Preamble:
This was a last minute surprise trip for the family so I missed the great Canadian price discount deals and the price increases that happened earlier this year. I jumped on DisBoards as soon as I booked to find out what was new In DLR. HUGE thanks to everyone here. I read up on PixarFest – which started the day we arrived, MaxPass which upped our FastPass game exponentially and turned out to be simply amazing for us. I was excited for the new Guardians ride as it’s my youngest son’s favourite movie and previously he’d been too nervous for ToT. So incredible what Disney theming can do. Since there were two new (to us) parades and a new fireworks show I started planning and looking at the preferred viewing packages and dining options for our 3 days. My family is into the big e-ticket rides, the food and enjoys the atmosphere and theming but not so much into the Fantasyland rides, princesses, parades or live shows. I think they definitely prefer DCA to DL but pretty much treat it as one big park. I had waffled on paying the extra to upgrade to the parkhoppers but I knew it added the best flexibility to enjoy our days. And truly, I think we crossed back and forth at least 3-4 times a day. IMO it really allows you to take advantage of everything there is to offer. Especially combined with MaxPass. 1 park per day really sells the experience short.
Surprise trip - guess what? We leave in 1 hr!
Day 1 –
We were up at 6:30am, had a bowl of cereal in our room and were out to the door at 7am. My family lined up at the hotel shuttle and I went in to the Disney Desk at the hotel. I bought our 4x 3day parkhoppers from the gal and received 4x PixarFest lanyards with a souvenir Cars pin. The shuttle started ½ hour before park opening so first one was at 7:30. While we waited for shuttle I loaded the barcodes of our 4 tickets into the
Disneyland app. I wasn’t sure about using MaxPass each day because we had used FP’s in the past very successfully and it adds an extra $40 US to our day’s expenses so I didn’t buy it …. Yet
The shuttle got us to the park at 7:35. We always bring a backpack with water bottles, sunscreen, first aid, granola bars, an extra pair of shoes, pants for the evening for me and big camera with lenses. We don’t carry it – we get a locker. That way we can put our jackets in there during the day and when the sun goes down put our hats and glasses away and grab the jackets, change into pants, change shoes etc. Best use of $7 ever. We can tuck in any souvenirs etc too
We decided to send just me through the bag check line and the 3 guys went through the no bag line (which is really no line) and headed straight through to line up at DL . I picked the shortest bag check line and it took me less than 10 to get through. I joined the boys in line and we were up to turnstile, they took photo of each of us to add to ticket barcode which they scanned from phone app. We walked through the gates at 7:50. Sigh… it’s just such an amazing feeling!
We walked in the right side and up the street past Pluto (yay!!) to the lockers. We bought a locker, tucked in all our stuff and headed up towards Tomorrowland. The sun was shining and life was magical and we were in Disney!! We got over to Star Tours and walked right on – very fun moment when we walked of the ride and the older gentleman ahead of us started clapping! It was the famous clapping dude. It was fun to watch him high-five all the CMs all through the ST gift shop and out the door.
We walked over and straight onto Buzz, then lapped it again. At that stage we realized that if we wanted to make the best of our time we might be best to get MaxPass and really take advantage of the FP shorter line ups. Important to note that that you have to purchase MaxPass for each person, and you have to do it with the credit card you have attached to the app. You need to know the CVV number to complete the purchase so write it down or memorize it. I forgot the number and I didn’t have that card with me so I had to load another credit card into the app. Once we loaded it up we were off and running… literally.
We booked a FP for SM, then walked onto Autopia and Nemo, back to SM, as soon as we got past the scanners, I went ahead and booked a FP for Matterhorn. It wasn’t even 9am and we had done 5 rides! It really does pay to be first at the park – and since my fam decided to bypass the Fantasyland stuff that most people beeline for, (and the Starbucks lineup!) we had a good time over in TL. We walked on Matterhorn and then booked Indiana Jones. We headed to Fantasyland, walked onto TeaCups and then went to RRT for breakfast. The food was great and very quick. Dh and I had the egg, bacon, potato & croissant platter and my boys had the pancake platter with eggs and bacon which was huge. I bought a coffee in a souvenir mug. The coffee was really good and I didn’t have to wait in the giant Starbucks line. Right now the souvenir mug is purple & pink with Mickey and Minnie in the Teacups.
