dianaore
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2004
We just returned from 5 days a DL June 25-29th
Okay first thanks to all you guys here who helped me plan my trip.
We had a wonderful time and built a lot of great family memories. I learned a lot and we are already talking about when we go back. I learned a lot to along the way at DL. I thought I'd post those things for any newbies like me who might like to know where we went right 
and wrong. 
Here goes!
We got a AAA package which was great! Love the fast pass and wouldn't go to DL without it.
We were in the park on a 5 day hopper pass, we spent 57 hours a total of 11.5 per day. We rode 84 rides and saw 4 parades and fireworks 4 nights though we never sat for them. The seats for fireworks began being snagged as early as 7:30..2 hours before the show!
POTC opened the day were were there and it was a mess!!.
Lines were starting in the Main street and wove all over the the place. We did get on it once after a shorter wait then the projected 2-3 hours. I was a bit disappointed as I recalled the one large drop being more exciting then the 2 medium size drops but then I am recalling the POTC from 20 years ago. It is still good but I sure though the old drop was more of a trill. Indiana was a mess as it was closed so often with break downs. 
We only rode it once. Splash MT was great though the lines were so long. Even for the fast pass lines were long just to get the tickets. FP tickets for space mt sold out by early to mid afternoon so we learned to hang around that area to get the FP often. We rode Space Mt 8 times in the 5 days! Loved it every time!!
Thunder Mt was a blast and we got a great video of the ride on the ride!
Characters were out though we missed seeing some of the old favorites like the 7 dwarfs, Peter Pan , Tinkerbell and then the new ones like Mike and Sully and then Flick and Ata. We can't complain we got autographs of 20 characters and most were approachable.
Lots of crowd control going on the whole time we were there. CM telling us to stay to the right and roping off the passageways. Really bad before the parades and fireworks. I'd say if you are not watching those pick a land and stay put.
We did the Goofy's kitchen and it was fun and the food selection was wide. We didn't get the character interaction we though we would get. Fairy Godmother and Mad Hatter and Chip and Dale. Chip had a chip on his should and seemed rude to the boys but they let it go. Goofy never made it to our table though we waited well past our meal being finished. Cinderella was also floating but never made it to our table. Max we saw in passing but that was all.
Food inside the park was out of this world! 6:00 for a corn dog or slice of pizza but we paid it along with 2.50 for bottled water. Almost all water out of the drinking fountains was warm and tasted nasty!
EE and PS were a bust for us. We didn't notice that the EE is only good on certain days so we missed out really getting to use it as the available days had passed in our 5 day stay. PS didn't mean much when we went 30 min before Aladdin they told us and many other unhappy guest that the 150 PS seats had already been given away and we should come at least 60-90 mins before the show if we wanted to use them. We didn't need the PS for Muppet's and didn't have time for Bug Life or Dreams..to busy catching rides.
We stayed at the HJ and loved it.
Wrote a great review for it on Trip advisor.
We also stayed at the DL Hotel. My review for that is not a good one at all: Hree it is:
If you are a person who values your hard earned money skip the desire to stay here it really wasnt our dream come true. We would have stayed longer in the park and skipped the hotel. We had such high expectations and we were pretty much let down all the way around with our stay.
The good points were that check-in and out was easy. The staff was friendly at both. The room was clean and that is about all.
We felt the room was small and lacked the charm of Disney and the kid delight we expected. The paintings on the walls in the room were something my grandmother might enjoy seeing. We expected bright colors and fun photos of Disney characters or Disneyland attractions not water colors of Paris (not even Paris Disneyland). The Denneys down the block had better decoration then our room! The room features that were Disney were the bathroom supplies in the Disney packaging and the lamps were held by Mickey hands on the wall. The lamp shades when in use had a Disney touch but you wouldnt know it if you didnt turn them on at night. The head board of the bed the entertainment center /dresser had wood burnings of Disney but still nothing to exciting really. The carpet was old and worn rather dirty looking in spots, again not bright and fun colors as we expected. The bedspread and wall paper were the same dull and not cheerful as we expected. It took us looking hard at both to see even the Disney touch in both he wall paper and the bedspread.
The hall way to our room was Motel 6 looking. There was nothing on the walls at all!
The pool was crowded and not clean the afternoon we got in to it. The second day it was a bit cleaner but not much and still very crowded. All the staff at the pool you could tell were anxious to get off work and didnt seem to add any charm to staying at the magical Disneyland hotel. The slide at the pool closed at 7:00 pm and didnt open until 11:00 am! That is two hours less on both ends of the pool hours.
As far as the pixie dust. We expected a sprinkling of glitter or something in our room. The only thing there that came close to pixie dust was a wall paper border that the top of the wall by the ceiling of Tinkerbell .and it didnt even glow in the dark
The parking for self serve was on the roof of the parking structure and if you didnt want to pay the bell hop to take your luggage in for you, you didnt have the use of the luggage cart. The elevator was whacked out and kept opening and closing at will (Tower of Terror on the Disneyland property we joked), it wasnt reliable either day we stayed.
All in all we will never stay here again. We feel we got caught up in the dream off having all the Disney magic we could on our trip and of the 5 hotels we stayed at on our trip we would rate this on second the bottom in may many of the rating categories. It wasnt worth the money we spend. We could have added more days to our park time and stayed at a good neighbor hotel or eaten steak each night for dinner and felt we had better spent our hard earned money. Maybe the other two Disney properties are better then this one.
All and all we will return and do it all over again. We will go better prepared for shows and EE and PS. We will book off site or try CGH.
