gregf71
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2012
And I am back…with another tale of merriment and details galore (for you savvy trip planners out there) from our most recent trip to the Happiest Place on Earth…and D23! You may recall me from my earlier trip reports:
Our cast of characters remain the same, though we are now a bit older and wiser, okay maybe not wiser, but it’s nice to dream, eh? Myself, now 47, San Diego born and raised (if you need a good taco shop, just let me know), longtime (now retired) Disneyland Annual Passholder (why?! Because they priced us out!!!), left-handed, yet right-footed (I know weird, right?). My wife, 44, originally from the Los Angeles area, who eventually figured out that San Diego is better (you know it is!) and was kind enough to marry me. Finally, our daughter, “the Teenager”, now 13, our joy and torment (oh wait, I mean “delight”) all rolled into one.
Our plan this vacation was simple, juggle some parks time with some down time, while also getting our steps in during the Expo…and maybe rub shoulders with someone famous (more on that later). Shall we begin? Let’s go!
Day 1: Arrival & Pop-Up Disney!
Our alarms went off early Monday morning. It was still dark outside, which meant needing a virtual crowbar to get our darling daughter out of bed…you know, teenager. This being the last week of summer break for her, she had been enjoying many sleep-ins over the past several weeks. Even with a Disney vacation a mere few hours away, she barely stirred as we could hear her alarm going off behind her closed bedroom door. Shrewdly, I knew there was only one thing that would roust her from her cave, so already showered and dressed, I popped into the car and hopped over to the local Starbucks for some liquid energy for the three of us. Returning home, I carefully approached her door, gently placing the cup of caffeinated goodness at its base, lightly knocking, and quietly saying, “Frappuccino.”
I crept away slowly and could almost immediately hear stirring from behind the door. The handle slowly turned downward as the door sluggishly creaked open a bit. A hand reached out near the floor, securing the cup, and retreating back into the darkness, closing the door once again. Mission accomplished! The teenager was up!
For those not in the know, the work day drive from San Diego to Anaheim can be challenging if you don’t time it right. Leave too early and you arrive in Disneyland well before the parks and the majority of Downtown Disney is open. Depart too late and you may find yourself stuck in morning commuter traffic in Mission Viejo all the way up into Orange County. Thankfully, we left just about right, meeting a little traffic, but it wasn’t horrible by any means. My advice, try to time it right and if you can use the carpool lanes, then do it!
Our home away from home for the week was Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel. I am not going to call it the “Hotel & Spa” because the spa was being remodeled during our stay (not that we planned to use it anyway, but still). After confirming our name with the CM at the entry kiosk and getting a square, green piece of paper with our name and dates of stay tossed atop our dash, we pulled up into the hotel driveway around 8am or so, stopping as instructed under the archway in front. With the assistance of the eager and very nice bellman, we quickly pulled our luggage from our vehicle, loading it all up onto a trolley for storage. While my wife and daughter entered the Grand to get us checked in, I drove the car across the street for self-parking. If there is one mild annoyance regarding staying at the Grand Californian, it is the location of the self-parking (I know, cry me a river). After parking the car, I trekked back across the street. I found myself walking behind a “Suit”, you know a Cast Member of the upper level variety who gets to wear a suit and tie to work instead of a “costume”. As we approached the locked pedestrian gate across from the drive-up kiosk, he inserted his employee badge into the reader, waited for the click, and proceeded through the now open gate. Noticing me several nearby steps behind him, he paused and said (with the door still open mind you), “You just need to scan your room card first.” To wit I replied, “We are checking in right now and I have not received my key card yet.” He shrugged and allowed me entry…gee, thanks, dude! I guess had he not been there, I could have called over to the CM working the kiosk to buzz me through (assuming they can do that) or simply walked around the gate using the right-side car lane (hopefully without being tased).
