Laura's Disney Lines

"Laura Gilbreath...you just returned from a long weekend at Epcot's Food and Wine Festival...what are you going to do next?"

"I'm going to Disneyland!!!" :-)

It's certainly not the first time that I've followed up a trip to Disney World with a trip to Disneyland a few days later! I wanted to see the new Tiana's Showboat Jubilee, which started on Friday. (Blog entry on that still to come.)

I arrived not long after the park opened at 9:00 - the first Jubilee wasn't until 11:15 so I some time until then. Town Square looks rather empty without the big Mickey pumpkin - but in another week it will have the Christmas tree, since the Christmas holiday celebration gets fully underway on November 13.

I went back to ride Space Mountain now that it's been un-Ghost-Galaxyed. I found it actually kind of boring without all the Ghost Galaxy signs and just the normal video display in the launch bay. (And, for my ET, yes, I did the dying goose! :-) )

After I rode Big Thunder Mountain and Haunted Mansion Holiday (no line for either one) I went to the Mark Twain Riverboat. It's all decorated for Tiana's Showboat Jubilee, but they were still doing riverboat cruises before (and between) shows. I went up on the upper deck and said good morning to the cast member there. He asked me how many were in my party, and when I said it was just me, he asked if I'd like to ride in the wheelhouse!!! In all my years of going to Disneyland I've never gotten to do that before! To get into the wheelhouse I had to climb up a short ladder - someone tall would have to watch their head. Once up there I signed the log book and Captain Daniel encourage me to take as many pictures as I wanted.

It was really a lot of fun! I got to steer and pull the cord to ring the bell, and pull the other cord to blow the steam whistle.

Captain Daniel was a wealth of information about Disneyland and its history and told me all kinds of interesting things. One thing I didn't know, was that four days before Disneyland opened, Walt and Lillian celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary with a party in Frontierland.

He pointed out a really great view of the castle and the Matterhorn.

Our voyage around the Rivers of America was full of the sights of animals, a settler's cabin (he apologized that they had left the laundry out. :-) ), and even a Native American village. I managed not to steer us into the rocks, and got to ring the bell and blow the whistle twice more before we docked again.

When we docked Captain Daniel presented me with my Pilot's Certificate, and then we climbed back down to the deck.

It was so cool!!! Definitely one of my most memorable Disneyland moments ever. Thank you, Captain Daniel, for a wonderful opportunity!

After I saw the Jubilee I went over to DCA to see how Paradise Bay is looking now that they have started filling it with water again. There's still a long way to go before it's full - it's only up to the bottom of the platform now.

They were working on these really interesting-looking things - I assume this is one of the water whips.

Between the Golden Zephyr and the viewing area I could see where the water was flowing in.

Stitch was hanging out in Sunshine Plaza and didn't have too many people around so I posed with him.

It was a beautiful day and really not very crowded at all. They have a lot of the Christmas decorations up already even though the official holiday season doesn't start until November 13 (yes, that is in fact Friday the 13th!). I found this one Thanksgiving-themed display in the Candy Palace on Main Street, though.

I took a stroll through Downtown Disney - they have re-opened the Taqueria at Tortilla Jo's since I was here a few weeks ago - it's very colorful. The menu isn't nearly as extensive - they no longer have the Mexicones, which were one of my favorites. The new menu is HERE.

I really had a wonderful day - I enjoy just walking around the parks and taking pictures, especially on a day that's not very busy. But getting to be a riverboat pilot was definitely the highlight!

At Disney's California Adventure earlier this year, the Boardwalk Games in Paradise Pier re-opened, with the games re-themed to incorporate Disney or Pixar characters. The games are Goofy About Fishin', Bullseye Stallion Stampede, Casey at the Bat and Dumbo Bucket Brigade. Initially they were offering the same stuffed animals for prizes that they'd had previously, but this summer the large prizes changed, and are now themed to the game! I think some of them are pretty cute - especially Dumbo and the Mudville Wiener Dog.

At Goofy About Fishin' everyone wins a prize. Players use a fishing rod with a magnet on the end to "hook" one of the fish that are swimming by in the water trough - the prize is determined based on the color of a dot on the bottom of the fish, and some are worth more than others.

Bullseye Stallion Stampede is a horse race. Each player plays their own game of skeeball to accumulate points which make their horse move forward in the race. First horse to finish wins the prize. Prizes are based on the number of players in the game - the more players, the higher the level of prize.

In Casey at the Bat (this classic baseball story was featured in the Disney movie "Make Mine Music") players attempt to throw a baseball into the catcher's mitt. No small prizes for this difficult game - anyone who does it wins one of the large prizes.

Dumbo Bucket Brigade is a water pistol game. Each player has their own "fire hose" and hitting the center of the target makes each clown fireman climb his ladder. Players compete against each other and the first fireman to the top of the ladder wins. The number of players determines the size of the prize.

Instead of paying cash to the operator, players swipe a game card to play each game. Game cards are available at nearby kiosks, which take either cash or credit/debit cards. $5.00 buys 500 points, most games are 250 points.

Disneyland AllEars® Meet and Greet!

AllEars® Team members Deb Wills, Laura Gilbreath, Lisa Berton and Cathy Bock invite you to come by and say "Hello!" at 11 a.m. on Sunday, October 11, 2009, at the Carnation Plaza Gardens in Disneyland.

Hope to see you there!

