneyland. You got some great pictures of all of the decorations at Haunted Mansion! Damn, I wish I was there right now!

[sherryberry 35]

I agree about Matterhorn - ouch! I loved Pirates at Disneyland. You got some great pictures of all of the decorations at Haunted Mansion! Damn, I wish I was there right now!

[ependydad...Doug 176]

Moving along, we hit Pirates of the Carribean next. This one starts with quite the pair of hills. Fun but a little splashy- nothing like we've experienced in WDW, though. Unfortunately, I don't know the ride well enough to know what is the same and what's different- but the DL version seems much longer and more elaborate.

In subsequent ridings, I've learned that you can get the people eating their fancy expensive dinners to wave at you if you wave wildly and goofily enough.

My daughter wonders if they ever clean down here:

I do enjoy their projections on water/mist:

La pooch still isn't giving up the keys:

My daughter was mesmerized about how real Jack looks:

Leaving there, my wife dove into what sort of appeared to be a line (there was tape on the ground). She told me to stand there and then went to the stroller to get something. Turns out we were in line for Jack & Sally and she was getting the autograph book. They could have used a little better line management, but once Jack and Sally came out- it moved pretty quick.

I love character interactions where they're allowed to talk so much better than the mute mime experiences. The kids were in love:

And, I did it. Geek me got my picture taken with Jack:

Which, I'm glad I did. It got my girl to speak up that she'd like a picture of just her and Sally:

I was very thankful for this visit. This was the only time that we saw Jack and Sally out. I'm sure if we tried, we could have caught them again. But how wild that they were right there and ready when we came out of Pirates?

Speaking of wild... Club 33 is also there. I hear the buy-in is something like $25-grand and a yearly stipend on top of that. We did get a glance inside as someone came out of the door. Actually, that happened a fair amount- we saw quite a bit of activity of people coming and going during our days at DL. However, he's all that you get:

Our day moved pretty quickly. Before long it was time for Hyperspace Mountain.

I'm not a Starwars geek. I don't own the movies and only ever watched the original 3. I'm confused by all of the new ones.

Anyway, the FastPass option was less than magical. This long line is the FastPass line; the empty line is the standard stand-by smucks and their supposed longer wait. It didn't help that I was having to be on the phone with Sleep Number through out the day and UPS and the last campground we were at all day long. We literally had to step out of line so that I could argue with someone and then in disgust, handed the phone off to my wife.

As you enter the room where you board your rockets, you had a good view of the area. Most riders who came back in were clapping and cheering. I had high hopes that it would be good.

The speakers in the seat backs look like Mickey heads:

I rode with my son and pulled a total "dad" move. After pushing his bar down to a decent level, I thought I'd give it an extra click. Poor boy was wedged in there like there was no tomorrow. By the end of the ride, he said his stomach was hurting him.

Even with that extra snugness, I still kept the DadBelt on him and held onto his leg the whole time. Unfortunately he's too short for the picture- but look at my daughter's face!

My impressions on the first ride is that it was pretty awesome. The Starwars theme and soundtrack were very immersive. I felt like the ride was way smoother than WDW's. (That said, on my second riding a few days later- it felt almost as herky-jerky as WDW's; I don't know if I was just giddy excited the first time and ignored it or what.) And, I liked the side-by-side seating.

What I was very thankful for was that they literally shut down the ride on the next set of cars after we exited. I can't imagine waiting a long time in line to be sent off and REALLY can't imagine being out on the ride and it shutting down.

I have a couple hour gap in my picture taking as I had to run back to the hotel. My soaking from Splash Mountain literally left me with wet pants, shirt, and underroos. If I could have jumped a fence, my walk would have been VERY short. But they frown on that, so I hoofed it further to get to the front gates than from the gates to the hotel (or so I'm guessing). While there, I grabbed clothes for my daughter and son - they were dry but wanted a warmer layer.

Next up in the pictures, it looks like we stopped at It's a Small World. We found that there was a crowd gathered and apparently the lighting of the facade at night is a big to do. I don't recall what went on, but we were there. My son wanted to ride this in the worst way, so we decided a 35 minute wait was acceptable. We look happy, right?

