StarSpeckledSky
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 11, 2019
Recently on June 13 my dad, sister, and I went to Disneyland for one day out of our week-long vacation in the LA area. I provided live updates while in the park but I wanted to share a post going over the day and offering thoughts on Disneyland to perhaps help some people planning a trip there!
First, an overview of the day in the park. Times are approximate and not exact because I'm too lazy to check my photos to track the exact minute. Here's how it went:
10:30am: Arrive at parking lots, park, walk to Disneyland Park
11:00am: Through gates
11:20am: Check-in for SWGE. It was really funny because my dad thought that the miniature model of SWGE in Launch Bay WAS SWGE!
. After this my sister showed a lot of interest in the sphere nearby Launch Bay (is it supposed to be a globe?) so we stopped there for a while. We weren't in a rush, as we wanted to avoid the first hour of overlap in our reservation slot. Once my sister had her fill of spinning the sphere around and getting her hands wet we slowly walked to SWGE, taking in our surroundings and the park. While we were walking I pulled a 3:15-4:15pm FP for Hyperspace using MP.
12:00pm: Step into SWGE. It was amazing, my dad was a little giddy. He's the one who introduced me to Star Wars and is a big fan! I took a bunch of pictures of him in front of all the ships, droids, and with Chewie! We caught him walking around.
12:30pm: I rode Millenium Falcon single rider as engineer. It was so cool!
12:40pm: We got blue and green milk - I loved both but blue was preferred by me. While we were sipping our drinks, we caught a mini performance of sorts with Kylo Ren and some stormtroopers. After the mini performance another set of stormtroopers walked around questioning people. I was questioned, as was my dad! I like to think that my sass scared them a little?
After I was questioned I pulled a 3:40-4:40 FP for Matterhorn.
1:20pm: Shopping! I got a cute Ewok plush.
1:40pm: I rode Millenium Falcon through standby, wait was posted as 15 but was more like 5. I was gunner this time. Really fun experience again and this time I knew what I was supposed to do and got 100%.
2:00pm: Exit SWGE, headed for lunch at CO.
2:15pm: Arrive at CO, early for 2:30 reservation but we were seated soon. We enjoyed a nice lunch and I basically devoured all the pomme frites. SO GOOD
2:45pm: Exit CO, headed to parade watching spot! While waiting I pulled a 3:40-4:40 FP for Big Thunder.
3:30pm: Parade! My sister loved this and I thought the music and dancing was quite well put together. Pretty impressive!
3:50pm: Parade ended. My dad took my sister to Toontown to meet Mickey and Minnie while I went off to use my FPs.
4:00pm: Hyperspace Mountain using FP. While in line for this I pulled a 4:40-5:40 FP for Star Tours.
4:25pm: Matterhorn using FP. After this, for some reason, it was a huge struggle to get to Fronteirland. I kept on being pointed this way and that and was super confused - plus I started panicking, worried that my FP would run out!
4:45pm: Big Thunder using FP. I was 5 minutes late and not later than about three seconds after scanning into the FP queue for BTM, my FP disappeared from my plans. Quick timing!
5:00pm: I really had to use the bathroom and basically took a mad dash to Splash, ready to use SR super fast before giving up and going to the restroom in Hungry Bear. After this it was around 5:20 and I lined up for SR Splash but the line was moving rather slowly. I was panicking as the time ticked towards 5:40, the end of my Star Tours FP, so I just gave up and ran for Tomorrowland.
5:41pm: Into line for Star Tours, just a minute after. Thank goodness the FP still worked. I was off really soon. Then I got a text from my dad saying that we should meet in Fantasyland to do teacups (a tradition) now. I quickly headed over there and on my way pulled a 7pm-8pm FP for Splash for after dinner.
I should probably note that during the time that I was using my FPs, my dad and sister met Mickey, Minnie, then had an ice cream.
6:00-7:00pm: The three of us rode teacups twice, Storybookland, Casey's, and Dumbo, in that order.
7:15pm: Picked up dinner from Hungry Bear. My dad and sister sat down to eat a bit and have a break while I rode Splash Mountain. In the middle of my ride the ride stopped, but it only took about 5 minutes. We got stuck in the really sad Laughing Place song.
7:35pm: Off Splash Mountain. I went to the bathroom again because I knew that I wouldn't have another chance for a while.
8:00pm: We brought the food and stuff to our Fantasmic viewing area. We ate while waiting for the show to begin.
9:00pm: Fantasmic! My sister and dad both enjoyed this and so did I.