Lee and I visited Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure last Saturday evening - I wanted to see the new and updated Electrical Parade and some of the other things that you can only enjoy after dark.

For a Saturday evening in the summer the parks were not too crowded. Splash Mountain had a 75 minute wait, but things like Buzz Lightyear and Star Tours were 10-15 minutes.

We wandered around Disneyland a bit trying to decide what we wanted for dinner. We went by the Celebration BBQ, which had a menu/format/price change in July. The characters are no longer at the meal though there is still entertainment on stage. Lunch is $19.99 for adults and dinner is $24.99 but drinks and dessert are no longer included in the price. (The price for kids 3-9 is $9.99 at either lunch or dinner.) Corn cob wheels and polish sausage are offered at dinner but not lunch, though either way it is still all-you-care-to-eat. Doesn't seem like much of a price decrease to me - at least not for dinner, by the time you pay for your drink. Still too expensive in my book, though I would consider going for lunch. I wish they would go back to the counter service BBQ idea they had there about 10 years ago.

We ended up having and early (5:15) dinner at Rancho del Zocalo. The portions have been slightly reduced in size since we last dined there, but it's still quite a bit of food. We both had the enchiladas - I had the regular cheese enchiladas, and Lee had the cheese enchiladas that came with tortillas and several slices of carne asada.

After dinner we went over to Disney's California Adventure to wander around and wait for night to fall. We did something we'd never done before: went to the Cove Bar (next to Ariel's Grotto) and had a drink. It's a full-service bar, and Lee was impressed by the selection of beers on tap. They also have quite a selection of specialty drinks - like various flavors of Comospolitans, Mojitos, and Margaritas, and drinks that glow. I was hoping they might have some dessert-type items, but they only serve appetizers: nachos, crab cakes, artichoke dip, buffalo wings, fried calamari, and bbq chicken pizza. So I had a Godiva Dark Chocolate Martini instead. It was supposed to come with a chocolate stick, but they were out of those. :-( Lee had a beer.

It was a nice way to relax for a while, and it was pleasant to be outside, though it started to cool off quickly once the sun disappeared.

One of the things we had planned to see that night was the lights on Mickey's Fun Wheel, and as it got darker we could start to see them. When Disney re-themed Mickey's Fun Wheel they added a bunch of new LED lighting and at night these are animated in number of different patterns and colors. We'd never seen it before, and I have to say that I was fascinated by all of the different colors and actions that it was able to produce. We must have watched it for about 20 minutes over the course of the evening, and I don't think we ever saw a repeat. Here's a short video that's just a sample of the kind of thing that it can do.

(If you're interested in more, I put up an 8:30 minute clip also, it's HERE.)

With all of the construction walls up around Paradise Pier it is a little more of a challenge to find a spot to see the Electrical Parade. Parade viewing is not allowed at all between the Golden Zephyr and what used to be the entrance to Golden Dreams. But with less than 10 minutes until the parade started we found a spot in front of the Golden Zephyr, where we were standing behind a row of people who were sitting, and that was a fine spot. There was a construction wall on the other side, which meant that there were no people there, so the characters focused all of their attention on our side of the parade route.

What can I say? As far as I'm concerned, Disney's Electrical Parade is still the best nighttime parade ever. The "new" soundtrack didn't sound any different to me - just more crisp and clear, maybe - it's still just a catchy and bouncy as ever. The lighting looks great, and it was nice to see the "new" parade elements: Tinker Bell's float leading it off (though I miss the Blue Fairy!), the Seven Dwarfs' mine (which gives three of the dwarfs something to do besides follow Snow White around), and the two Pleasure Island floats. The latter replaced the Dumbo's Circus floats.

We followed the crowds out of the park who were mostly headed to Disneyland. We weren't trying to see the fireworks, but we did catch a little bit of ,b>Magical, including a glimpse of Dumbo flying around the castle. We were trying to get to Pixie Hollow, to see more of the Pixie Hollow Enchantment light/fountain sequences. Unfortunately we had a bit of a wait - they go off about every 15 minutes, but even though the fireworks were over before 9:45, the first Pixie Hollow show wasn't until about 10:00. And then it ended up being the one we'd originally seen in June (which you can see HERE).

So we waited another 15 minutes, and saw this one:

Unfortunately the HD video camera doesn't have a wide enough angle to show you everything that's going on - like all of the jumping fountains and the lights in the trees and on the fountains.

It's really a fun little show - I'll be sorry to see it end, though I hope they will bring it back in the future - maybe for the holidays?

Disneyland AllEars® Meet and Greet!

AllEars® Team members Deb Wills, Laura Gilbreath, Lisa Berton and Cathy Bock invite you to come by and say "Hello!" at 11 a.m. on Sunday, October 11, 2009, at the Carnation Plaza Gardens in Disneyland.

Here's a picture of the entrance to the Plaza Gardens, which is located between Frontierland and the castle.

Last month I asked for your tips to help AllEars® reader Nancy plan her first trip to Disneyland this fall. Thanks to everyone who responded. In the interests of length, I have edited and combined similar responses.

Before we start, though, I wanted to mention that AllEars® blogger Jack Spence wrote a couple of blogs sharing his thoughts on Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom, and I think those would be helpful:
Disneyland vs. Magic Kingdom Part 1
Disneyland vs. Magic Kingdom Part 2

Several of you commented on preparing yourself and setting your expectations.