Entering the Grand brings back very pleasant memories for us of previous stays at the Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World. Good times indeed. Entering the main registration area, I quickly found my wife and daughter talking to a CM at the very far end of the front desk. Moseying down to join them, our check-in process was almost complete and we were presented with a folder that contained all of our AAA vacation documents, as well as a couple of Disney buttons (only two though, not three, which I thought was strange, but didn’t say anything). Since our room was obviously not ready (totally expected this early in the morning), we confirmed my cell number with the CM and headed out towards Downtown Disney for a walkabout before lunch and Pop-Up Disney!
I won’t bore you with the details of each store we checked out. We hit our usual haunts and checked out a few new places that had arrived since the last time we were here, questioning how long a couple of these “new to us”, more specialized non-Disney shops will last, looking at you Sugarboo & Co. (not sure why anyone would buy these things while on a Disney vacation) and Rinse (horrible, almost hidden location outside the security checkpoint by the Disneyland Hotel). Ultimately, we found ourselves at one of our favorites, the WonderGround Gallery, where we admired the on-demand artist Disney character sketches. While flipping through them, I mentioned to my wife and daughter that there wasn’t a TRON (my all-time favorite movie) sketch, which perked the interest of the in-house sketch artist sitting nearby. He quickly turned towards us and said, “One second, I may have something over here you might like.”
Digging through a closet at the rear of the store, he pulled out a Mickey TRON sketch, in neon green. Handing it to me to examine, he beckoned me to return to the sketch table by the front window, whereby he pulled a black light out of an adjoining drawer, flashing it upon the drawing. “I did this one the other day and you can see the special hidden circuitry designs when viewed under a black light!” Visually, it was very cool, but not having a black light myself at home (I mean, who does really?), and preferring my TRON characters in blue (the red guys were bad after all, and I think the very few green dudes in the movie were soldiers working for the bad guy), I asked if he had any others in stock. He didn’t, but he said he could draw one! I glanced over to my family and they both nodded. I needed to get this. The artist completed the paperwork for me and told me that he could have it ready by around 1pm that afternoon. I had to pay for it at that moment, which was fine, and we then realized that it was finally lunch time.
For a very long time, I have been looking forward to enjoying a meal at Black Tap! During our previous Disneyland visit, it was still suffering through delay after delay. Thankfully, this time it was open and we were the second customers of the day! Two words to describe our Black Tap experience…delectable and expensive. I know, I know, we are at a theme park and that automatically adds to the cost of most meals, but wow these prices! If we hadn’t enjoyed our meal so much, I would be complaining profusely, but darn it, that meal was great! My daughter and I both ordered the All-American Burger, which came with the standard French Fries. My wife, on the other hand, ordered the Texan Burger, upgrading to the Sweet Potato Fries. A self-service fountain soda for each of us, plus we pre-ordered one of their famous Crazy Shakes, the Cotton Candy, to share! With gratuity (did I mention that this is effectively a “counter service” restaurant…though they do deliver your food to your table), it came to just over $100.00 for the three of us. OK, yes, I know, “Theme Park Upcharge”, but wow.
But let me say this…the food was fantastic! The burgers were sublime, not too big, but not too small either. The Martin’s Potato Roll buns were soft and chewy, and the meat was expertly prepared, very flavorful, making me look forward to each and every bite. And the fries, oh those fries…delicious (the sweet potato ones too)! I would rank these burgers up there with In N Out and Five Guys (my personal favorite burger joint) as one of my all-time favorites, but that price point is really hard to swallow.
Finally, our dessert arrived. It was beautiful!
