Today, I’m honoured to have my client (and former colleague at the Canadian Institute of Actuaries) guest blog for me about his family’s recent trip to Southern California. Enjoy his family’s take on Disneyland, and how it compares to a recent visit to Walt Disney World!
(Note: All of Disneyland can fit in a parking lot at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom… so, Chris’ family’s experience is not at all surprising to me, and I have many clients who’d had similar reactions. On the other hand, I have some clients who strongly prefer Anaheim over Orlando. It seems like the Disney park you’d visited first will often have the strongest emotional tie for you. But there are distinct differences in fast passes/operational issues/ meal plans, as Christian notes too.)
Thanks so much for your terrific guest blog, Christian. Your family offers some great tips to others looking to optimize their Disney visit, Southern California style!
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Our Family Vacation to Southern California
My family met me in Los Angeles at the end of a work conference in late May. We spent the first 3 days near Carlsbad Beach, which is a bit more than halfway south between L.A. and San Diego. We visited both SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo, before heading back to Anaheim for 3.5 days in Disneyland. This blog post will focus only on our Disneyland experience.
We opted to stay in one of the moderate “Good Neighbor” hotels close to the park (essentially the same as Walt Disney World moderate hotels), the Howard Johnson Plaza Hotel & Water Playground. We arrived at the hotel early after leaving our hotel in Carlsbad heading back to Anaheim, not knowing how long the morning drive would be (driving in L.A. is a bit crazy at times). To my surprise, the hotel was able to provide us with a room immediately on arrival. When we booked the Disneyland vacation, we could only select a “Standard Room”, however we were able to upgrade to a deluxe room for a minimal cost upon arrival (subject to availability).
Service at the hotel, from check-in to check-out was outstanding. The deluxe rooms were located further away from the reception area (where the water park is located), however there was another pool located next to our building. The waterpark had a small pool, two sets of slides built into a play structure, with a large bucket of water that drops routinely, and numerous jets and fountains for the kids to play in. The waterpark was great and the kids enjoyed it on very hot days.
There a number of restaurants along the road, although we only dropped in to McDonalds for refreshments one afternoon heading back to the hotel for a quick dip in the pool. The hotel is located about a 5 mins walk from the main gates (there are a few hotels closer, such as the Best Western Suites directly across the road), and then another 5 mins walk from the main gates to the turnstiles. Obviously, staying at a Disney property we would have been a bit closer, but at a steeper cost.
This was the second time for my family going to a Disney park, although the third time for me and my first at Disneyland (DL). Our last trip was 2 years ago at Disney World.
A number of rides are more or less the same at Walt Disney World (WDW), but there are some small differences which still makes it a memorable and unique experience. Because of space limitations, the rides are much more clustered together so it looks as though the park is more crowded. The sheer size of WDW and its many parks makes DL pale by comparison. The choice of restaurants is also limited, but more on that later.
We spent about 3.5 days at DL in total, and that would pretty be all that you would need to see and do everything. The girls did manage to get signatures from 14 new characters, include the new Princess Merida from Brave. We did not think we’d manage to find anyone new after the first 1.5 days though as we had not seen any characters that had not seen at WDW. There were lots of characters at Minnie’s Breakfast at the Plaza Inn.
The park is split between DL (more or less the same as Magic Kingdom, but smaller) and California Adventure Park (CAP). CAP is a combination of Hollywood Studios at WDW (more or less), a kids play area (A Bug’s Land) and an amusement park which surrounds the lake where the World of Colour show takes place, with ferris wheel, roller coaster, carrousel, boardwalk, etc.
Although several rides in both park feature FastPass, not all of them do. A FastPass option would have been helpful at Toy Story Mania. We waited over an hour to get on it, but it was truly enjoyable and the kids wanted to do it again, but were reluctant to wait again. We also noticed on quite a few occasions that rides would close down for unknown reasons. The Matterhorn was also closed all 4 days.
Another inconvenience that we found was that not all activities were listed on the information guide (the sheet you pick up along with the maps when you arrive at the park). For example, we almost missed out on seeing the Pixar Play Parade at CAP because it was not listed. Luckily, one day we noticed them cordoning off an area near the Hollywood backlot and asked what was taking place. We managed to catch the parade, and catch a few characters while we were waiting! It was disappointing since I love video recording the parades so that the kids can relive the experience after getting back home. I had left my video camera at the hotel not knowing there was a parade that we had missed on previous days.
There was some major construction taking place at CAP, which meant you had to bypass through a maze of walkways to get inside the park after the turnstiles. The construction didn’t help much with the pedestrian traffic when leaving at night after the World of Colour show – which is truly amazing BTW. A few weeks after we left, I found out that they had opened Cars Land, so we missed it by 10 days.
At Disneyland, when you opt for the “meal plan”, you get coupon vouchers instead of the traditional meal plan like at WDW. You get one character breakfast, one snack voucher (worth $5) and one dinner voucher (worth $15 for adult, $10 for children). For the character breakfasts alone, it is worth it if you have kids wanting to meet your favorite Disney characters, as the breakfast buffet cost is approximately $30/pp. If you plan on having lunch, you’ll have to purchase that separately, unless the snack will suffice to tide you over until dinner. Because it was really hot, our snack vouchers went to frozen beverages or ice cream… and my youngest daughters new favorite, churros!
When we went to WDW last time, we opted for the Deluxe Meal Plan, which was a lot more food than we could handle. At DL, we would have easily paid more for the meal plan to get a light lunch because you didn’t get much with the $15 dinner voucher (barely enough for a drink and a counter-service meal). As mentioned previously, we felt that the amount of restaurants to choose from was much more limited compared to WDW, and especially so for “table service” dinner.
After you’ve been to WDW, DL is a bit disappointing, but we expected this from a family member’s comments after having visited both parks.
All in all, we still had a really great time – how can you not when you see your child’s eyes light up seeing their favorite Disney character.
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