It's really quite extravagant:

I have a lot more pictures on Flickr (click any picture and look at the pictures before/after these), but their Christmas theme-ing is really awesome. I'm very sad that WDW doesn't get anything like this outside of Jingle Cruise.

Does WDW's have the various Disney characters through-out the displays? We saw a good many princesses and other characters:

Back to the themeing...

I took this because of the abhorrent lie. We came to SoCal because it's supposed to be warm. Where's my 75+ degree weather?! (Actually, these first few days while hoteling it was pretty nice. Otherwise, it's been chilly and between now and Christmas, it just gets worse. )

We popped over to Nemo's ride. Let me say, this is corny and cheesey, but I really enjoyed it. They did a great job making you believe that you were diving down in a submarine. What I didn't like was the delay (4-5 minutes) before they let us get off of the ship. My poor wife's claustrophobia started kicking in and she started getting uncomfortable.

She looks so beautiful and happy here (hint: we had just sat down):

Ride pictures are next to impossible to take. But I got a couple of blurry ones:

We got out of there and were ready for the Paint the Night Parade AND we were hungry! I'll post about them in the next update...

[ependydad...Doug 176]

I agree about Matterhorn - ouch! I loved Pirates at Disneyland. You got some great pictures of all of the decorations at Haunted Mansion! Damn, I wish I was there right now!

We keep laughing about when we'll go back!

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

Wow, yous got a lot done!

 

You are correct that the Disneyland Pirates ride is way longer than WDW's.  They have entire elaborate scenes in their Pirate ride that we don't have.  And boats that don't fill with water.   That restaurant you saw is called the Blue Bayou.  We got to eat there on one of our Disneyland visits- very cool place with great food.

 

The Disney World Small World ride does not have the Disney character dolls in it like Disneyland's does.  Nor do we get that holiday overlay, which makes it a totally different ride experience.

 

I felt the same way you did a about Hyperspace Mountain- They did a great job with this, and it also makes it a new ride experience.  At Halloween, they do something called the Ghost Galaxy overlay-which is not as good as the Hyperspace Mountain version, but is still something fun and different.

 

Maybe someday we'll get nice stuff like this at Disney World.  Instead, we get Magic Bands and "free" Photo Pass.  Yay us.

 

TCD

[keith_h 420]

The Blue Bayou restaurant is great. We would always eat there when we went down to SoCal for a visit with family. It was the first place my girls saw fireflies as they don't exist out west. I would also eat there when I lived in SoCal and was taking a date to Disneyland (well before I had met my wife). 

 

I really like the NBC theme. It is something I would like to see if we get a chance to visit California again. Your picture of the FP line shows something I've always had in the back of my mind and that is what happens when everybody has a Fastpass. You might want to copyright that as it would make a great comedy sketch.

[ependydad...Doug 176]

Wow, yous got a lot done!

 

You are correct that the Disneyland Pirates ride is way longer than WDW's.  They have entire elaborate scenes in their Pirate ride that we don't have.  And boats that don't fill with water.   That restaurant you saw is called the Blue Bayou.  We got to eat there on one of our Disneyland visits- very cool place with great food.

 

The Disney World Small World ride does not have the Disney character dolls in it like Disneyland's does.  Nor do we get that holiday overlay, which makes it a totally different ride experience.

 

I felt the same way you did a about Hyperspace Mountain- They did a great job with this, and it also makes it a new ride experience.  At Halloween, they do something called the Ghost Galaxy overlay-which is not as good as the Hyperspace Mountain version, but is still something fun and different.

 

Maybe someday we'll get nice stuff like this at Disney World.  Instead, we get Magic Bands and "free" Photo Pass.  Yay us.

 

TCD

Sounds ilke Blue Bayou is a winner. I wonder if it would be distracting/awkward to have people see you while you eat. But I guess it's no different than eating outside. Like I said, on a subsequent ride- I waved wildly like an idiot and got more than one person to wave back.