After the requisite picture taking, we dug in, frequently sword-fighting with our spoons to get the next delectable bite. The Cotton Candy is a strawberry shake with a vanilla frosted rim with blue, pink, and pearl chocolates topped with a pink lollipop, blue and pink rock candy, whipped cream, and of course cotton candy. The lollipop was immediately claimed by our darling daughter, while my wife and I each took a stick of rock candy, mine blue and hers pink. I thoroughly enjoyed watching our daughter squirm as I dipped my rock candy into my Coke, swirled it around, and then slurped the liquid off of the candy. She could only tolerate this process for so long and then claimed my rock candy as her own, stating, “If you can’t eat this right, then you don’t get it!” Honestly, I didn’t mind, I was happy to give it up. Why, do you ask? Because I could then focus on the pearl chocolates that surrounded the rim! They were wonderful!
Lunch completed, we meandered around Downtown Disney a bit more and were very pleased to receive a text that our room was ready early! Sweet! Room 3133 here we come! Looking at the hotel property map, we learned that our room was the last on a run that led from the lobby area towards Downtown Disney. Did we score one of those rooms above Downtown Disney?! Um, no. As we walked down the hallway towards our room, we could see a window with Ballast Point in the not too far distance (a wonderful San Diego brewery with excellent food by the way, but we actually live fairly close to their main brewery and restaurant in San Diego, so the DTD location was not in our plans this vacation). Accessing our room, which sat directly across from a vending and ice machine room and adjacent to a housekeeping storage space, we immediately went to check out our view…or rather, the lack thereof. Looking out straight, we gazed upon the roof of the resort building; down was a beige flat top roof with a few greyish-silver air-conditioning hoods jetting up; to the right was (pause) actually I cannot remember; and to the left was the main entry arch with a few trees and the Paradise Pier Hotel in the far distance. All in all, not a great view whatsoever, but that was fine. Unfortunately, the worst of it was the fact that some folks decided to smoke on the sidewalk down below and it wafted up to our balcony. I mean, it wasn’t all of the time thankfully, but it was annoying given my wife’s allergies. Honestly, we had gotten lucky with rooms in the past, just not this time. It was clean and it was ours for the week! Too bad it was haunted…but I will get to that later.
Bags delivered and unpacked, we got ourselves together and headed to the old ESPN Zone for our 1:30pm reservations at Pop-Up Disney! I had bought tickets ahead of time online once we learned that the exhibit’s stay had been extended into early September. I hoped at the time of purchase that there was some sort of D23 attendee or resort hotel discount, but I couldn’t find either, so we ended up paying full price. And guess what?! While relaxing in our room beforehand with the resort TV channel on, sure enough a slide flashed by indicating a guest discount! Oh well, that’s life!
Arriving a tad early, we checked into Pop-Up Disney, received our group assignment, and were escorted into a large adjoining waiting room, where we found a couple photo-ops and Mickey Mouse videos projected in one of the corners. After waiting about 20 minutes or so, our group was called and we were escorted up the nearby stairs into the first room. OK, so what exactly is Pop-Up Disney, you ask? Well, imagine a series of nine very different, imaginatively themed “experiences” or rooms based primarily on Mickey and to a certain extent Minnie designed specifically for selfies and photos primed and ready for social media posting. The very first thing we see is a giant “couch” themed to look like Minnie’s read and white polka-dotted bow. The various “scenes” ran the gamut from the black and white old school Mickey shorts to neon, laser colors with a giant silver Mickey status standing in a mirrored room. Here are some of our favorite images:
Some of the exhibits offered perfectly positioned backgrounds for posing or simply jumping into, while others provided actual “props” to hold and enhance your picture. Overall, it was a blast and we all enjoyed it very much. Exiting the final room, we headed down the stairs and of course into the gift shop, whereby our daughter notified the CM that she had spotted all of the hidden Minnie’s along the way (the final two or three being in the gift shop itself), whereby she was presented a sticker (hey it was free).