From Craig:
I think the most important planning step for a frequent WDW visitor going to Disneyland for the first time is attitude. When you're a frequent visitor to one Disney property, half of the fun of visiting another Disney location for the first time is to see the many similarities and many differences between the two. Be prepared for smaller, but don't make the mistake of equating smaller with not-as-good. I'll allow for one disappointment: arriving at Main Street for the first time, be prepared to wonder what happened to the castle.

From Amanda:
The first thing I would suggest is to go into the trip realizing that DL is a lot different than WDW. Some WDW vets express disappointment when they see DL for the first time, because they expect it to be the same. It isn't, but it's wonderful and so much fun in its own right! :)

From Maureen:
For the first time DL visitor:
-read some history of DL so you can appreciate its past as well as its present
-be sure to do the rides and attractions that are unique to DL
-take time to notice the little things;the shops are filled with wonderful, charming detail
-start planning your next trip because you'll want to go back !

From Dan (a first time visitor last year!):
I would suggest taking two full days (at least) to see the Magic Kingdom. There's just so much packed into the space (yet it doesn't seem cramped).

A number of you mentioned concentrating on the attractions that are at Disneyland but not at Disney World, such as the Matterhorn, Indiana Jones, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage, Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin, Grizzly River Rapids, and Monsters, Inc.

From Dayle:
Ride the Storybook Land Canal boats - charming and amazing examples of bonsai. Matterhorn Bobsled since this is a Disneyland original. Indiana Jones - much better than Dinosaur. I also think Space Mountain and Autopia are better than the Magic Kingdom counterparts.

From Kameo:
[After arriving at park opening] I'd recommend heading straight to Matterhorn in Disneyland. It is fantastic (though a little rough) and does not have fastpasses. The line can be unmanageable if you wait to ride it later in the day. Also, you absolutely must hit Indiana Jones. It is a great ride (think of the ride vehicle for Dinosaur at Animal Kingdom) and you should hit it or Space Mountain immediately after Matterhorn.

From Dan:
I'd say make sure to take the Disneyland Railroad for a complete circuit of the park, as my suggestion to first timers.

From A.D.:
Others will have plenty to say about attractions - the only one I want to highlight is the Sailing Ship Columbia, a very under-appreciated attraction; don't miss the museum!

From Barb:
Couple of things they really gotta go for in Disneyland. Our Pirates of the Caribbean, just a much better start and finish than WDW, our Peter Pan, for the amazing fiber optic stars :)

From Shirley:
You absolutely, positively, must experience the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. I still do not understand why they don't have this fantastic ride at WDW. The waiting area is not to be missed as well.

The #1 recommendation was the Aladdin show at DCA, where I received several comments such as the following:

From Dayle:
Biggest recommendation for first time visitor to Disneyland Resort is to see the Aladdin show at the Hyperion Theater within California Adventure. This is a Broadway caliber production with fantastic sets and performers.

From Amanda:
At California Adventure, definitely make time to see the Aladdin musical! There is one character especially who makes the experience very entertaining! This is something I would go see multiple times on a vacation because it's that good!

And of course there were lots of recommendations on places to eat! :-) Quite a few of you suggested the Blue Bayou (I have to admit it's not one of my favorites, though).

From Gabriela:
While dining at DLR isn't as big of a deal as WDW, I would suggest at least one meal at the Blue Bayou. The best food may not always be guaranteed, but there's just something about eating right next to PotC.

From Suzie:
I think that the Pirates of the Caribbean and the Blue Bayou restaurant are must dos. The ride is awesome, of course but the eatery is wonderful and themed so well!

There were quite a few other less-well-known recommendations, though:

From Dayle:
In Disneyland, skip the ice cream carts and go to the Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlor on Main Street. For maybe a $1 more, you get a large hand scooped ice cream sundae with the fixings.

From Kameo:
For food, be sure to try the corn dogs! They are in the little red cart just to the right of main street when walking toward the castle. They are the best value in food at Disneyland.

From Barb:
They gotta head to DCA for a swirl ice cream at Catch A Flave- absolutely the best ice cream in the park. We actually will make the drive up from San Diego just to get a taste of it ;)

From Gabriela:
And if you know someone who can get you into Club 33, then go for it!!! Other table service restaurants worth a stop include the Carnation Café on Main Street, and Wine Country Trattoria over at DCA. Great counter service places for me include the French Market at DL (good t.s. food at c.s. prices, mint juleps and live music! what's not to love?), and the choices over at Pacific Wharf at DCA.

From Connie:
If you enjoy character dining, do go to Disneyland Hotel's Goofy's Kitchen. It is one of the best character dining experiences-I have been to many. So many unique characters that you do not usually see or meet. The characters intermingle with the children so well. Another very nice dining experience is at Paradise Pier in California Adventure. It is Ariel's Grotto. Here it is a restaurant, in Disney World it is a meeting area. I would strongly suggest arranging a Fantasmic package with dessert so you can really enjoy the show.

And there were quite few miscellaneous, but very helpful, suggestions!

From Kameo:
As with Disneyworld, always arrive to the parks at open as this is the time you will get on the most rides in the least amount of time.

From Van:
Just returned from DL for the first time with my son. I would recommend going on the welcome to Disneyland Tour if for any other reason than the priority seating to Aladdin and the fastpasses which can be used for any ride, even those that don't normally take fastpasses, like the Matterhorn. It is relatively cheap by Disney standards and you can save money with your Disney Visa Card or AAA.