9:30pm: Fireworks! Disneyland Forever was nice, not our favorite but still nice. The animations and mist screens were cool, maybe we would have liked it better in a different spot? I'm not sure. Anyways. The message was fun and my sister started jumping up and down (or was it squirming?) when Elsa appeared.
9:50pm: Left viewing area and headed for Pooh.
10:00pm: Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Wait was five minutes. After this my sister decided that she really wanted to ride the carousel but that was still closed after fireworks so we headed for small world first.
10:15pm: it's a small world. In the line my sister wanted to go to the bathroom but she held it until the end of the ride.
10:35pm: bathroom break
10:45pm: King Arthur's Carousel, wait was posted 5 minutes but we basically only waited 2.
10:55pm: Shopping
11:10pm: Exit Disneyland Park, ride tram to parking
11:20pm: Exit Disneyland property
Thoughts on the day:
If anyone was following my trail of threads, especially the one I was using for live updates, you'll know that we were planning to rope drop! In the days coming up to our day in Disneyland my dad was 100% on board with rope drop! Wednesday night before we went to Disneyland? Nope. We ended up waking up at 8:30am. Park had opened at 8am and our hotel was 30 minutes away. We did our morning things, had breakfast, by the time we were on the road it was 10am. Naturally I was freaking out - what about my plan? I frantically made a new one. The one big relief was that my dad was still on board with us splitting up in the park after the parade. He was also on board with getting me MaxPass. If anyone is unsure about MaxPass - GET IT. It was an absolute lifesaver for me and I wouldn't have been able to do half of the things I did without it. I suppose that in some cases it's alright if you don't get MaxPass, such as if you're devoting a week to the resort and aren't in a big rush to see a ton in one day, but if you're spending a day at each park or honestly even two days at each park, MaxPass is a must. Only the people who are interested in the biggies need it, you should just pull from kiosks for the other rides for other party members. In our day that wasn't even needed as all the rides that weren't biggies didn't need a FP. In our party of three I was the only one who had it. We linked all our PhotoPasses to me as well.
At any rate we didn't rope drop. Far from it. We caught check-in for our SWGE reservation and did that, no time for anything before. THANK GOODNESS we had a Fantasmic dining package because otherwise we would have had to do standby (which that day wouldn't have been bad from the looks of it but still).
Talking about crowds, I'd say that they were moderate, probably around 5-6. Longest wait that I saw on the app for Peter Pan was 35 minutes the day we went, longest wait for Hyperspace was 75 minutes the day we went and that was in the middle of the day, so not bad really. When I used my FP for Hyperspace, waits for that ride were only 35 minutes. As I mentioned above, standby for Fantasmic didn't look too crowded while we were walking by.
A big thing that I'd like to point out is that even though we didn't rope drop and we devoted 3 hours of our time to SWGE (including check-in), in total, excluding the Falcon ride, I rode 15 rides (including the repeat tea party). If you include the two times I rode the Falcon that's 17. Had we stayed until park closing and perhaps arrived just a few minutes earlier I'm confident that we could have fit in Peter Pan, Alice, and Lincoln as well. So in ~9 hours I rode 15 rides, ate lunch at a sit down restaurant, watched a parade, watched Fantasmic, and watched fireworks. Maybe it was just crowds being low-ish but this really emphasizes what a good knowledge of FPs and general knowledge of how the park works can do for you, even without rope dropping. Throughout my day in the park I kept looking over my "Disneyland note" in the notes app. This note contained info that, before the trip, I had compiled to help me in the park. Included was a screenshot of Skyegirl's FP priorities as well as my lists of priority attractions and would like to do attractions.
First I'll go back and talk about the FP priorities in my notes. This was helpful for giving me an idea of what FPs to consider grabbing next. However, it's worth noting that you shouldn't just blindly book FPs in the exact priority order commando style. The return times are important as well. For instance, in the park at one point I had a choice between a FP for BTM or Star Tours. Star Tours is a slightly higher priority but the BTM return time fit much better into my overall day plan and therefore I chose to book that. Star Tours times were too early and cutting it too close to the parade for my liking. I mentally noted to get Star Tours as my next FP once times were late enough. I probably estimated too close, as you can see from the schedule above, but it was fine. At any rate FP priorities should be paired WITH return times, you don't need to be fearful that one will run out in the 90 minutes/120 minutes that you can't book unless it's already pretty late.
And speaking of overall plans it's good to have one, but one more like a structure and less like a "___pm we do this and then go to ___ at ___pm." It's really hard to make that kind of plan with Disneyland and honestly it just make the experience worse off. I already spent enough time on my phone with the play app and getting FPs, no more looking at an itinerary!