Heading back to the hotel after picking up my TRON Mickey sketch from WonderGround (which is AMAZING by the way; not sure why DISBoards is posting this image vertically):
...we stopped in the Hearthstone Lounge for a nice cold beverage. Back in the spring, while attending WonderCon (a comic book convention for those not aware), we came over here for dinner and hit the Lounge for a cold drink beforehand. At that time, my wife and I both ordered an amazing Shandy, beer with lemonade. They were amazing and the bartender made them with two lemon slices, positioned upon the rim of our glasses as Mickey ears! This time, however, this bartender (could have been the same one, I don’t really know) decided that one lemon slice was enough and laid it inside the glass, floating on top of the beer and lemonade mixture. Thankfully, the beverage was just as delicious and refreshing as the last time. Our daughter, obviously not being of age for a Shandy, enjoyed a wonderful non-alcoholic cocktail as we all sipped to our hearts content.
After returning to our room for a little bit, dinner time soon approached, so we headed back out to Downtown Disney with our planned destination of Earl of Sandwich. We first tried Earl several years ago, not long after it first opened in DTD. To say the least, I was not impressed and had no sense of urgency to ever return. That said, my family wanted to try it again this time, particularly with it having been saved from the wrecking ball after the proposed luxury hotel plan was canceled, so I agreed to give it one more shot. My new opinion…still not impressed. Truly, I am not a food snob in any way, shape, or form, but I do not get the popularity of this place. I remember back in the day reading time and again how folks loved their sandwiches in then Downtown Disney in Orlando and how excited people were about it opening in Anaheim. To me, their offerings are just meh, decent I suppose, but lacking in any serious flavor; certainly nothing to tantalize my taste buds. This time, I tried their Holiday Turkey, with stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce…one of my personal favorite combinations. Honestly, it was lacking. Give me the Bobbie from Capriotti’s (look them up for those lucky enough to live by one; the San Diego locations all sadly closed) hands down over this. Sorry Earl, while our daughter loved her Greek salad and my wife liked her Full Montague, I won’t be coming back. Oh if they only had a Jersey Mike’s in there!
After hopping over to the Disneyland Hotel for a bit, we stopped by the clandestine Rinse soap shop and bought a few things; nice shop, but horrible location. Content with the day, we called it and returned to our room. Tomorrow…Disneyland and Galaxy’s Edge!!!
Our cast of characters remain the same, though we are now a bit older and wiser, okay maybe not wiser, but it’s nice to dream, eh? Myself, now 47, San Diego born and raised (if you need a good taco shop, just let me know), longtime (now retired) Disneyland Annual Passholder (why?! Because they priced us out!!!), left-handed, yet right-footed (I know weird, right?). My wife, 44, originally from the Los Angeles area, who eventually figured out that San Diego is better (you know it is!) and was kind enough to marry me. Finally, our daughter, “the Teenager”, now 13, our joy and torment (oh wait, I mean “delight”) all rolled into one.
Our plan this vacation was simple, juggle some parks time with some down time, while also getting our steps in during the Expo…and maybe rub shoulders with someone famous (more on that later). Shall we begin? Let’s go!
Day 1: Arrival & Pop-Up Disney!
Our alarms went off early Monday morning. It was still dark outside, which meant needing a virtual crowbar to get our darling daughter out of bed…you know, teenager. This being the last week of summer break for her, she had been enjoying many sleep-ins over the past several weeks. Even with a Disney vacation a mere few hours away, she barely stirred as we could hear her alarm going off behind her closed bedroom door. Shrewdly, I knew there was only one thing that would roust her from her cave, so already showered and dressed, I popped into the car and hopped over to the local Starbucks for some liquid energy for the three of us. Returning home, I carefully approached her door, gently placing the cup of caffeinated goodness at its base, lightly knocking, and quietly saying, “Frappuccino.”
I crept away slowly and could almost immediately hear stirring from behind the door. The handle slowly turned downward as the door sluggishly creaked open a bit. A hand reached out near the floor, securing the cup, and retreating back into the darkness, closing the door once again. Mission accomplished! The teenager was up!
