We just returned back to Autralia after a week in Anaheim.
I'm just going to make a few points in this post for anyone who may be interested - especially from the point of view of a foreign visitor.
The Aussie Dollar is weak right now, so things cost us A LOT of money, we are only getting 60c to the US $1 so our food ect added up really quickly and we just felt like the costs were so high compared to previous years.
The food portions at Disney seem to have gotten smaller with the prices going up - this is to be expected but was really hurting our hip pocket.
We normally get a kids meal and split it between the kids - I found I couldn't do this anymore.
We stayed at the Americas Best Value Inn on Katella and it was fine, the walls are thin but we were so tired that we slept all night anyway, it was a nice 10min walk to the parks and I would stay there again.
While at Disneyland we did the following "upgrades"
Fantasmic Standard Dining Package at River Belle Terrace - the food was horrendous. It just wasn't good at all. I also heard the people seated next to us send the food back - the chicken was so dry my 4yo spat it right out, the people next to us sent the chicken back also and got something else. I can not recommend this restaurant at all - the tickets for Fantasmic were worth the cost though.
World of Color Dessert Party - this was great, we really enjoyed it. It was expensive but the seating was great and the food was good and plentiful.
We also did two character meals - Plaza Inn with Minnie which we all loved and the Princess Breakfast which we all did not - I wrote a review of that one already explaining why - I do not recommend this character meal at all.
We DID NOT purchase
Genie+, we simply couldn't afford it. I will say we weren't coming to go on the biggest rides all week long but I did manage to get a few in by getting to the parks for rope drop.
Thank goodness for Rope Drop or we would have got nothing done, wait times were bad, I've never experienced wait times like this before, but I have also never been at this time of year before, so that could be a reason - people coming for the Christmas Decorations which is why I was there also. It was impossible to do any rides after lunchtime, so we just focused on shows or character meets after that. Which was a shame, but I wasn't waiting in hour long lines with two kids (4 and 6) the 4yo is quite "naughty" so was really disruptive waiting in lines and I didn't want to subject everyone in line to her behaviour.
We ended up purchasing the Lightning Lane for Radiator Springs Racers on our last day (this past Sunday) because we really wanted to ride it - AU $100 for one ride is just so extreme but it was the only way it was getting done, at rope drop the time was 95mins and it only went up from there on both days we visited. With LL we were on the ride in 10mins.
Ride breakdowns were a HUGE problem, it made the lines so much longer, I noticed at one point in DCA that there were 5 rides broken down at the same time - this just isn't good enough.
Overall we had a good time, was it a GREAT time? NO, it was the most disappointing trip we have ever taken, but things have changed and I guess we have nothing to do but roll with it.
I hate Genie+ and am so sad that it is here to stay - I do hope they can tweak it to be more like a Universal Pass in Orlando where it is either unlimited OR you can get on a ride whenever you want - not by booking it. If that was the case I "may" have purchased it, but as it stands now, there was no way I was paying $25+ per person to "maybe" ride a handful or rides once - I need more of a guarantee to shell out that kind of money.