From A.D.:
For the convenience factor, many of the "Good Neighbor" hotels located near Disneyland are just as close as the Disneyland Hotel and Paradise Pier. (The monorail will save you some walking *if* it's open, but it won't save you much time, especially if you have to wait.) Disney's Grand Californian Resort is the only place that really will save you walking time over the other hotels in the area.

From Shirley:
The New Orleans square is beautiful as well (another "why don't they have this at WDW"). Be sure to stroll through it and grab lunch there as well.

From Brittany - a Jungle Cruise Skipper!:
Ride the Jungle Cruise at night, it's more exciting that way. It is not like the WDW one in many ways! The Celebrate parade is fun, IF you have small children, but please don't wait around for an hour for it, it's good, but not that good. You MUST watch the fireworks in Sept. if Magical is still the show going on then try to stake out a spot before 9pm. The very best spot in my humble opinion would be in the Plaza, which is that little area just after Main Street USA but just before the Hub.

Disneyland AllEars® Meet and Greet!

AllEars® Team members Deb Wills, Laura Gilbreath, Lisa Berton and Cathy Bock invite you to come by and say "Hello!" at 11 a.m. on Sunday, October 11, 2009, at the Disneyland Plaza Garden Stage.

Directions: Walk down Main Street until you reach the statue of Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney. The entrance to the outdoor covered stage with tables and chairs will be up and to the left.

Let us know you plan to attend by emailing allearsnet at yahoo dot com

Blue Sky Cellar, the preview center for DCA's expansion, re-opened on July 16 with some updated exhibits.

Most of the content on the Show Ideas and Concept Development is the same, but the bulletin board on Toy Story Midway Mania has been replaced with one showing concept art for two new dining areas: Lucky Fortune Cookery in the Pacific Wharf (in the old Cocina Cucamonga location) and Pardise Garden Grill and Boardwalk Pizza & Pasta in the Paradise Pier area. Pardise Garden Grill replaces the old Burger Invasion restaurant, and Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta will be a re-theming of the current Pizza Oom Mow Mow restaurant. The two will share an expanded dining courtyard and are set to open in spring 2010.

There's a display cabinet at the end of the ramp that has miscellaneous items in it, mostly related to Blue Sky Cellar. But there's what I thought was one very special item down in the lower right corner - a notice about a company retirement party for long-time Imagineer Marty Sklar, who retired on July 17. (His window on Main Street was also dedicated on July 17.)

The video in the "Screening Room" is completely new, and focuses largely on the World of Color show. Some of the paper models Steven Davison describes are on exhibit in a display case in the middle of Blue Sky Cellar. There's also a few sneak peeks at Silly Symphony Swings (2010), the Little Mermaid Attraction (2011), the new main entrance plaza (Coming Soon), and Cars Land (2012).

In the center of the room, most of the content of the display cases has been replaced. The model of Paradise Pier is the exception, but it has been updated to show the location of the show platform and fountains for World of Color.

There is also a second model of the viewing area for World of Color.

"Disney Imagineers used this model to create new landscaping, determine the best sightlines, and maximize capacity for the World of Color viewing area. This design reflects the formality and detailing typical of turn-of-the-century public parks, seamlessly blended with today's requirement for effective circulation and spectacular viewing terraces.

"The roses and boxwood in the planters and the two new trellises would have been right at home in parks of the past. Meanwhile, a new state-of-the-art water play area creates a cool zone for daytime activity, while a hidden stage provides maximum flexibility for future events."

This model is described below:

"Study model for vault to hide sound and lighting equipment towers. By day they look like natural stone piers around the lagoon. At night they open to allow the towers to rise into place for World of Color.

This model was used to direct the rockwork shapes and to develop the painting scheme."

As I mentioned above, in a third display case are examples of the paper art created for World of Color.

"The World of Color creative team employed a variety of animation techniques to create new background and special effects for the production. These delicate paper sculptures were hand-fabricated by a local artist for the Alice in Wonderland sequence.

"Each figure was posed, photographed, and then repositioned in small increments and photographed again. When the series of photos is played as a continuous sequence - known as stop-motion animation - it produces the illusion of movement."

The Imagineers' desks have been updated to show work-in-progress for World of Color. On the left side you can see concept art for "Little Squirt" - a character in World of Color - with notes like: "A little squirt of imagination goes a long way", and "Represents the childlike qualities of mischief and imagination." (If you've seen the Steven Davison videos in this blog entry you'll hear him talk about "Little Squirt".) On the right side desk are notes on the programming for the Cheshire Cat: "A) Cheshire Cat's face proj on rear left mist screen. C) Waterwhips create his body & tail. B) Alice falls into a bottle floating on a psychedelic sea of color. D) Grid fountains rise & fall to mirror the water on B) grids extend the sea forward."

Disney has developed a new on-line version of Blue Sky Cellar - the web site www.DisneysCaliforniaAdventure.com went on-line on Thursday, July 16. The web site will be updated periodically, at least as often as Blue Sky Cellar itself (though I hope it will be more frequently than that!).

In the Screening Room there's a map of what DCA will look like when the expansion is finished - I thought it might be interesting to show you the map and close-ups of the various areas that are changing.

On Thursday Disney held a media event on the DCA expansion, with a focus on the new Disney's World of Color show, which will premiere next spring. I'll have more detailed information in upcoming blog entries, but I wanted to talk a bit about the event and especially the lagoon walkthrough itself.

The event began in Blue Sky Cellar, DCA's preview center, which has been updated with new concept art, models, and a new video.