The rest of the am we spent at IJ, JC, POTC and wandering around. I had a lunch booked at BB for 1:40. I had scoped out the tables when we went through the ride earlier and noticed that the two waterside tables closest to the kitchen door were empty. I took that as a sign that if I requested a waterside table we would be relegated to those less desirable tables. So I left the table placement up to fate, We were nicely lead through the whole restaurant all the way to the back – by the kitchen… Super bummer and 90% of the ambiance was lost. #tablefail
I guesstimate about 50 tables in the room. And only about 25 of them are situated where you would get a great PotC vibe The service was mediocre and the food was lukewarm and mass produced. The pricing is very out of line with what you get. Even with the experience of being inside PotC
I ordered the Monte Cristo. My 13 yo son ordered the prawn starter. Then my husband ordered the gumbo and prawn starter. The server turned to me and told me that my husband could not do that, that he only “allowed” my son to do that since I had ordered an entree. I said “why don’t you tell my husband that since he’s the one ordering”. It was so weird – like I was in charge of what my husband ordered. So the server turned to my husband and my husband asked if he could have the 2 starters, since my other son (15yo ) was ordering the chicken entree. The server begrudging said yes he supposed so. It was all very odd if you ask me. The starters were about $13 each - so not exactly cheap. The whole thing was quite awkward and uncomfortable. We tried to be kind and get back into his good graces by being charming. The boys really like the bread. Everything else arrived lukewarm
After the lame table placement, and off on the bad foot with the surly server we ended up having a good time together at the lunch but determined we never really needed to do it again. We really enjoyed the atmosphere across at the Cafe Orleans on a previous visit and the menu choices are similar but with added variety and a better price point. We chalked it up to a good experience… but not one to repeat.
After lunch we did HM with a FP booked at lunch, then over to Winnie the Pooh. We booked a FP for GotG and headed to DCA. The rest of the afternoon was spent wandering DCA, getting FP’s for Goofy’s & Soarin’. We headed back to DL and caught the end of the Pixar Parade. We were trying to head back to ST for a FP but it was very blocked in the entrance to DL. Once the end of the parade went through they allowed us to go through as a big group through a secret back way that sent us up to where the Astro Orbiter is. We couldn’t get across Main Street but we could stay on right hand side and we got ahead of the parade and managed to see most of it up by IASWA.
When it was over we went to ToonTown and rode RR – the light is so pretty there right at sunset. Then we went over to IASW and when we came out the lights were all coming on. We left DL around 8pm and headed to Downtown Disney – hoping to go to Rainforest Café. The area is definitely a construction zone with areas blocked off. The new Splitzville looks pretty cool. We got all the way down to RC and it was a 2.5hr wait! Lol no way… who would wait for an 11pm dinner??? We walked back to the plaza and got on the 9:15 shuttle back to the hotel. Fitbit read: 28,185 steps! 19.22 km! We decided to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant and it was very good. The boys all had burgers and I had Caesar salad and fries... and a big glass of wine.
We hobbled up to the room and were asleep by 11
THOUGHTS ON THE DAY: Make sure you go early. Crowds are lighter in the am, it’s nice and cool on a hot 90F day like we had. Maxpass was amazing for us. I think we did close to 20 rides on our first day Not only did we absolutely maximize our day – hitting all the rides we wanted to, but the PHOTOPASS part was fantastic! Whenever we came across a photographer with no line up we posed for a few pics. They scanned our QR code in our app and they appeared in a few minutes. I saw huge lines for a few photo op places. I can’t imagine waiting for 30-90 minutes to get a photo taken in a particular spot when there are other photographers with no lines. Much the same way I can’t imagine waiting up to 120 minutes for rides when there are FP and MaxP! The Pixar Parade is very fun and colourful – and long. Make sure you are on the right side of the Park when it’s set to start because it takes a while to get over to the other side – like ½ hour. The new Guardians of the Galaxy ride is awesome! The music and theming is a LOT of fun Another important tip about MaxPass... have another member of your party log into the app under the same account. It helps to save battery if 2 people use it - and in our case it ws nice to have my son be in charge of scanning the bar codes - he was much better at it than me!