Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought that I would ever get to do a VIP Tour. Then some serious Pixie Dust was sprinkled on me. It turned out that somebody I know knows somebody in turn who has access to a limited number of complimentary VIP tours. As this person had not used their allocation, I was asked if I would be interested in doing a VIP tour. Well, let me tell you, interested does not even begin to cover it. I am positively bouncing off the walls with excitement every time I think about this. To make this even better, I was given the option to invite some friends as each VIP tour can have up to 9 people. So I get to share this special day with four people I care deeply about. I suppose this will be my official birthday party even though it takes place 10 days after my actual birthday.
Considering the other plans that I have for this trip, commitments of the rest of the cast and anticipated crowd levels, 24th November was the date that worked best all around. There was just one slight worry for me. We are only flying back from Hawaii the day before and the original plan had been to fly standby. So there was a risk that we either would get back very late the evening before or even in the early morning hours of that day. Since then I have decided to play it safe and bought a normal ticket that leaves Honolulu in the morning of the 23rd November and gets us back to Los Angeles mid afternoon. Our body clocks are still going to be on Hawaii time so I requested a midday start. There is an IHOP close to our hotel so we will probably have a late breakfast there before heading to the Grand Californian Hotel where we will meet.
Before we head into the parks, I thought I introduce the cast. Those of you who have followed my trip reports for a while should have across all of them.
Graham - When I first mentioned this day and asked if he wanted to come along, his reaction was "Why would I want to do that?" He is extremely reluctant when it comes to the parks. If I am very lucky, I manage to get him to the parks once a year. He prefers
Disneyland to Walt Disney World, but even that in very small doses. This year he had no inclination to go anywhere near a park. Something must have sunk in though. He did pick up on the fact that we would have priority access to a lot of the rides and attractions and he suddenly asked me if we were going just to Disneyland. Once I told him that we would be visiting both parks, he was in. Turns out that California Screamin has been on his bucket list for a while and Matterhorn Bobsleighs is his favourite ride.
We actually have a few friends in Southern California and most of them will join us during that day. Alison (Frananaj) is posting on this thread. We finally met in person in May last year and instantly hit it off. I can't wait to see her again.
We met Sue and her husband on our Med cruise in 2010, where they were our table mates and we kept in touch ever since. They attended our vow renewal in 2011 and we stayed with them a couple of times. Just to show how much we have in common, Sue loves Disneyland and we have had a lot of fun in the parks before. Her husband on the other hand shares Graham's feelings about the parks and just does not get why people would want to do this to themselves. He won't be joining us for this day.
The last member of the cast was a real stroke of luck that she entered my life. We had planned to renew our wedding vows on the Disney Wonder in 2011. This was all booked and then fell apart for a variety of reasons. The main one and ultimately the deal breaker was that I just could not work with their wedding coordinator. She behaved like she was doing me this huge favour. So I cancelled the vow renewal package and was ready to give up on the idea entirely. At some stage Graham suggested maybe I should contact Crystal Cathedral to see if we could have the vow renewal there. I initially dismissed this out of hand, but after a month of pouting I decided that this may not be such a bad idea after all and that I had really nothing to lose. Their wedding coordinator was the polar opposite of what I had experienced with Disney. I would only fully understand just how many strings had been pulled on the day itself. One issue that I did have is that rather than having a ready made package, I had to organize everything myself. This is where Jennifer came in. I Googled Wedding Photography in Garden Grove and her website was one of many hits. I went through a silly amount of websites, but I always ended up back on her website. I absolutely loved her work. So I contacted her. We started chatting and soon I realised that I loved the person behind the website is as much as her work. She was an absolute God-sent. I hit a few roadblocks along the way. Trying to organize a vow renewal when you are 5000 miles and 8 time zones away is not an easy thing to do. She helped with a lot of them from organising a make up artist to do my hair and make up to picking me up from the port and taking me to her place to get ready. I literally could not have done it without her. I had come to really enjoy chatting with her online and when we finally met in person, it felt like we had known each other for ages. We met on three occasions while we were in California that year and kept in touch ever since. We nearly met up in Orlando last year, but our timing was slightly off. I always planned to see if we could catch up with each other on this trip and as she is a huge Disney fan, this is just perfect.
So this is the cast and I cannot think of any other people I would rather spend my day with. So with the timings and cast taken care of, it was just a question to decide what to do with the day. Right from the beginning I knew that I wanted to spend time in both parks. I also knew that I did not want to spend the day racing from attraction to attraction, but wanted to leave some room to stop and smell the roses and for a certain level of flexibility to do things on a whim. I also wanted to make sure that everybody will enjoy this very special day. The VIP guide essentially acts as a human Fastpass so I knew we could get a lot done if we put our mind to it. I decided to ask everybody for their two must do attractions. It turned out that great minds do think alike and we ended up with some duplicate requests. The list of must do attractions ended up being California Screamin, Toy Story Midway Mania, Radiator Springs Racers, Matterhorn Bobsleighs, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Haunted Mansion Holiday and the Disneyland Railroad. I also smuggled in Soarin, because we ended up with less attractions than I had expected.
As far as the Disneyland Railroad is concerned, I had read that they still allow people on the VIP tours to ride in the Lilly Belle Presidential Parlor Car. I got the chance to do this after our Hawaii cruise in 2012 and this is one of my most precious Disney memories. So I asked for this. The Lilly Belle is not out every day so there are no guarantees, but they have noted the request. I am sure that we don't need an hour per attraction so I would not be surprised if some other attractions join the line up on the day.
The tour also can include VIP seating to various shows. I am a huge fan of World of Color, but have not seen the Winter Dreams version yet. So I requested seating for that. I think this will be a really magical day.