 

 

The Blue Bayou restaurant is great. We would always eat there when we went down to SoCal for a visit with family. It was the first place my girls saw fireflies as they don't exist out west. I would also eat there when I lived in SoCal and was taking a date to Disneyland (well before I had met my wife). 

 

I really like the NBC theme. It is something I would like to see if we get a chance to visit California again. Your picture of the FP line shows something I've always had in the back of my mind and that is what happens when everybody has a Fastpass. You might want to copyright that as it would make a great comedy sketch.

Sounds nice. We hit the other New Orleans-like restaurant there for the famed Monte Crisco sandwich. I'll post about it later.

And the NBC stuff was very high on why we scheduled time in December- in order to be able to catch it. Very worthwhile.

[ependydad...Doug 176]

You wouldn't believe the number of photos that I "kept" after culling down the bad ones. I'll work to really skip a bunch of pictures and focus a little more. If you want to see more, just click on any photo and check the others out on Flickr.

We were set for the Paint the Night parade. TCD did a great job showing this parade off in his TR. And really, we enjoyed it.

That morphs into the nighttime fireworks. I think they're called the Disneyland Forever fireworks. To be completely honest, this was easily the top Disney fireworks I've ever seen AND not only that, pretty far up there for one of the best fireworks shows I've seen.

I do have some videos from it. I'll have to find them to link them here.

Now the unpleasant- we were the only section standing for the parade because the "insert unpleasant names" people in front/beside of us were literally the only people we could see who were standing. Unfortunately their standing meant we had to stand which meant the people behind us had to stand. It also meant that my daughter's foot hurt her. She injured it back in April while hiking and it's never been wholly right since then. It hadn't hurt for a while, so we didn't get her a wheelchair for our long day in Disney (pushing 11-12 hours by the time the parade started). Standing for the parade and then standing for the fireworks left her in tears by the end of it. After trying to push our stroller with my daughter in it (11, almost 12)- we spoke to a cast member who tried to radio someone who then sent someone else to get a nurse. We just needed some help getting her most of the way out of the park. The nurses checked her over and then said that they could wheel her out through the Disneyland gates, but not out past the bag check/where the buses are. That was good enough for us as it got us over 1/2 way back to the hotel.

Very professional nurses; very top notch response; very friendly. Very thankful. Apparently they both work at hospitals in ER/urgent care type places. I honestly feel much safer in Disneyland, if something bad were to happen to us.

BUT, we actually had them stop before we got out of Disneyland. Turns out, as my son was playing with the stuff in the stroller, he seems to have lost one of our paper tickets. The one nurse strongly recommended that we don't leave the park and deal with it from the inside. So, while my wife attended to that, I took this picture of the Christmas tree:

Click it and zoom in. Do you see the problem? The mid-part of the tree didn't have working colored lights. It was subtle as there were colored decorations and so many white lights. But, sure enough- it wasn't like the rest of the tree. I was surprised that such a major decoration had such a fail.

While walking back to the hotel, my son fell asleep in his stroller. Here's how he ended up by the time we got to the room:

And, sister quickly joined him:

(Note, not a bruise on his face- left over face paint.)

Thursday, December 3

Today we were headed to Disney's California Adventure.

For anyone who needs to rent a wheel chair, the rental is outside over near Disneyland. My wife had to run back over for it. Fortunately, the crowds were low and there was no line getting back in. It's $32 for the rental, but upon its return, you get refunded $20 essentially making it $12/day.

Right inside, we came across Oswald:

We truly had a hard time deciding what to do as everything had very short wait times. 20 minutes for Soarin', 30 minutes for Radiator Springs ride, you name it. We ultimately decided to grab FastPasses for Radiator Springs and then do some of the smaller attractions. Here we're on Mater's Tractors:

This whole Cars-land is AWESOME. It was easily one of the coolest parks/parts of a park that we've been in. We stoppped and saw Lightning McQueen:

My son was in LOVE:

Before we left, he walked around Lightning with his hand lightly touching him. It was cute.

We headed into Bugville. I seriously want my money back from their "bumper cars". Slow, slow, sssssllllllooooowwwwwww, slow. Not only that, it took longer to load people than the actual ride took.