For those not in the know, the work day drive from San Diego to Anaheim can be challenging if you don’t time it right. Leave too early and you arrive in Disneyland well before the parks and the majority of Downtown Disney is open. Depart too late and you may find yourself stuck in morning commuter traffic in Mission Viejo all the way up into Orange County. Thankfully, we left just about right, meeting a little traffic, but it wasn’t horrible by any means. My advice, try to time it right and if you can use the carpool lanes, then do it!
Our home away from home for the week was Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel. I am not going to call it the “Hotel & Spa” because the spa was being remodeled during our stay (not that we planned to use it anyway, but still). After confirming our name with the CM at the entry kiosk and getting a square, green piece of paper with our name and dates of stay tossed atop our dash, we pulled up into the hotel driveway around 8am or so, stopping as instructed under the archway in front. With the assistance of the eager and very nice bellman, we quickly pulled our luggage from our vehicle, loading it all up onto a trolley for storage. While my wife and daughter entered the Grand to get us checked in, I drove the car across the street for self-parking. If there is one mild annoyance regarding staying at the Grand Californian, it is the location of the self-parking (I know, cry me a river). After parking the car, I trekked back across the street. I found myself walking behind a “Suit”, you know a Cast Member of the upper level variety who gets to wear a suit and tie to work instead of a “costume”. As we approached the locked pedestrian gate across from the drive-up kiosk, he inserted his employee badge into the reader, waited for the click, and proceeded through the now open gate. Noticing me several nearby steps behind him, he paused and said (with the door still open mind you), “You just need to scan your room card first.” To wit I replied, “We are checking in right now and I have not received my key card yet.” He shrugged and allowed me entry…gee, thanks, dude! I guess had he not been there, I could have called over to the CM working the kiosk to buzz me through (assuming they can do that) or simply walked around the gate using the right-side car lane (hopefully without being tased).
Entering the Grand brings back very pleasant memories for us of previous stays at the Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World. Good times indeed. Entering the main registration area, I quickly found my wife and daughter talking to a CM at the very far end of the front desk. Moseying down to join them, our check-in process was almost complete and we were presented with a folder that contained all of our AAA vacation documents, as well as a couple of Disney buttons (only two though, not three, which I thought was strange, but didn’t say anything). Since our room was obviously not ready (totally expected this early in the morning), we confirmed my cell number with the CM and headed out towards Downtown Disney for a walkabout before lunch and Pop-Up Disney!
I won’t bore you with the details of each store we checked out. We hit our usual haunts and checked out a few new places that had arrived since the last time we were here, questioning how long a couple of these “new to us”, more specialized non-Disney shops will last, looking at you Sugarboo & Co. (not sure why anyone would buy these things while on a Disney vacation) and Rinse (horrible, almost hidden location outside the security checkpoint by the Disneyland Hotel). Ultimately, we found ourselves at one of our favorites, the WonderGround Gallery, where we admired the on-demand artist Disney character sketches. While flipping through them, I mentioned to my wife and daughter that there wasn’t a TRON (my all-time favorite movie) sketch, which perked the interest of the in-house sketch artist sitting nearby. He quickly turned towards us and said, “One second, I may have something over here you might like.”
Digging through a closet at the rear of the store, he pulled out a Mickey TRON sketch, in neon green. Handing it to me to examine, he beckoned me to return to the sketch table by the front window, whereby he pulled a black light out of an adjoining drawer, flashing it upon the drawing. “I did this one the other day and you can see the special hidden circuitry designs when viewed under a black light!” Visually, it was very cool, but not having a black light myself at home (I mean, who does really?), and preferring my TRON characters in blue (the red guys were bad after all, and I think the very few green dudes in the movie were soldiers working for the bad guy), I asked if he had any others in stock. He didn’t, but he said he could draw one! I glanced over to my family and they both nodded. I needed to get this. The artist completed the paperwork for me and told me that he could have it ready by around 1pm that afternoon. I had to pay for it at that moment, which was fine, and we then realized that it was finally lunch time.