Hope this helps someone else planning a trip to DL
Diana
Okay first thanks to all you guys here who helped me plan my trip.
We had a wonderful time and built a lot of great family memories. I learned a lot and we are already talking about when we go back. I learned a lot to along the way at DL. I thought I'd post those things for any newbies like me who might like to know where we went right and wrong. Here goes!We got a AAA package which was great! Love the fast pass and wouldn't go to DL without it.
We were in the park on a 5 day hopper pass, we spent 57 hours a total of 11.5 per day. We rode 84 rides and saw 4 parades and fireworks 4 nights though we never sat for them. The seats for fireworks began being snagged as early as 7:30..2 hours before the show!POTC opened the day were were there and it was a mess!!.
Lines were starting in the Main street and wove all over the the place. We did get on it once after a shorter wait then the projected 2-3 hours. I was a bit disappointed as I recalled the one large drop being more exciting then the 2 medium size drops but then I am recalling the POTC from 20 years ago. It is still good but I sure though the old drop was more of a trill. Indiana was a mess as it was closed so often with break downs. We only rode it once. Splash MT was great though the lines were so long. Even for the fast pass lines were long just to get the tickets. FP tickets for space mt sold out by early to mid afternoon so we learned to hang around that area to get the FP often. We rode Space Mt 8 times in the 5 days! Loved it every time!! Thunder Mt was a blast and we got a great video of the ride on the ride!
Characters were out though we missed seeing some of the old favorites like the 7 dwarfs, Peter Pan , Tinkerbell and then the new ones like Mike and Sully and then Flick and Ata. We can't complain we got autographs of 20 characters and most were approachable.
Lots of crowd control going on the whole time we were there. CM telling us to stay to the right and roping off the passageways. Really bad before the parades and fireworks. I'd say if you are not watching those pick a land and stay put.
We did the Goofy's kitchen and it was fun and the food selection was wide. We didn't get the character interaction we though we would get. Fairy Godmother and Mad Hatter and Chip and Dale. Chip had a chip on his should and seemed rude to the boys but they let it go. Goofy never made it to our table though we waited well past our meal being finished. Cinderella was also floating but never made it to our table. Max we saw in passing but that was all.
Food inside the park was out of this world!
6:00 for a corn dog or slice of pizza but we paid it along with 2.50 for bottled water. Almost all water out of the drinking fountains was warm and tasted nasty!EE and PS were a bust for us.
We didn't notice that the EE is only good on certain days so we missed out really getting to use it as the available days had passed in our 5 day stay. PS didn't mean much when we went 30 min before Aladdin they told us and many other unhappy guest that the 150 PS seats had already been given away and we should come at least 60-90 mins before the show if we wanted to use them. We didn't need the PS for Muppet's and didn't have time for Bug Life or Dreams..to busy catching rides. We stayed at the HJ and loved it.
Wrote a great review for it on Trip advisor.We also stayed at the DL Hotel. My review for that is not a good one at all:
Hree it is:If you are a person who values your hard earned money skip the desire to stay here it really wasnt our dream come true. We would have stayed longer in the park and skipped the hotel. We had such high expectations and we were pretty much let down all the way around with our stay.
The good points were that check-in and out was easy. The staff was friendly at both. The room was clean and that is about all.
We felt the room was small and lacked the charm of Disney and the kid delight we expected. The paintings on the walls in the room were something my grandmother might enjoy seeing. We expected bright colors and fun photos of Disney characters or Disneyland attractions not water colors of Paris (not even Paris Disneyland). The Denneys down the block had better decoration then our room! The room features that were Disney were the bathroom supplies in the Disney packaging and the lamps were held by Mickey hands on the wall. The lamp shades when in use had a Disney touch but you wouldnt know it if you didnt turn them on at night. The head board of the bed the entertainment center /dresser had wood burnings of Disney but still nothing to exciting really. The carpet was old and worn rather dirty looking in spots, again not bright and fun colors as we expected. The bedspread and wall paper were the same dull and not cheerful as we expected. It took us looking hard at both to see even the Disney touch in both he wall paper and the bedspread.
The hall way to our room was Motel 6 looking. There was nothing on the walls at all!
The pool was crowded and not clean the afternoon we got in to it. The second day it was a bit cleaner but not much and still very crowded. All the staff at the pool you could tell were anxious to get off work and didnt seem to add any charm to staying at the magical Disneyland hotel. The slide at the pool closed at 7:00 pm and didnt open until 11:00 am! That is two hours less on both ends of the pool hours.
As far as the pixie dust. We expected a sprinkling of glitter or something in our room. The only thing there that came close to pixie dust was a wall paper border that the top of the wall by the ceiling of Tinkerbell .and it didnt even glow in the dark
The parking for self serve was on the roof of the parking structure and if you didnt want to pay the bell hop to take your luggage in for you, you didnt have the use of the luggage cart. The elevator was whacked out and kept opening and closing at will (Tower of Terror on the Disneyland property we joked), it wasnt reliable either day we stayed.
All in all we will never stay here again. We feel we got caught up in the dream off having all the Disney magic we could on our trip and of the 5 hotels we stayed at on our trip we would rate this on second the bottom in may many of the rating categories. It wasnt worth the money we spend. We could have added more days to our park time and stayed at a good neighbor hotel or eaten steak each night for dinner and felt we had better spent our hard earned money. Maybe the other two Disney properties are better then this one.
All and all we will return and do it all over again.
We will go better prepared for shows and EE and PS. We will book off site or try CGH.Hope this helps someone else planning a trip to DL
Diana
Other reviews had noted how noisy it was. Did you notice that to be a problem?
