MarBee
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2015
Recently went to DL for the first time. I’ve been to WDW dozens of times over the years. We bought 3 day park hopper tickets and stayed at the Fairfield. We spent the first few days of our trip at the beach, Hollywood, and other So Cal tourist spots. The last 3 days were all Disney.
Our first day at DL was pure Disney magic. We rope dropped, and even though we almost never rope drop at WDW ( we are not morning people), rope dropping at DL was a breeze because of the time difference for us. We started off at Indy and did just about every single ride (I chickened out on Nemo). The day was nothing short of magical.
Comparing DL to MK, we all thought that every ride that is at both parks, the DL version was better. The weather was obviously better at DL, and we thought the food that we had (Carnation Cafe and Daisy’s cafe) was actually better than the WDW equivalents.
The parade was cute and fun (but short and small), and the castle show was great, but WDW wins for this one.
I did like how they actually kept walkways open during the shows. At WDW, you just don’t go near the front of the park during showtime.
If you asked us then which park we liked better, we probably would have been DL converts, even with the 5.5 hour plane ride. However, our CA experience was the next day.
We rope dropped CA and went to Marvel land first. Web Slingers was great!
Then, we spent the next 1.5 days waiting in lines while rides broke down. We counted, and we spent a total of 18 hours in CA. We did/try to do 11 rides. 8 of them broke down while we were in line (some more than once). It really killed the vibe.
We even wound up buying an ILL- $80 for four of us- to ride Radiator Springs. I am totally anti- buying ILLs, but we spent a total of 3 hours on and off between the 2 days we went trying to ride this ride for it to break down, and I caved. Finally, we got almost to the front of the line, and it broke down again. So frustrating. We decided we couldn’t take CA anymore and went over to DL to end the trip on a high note.
We ate at the quick service near Soarin which was okay, and we had a dinner reservation at Wine Country Trattoria. It was pretty bad. Pricey for small portions of mediocre food.
We decided that everything that is the same between WDW and CA, WDW did it better. We called CA “adventures in waiting for absolutely nothing.” We had to laugh when every single paper towel dispenser in the Cars Land bathroom was broken all at once.
Some observations about the queuing systems at DL:
1) line cutting is just totally normal. Literally every single ride (even Little Mermaid with a 10 minute wait), an entire group of people would politely push past everyone to meet the placeholder in line. Literally every single line. When one group got caught doing so, the Cast Member said “they’re meeting a friend up ahead,” and allowed a group of about 10 go to meet 1 person in line.
This is not allowed at WDW at all. (Of course there’s always the mom and little kid returning from the bathroom exception.)
We decided that if we lived in SoCal, we would start a business called “spot saver.” I will wait in line for you and then your group can push ahead to my spot. Once you get there, I’ll go on to the next line and save the spot there. So instead of your group of 10 spending $300 on Genie+, I’d charge $200 and save you money and your phone battery.
2) there are not enough cast members at rides and queues. The lines move so slow on some rides because some people are doing double and triple duty. For example, the person inside at Soarin at the final checkpoint lets the groups in, then walks to each of the groups to assign the rows, then goes into the ride to check the yellow safety straps.
Why is there not a person at each door? The wait times would be so much less with more staff.
3) why aren’t staff allowed to compensate when an attraction goes down? There were people who had waited in line for 2 hours at RSRs, and then were told that it’s down and to leave. No fastpasses given to come back later or at least skip the line someone where else.
Overall, we did not like CA. Great theming, cool rides, but horrible breakdowns and queues. I truly felt ripped off by Disney for the time I spent in that park. I realize that it could have just been a perfect storm of breakdowns and maybe a one-off situation, but I’ve never ever experienced anything like that at WDW in my dozens of visits.
Would I return to Disneyland? Maybe. After a lot of improvements are made to CA. I’ll be back to WDW in the future though.