Mary Lowery, Director of Internet Strategy and Business Management for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, announced a brand new website, www.disneyscaliforniaadventure.com, which will provide frequently updated information on DCA's expansion. The website went on-line just a few minutes before Mary began her demonstration. Check it out - there are lots of videos on things like the World of Color, the Little Mermaid attraction, and Cars Land. (Note that the Mickey Mouse clock shows the correct time - and if you click on it the alarm goes off!)

Steven Davison gave a fairly lengthy presentation on the upcoming World of Color nighttime spectacular, including several videos. One of the videos was a test of some of the fountains, mist screens and digital projectors that they did in the lagoon over a year ago, before it was drained. It was pretty impressive!

I didn't think we'd get it ready in time to post with this blog entry, but thanks to the efforts of my husband Lee, here is Steven Davison's presentation. It's in 3 parts due to the length. There's a couple of minutes between the end of the first clip and the start of the second that was proprietary and has been removed.

The name Disney's World of Color comes from the 1960s television show Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, which brought Walt Disney into our living rooms on Sunday nights. The opening music for the show will be an updated version of that theme song. There are more than 1200 different fountains, with several different kinds of nozzles - some shooting as high as 200' in the air (to give you an idea, Mickey's Fun Wheel is 150' high). Each fountain has its own set of LED lights, which can produce 18 million colors. The show will also include lasers, fog, and fire. Plus the world's largest projected water screen - 380 feet wide and 50 feet high (that's 19,000 square feet!).

The show will include animation and music from films such as Alice in Wonderland, Pocahontas, The Lion King, Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and WALL-E. I have to say that the Colors of the Wind segment from Pocahontas looks amazing.

The new viewing area will accommodate 9000 guests, though the show will be visible from just about anywhere around Paradise Bay. It's anticipated to be 25 minutes long.

After that it was time to actually go into the lagoon and see just how they are going to pull this off. First off, we had to don hardhats, vests, and safety glasses. Our "guides" were Sayre Weisman, Show Producer, and Chuck Davis, World of Color Technical Producer.

We could not take any pictures while we were in the lagoon, but here's a video Disney released that shows some of the construction and the underside of the platform.

Here's some of my notes:

The platform is 400' long and 120' wide at its widest points. It is built out of individual 12' x 16' sections which are made of structural fiberglass.

As you can see in the video, the platforms were put into place with a huge crane - it took a couple of days and nights.

About 2/3 of the fountains are currently installed.

The entire platform raises and lowers - it has three different levels: hidden level, where everything is under the surface of the water, show level, which is 23" below the surface, and maintenance level, where the entire platform can be dry.

The blue tanks that you can see in the photo above are the "ballast tanks" - air displaces water (or vice versa) to raise or lower the platforms. Once they reach the desired level they are locked into place with scissor lifts.

There are several kinds of fountains, including grid fountains, which can shoot 43' high, chaser fountains, which go to 85', and blow pops, which can shoot 200' in the air. Each fountain has its own 1 HP well pump and its own LED light ring, which can illuminate the whole fountain. Each has electrically piloted pneumatic valves (I had to be sure to write that down!), to control the flow of water. The fastest ones can cycle in 1/8 of a second!

Each platform has a SUB - a submersible utility box - which contains the logic, electronics, power, and air, etc. for each platform. Everything is remotely controllable.

The lagoon tour concluded with a demonstration of a blow pop fountain - and they said it's the first time they've done that. Since there's no water in the lagoon they had to bring in a water tank. It shot a column of water about 150' in the air - it was pretty impressive even though it didn't last very long since they quickly ran out of water.

After the tour there was a Q&A session with Steven Davison, Sayre Wiseman, Chuck Davis and Bob Weis.

The event was very interesting - it was really cool to get the "under the scenes" tour of the World of Color show. It really looks amazing - I'm looking forward to next spring!

54 years young!

This year we've already seen the opening of the updated "it's a small world" attraction, the new Celebrate! A Street Party, the Celebration Round-up and BBQ dining experience, and the new Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique. Over at DCA, the Food and Wine Festival returned for a 4th year, Cocina Cucamonga moved to a new location with an expanded menu, Mickey's Fun Wheel opened, and the Blue Sky Cellar preview center just re-opened with updated exhibits on what we can expect in DCA's continuing expansion.

I think Disneyland received some of its birthday presents early this year with the premiere of the new Summer Nightastic! event, featuring the return of revamped favorites like Disney's Electrical Parade and Fantasmic!, and the new TLT Dance Club, Pixie Hollow Enchantment, and the all new fireworks show, Magical, where Dumbo flies around the castle.

The Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend returns Labor Day weekend, with events Friday-Sunday - Lee and I will be running the half marathon on Sunday. And the very first D23 Expo takes place at the Anaheim Convention Center September 10-13.

Disney's HalloweenTime returns on September 25, including the popular Haunted Mansion Holiday and the return of Mickey's Trick or Treat Party at DCA on selected nights in October.

Also this fall, the very first DVC resort in California, The Villas at Disney's Grand Californian Resort & Spa opens its doors.

The holidays return to Disneyland in November as Disneyland is transformed into the "Merriest Place on Earth", with all of the special decorations, parade and fireworks that go with it.

Next spring the new Disney's World of Color nighttime spectacular opens in DCA and who knows what else Disney might have planned?