Anyways, the "plan" I frantically made in the car once arrival time was determined was this: check-in for SWGE, go to SWGE, eat lunch, parade, split up (dad and sister go to meet mickey and minnie, I use FPs on big rides), do some whatever small rides together, dinner, fantasmic + fireworks, do whatever Fantasyland rides, leave. It was followed relatively well aside from some small back and forths and that gave me satisfaction. A down to the minute plan would have flopped in 5 seconds and I would have gotten upset because of the perfectionist I am.
NOTE: I proofread and stuff and noticed that I didn't mention one thing. We came on a day with EMH when we didn't have that special privilege, not that we would have used it anyways. Mentioned it here.
I think it's about time to move onto my impressions on Disneyland Park as a whole. I've been to Disneyland Park before between the ages of 3-6 but I only remember a little. Now I remember basically everything.
To start off I'll just say that I LOVED Disneyland. A lot of WDW people complain about the "small size" or "crowded feeling" of Disneyland Park in comparison to the Magic Kingdom. I actually like this smaller size and I think that for people like me who do more planning than we should it's rather nice to have a little less things to deal with. Plus it's so much easier for families who split up to find each other again. I also felt safer in Disneyland by myself - I've wandered around MK by myself once and it was just a little... nerve-wracking? Perhaps it was an age thing but this was only a year ago. In Disneyland I felt like my dad and sister were still close-ish and that definitely made me feel better. Not 100% sure why though. But all that's to say the I'd rank Disneyland higher than the Magic Kingdom. My opinion not yours if you disagree!
I feel like Disneyland would be the better Disney park in the USA for us to go to. Shame that it's the one further away! The reason is because my parents are really last minute with where/when we'll go on vacation during one of my breaks. They could decide two months before or two days before - both have actually happened before. At Disneyland everyone's starting fresh with FPs and dining reservation competition is minimal. I think that we could spontaneously decide to go and have a great time, pulling FPs and getting dining reservations without stress. Now I get that WDW same-day FP+ works sort of similarly but it's so stressful and way too much nose-in-screen because everyone has all these reservations already! Also my family doesn't really bother with staying onsite anymore as there's more to Florida that we'd like to do most of the time so there's no 60 day window for us. And even if we had the 60-day window I doubt that we'd know that we were going far enough in advance to make use of it. WDW dining reservations are also more difficult to make.
Overall it was an amazing one-day trip. We got a ton done even though we didn't rope drop and had fun as well! Hopefully this post was insightful or at least interesting to read and can possibly help people planning a trip to DL.
First, an overview of the day in the park. Times are approximate and not exact because I'm too lazy to check my photos to track the exact minute. Here's how it went:
10:30am: Arrive at parking lots, park, walk to Disneyland Park
11:00am: Through gates
11:20am: Check-in for SWGE. It was really funny because my dad thought that the miniature model of SWGE in Launch Bay WAS SWGE!
. After this my sister showed a lot of interest in the sphere nearby Launch Bay (is it supposed to be a globe?) so we stopped there for a while. We weren't in a rush, as we wanted to avoid the first hour of overlap in our reservation slot. Once my sister had her fill of spinning the sphere around and getting her hands wet we slowly walked to SWGE, taking in our surroundings and the park. While we were walking I pulled a 3:15-4:15pm FP for Hyperspace using MP. 12:00pm: Step into SWGE. It was amazing, my dad was a little giddy. He's the one who introduced me to Star Wars and is a big fan! I took a bunch of pictures of him in front of all the ships, droids, and with Chewie! We caught him walking around.
12:30pm: I rode Millenium Falcon single rider as engineer. It was so cool!
12:40pm: We got blue and green milk - I loved both but blue was preferred by me. While we were sipping our drinks, we caught a mini performance of sorts with Kylo Ren and some stormtroopers. After the mini performance another set of stormtroopers walked around questioning people. I was questioned, as was my dad! I like to think that my sass scared them a little?
After I was questioned I pulled a 3:40-4:40 FP for Matterhorn.1:20pm: Shopping! I got a cute Ewok plush.
1:40pm: I rode Millenium Falcon through standby, wait was posted as 15 but was more like 5. I was gunner this time. Really fun experience again and this time I knew what I was supposed to do and got 100%.
2:00pm: Exit SWGE, headed for lunch at CO.
2:15pm: Arrive at CO, early for 2:30 reservation but we were seated soon. We enjoyed a nice lunch and I basically devoured all the pomme frites. SO GOOD
2:45pm: Exit CO, headed to parade watching spot! While waiting I pulled a 3:40-4:40 FP for Big Thunder.
3:30pm: Parade! My sister loved this and I thought the music and dancing was quite well put together. Pretty impressive!
