TR: Disneyland 5/30/07

[Rastuso]

Day 5 – Disneyland

 

An early wake up call let us realize our son was still hacking a lot. We hoped he would make it through the day without getting worse. I made a quick bagel egg sandwich in the mini kitchen, got some Starbucks, and we were off to the Happiest Place on Earth. Nobody at the parking gates, we even parked in Pinocchio, which is used before the garage. No wait for the tram, no wait for tickets, and no wait to get in. Take THAT, Magic Mountain!

 

First up was to be the brand new Pirate’s Lair. We get Indy Fastpasses on the way, and find out that the island doesn’t open until 9:30. So, it’s back to Indy for a standby ride which was about 25 minutes. Longer than I had hoped, but it did let my son really take in the whole queue for his first ride. He’s a big Legend of Zelda fan, and lot’s of things from those games are in the queue. He liked the spike room too. We found out that the reason for the long wait was that they only had one side of the station going. I expect more from Disney, but it is an off day I guess. My son is surprisingly not ecstatic when we get off the ride, although he did really like it.

 

Once we were done, we head to Pirate’s Lair. They give you maps of the island that were very hard to understand, and there are NO signs. So, it is very unclear that the main cave entrance is directly to the left of the dock. We of course go right. We go through the older small caves that have a few piratey things added. The bridges are opened, and there are a few interactive pirate treasure areas. In the far back of the island is a large gold pile with Capt Jack standing there. My wife is totally in love with Johnny Depp, and loves him in pirates, so of course, she had to get pictures and flirt with him. And he flirted back. It is pretty odd that here we are in Disneyland, with an official Disney face character saying he is drunk, and that those aren’t his wenches. What would Walt think?

 

We finally get to the main cave, Dead Man’s Grotto. It was opened up so anyone can easily get through, not like the old caves that I had to squeeze through. There are some pretty cool effects in this cave:

 

SPOILERS*************

The first thing is the actual Dead Man’s Chest that is sitting next to the path. If you grab it, it lights up and you can feel Davey Jone’s heart beating from within. There are a few points where you can see pirate loot. One of them is behind glass, and when you reach for it, either a ghost pirate head pops up, or the guy with a wooden eye drops his eye down to look at you. The next treasure disappears when you reach for it. The main effect is near the end. Our first time through we couldn’t trigger anything. A pirate lays up against the wall, apparently asleep. A skeleton is against the other wall. Nothing ever happened. So, we leave and I ask a few CMs if there is something special, and yes there is. So, we go back. Finally, my son realizes that you have to make a lot of noise by trying to open the chained door and rattling it. The pirate awakens then talks about he treasure. Moonlight comes in from above, and he turns to a skeleton. A very neat effect, done with scrim lighting, and not Pepper’s Ghost I believe.

 

END SPOILERS************

 

We were about to leave the island and the pirate show was beginning on the Fantasmic stage. A short diversion with Capt Jack and 3 other characters battling over a map. It was good for the kids, and worked as an advertisement to get people to want to the come to the island, since you could see but not hear the show from mainland. We leave the island and go use our Fastpasses that we had gotten before going over. Even early in the day, Splash had a long standby wait. I just couldnt’ wait in that line watching people walk by all the time. A fun, but pretty wet ride. My son was in the front seat and got quite wet. Weather was typical LA May I guess, so it was only in the low 70s. Not exactly “let’s get wet” weather.

 

We then hit Mansion and really missed the Nightmare overlay. But, the new effects made up for it.

 

SPOILERS***************

 

The floating madame Leota head is very well done and a bit of a headscratcher. But I think the projection comes in from a fiber optic cord now. The attic is totally redone and totally changes the story of the mansion. Instead of a jilted wife and a husband that commits suicide, you now learn of a homicidal bride who beheads her husbands. The multiple wedding portraits with the groom’s heads disappearing are cool. And the new bride is top notch. The axe appearing in her hands is very cool. It looked like the whole bride was a projection. Very well done.

 

END SPOILERS ***************

 

Then we did pirates. I was under the impression that there were more new effects in this one than the WDW. I can’t recall if the Magic Kingdom has a Captain Barbosa figure or not, but you could hardly tell that was him. The swordfighting projection was barely seeable. The rest of the changes were the same, a Davey Jones projection on a smoke screen, and three Depp animatrons.

 

We did some shopping, and got some new squished coins. We decided to look into having dinner at the Blue Bayou on Friday. The host said that all they had was 9 pm, which would be tough with the Light Parade starting at 8:45 at DCA. We hemmed and hawed a bit and he said he was just informed of some walkin space available, so we sat down for lunch. This was the first time we had dined here since the first Haunted Mansion Holiday even dinner. Luckily, we were deep into the restaurant away from the bright opening out into the park. I got the salmon and a cup of gumbo. The gumbo was OK, but the salmon was great. My wife had the pork chop which she said was very good. We were going to get a dessert, but decided against it. Each one had a pirate themed collectible. But they were some sort of hard candy, not a real collectible.

 

We were finally done with this side of the park, and went to the Big Thunder. A quick wait since the FP machines weren’t on this day. Fun as usual, except for once again we had idiots girls who thinking screaming at the top of their lungs the whole ride is just SO funny. Gripe at me for racism? This is one situation where it is always white girls. It wasn’t as bad as times before (I recall turning around and screaming at a girl sitting with her dad one time after she had screamed at the top of her lungs every time we entered a cave at WDW. She wasn’t doing it because she was scared. My wife thought the father would punch me when we got off the ride, but I think it maybe made him realize that letting your kid scream at people isn’t real polite. The girls this time were one row behind me, but in the next car, so it was a bit further, and they weren’t screaming as much. However, when we got on the last lift and they started in, I turned around and bellowed out a scream for them. The rest of the ride was silent, and I heard some guys behind them laughing quite a bit. This is right up there with line jumping. What is it with BTMRR and screaming? The majority of the time there is at least one screamer on the train somewhere. And it is always obviously NOT screams of terror.