AllEars pages on some of the events and attractions mentioned above:
"it's a small world"
Celebrate! A Street Party
Celebration Roundup and BBQ
Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique
Disney's California Food and Wine Festival
Mickey's Fun Wheel
Summer Nightastic!
Disney's Electrical Parade
Fantasmic!
Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend
Mickey's Trick or Treat Party

A few updates from my visit to Disneyland/Disney's California Adventure on Friday. The Spring Break crowds seem to finally be gone, and crowd levels were more what I would expect on a post-Spring Break week-day afternoon. Nice.

The featured entertainment at Taste, the finale event of the Food and Wine Festival, will be a Korean group called Nanta. Definitely fits in with their World Celebration theme this year! Here's some information on the group from their web site:

''NANTA' figuratively refers to reckless punching as in a boxing match. 'NANTA' is a non-verbal performance of free rhythmical movements that dramatize customary Korean percussions in a strikingly comedic stage show. Integrating unique Korean traditional drumbeats in a western performance style, NANTA storms into a huge kitchen where four capricious cooks are preparing a wedding banquet. While cooking, they turn all kinds of kitchen items - pots, pans, dishes, knives, chopping boards, water bottles, brooms and even each other- into percussion instruments."

Sounds like the "cooking" aspect fits in well with the Festival, also.

Tickets for this year's Mickey's Trick or Treat Party at DCA are now on sale to Annual Passholders. We have information on this year's party, including the dates, on our page HERE.

At DCA, the new restrooms in the Golden State area have opened. They are across the "street" from the old ones, which will be demolished when they start to build the new Little Mermaid attraction. The new restrooms (the womens' side, at least) are huge. And I'm happy to say that the new faucets are the really nice aerated ones - they don't spray water all over the place like most of the other restroom faucets in the park do. (That's one of my pet peeves.) They also have the motion-activated paper towel dispensers, too.

King Triton's Carousel of the Sea has re-opened after a fairly lengthy rehab. I just love all of the colorful and smiling sea creatures on this attraction. And they are all bright and shiny and look like new. It looks to me like the major change was re-theming the top of the attraction.

Work continues in on the World of Color show in Paradise Bay. There's more stuff on on the bottom every time I visit.

They are also working on the amphitheater viewing area.

I visited the Wine Shop again to get some more of the Sapphire Hill Very Late Harvest Zinfandel that I bought a couple of weeks ago - I served it at my Chocolate Party last weekend and we all really enjoyed it.

Over at Disneyland, I was surprised to see the Evil Queen from Snow White greeting guests in Fantasyland. She was appropriately disdainful and haughty - some of the kids didn't quite know what to make of her.

Peter Pan's Flight is undergoing refurbishment and is scheduled to re-open on June 8. There are signs on the walls around it that say "Sorry, no flights to Never Land today". :-)

When writing the blog on the Celebration Roundup and BBQ, one question Deb Koma raised was whether there were food alternatives for picky kids - like mac and cheese. So I asked. Nope, what's on the menu is what everyone gets - no alternatives. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon when I was there - there weren't too many people dining there.

Magical, the new fireworks show, actually has its first show on Thursday, June 11 at 8:45. And it has quite a long official name, too - the Disneyland Calendar shows it as: Magical - Disney's New Nighttime Spectacular of Magical Celebrations In the Stars. Wow. That's quite a lot to live up to.

As part of the big DCA Expansion project, there are a number of attractions around Paradise Pier that are being re-themed. Mickey's Fun Wheel opened on Monday, May 4. The former Sun Wheel attraction received several changes during the re-theming project, including an actual facelift -- the sun face on the wheel has been replaced by a classic "pie-eyed" Mickey face. The attraction also received a new paint job with a new color scheme and the cars feature the faces of different Disney characters.

The Up pre-parade opened on Friday, May 8. This float promoting the upcoming Disney*Pixar movie precedes the Pixar Play Parade. We saw the preview for Up when we saw the new Star Trek movie this weekend (which we really enjoyed!) and it looks very entertaining. Carl Fredricksen (check out the tennis balls on the legs of his cane) and Russell wave to the crowd from the front of the float.

And shaggy dog Dug waves from the back of the float.

The Disney's World of Color nighttime spectacular will be coming to Paradise Bay in the spring of 2010. In preparation for that the bay was drained and construction walls put up around it, though from the bridge near Ariel's Grotto you can see what's going on. They have been doing a lot of construction in there - setting up lots of platforms/stages that seem to cover much of the central part of the bay! There are signs along the edge of the bay giving a little bit of information on the show - it will feature characters and scenes from movies like Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and Pocahontas. Two of the three-d'ish-looking pieces of concept art depict scenes of Crush surfing a wave, and Pocahontas in a swirl of leaves. Lots of water screens, lighting effects, and even some pyrotechnics will be involved. There should be viewing from all around the bay, but they seem to be doing a lot of work to set up a viewing area in the former amphitheater section.

Lee shot this video clip from the bridge, which will give you some idea of what it currently looks like - you can see that the former Sun Wheel (set to re-open on May 7 as Mickey's Fun Wheel) now features the classic pie-eyed Mickey face.

AllEars Reader Jeanine Yamanaka visited the new Blue Sky Cellar at Disney's California Adventure last week. She shares her photos and thoughts about the new preview center in this guest blog.

October 16th, Blue Sky Cellar opened its doors to Annual Passholders and Cast Members in Disney's California Adventure, taking the place of the old Seasons of the Vine attraction. It is, in essence, a preview center for the new changes planned to update the oft-dissed park into something more suitable for Disneyland's second gate.

