angey77
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2001
Even though it was a bit crowded, I can say my first time to DL was wonderful. I'll just give a quick run-down, with my comparisons to WDW, for those who are looking for the differences from an old, familiar face.
So some observations here.
What WDW has on DL:
Room key doubles as charge card and you don't have to carry around an extra piece of paper for charging purposes
A castle that takes more than 10 seconds to walk through. I knew the castle was small, but I had no clue it was so narrow!
Order when it comes to lines for characters!!! I FINALLY saw the Evil Queen, I ran to stand in line, and it was just 100 people, mostly non-English speaking, mobbing her with no "handlers" to organize everyone. She was basically carried through the hub by a mass pushing! Same with Mickey's house in Toontown. We got to the back room and it was a free-for-all fiesta. geesh. Needless to say, no pics with Mickey
Transportation - nice to have buses after a long day
Food seems to be a bit better, in park, a bit more variety, a little less expensive
Fantasyland opens a bit quicker after the fireworks
Maybe I'm biased, but its a close call, I like Wishes better. And when the fireworks started, and they were playing Wishes, I thought someone was playing a trick on me
Early Entry means 8a sharp, you're in the gate
Splash Mountain has a lot more story. DL's seemed like it would be one big drug-induced hallucination, with miscellaneous things pinned here and there in hopes of someone comprehending it. However, it feels like DL has a much faster drop than WDW, which is great in my book.
OK, now what DL has on WDW:
Proximity! Love the fact I didn't have to walk forever to go from one land to the next, and my hotel (Disneyland Hotel) was a 10-minute walk from the main gates
Detail on every building, every attraction. DH and I could not get over the Haunted Mansion had a St. Aug grass lawn! (That's all we have in Louisiana).
Amount of attractions - far more than WDW's Magic Kingdom, especially Fantasyland
SPACE MOUNTAIN! Kicks WDW's booty (I don't know what all these DL people are complaining about!). I wouldn't mind two years without SM at WDW if they did that to it
Toontown is much cooler
Autopia is much better, not just a race track
Tiki Room is NOT under new management, and we like it that way
Fireworks has MULTIPLE Tink flights and lasers shooting fireworks during Star Tours (cool effect)
Indiana Jones, woo hoo!
I loved looking at things and saying "Walt did that" or "Walt saw that." Loved the history.
And as far as DCA, they could chop off Paradise Pier and the park would benefit much from it. OK, so I might be bitter since Screaming was broken due to that accident (just a TAD bitter), but the rest of the rides back there were Six Flags New Orleans caliber, which basically means I don't think they were good enough to be "Disney". We only went to that part of the park and Bug's Land Saturday night and swore DCA was the worst park EVER! OK, what is up with Heimlich's Chew Chew Train? It was so bad, it hurt. hehe. But then we returned Sunday and realized "Ahh, the best part of the park, we didn't hit!" Needless to say, Soaring, GRR, Aladdin and ToT put DCA back on the map for us.
Even though most FPs were sold out by around 3-4p, we managed to get at least three per day for each ride (unlimited FP with AAA). Waits were running around 45-120 minutes for E-attractions, except for in the mornings. DL is DEFINITELY a morning park. Oh, and the parks would get worse crowd-wise after dinner. We tried to catch the fireworks then Fantasmic Sunday night. umm, no. It was a mob of people to get over to Fantasmic, and DH and I are not crowd people. Then we corralled to Tomorrowland via Frontierland and Fantasyland, and there are a ton of people there too. Then Monday we saw people sitting and waiting for Fantasmic beginning around 6p, and we said "umm, no." So (blasphemy), we missed Fantasmic. I just couldn't justify waiting all afternoon, and night time was crazy. Monday, we did early entry, and even though we left the hotel at 6:30a, it was worth it. The only thing that stunk was they wouldn't board the monorail until around 7:05. But we got into FL and did it all before opening, except the Storybookland boats, which we never got to due to lines and closures for the parade But we saw a cat drinking water on Casey Jr.! I got a pic of him. hehe. And also the big perk of early entry was walk-on to Matterhorn. OK, so I am ready for this one. The line had been wrapping around the sucker all weekend, so we didn't go on it yet. Well, we go on and DH hates it since it basically beat the hoo-hoo out of him (we rode the Tomorrowland side).
As far as food, we ate at Hungry Bear, French Market, the Mexican place in DCA (not that impressive were the nachos), churros, lots of Mickey bars, the sorbet from the carts (that was really good), breakfast at Club Buzz, Whitewater Snacks (??) at Grand Californian, Bengal BBQ and Napa Rose, which was EXCELLENT. Everything we had there was so good, especially the Tahitian vanilla creme brulee tart on top of raspberries. mmm.