We road some flying boxes:

Daughter and I rode Tower of Terror. I was surprised at how identical this was to WDW. Funny enough, the woman beside of me was also in a wheelchair and also wearing tye dye. But no relation!

We got a rider switch pass in case my wife wanted to ride it, but ultimately we didn't use it as the ride isn't any different. (My daughter was disappointed- she loves it; but we ran out of time.)

(I do love how much my daughter squeezes onto my arm for this ride. She turned 12 today- I don't have a whole lot of this left.)

Moving right along. There was more phone time with Sleep Number as we sorted things out. At one point, we made a potty stop while I was on the phone and I saw this very lady-like specimen:

We headed back to the Chase character spot. We *just* missed Stitch:

(Look in the background- they double this character spot with a smoking section. And the area reeked. The cast member said we were lucky as it wasn't too bad that day. YUCK!)

But, we did get to see Daisy:

Coming out of there, we happened to walk into a line to see Sully. (Who doesn't do autographs due to his large Monster hands. I wished they did a stamp like some other characters, but alas.)

We got on the Monsters, Inc. dark ride. My son was very concerned it would be scary. TCD described this ride as terrible and unfun (paraphrasing). We enjoyed it. I don't think it's any different than Pooh or the like.

Next up was the Frozen warehouse... err.. ice land. I joke, but we enjoyed it. First we saw Olaf:

Then we sledded down a hill (remarkably fast!) - no pictures.

And then we played in the "snow". We got lucky with timing. They'd just "freshened" up the snow.

If I play my cards right, this will be the only snow the kids see for a long, long, long, long, long time.

Leaving there, we headed to the pier where we rode Goofy's ride. Fun for a mouse coaster. We actually went back and rode this again.

Grabbed a snack.. I don't enjoy corndogs, but the family's consensus is that they like these better than the Disneyland ones.

Next up was Soarin'. It had a 35 minute wait, but we could pull FastPasses for the same length of time. Which meant, we could go do something else. Honestly, I have no idea what we did. But we did it. We did this a few times in different places. Finally back in line:

This is another ride where the FastPass didn't save us a whole lot of actual waiting time.

As expected, the show was very good and film very clean (though, the spots at WDW never bothered me). Identical scenes, though, and that disappointed me. But, I got to sit next to one of my favorite 3 people:

Once we left here, we headed back to Cars-land to redeem our Radiator Springs FastPass. I'll show that in the next update.

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

I am jealous of the uncrowded conditions you enjoyed at California Adventure.  30 minutes for Radiator Springs Racers is pretty rare!

 

I am surprised that you think the DCA Tower of Terror is the same as DHS's.  They don't have the beginning part where your car moves from one shaft to the next, which I think is pretty cool.  Also, they don't have random drop sequences there- every ride is the same series of drops.  This is one California ride that I think is inferior to its Florida counterpart.

 

TCD

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

Great photos!  I'm thoroughly enjoying your TR.

[ependydad...Doug 176]

I am jealous of the uncrowded conditions you enjoyed at California Adventure.  30 minutes for Radiator Springs Racers is pretty rare!

 

I am surprised that you think the DCA Tower of Terror is the same as DHS's.  They don't have the beginning part where your car moves from one shaft to the next, which I think is pretty cool.  Also, they don't have random drop sequences there- every ride is the same series of drops.  This is one California ride that I think is inferior to its Florida counterpart.

 

TCD

Too true about the lack of crowds. If someone wants to go for Christmas decorations, the first week in December on *weekdays* was AWESOME. The weekends crowded back up, but I couldn't believe how little the crowds were. Plus, we lucked into pretty gorgeous weather.

They still did the breaking mirror sequence. Was there more that I'm forgetting? I knew they didn't move from shaft to shaft- but there was still some up/down and theatrics. I didn't pick up on the lack of randomization as we only rode it once.

 

 

Great photos!  I'm thoroughly enjoying your TR.

Thanks, Gwen! It's so hard being selective, but if I'm not- this TR would take forever! I'm still going through and uploading pictures. I think the Flickr album is up over 600 pictures (holy carp).