For a very long time, I have been looking forward to enjoying a meal at Black Tap! During our previous Disneyland visit, it was still suffering through delay after delay. Thankfully, this time it was open and we were the second customers of the day! Two words to describe our Black Tap experience…delectable and expensive. I know, I know, we are at a theme park and that automatically adds to the cost of most meals, but wow these prices! If we hadn’t enjoyed our meal so much, I would be complaining profusely, but darn it, that meal was great! My daughter and I both ordered the All-American Burger, which came with the standard French Fries. My wife, on the other hand, ordered the Texan Burger, upgrading to the Sweet Potato Fries. A self-service fountain soda for each of us, plus we pre-ordered one of their famous Crazy Shakes, the Cotton Candy, to share! With gratuity (did I mention that this is effectively a “counter service” restaurant…though they do deliver your food to your table), it came to just over $100.00 for the three of us. OK, yes, I know, “Theme Park Upcharge”, but wow.
But let me say this…the food was fantastic! The burgers were sublime, not too big, but not too small either. The Martin’s Potato Roll buns were soft and chewy, and the meat was expertly prepared, very flavorful, making me look forward to each and every bite. And the fries, oh those fries…delicious (the sweet potato ones too)! I would rank these burgers up there with In N Out and Five Guys (my personal favorite burger joint) as one of my all-time favorites, but that price point is really hard to swallow.
Finally, our dessert arrived. It was beautiful!
After the requisite picture taking, we dug in, frequently sword-fighting with our spoons to get the next delectable bite. The Cotton Candy is a strawberry shake with a vanilla frosted rim with blue, pink, and pearl chocolates topped with a pink lollipop, blue and pink rock candy, whipped cream, and of course cotton candy. The lollipop was immediately claimed by our darling daughter, while my wife and I each took a stick of rock candy, mine blue and hers pink. I thoroughly enjoyed watching our daughter squirm as I dipped my rock candy into my Coke, swirled it around, and then slurped the liquid off of the candy. She could only tolerate this process for so long and then claimed my rock candy as her own, stating, “If you can’t eat this right, then you don’t get it!” Honestly, I didn’t mind, I was happy to give it up. Why, do you ask? Because I could then focus on the pearl chocolates that surrounded the rim! They were wonderful!
Lunch completed, we meandered around Downtown Disney a bit more and were very pleased to receive a text that our room was ready early! Sweet! Room 3133 here we come! Looking at the hotel property map, we learned that our room was the last on a run that led from the lobby area towards Downtown Disney. Did we score one of those rooms above Downtown Disney?! Um, no. As we walked down the hallway towards our room, we could see a window with Ballast Point in the not too far distance (a wonderful San Diego brewery with excellent food by the way, but we actually live fairly close to their main brewery and restaurant in San Diego, so the DTD location was not in our plans this vacation). Accessing our room, which sat directly across from a vending and ice machine room and adjacent to a housekeeping storage space, we immediately went to check out our view…or rather, the lack thereof. Looking out straight, we gazed upon the roof of the resort building; down was a beige flat top roof with a few greyish-silver air-conditioning hoods jetting up; to the right was (pause) actually I cannot remember; and to the left was the main entry arch with a few trees and the Paradise Pier Hotel in the far distance. All in all, not a great view whatsoever, but that was fine. Unfortunately, the worst of it was the fact that some folks decided to smoke on the sidewalk down below and it wafted up to our balcony. I mean, it wasn’t all of the time thankfully, but it was annoying given my wife’s allergies. Honestly, we had gotten lucky with rooms in the past, just not this time. It was clean and it was ours for the week! Too bad it was haunted…but I will get to that later.