3:50pm: Parade ended. My dad took my sister to Toontown to meet Mickey and Minnie while I went off to use my FPs.
4:00pm: Hyperspace Mountain using FP. While in line for this I pulled a 4:40-5:40 FP for Star Tours.
4:25pm: Matterhorn using FP. After this, for some reason, it was a huge struggle to get to Fronteirland. I kept on being pointed this way and that and was super confused - plus I started panicking, worried that my FP would run out!
4:45pm: Big Thunder using FP. I was 5 minutes late and not later than about three seconds after scanning into the FP queue for BTM, my FP disappeared from my plans. Quick timing!
5:00pm: I really had to use the bathroom and basically took a mad dash to Splash, ready to use SR super fast before giving up and going to the restroom in Hungry Bear. After this it was around 5:20 and I lined up for SR Splash but the line was moving rather slowly. I was panicking as the time ticked towards 5:40, the end of my Star Tours FP, so I just gave up and ran for Tomorrowland.
5:41pm: Into line for Star Tours, just a minute after. Thank goodness the FP still worked. I was off really soon. Then I got a text from my dad saying that we should meet in Fantasyland to do teacups (a tradition) now. I quickly headed over there and on my way pulled a 7pm-8pm FP for Splash for after dinner.
I should probably note that during the time that I was using my FPs, my dad and sister met Mickey, Minnie, then had an ice cream.
6:00-7:00pm: The three of us rode teacups twice, Storybookland, Casey's, and Dumbo, in that order.
7:15pm: Picked up dinner from Hungry Bear. My dad and sister sat down to eat a bit and have a break while I rode Splash Mountain. In the middle of my ride the ride stopped, but it only took about 5 minutes. We got stuck in the really sad Laughing Place song.
7:35pm: Off Splash Mountain. I went to the bathroom again because I knew that I wouldn't have another chance for a while.
8:00pm: We brought the food and stuff to our Fantasmic viewing area. We ate while waiting for the show to begin.
9:00pm: Fantasmic! My sister and dad both enjoyed this and so did I.
9:30pm: Fireworks! Disneyland Forever was nice, not our favorite but still nice. The animations and mist screens were cool, maybe we would have liked it better in a different spot? I'm not sure. Anyways. The message was fun and my sister started jumping up and down (or was it squirming?) when Elsa appeared.
9:50pm: Left viewing area and headed for Pooh.
10:00pm: Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Wait was five minutes. After this my sister decided that she really wanted to ride the carousel but that was still closed after fireworks so we headed for small world first.
10:15pm: it's a small world. In the line my sister wanted to go to the bathroom but she held it until the end of the ride.
10:35pm: bathroom break
10:45pm: King Arthur's Carousel, wait was posted 5 minutes but we basically only waited 2.
10:55pm: Shopping
11:10pm: Exit Disneyland Park, ride tram to parking
11:20pm: Exit Disneyland property
Thoughts on the day:
If anyone was following my trail of threads, especially the one I was using for live updates, you'll know that we were planning to rope drop! In the days coming up to our day in Disneyland my dad was 100% on board with rope drop! Wednesday night before we went to Disneyland? Nope. We ended up waking up at 8:30am. Park had opened at 8am and our hotel was 30 minutes away. We did our morning things, had breakfast, by the time we were on the road it was 10am. Naturally I was freaking out - what about my plan? I frantically made a new one. The one big relief was that my dad was still on board with us splitting up in the park after the parade. He was also on board with getting me MaxPass. If anyone is unsure about MaxPass - GET IT. It was an absolute lifesaver for me and I wouldn't have been able to do half of the things I did without it. I suppose that in some cases it's alright if you don't get MaxPass, such as if you're devoting a week to the resort and aren't in a big rush to see a ton in one day, but if you're spending a day at each park or honestly even two days at each park, MaxPass is a must. Only the people who are interested in the biggies need it, you should just pull from kiosks for the other rides for other party members. In our day that wasn't even needed as all the rides that weren't biggies didn't need a FP. In our party of three I was the only one who had it. We linked all our PhotoPasses to me as well.
At any rate we didn't rope drop. Far from it. We caught check-in for our SWGE reservation and did that, no time for anything before. THANK GOODNESS we had a Fantasmic dining package because otherwise we would have had to do standby (which that day wouldn't have been bad from the looks of it but still).
Talking about crowds, I'd say that they were moderate, probably around 5-6. Longest wait that I saw on the app for Peter Pan was 35 minutes the day we went, longest wait for Hyperspace was 75 minutes the day we went and that was in the middle of the day, so not bad really. When I used my FP for Hyperspace, waits for that ride were only 35 minutes. As I mentioned above, standby for Fantasmic didn't look too crowded while we were walking by.