If I did return, we would totally stay in a Disney owned hotel. I didn’t realize that the “bubble” truly stopped the second you step an inch out of the entrance/exit. Even though our hotel was right at the entrance, the short walk from the entrance to the hotel sort of killed the Disney vibe you get from the parks.
Our first day at DL was pure Disney magic. We rope dropped, and even though we almost never rope drop at WDW ( we are not morning people), rope dropping at DL was a breeze because of the time difference for us. We started off at Indy and did just about every single ride (I chickened out on Nemo). The day was nothing short of magical.
Comparing DL to MK, we all thought that every ride that is at both parks, the DL version was better. The weather was obviously better at DL, and we thought the food that we had (Carnation Cafe and Daisy’s cafe) was actually better than the WDW equivalents.
The parade was cute and fun (but short and small), and the castle show was great, but WDW wins for this one.
I did like how they actually kept walkways open during the shows. At WDW, you just don’t go near the front of the park during showtime.
If you asked us then which park we liked better, we probably would have been DL converts, even with the 5.5 hour plane ride. However, our CA experience was the next day.
We rope dropped CA and went to Marvel land first. Web Slingers was great!
Then, we spent the next 1.5 days waiting in lines while rides broke down. We counted, and we spent a total of 18 hours in CA. We did/try to do 11 rides. 8 of them broke down while we were in line (some more than once). It really killed the vibe.
We even wound up buying an ILL- $80 for four of us- to ride Radiator Springs. I am totally anti- buying ILLs, but we spent a total of 3 hours on and off between the 2 days we went trying to ride this ride for it to break down, and I caved. Finally, we got almost to the front of the line, and it broke down again. So frustrating. We decided we couldn’t take CA anymore and went over to DL to end the trip on a high note.
We ate at the quick service near Soarin which was okay, and we had a dinner reservation at Wine Country Trattoria. It was pretty bad. Pricey for small portions of mediocre food.
We decided that everything that is the same between WDW and CA, WDW did it better. We called CA “adventures in waiting for absolutely nothing.” We had to laugh when every single paper towel dispenser in the Cars Land bathroom was broken all at once.
Some observations about the queuing systems at DL:
1) line cutting is just totally normal. Literally every single ride (even Little Mermaid with a 10 minute wait), an entire group of people would politely push past everyone to meet the placeholder in line. Literally every single line. When one group got caught doing so, the Cast Member said “they’re meeting a friend up ahead,” and allowed a group of about 10 go to meet 1 person in line.
This is not allowed at WDW at all. (Of course there’s always the mom and little kid returning from the bathroom exception.)
We decided that if we lived in SoCal, we would start a business called “spot saver.” I will wait in line for you and then your group can push ahead to my spot. Once you get there, I’ll go on to the next line and save the spot there. So instead of your group of 10 spending $300 on Genie+, I’d charge $200 and save you money and your phone battery.
2) there are not enough cast members at rides and queues. The lines move so slow on some rides because some people are doing double and triple duty. For example, the person inside at Soarin at the final checkpoint lets the groups in, then walks to each of the groups to assign the rows, then goes into the ride to check the yellow safety straps.
Why is there not a person at each door? The wait times would be so much less with more staff.
3) why aren’t staff allowed to compensate when an attraction goes down? There were people who had waited in line for 2 hours at RSRs, and then were told that it’s down and to leave. No fastpasses given to come back later or at least skip the line someone where else.
Overall, we did not like CA. Great theming, cool rides, but horrible breakdowns and queues. I truly felt ripped off by Disney for the time I spent in that park. I realize that it could have just been a perfect storm of breakdowns and maybe a one-off situation, but I’ve never ever experienced anything like that at WDW in my dozens of visits.
Would I return to Disneyland? Maybe. After a lot of improvements are made to CA. I’ll be back to WDW in the future though.
If I did return, we would totally stay in a Disney owned hotel. I didn’t realize that the “bubble” truly stopped the second you step an inch out of the entrance/exit. Even though our hotel was right at the entrance, the short walk from the entrance to the hotel sort of killed the Disney vibe you get from the parks.
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