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

Thanks, Gwen! It's so hard being selective, but if I'm not- this TR would take forever! I'm still going through and uploading pictures. I think the Flickr album is up over 600 pictures (holy carp).

 

Only 600?  Last year I took 5,000 in 3 weeks at WDW.  Try paring that many down!

 

Most of us have never been to DL, so we appreciate seeing all your pictures!

[ependydad...Doug 176]

Only 600?  Last year I took 5,000 in 3 weeks at WDW.  Try paring that many down!

 

Most of us have never been to DL, so we appreciate seeing all your pictures!

600 is the currently running paired down number. :) I took more- but more times than not, it's 7 of the kids at a shot trying to get them looking and not blinking. My son has the attention span of a gnat and his eyes dart every which way. Catching him looking in my direction and moreso his eyes actually at me is always a difficult proposition!

[ependydad...Doug 176]

Only 600?  Last year I took 5,000 in 3 weeks at WDW.  Try paring that many down!

 

Most of us have never been to DL, so we appreciate seeing all your pictures!

600 is the currently running paired down number. :) I took more- but more times than not, it's 7 of the kids at a shot trying to get them looking and not blinking. My son has the attention span of a gnat and his eyes dart every which way. Catching him looking in my direction and moreso his eyes actually at me is always a difficult proposition!

[ependydad...Doug 176]

I started my last update saying that I wasn't going to inundate you with photos, but I seriously love Cars land. It was awesome by day, but at night- just wow. So very cool (even if Disney did let a small fail happen).

We first walked in about 5pm. The sun had just set but it wasn't fully dark yet. As you can see, we had a lot of company. Not crazy crowded, but cozy. There's also nothing too special at the start. In fact, this is kind of terrible photo and a waste of one of my 30. But here you go:

Once you get to the buildings, it starts to liven up:

The Crazy Cone motel and meet and greet looked fantastic:

But, where they really shine (and fail) is with Flo's V8 Cafe:

Yep, "Cafe" is burnt out. I wondered if it blinked and watched it for a bit- no love. Even worse, we were back a week later and it was still burnt out.

But, they still killed it. Just amazing:

Luigi's. The ride is closed for renovation, but the exterior is still open and looks great.

Ramones:

Looking back at Flo's is such a better view with the whole sign lit:

Townhall/courthouse/sherrif/I don't know what they call this:

And, ultimately- our destination. The Radiator Springs ride!

TCD, look at this wait time. This photo was taken at "2015:12:03 17:07:44". Yep, 5pm and it's a 30 minute wait!

The themeing of the queue, the ride, and the whole experience were absolutely stellar and beyond anything that I've seen anywhere else ('cept for maybe Universal and the Hairy Potter stuff- and we haven't even been back to see Diagon Ally).

Since we had the wheel chair, we were pushed to a separate line. They didn't cheap out on the decorations over here and actually had a pretty decent setup. Separate entry/exit. The only real downside was that we didn't have someone to race against on this ride. That really ups the fun factor (we got to a week later when we came back).

Random strangers in a ride car. It's amazing what low light and a little panning looks like:

(Seriously, they're going very slow- this is taking them to the exit of the ride after a mini-traffic jam.)

Pretty snazzy view of the ride:

And we're in! In a surprise turn, brother wanted to ride with sister. Momma wasn't wholly comfortable but finally gave in when she realized we'd get some alone time in the backseat! WOOT! WOOT!

See how lovey we are? We left an empty seat between us.

Riding along:

Minor traffic jam as they did their seat belt check. The ride is built on the same platform as Test Track in Epcot... only, this one is awesome.

And that's the last photo that I took as I filmed the whole ride. It's a little dark and that makes it disconcerting at times. Overall, I loved everything about the ride. The only thing that they really chintzed out on is the tipping tractors. I don't know why they didn't up the game on them and actually make the tractors tip.