A big thing that I'd like to point out is that even though we didn't rope drop and we devoted 3 hours of our time to SWGE (including check-in), in total, excluding the Falcon ride, I rode 15 rides (including the repeat tea party). If you include the two times I rode the Falcon that's 17. Had we stayed until park closing and perhaps arrived just a few minutes earlier I'm confident that we could have fit in Peter Pan, Alice, and Lincoln as well. So in ~9 hours I rode 15 rides, ate lunch at a sit down restaurant, watched a parade, watched Fantasmic, and watched fireworks. Maybe it was just crowds being low-ish but this really emphasizes what a good knowledge of FPs and general knowledge of how the park works can do for you, even without rope dropping. Throughout my day in the park I kept looking over my "Disneyland note" in the notes app. This note contained info that, before the trip, I had compiled to help me in the park. Included was a screenshot of Skyegirl's FP priorities as well as my lists of priority attractions and would like to do attractions.
First I'll go back and talk about the FP priorities in my notes. This was helpful for giving me an idea of what FPs to consider grabbing next. However, it's worth noting that you shouldn't just blindly book FPs in the exact priority order commando style. The return times are important as well. For instance, in the park at one point I had a choice between a FP for BTM or Star Tours. Star Tours is a slightly higher priority but the BTM return time fit much better into my overall day plan and therefore I chose to book that. Star Tours times were too early and cutting it too close to the parade for my liking. I mentally noted to get Star Tours as my next FP once times were late enough. I probably estimated too close, as you can see from the schedule above, but it was fine. At any rate FP priorities should be paired WITH return times, you don't need to be fearful that one will run out in the 90 minutes/120 minutes that you can't book unless it's already pretty late.
And speaking of overall plans it's good to have one, but one more like a structure and less like a "___pm we do this and then go to ___ at ___pm." It's really hard to make that kind of plan with Disneyland and honestly it just make the experience worse off. I already spent enough time on my phone with the play app and getting FPs, no more looking at an itinerary!
Anyways, the "plan" I frantically made in the car once arrival time was determined was this: check-in for SWGE, go to SWGE, eat lunch, parade, split up (dad and sister go to meet mickey and minnie, I use FPs on big rides), do some whatever small rides together, dinner, fantasmic + fireworks, do whatever Fantasyland rides, leave. It was followed relatively well aside from some small back and forths and that gave me satisfaction. A down to the minute plan would have flopped in 5 seconds and I would have gotten upset because of the perfectionist I am.NOTE: I proofread and stuff and noticed that I didn't mention one thing. We came on a day with EMH when we didn't have that special privilege, not that we would have used it anyways. Mentioned it here.
I think it's about time to move onto my impressions on Disneyland Park as a whole. I've been to Disneyland Park before between the ages of 3-6 but I only remember a little. Now I remember basically everything.
To start off I'll just say that I LOVED Disneyland. A lot of WDW people complain about the "small size" or "crowded feeling" of Disneyland Park in comparison to the Magic Kingdom. I actually like this smaller size and I think that for people like me who do more planning than we should it's rather nice to have a little less things to deal with. Plus it's so much easier for families who split up to find each other again. I also felt safer in Disneyland by myself - I've wandered around MK by myself once and it was just a little... nerve-wracking? Perhaps it was an age thing but this was only a year ago. In Disneyland I felt like my dad and sister were still close-ish and that definitely made me feel better. Not 100% sure why though. But all that's to say the I'd rank Disneyland higher than the Magic Kingdom. My opinion not yours if you disagree!
I feel like Disneyland would be the better Disney park in the USA for us to go to. Shame that it's the one further away! The reason is because my parents are really last minute with where/when we'll go on vacation during one of my breaks. They could decide two months before or two days before - both have actually happened before. At Disneyland everyone's starting fresh with FPs and dining reservation competition is minimal. I think that we could spontaneously decide to go and have a great time, pulling FPs and getting dining reservations without stress. Now I get that WDW same-day FP+ works sort of similarly but it's so stressful and way too much nose-in-screen because everyone has all these reservations already! Also my family doesn't really bother with staying onsite anymore as there's more to Florida that we'd like to do most of the time so there's no 60 day window for us. And even if we had the 60-day window I doubt that we'd know that we were going far enough in advance to make use of it. WDW dining reservations are also more difficult to make.
Overall it was an amazing one-day trip. We got a ton done even though we didn't rope drop and had fun as well! Hopefully this post was insightful or at least interesting to read and can possibly help people planning a trip to DL.
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