Bags delivered and unpacked, we got ourselves together and headed to the old ESPN Zone for our 1:30pm reservations at Pop-Up Disney! I had bought tickets ahead of time online once we learned that the exhibit’s stay had been extended into early September. I hoped at the time of purchase that there was some sort of D23 attendee or resort hotel discount, but I couldn’t find either, so we ended up paying full price. And guess what?! While relaxing in our room beforehand with the resort TV channel on, sure enough a slide flashed by indicating a guest discount! Oh well, that’s life!
Arriving a tad early, we checked into Pop-Up Disney, received our group assignment, and were escorted into a large adjoining waiting room, where we found a couple photo-ops and Mickey Mouse videos projected in one of the corners. After waiting about 20 minutes or so, our group was called and we were escorted up the nearby stairs into the first room. OK, so what exactly is Pop-Up Disney, you ask? Well, imagine a series of nine very different, imaginatively themed “experiences” or rooms based primarily on Mickey and to a certain extent Minnie designed specifically for selfies and photos primed and ready for social media posting. The very first thing we see is a giant “couch” themed to look like Minnie’s read and white polka-dotted bow. The various “scenes” ran the gamut from the black and white old school Mickey shorts to neon, laser colors with a giant silver Mickey status standing in a mirrored room. Here are some of our favorite images:
Some of the exhibits offered perfectly positioned backgrounds for posing or simply jumping into, while others provided actual “props” to hold and enhance your picture. Overall, it was a blast and we all enjoyed it very much. Exiting the final room, we headed down the stairs and of course into the gift shop, whereby our daughter notified the CM that she had spotted all of the hidden Minnie’s along the way (the final two or three being in the gift shop itself), whereby she was presented a sticker (hey it was free).
Heading back to the hotel after picking up my TRON Mickey sketch from WonderGround (which is AMAZING by the way; not sure why DISBoards is posting this image vertically):
...we stopped in the Hearthstone Lounge for a nice cold beverage. Back in the spring, while attending WonderCon (a comic book convention for those not aware), we came over here for dinner and hit the Lounge for a cold drink beforehand. At that time, my wife and I both ordered an amazing Shandy, beer with lemonade. They were amazing and the bartender made them with two lemon slices, positioned upon the rim of our glasses as Mickey ears! This time, however, this bartender (could have been the same one, I don’t really know) decided that one lemon slice was enough and laid it inside the glass, floating on top of the beer and lemonade mixture. Thankfully, the beverage was just as delicious and refreshing as the last time. Our daughter, obviously not being of age for a Shandy, enjoyed a wonderful non-alcoholic cocktail as we all sipped to our hearts content.
After returning to our room for a little bit, dinner time soon approached, so we headed back out to Downtown Disney with our planned destination of Earl of Sandwich. We first tried Earl several years ago, not long after it first opened in DTD. To say the least, I was not impressed and had no sense of urgency to ever return. That said, my family wanted to try it again this time, particularly with it having been saved from the wrecking ball after the proposed luxury hotel plan was canceled, so I agreed to give it one more shot. My new opinion…still not impressed. Truly, I am not a food snob in any way, shape, or form, but I do not get the popularity of this place. I remember back in the day reading time and again how folks loved their sandwiches in then Downtown Disney in Orlando and how excited people were about it opening in Anaheim. To me, their offerings are just meh, decent I suppose, but lacking in any serious flavor; certainly nothing to tantalize my taste buds. This time, I tried their Holiday Turkey, with stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce…one of my personal favorite combinations. Honestly, it was lacking. Give me the Bobbie from Capriotti’s (look them up for those lucky enough to live by one; the San Diego locations all sadly closed) hands down over this. Sorry Earl, while our daughter loved her Greek salad and my wife liked her Full Montague, I won’t be coming back. Oh if they only had a Jersey Mike’s in there!
After hopping over to the Disneyland Hotel for a bit, we stopped by the clandestine Rinse soap shop and bought a few things; nice shop, but horrible location. Content with the day, we called it and returned to our room. Tomorrow…Disneyland and Galaxy’s Edge!!!
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