Click to watch the video on Flickr:

Even with the FastPass, that was still a pretty good time suck. I took the first photo at 17:07 and we were back out and visiting with Mater (at the Crazy Cone Motel) at 17:49. So, that was a good 40 minutes. I don't know if it helped or hurt that we went to the handicap queue.

Mater's eyes and talking weren't great. But he looked cool and my son did the same walk around with him.

We left there and were hungry. We didn't book many sit-down places as we wanted to maximize park time. There were some unique food opportunities, like the bread bowls I'm just about to write about, but we weren't "wowed" by the food. It was food; it filled us up. But, as would be expected - it was EXPENSIVE.

We happened to find a "bakery" that make their own bread bowls and soups. I'm not a big bread bowl fan as I'd much rather just have a larger bowl of soup. Anyway, this place has a patio that over looks a little bit of water and then a street that just so happened to be a parade route. While my wife went into to order food, we lucked into a couple that let us join them at their table. They were just finishing up, but let us sit for a spell while they did. We had a "front row" view of the parade (ignoring the water, fence, light poles, and people sitting). I'll cover the parade again later.

But, if you can luck into one of these seats- they're not too shabby:

The bread bowls were good. Everyone enjoyed their soup. I used my contraband pocket knife tool to cut mine up. That knife has the tastes of a thousand meals on it.

From there, we headed to the World of Color show. Longest story shortest, loved the shows- hated the "seating". I was warned by a discussion on a prior report that it would be bad. Bad is an understatement and we even had FastPasses and handicap seating.

We first saw the "winter" (aka Olaf) show:

The only problem with the projections on the water mist is that you had to be fairly centered to them to really see them. Moving 8' to my left made a world of difference. Unfortunately, 8' for me was easy- 8' for the rest of my family (and wheel chair) was tricky. So we lived with what we had.

I think Beckers posted something about a foam bubble contraption. They used this thing to send floating snow flakes up. It was kind of cool:

The "seating" is a shame, because it's really an enjoyable show. Here are a couple of videos:

Click to play on Flickr:

And another (honestly, with my terrible Internet connection- I can't tell if this is the first WoC or the second):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dougsetzer/23491322620/in/album-72157660079942673/

And another (honestly, with my terrible Internet connection- I can't tell if this is the first WoC or the second):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dougsetzer/23490697240/in/album-72157660079942673/

And another (honestly, with my terrible Internet connection- I can't tell if this is the first WoC or the second):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dougsetzer/23167199273/in/album-72157660079942673/

And another (honestly, with my terrible Internet connection- I can't tell if this is the first WoC or the second):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dougsetzer/23158325174/in/album-72157660079942673/

After World of Color, we had FastPasses for a second World of Color. They have 2 FastPass viewing areas and you get a FastPass for each one. Which means, you watch one- everyone has to clear the area and then re-enter the other one. Like dummies, we didn't wait in line immediately following the first world of color. Instead, we did dumb stuff like use the bathroom and hid from the crowds.

No matter, we ended up getting OK seats again due to the wheelchair. But again, it was standing for the entire time. And by #2, I was about done with standing.

This one has a lot of Walt and NPH:

AND FIRE!

The show starts as the park closes, so like everyone else- we rolled out with all of our closest friends:

I found out during the day that my camper wouldn't be ready on Friday like I was originally told/planned for. That meant spending the weekend in the hotel. But it also meant, we wanted to stock up on provisions. instead of Disney'ing it on Friday, we did some running around and general "errands" type of stuff. Tell me, who else does that on "vacation"?

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

And that's the last photo that I took as I filmed the whole ride. It's a little dark and that makes it disconcerting at times. Overall, I loved everything about the ride. The only thing that they really chintzed out on is the tipping tractors. I don't know why they didn't up the game on them and actually make the tractors tip.

 

I hate to tell you this, but you got gypped.  One of the tractors is supposed to tip.  Right on its back, and let out a loud "MOO!"  It's a funny scene.

 

TCD

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

The big thing I liked about the Cars disability loading is it is a completely seperate area, (similar to TSM), a car is pulled out of the unload and sent to that area. You have plenty of time to enter the vehicle, and your car is then merged into the regular ride track. At the end of the ride, you are then routed back into the same place you entered.