On entering, we were held in a pen outside (despite the fact that there was no one else around) so that a cast member (CM) could come and orient us in a group. Apparently they are expecting bigger crowds than were there while I was there. The CM eventually explained the "Blue Sky" concept, and seemed to make a point of emphasizing that not everything shown within would necessarily come to fruition.

Once inside, the decor seems fairly unchanged from its origins as the Golden Vine Winery, with a heavy emphasis on barrels and crates. The idea is supposed to be that the Imagineers were using this empty space as a spare office, and you're touring their papers and diagrams just as they left them on their desks or bulletin boards.

One of the first boards you come to is that of Concept Development, which is covered with drawings and notes on the new overlay that will come to the current Orange Stinger swing ride. It will be refashioned into the Silly Symphony Swings and themed around the animated short "The Band Concert." It is scheduled to open in the Spring of 2010.

Interspersed between a lot of the development art, is an abundance of Toy Story Midway Mania concept art - possibly to give the onlooker hope for the completion of all the projects, since this one was actually finished.

Under Show Ideas, they have a great deal of art and planning for the proposed lagoon show World of Color, which looks to be the next generation of Fantasmic! It will utilize some of the same water projection technology, along with light/fire/pyro effects showcasing scenes from Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Pocahontas, etc. To accommodate viewers, a lot of landscaping changes will have to be made to the surrounding area, including more foliage and giving it more of a park-like feel. This is also predicted to open in the Spring of 2010, and the CMs said they might start draining the lagoon to work on it any day now.

Another small board shows the beginning drawings for the Little Mermaid ride, currently planned to go into the now-vacant Golden Dreams theater, and the new overlay for Mulholland Madness, Goofy's Sky Skool. It doesn't seem as though it would take that long to just change out the billboards on the tiny roller coaster, so it's almost encouraging that they're taking their time with the overlay. Perhaps the changes will be more substantive.

On another side of the room, two large casks have been converted into makeshift desks displaying mostly art and sketches of the cosmetic changes coming to the Paradise Pier area, always the sparsest in the way of theming. The pictures on the wall above show how the current carnival-style games will get retooled with various animated characters - Casey at the Bat, Dumbo Bucket Brigade, Goofy About Fishin', and Bullseye Stallion Stampede are all scheduled to reopen in the Spring of 2009. One change already taking effect is the replacement of the Sun face in the middle of the Sun Wheel with that of the pie-eyed Mickey face, bringing it more into the time frame of the rest of the area.

In the middle of the room are various display cases with maquettes of the current Toy Story Midway Mania ride vehicles showing the wheelchair accessibility available, and also of the entire Paradise Pier area, as they envision it when finished.

Another case shows miniature models of the carnival games with their new 1920's exterior, and mock-ups of the inside character theming.

Another wall is covered with wine barrels and a few computer displays which allow you to take a quiz on various aspects of Disney Imagineering and California history. They give you five multiple-choice questions which change with repeated testing.

Anyone can get over 400,000 in Toy Story Mania - but just try getting 5 out of 5 on the quiz!

The back half of the room is arranged with a video screen that shows a short film on all the projects displayed in the room, with an enthusiastic John Lasseter describing some of the new attractions. There isn't much seating - about the size of 3 large couches, so it's a good thing the film is as brief as it is, to allow for frequent audience turnover.

On the wall adjacent to the video screen is a large map of the projected new Disney's California Adventure. The new entrance with the Studios-esque Pan Pacific Auditorium facade and the central hub transformed by the Carthay Circle Theater and matching 1920's architecture can all be seen.

The big addition is of course, Cars Land, which will ironically signal the end of the last remaining bit of parking lot on the same side of the street as the parks. The representation of Radiator Springs is planned to include three new rides: Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, Luigi's Flying Tires (modeled after the old Flying Saucer ride in Disneyland's Tomorrowland of yore,) and Radiator Springs Racers, which is described as the "E-ticket ride of the land." There are also spaces designated for both quick service and table service eating, and possibly live entertainment. Cars Land is scheduled to open in 2012 as the last part of the planned rehab.

There's also a small glass building off in the upper right corner - although it's not mentioned anywhere, the CMs believe it may be intended to be a fancy dining establishment, but that's subject to change. Interestingly enough, the map is not even printed, but is a projection on a screen - proof of its impermanence.

The last display before the exit is that of the Red Car Trolley, a throwback to the Pacific Electric Red Car. It is planned to run from the entrance hub up to the Tower of Terror-the only change predicted for the Hollywood area of the park.

Blue Sky Cellar is planned to evolve as the plans for the Disney's California Adventure rehab grow, with updates every six months or so. It's a nice display and one worth checking out if you have any interest in the upcoming construction, or just while you're waiting for that Soarin' fast pass to come through for you. It opened to the public on October 20th.

When my friend Kristin(e) and I went to Disneyland last month, Kristin got her first Disneyland Annual Pass, so I thought I would share that experience with you. (Those of you who have WDW APs will find it's quite a different process!)

Here's she's smiling with anticipation as we take the tram from the parking structure to the park entrance. :-)

First thing, Kristin had to decide which kind of Annual Pass she wanted. If you live in Southern California you have a choice of 4 different ones. The main difference is the price and the number of blockout days.