 

We went on to Fantasyland. Surprisingly, Pinocchio had a bit of a line, but only a few minutes. Snow White is still half a ride.

 

Next was Alice, which was under refurb the last time we were at Disneyland. We go up to the line, and two white folks get in right before us. But, they didn’t go into the queue, oh no, they stand there and wave in a parade of kids and adults that file in for a minute. Not a huge deal, but inconsiderate. So, we are about 5 minutes into the 15 minute wait and here comes about 6 asians wanting to cut up to the last bit of the queue to join some others. I of course say no way. Well, the one mother way up in line wasn’t happy. Two kids had already cut up there, but the three adults were stuck behind me. The one mother said I needed to let them by. I said no way. She said they had been to the bathroom. She was acting like they had to leave the line to go to the bathroom, which was bogus. I said they should go to the bathroom BEFORE getting in line like I did. She kept saying how it was “for the kids” so I should let them cut. Then came the greatest part of the argument. She said I was inconsiderate for not letting them through. Well, this really set me off, so I raise my voice and say “I’m being inconsiderate because I won’t let people cut in front of me????” She says yes. I quickly realize this woman is a lifelong liberal who has no concept of reality. She continues griping at me acting like I’m a villain. Of course, everyone else is silent, and I mention to my wife how no one else has the balls to say no to cutters. Well, this triggered a response from the woman in front of us who had held up the line for a parade of people earlier. She agreed that I was inconsiderate and said I was butting into other people business by not letting the kids by. This of course was also insane since I was not talking to her when she started berating me for not letting kids cut. I argue with her for quite a while and begin thinking I’m in Bizaro Disneyland. My wife did hear some people behind us saying they were glad I didn’t let them by. We noticed a lot of this going on for our two days. I must assume the average Disneyland goer believes that it is perfectly acceptable for part of the family to get in line when the rest go to the bathroom. Those stragglers are then perfectly justified in cutting into the line to rejoin the rest of the family 10 minutes later. This Asian lady was unbelievable. She was absolutely amazed that I was being so rude as to not let her kids cut. Now, what sort of signal is this giving her kids? Of course, she had like 4 kids, and no father in sight. The crowd quality has noticeably gone down quite a bit. Surprisingly, this line episode absolutely was overshadowed by a positively stunning altercation later in the week. I’m probably posting about it separately.

 

The ride was fantastic, and vibrantly repainted, along with some upgrades to some of the effects. We all really like this ride.

 

Now, finally, after 3 trips where it was closed, we were going to get to ride the Matterhorn again!!! I loved this the first time I rode it, quite a few years ago. The wait wasn’t too bad, and we go to the right station since it is out of view from the main queue and had a shorter line. I recall this was my favorite side last time. It just seems smoother. My son really liked it too.

 

My son was starting to run out of gas, so we got a Mickey ice cream that was about -10 C, and took 10 minutes to thaw. We were going to do Roger Rabbit, but it had apparently ran out of fastpasses for the day already. So, we decided to put RR off until Friday and go ride the new Space Mountain, which was a new credit for me. But, it was out of FPs for the day too, and had a 40 minute standby, and also went DDM. This sorta shows the flaw of FPs, especially on a slower day. They were only using FP on about 5 rides. So, everyone was getting them, leading to these two sellouts with 4 hours left in the day. Since many people know that FPs are good for the entire day, not just the window, the rides with FP get VERY long standby lines later in the day when everyone decides to cash out for the night. Without FP, I’d guess Space would have had about a 10 minute wait. Plus, with RR, you miss the great queue with FP.

 

So, we had really ran out of options for the night, except for Indy which we had 6 hour old FPs for. My son wasn’t up to another ride though, so I left him in TL with his mom to do some shopping and arcade gaming while I ran over for a quick Indy ride. One nice thing about DL is that you can get from TL to AL in about 1/3 the time as in the MK. The standby was huge, and the line inside was past the pole room, but really moving well with both station. It ended up only about a 15 minute wait. Some nimrod Mexican was in the row in front of me, standing up and futzing with his son’s seatbelt. The CM was repeatedly telling him to sit down and the belts would be checked at the next station. He was either deaf, didn’t speak English, or was pretending to not speak English. It held us up about a minute. I was even saying “sito downo”, but that wasn’t helping either. Great ride as usual.

 

I got back to TL and my son was still feeling bad, so we decided to bail a few hours early. We stopped at City Hall to get some new Disney dollars. They have 3 Pirates dollars with the three main ships on the back, plus a Little Mermaid dollar. It took quite a while since they had ran out and had to get some from the safe. The parade was going on, entertaining my family. We ended up in the parade crowd leaving. We did some shopping at the WoD. I got a real nice Polo with a Mickey crest on it. My wife got a Pirates shirt, and my son got a baby Pluto plush. I don’t understand the total dearth of Matterhorn and Indy stuff. For a while they got some, but it’s dried up. I didn’t even see the newer Indy figures anywhere, are they sold out? I saw no Star Tours figs either. But they have plenty of the cool but insanely priced attraction miniature packs.

 

We had to deal with a massive tram crowd, but got on in three trams. My son needed some major rest, and a doctor call was probably in order tomorrow.

 

No pics, I'll have some for Dinoquest

 

-R