OK, I'm sure there is more, but my head is still spinning. If anyone has any questions, I'll try my best to answer them!
So some observations here.
What WDW has on DL:
Room key doubles as charge card and you don't have to carry around an extra piece of paper for charging purposes
A castle that takes more than 10 seconds to walk through. I knew the castle was small, but I had no clue it was so narrow!
Order when it comes to lines for characters!!! I FINALLY saw the Evil Queen, I ran to stand in line, and it was just 100 people, mostly non-English speaking, mobbing her with no "handlers" to organize everyone. She was basically carried through the hub by a mass pushing! Same with Mickey's house in Toontown. We got to the back room and it was a free-for-all fiesta. geesh. Needless to say, no pics with Mickey
Transportation - nice to have buses after a long day
Food seems to be a bit better, in park, a bit more variety, a little less expensive
Fantasyland opens a bit quicker after the fireworks
Maybe I'm biased, but its a close call, I like Wishes better. And when the fireworks started, and they were playing Wishes, I thought someone was playing a trick on me
Early Entry means 8a sharp, you're in the gate
Splash Mountain has a lot more story. DL's seemed like it would be one big drug-induced hallucination, with miscellaneous things pinned here and there in hopes of someone comprehending it. However, it feels like DL has a much faster drop than WDW, which is great in my book.
OK, now what DL has on WDW:
Proximity! Love the fact I didn't have to walk forever to go from one land to the next, and my hotel (Disneyland Hotel) was a 10-minute walk from the main gates
Detail on every building, every attraction. DH and I could not get over the Haunted Mansion had a St. Aug grass lawn! (That's all we have in Louisiana).
Amount of attractions - far more than WDW's Magic Kingdom, especially Fantasyland
SPACE MOUNTAIN! Kicks WDW's booty (I don't know what all these DL people are complaining about!). I wouldn't mind two years without SM at WDW if they did that to it
Toontown is much cooler
Autopia is much better, not just a race track
Tiki Room is NOT under new management, and we like it that way
Fireworks has MULTIPLE Tink flights and lasers shooting fireworks during Star Tours (cool effect)
Indiana Jones, woo hoo!
I loved looking at things and saying "Walt did that" or "Walt saw that." Loved the history.
And as far as DCA, they could chop off Paradise Pier and the park would benefit much from it. OK, so I might be bitter since Screaming was broken due to that accident (just a TAD bitter), but the rest of the rides back there were Six Flags New Orleans caliber, which basically means I don't think they were good enough to be "Disney". We only went to that part of the park and Bug's Land Saturday night and swore DCA was the worst park EVER! OK, what is up with Heimlich's Chew Chew Train? It was so bad, it hurt. hehe. But then we returned Sunday and realized "Ahh, the best part of the park, we didn't hit!" Needless to say, Soaring, GRR, Aladdin and ToT put DCA back on the map for us.
Even though most FPs were sold out by around 3-4p, we managed to get at least three per day for each ride (unlimited FP with AAA). Waits were running around 45-120 minutes for E-attractions, except for in the mornings. DL is DEFINITELY a morning park. Oh, and the parks would get worse crowd-wise after dinner. We tried to catch the fireworks then Fantasmic Sunday night. umm, no. It was a mob of people to get over to Fantasmic, and DH and I are not crowd people. Then we corralled to Tomorrowland via Frontierland and Fantasyland, and there are a ton of people there too. Then Monday we saw people sitting and waiting for Fantasmic beginning around 6p, and we said "umm, no." So (blasphemy), we missed Fantasmic. I just couldn't justify waiting all afternoon, and night time was crazy. Monday, we did early entry, and even though we left the hotel at 6:30a, it was worth it. The only thing that stunk was they wouldn't board the monorail until around 7:05. But we got into FL and did it all before opening, except the Storybookland boats, which we never got to due to lines and closures for the parade But we saw a cat drinking water on Casey Jr.! I got a pic of him. hehe. And also the big perk of early entry was walk-on to Matterhorn. OK, so I am ready for this one. The line had been wrapping around the sucker all weekend, so we didn't go on it yet. Well, we go on and DH hates it since it basically beat the hoo-hoo out of him (we rode the Tomorrowland side).
As far as food, we ate at Hungry Bear, French Market, the Mexican place in DCA (not that impressive were the nachos), churros, lots of Mickey bars, the sorbet from the carts (that was really good), breakfast at Club Buzz, Whitewater Snacks (??) at Grand Californian, Bengal BBQ and Napa Rose, which was EXCELLENT. Everything we had there was so good, especially the Tahitian vanilla creme brulee tart on top of raspberries. mmm.
OK, I'm sure there is more, but my head is still spinning. If anyone has any questions, I'll try my best to answer them!