 

Too many times on Test Track, you have to wait at exit to get your wheelchair or ECV brought to you, and they are yelling at you to exit the area upon unloading, and I firmly tell them, we are not going anywhere till our ECV is brought to us. 

[CCIntrigue...aka Gwen 547]

More great photos!

 

I agree with Carol about the TSM loading/unloading area.  It's nice not to feel rushed when you have a hard time getting on/off a ride like I do.

[ependydad...Doug 176]

I hate to tell you this, but you got gypped.  One of the tractors is supposed to tip.  Right on its back, and let out a loud "MOO!"  It's a funny scene.

 

TCD

There are 2 tractors the look startled and possibly moo, then some hedges and then one tractor that is tipped on its back. But there's no actual tipping that we got to see (on either ride). Are you saying that you actually got to see the tipping action? If so, I'm really disappointed! If not, I'm still disappointed that Disney didn't do it. :D

 

 

The big thing I liked about the Cars disability loading is it is a completely seperate area, (similar to TSM), a car is pulled out of the unload and sent to that area. You have plenty of time to enter the vehicle, and your car is then merged into the regular ride track. At the end of the ride, you are then routed back into the same place you entered.

 

Too many times on Test Track, you have to wait at exit to get your wheelchair or ECV brought to you, and they are yelling at you to exit the area upon unloading, and I firmly tell them, we are not going anywhere till our ECV is brought to us.

I hope I didn't come across as negative about the separate entry/exit. I liked it for all of the reasons that you did- and we aren't slow. Sister's foot just hurts, but she can still walk a bit without it. If I recall, Space Mountain at Disneyland has the same kind of separate loading/unloading area for wheel chair people who cannot do stairs.

That kind of yelling frustrates me. I know exactly what you're talking about.

 

 

More great photos!

 

I agree with Carol about the TSM loading/unloading area.  It's nice not to feel rushed when you have a hard time getting on/off a ride like I do.

Yeppers.

[ependydad...Doug 176]

My wife shared this with me. I didn't realize that California Adventure was so terrible.

http://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20151212/31106/california-mis-adventure-how-disneylands-second-gate-crashed-burned-and-was

[bhall 115]

In this video from 5 months ago, there is tractor tipping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycmqLOV5EKg

 

Interesting comment from the video's uploader too regarding this ride.

 

 

But...in this video, they don't tip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj3KMIchQmY

 

Glitch?  Intentional? 

[Tri-Circle-D 2,059]

There are 2 tractors the look startled and possibly moo, then some hedges and then one tractor that is tipped on its back. But there's no actual tipping that we got to see (on either ride). Are you saying that you actually got to see the tipping action? If so, I'm really disappointed! If not, I'm still disappointed that Disney didn't do it. :D

 

Yes, I saw the tractors tip- just like in the video bhall posted below.  As I said, you got gypped.  It's a funny scene.

 

My wife shared this with me. I didn't realize that California Adventure was so terrible.

http://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20151212/31106/california-mis-adventure-how-disneylands-second-gate-crashed-burned-and-was

 

Thanks for posting that link.  I am not a big fan of that site, but that article is excellent. I have heard bits and pieces of what it says, but I haven't read the whole story in one comprehensive article like this one.  Those of us who waited until now to visit Disneyland and California Adventure were apparently spared the massive disappointment guests felt visiting the original version of California Adventure.  It's hard for me to imagine what it would be like without Cars Land, the Carthay Circle Theater building, the trolley cars and the rest. 

 

Also, I found the discussion about the abandoned plans for Westcot fascinating.  It's interesting that Disney wanted to try to make Disneyland a multi-day destination for international visitors like Disney World.  I don't think they quite got there.  They are still very heavily reliant on local visitors.  Much more so than Disney World.

 

In this video from 5 months ago, there is tractor tipping.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycmqLOV5EKg

 

Interesting comment from the video's uploader too regarding this ride.

 

 

Thanks for posting that.  I was going to look for a ride video to show the tractors tipping.  But, you did it for me.

 

TCD