Quick Disneyland review from WDW vets, 1st timers, stayed GCH

Fall1

DIS Veteran
Joined
Aug 16, 2005
We are just back from 5 nights at GCH and our first DL trip. The cast was DH, myself, DS and DD, both 11.

We have been to WDW many times together and wanted to do San Diego and DL for a different kind of trip. We tried not to spend all our time comparing DL to WDW and just have fun for this trip. Overall we were successful, but some comparisons are hard not to make.

We really liked GCH, mostly for the super quick and easy access to the parks, it can't be beat!! We enjoyed the hotel, but the BC/YC at WDW is our favorite and overall we thought the hotels at WDW were better in terms of theming and pools. If we ever do DL again, we'd stay at GCH again for sure though! We did the early morning 3 out of our 4 park days and got so much done.

We had a 4 day park hopper ticket and did both parks all the days. We started in the park that had the early morning and hopped back and forth a couple times. We did take swim/room breaks for a bit in the afternoon all 4 days. The kids and I love a pool!

For Disneyland:
We LOVED Pirates! It was a longer ride and really great!! We really liked It's a Small World too, the characters sprinkled throughout were so cute.
I didn't get the hype of Space or the Matterhorn, hardly any hills and very jerky. The original rides in Fantasyland were adorable.

We ate a breakfast and a lunch at the Carnation Café, both were good but we like breakfast better. We did the character breakfast at the Plaza and loved the characters, but not the food. I can't say we were surprised the food wasn't great, we'd booked it for the characters and they were fun. We saw Minnie, Pooh, Eyore, Captain Hook, Rafiki, a MP penguin, Chip and Dale.

We had a quick dinner at the Jolly Holiday bakery and that was very good. The Mickey rose macaron they had for Mickey's 90th was amazing - best dessert of the trip!

Our big surprise was Fantasmic, we all absolutely loved it! The pirate ship was amazing!

For California Adventure:
We LOVED Carsland! They did an AMAZING job!! Radiator Racers was my favorite ride (the kids second favorite to the Incredicoaster!) The whole area was adorable, Luigi's ride was so fun!! We ate dinner at Flo's and got pretzels from the Cozy Cone.

Pixar Pier was great. We rode the Incredicoaster more times than I can count and did Toy Story Mania a bunch too. We loved the swinging ferris wheel.

We ate lunch at the Lamplight Lounge and loved the lobster nachos and the donuts for dessert. We should've just done apps and dessert because none of us loved our meals there. Still glad we went, the theming was adorable.

We got sundaes from Ghiradelli's and treats from the bakery at DL too.

We all loved Animation Academy, we did it 3 times, drew Olaf, Pooh and Mickey. Darren the artist there is amazing! We also really liked the Guardians ride, the story was so fun!

We also thought World of Color was beautiful!

MaxPass was wonderful aside from the $15 per person per day cost. Getting to stack FPs before using one is great for planning. We also go FPs for Fantasmic and World of Color instead of the dining packages and SO SO SO glad we did. We weren't loving the food at DL overall, so getting to use FP for the night shows worked well.

Overall, we loved DL and DCA! It'll never replace WDW for us, that's home to us! But we did love it.

The wins that DL has over WDW for us are:
hotel access to the parks
Fantasmic
Pirates
Haunted Mansion
Animation Academy

WDW wins huge for us in food and hotels/pools-which are a big part of our vacation.

We are so glad we went and would love to go again sometime in the future!
 

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