Premium Annual Pass: No blockout days, $389 (also includes parking)
Deluxe Annual Pass: 60 blockout days, $269
outhern California Annual Pass: 150 blockout days, $174
Southern California Select Annual Pass: 195 blockout days, $134
(Parking can be added to any non-premium AP for $59 - since parking is $12/day now, if you're going to go to the park more than 5 times a year you'll want the parking feature.)

Kristin chose the So Cal Select - yes, it's quite restrictive, but the days she is likely to go are on Fridays with me, and most Fridays when we would go are open.

She purchased her ticket at the Disneyland Main Entrance Ticket Booth - but she could have gone to the Disneyland.com website and purchased it on-line and printed it out at home. Since it was one of the Southern California-type passes she was required to show proof of residence (Driver's license in her case, though they also accept utility bills, etc.) Another thing to be aware of: if the day we had purchased her AP had been a blockout day for her pass (it wasn't), she still would have been able to get in and activate/use her AP on that very first day.

Once we entered the park we went straight to the Annual Pass Center at the Bank of Main Street so that she could actually get her REAL Annual Pass (unlike WDW, where the ticket they give you at the ticket booth before you enter the park IS your Annual Pass, at Disneyland you must go to the Annual Pass Center to get your permanent AP).

After a brief wait she went up to one of the "teller" windows where they asked various information of her (at this point she would have been able to upgrade her pass if she'd changed her mind and/or add the parking feature):

And then took her photo:

And then handed her her bright, shiny, new AP, customized with her picture on it! They also gave her a nice color blockout day calendar and a copy of the October issue of Backstage Pass, the Disneyland Annual Passholder news magazine that we receive ~quarterly.

After we were finished at the bank we went into the park to Haunted Mansion Holiday where she used her AP for the very first time to get a Fastpass.

And then, as I wrote in this blog entry, we went on to have a wonderful day at Disneyland and DCA - and since she's now got an AP, I look forward to at least one, and hopefully more, fun days at the park with Kristin in the next year!

Other miscellany:

If you're adding parking to an AP, bring your parking receipt with you to the AP Center - they will credit the money you already paid that day to the cost of the parking feature. Note: the parking feature is not valid on your AP's blockout days.

If you want to go to the park on a blockout day you can do that by purchasing a blockout day ticket for $40 at any of the ticket windows. (If you're staying at any of the Disney hotels they are also available for purchase at the Front Desk.) Disney advertises blockout day tickets as "subject to availability", so it's possible that on very busy days you could still be denied entry.

Once you have your AP, you can register it on the AP section of Disneyland's web site: http://www.disneyland.com/ap. This area of the web site lists offers available only to AP holders, such as sneak previews of attractions, hotel and restaurant discounts, etc. You can sign up there to receive special AP-only email from Disney.

Disneyland APs can be renewed either by mail or via the Disneyland.com/ap web site. There is a small discount for doing so, and it also means no standing in line at the AP Center again! In addition you usually receive a 20% off merchandise coupon, plus choice of AP design - the standard one available at the park or a special design available only to renewing passholders.

If you must vist the AP Center, go first thing in the morning right after park opening - the line can get pretty long as the day goes on. Though I have occasionally seen a short line in the afternoon on a not-so-busy day.

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Warning: This is going to be a rambling collection of various observations.

On Friday, September 26, the first official day of Disney's HalloweenTime, I made a day trip to DL with my friend Kristin(e). (Spelled Kristin, but pronounced Kristine - got that?)

Weather was beautiful and the crowds were minimal - the longest line we waited in all day was 20 minutes for Toy Story Mania. We practically walked onto Space Mountain at 11:30 that morning. And even Soarin' and Grizzly Rapids had less than 15 minute standby lines - we really didn't need Fastpasses, though we used them a few times. (Since it was Friday, I'm sure crowds at Disneyland picked up in the afternoon/evening, but we left at 6:00, so we missed that.)

Disneyland continues to have big problems with the Indiana Jones attraction - it was down when I was there last month, and it was down when we walked by it just after park opening. We went back later and it was up, and we got as far as getting into our jeep and belted in - and then it stopped. And after a few minutes the lights came on. And then they started sending Cast Members into the attraction to walk people out of it (which would have been really cool, but we weren't in the attraction at all!) They gave us a Fastpass to return later, which didn't end up happening, but Kristin gave it to a group of very nice young teenage boys who rode Grizzly Rapids with us. Anyway...seems like Indy is in major need of an extended rehab.

Haunted Mansion Holiday is back, and still a lot of fun, though I didn't notice any new additions to it this year. But I took a few movies inside (movie mode on my camera handles low light a lot better than still photography!) and noticed something I'd never noticed before: the gingerbread coffin on the table in the ballroom scene has a lid that opens and closes, with a gingerbread man corpse that sits up then lays back down! The scent of gingerbread in the air is a nice touch.

Other things that have returned in Disney's HalloweenTime:

The Halloween displays along the tram route.

The huge pumpkins over the Disneyland park entrance, and the large Mickey pumpkin in Town Square.

The Dapper Dans on Main Street in their orange and black striped vests

Woody's Halloween Roundup in the Big Thunder Ranch area, with live shows featuring Woody, Jessie, and Bullseye - and your host, Tex Tumbleweed (and sponsored by Cowboy Crunchies!)

Free coloring crafts for kids at Woody's Roundup, or there are bat and pumpkin-shaped Halloween cookies available to purchase and decorate.

The pumpkin carver at the Roundup

Special menu and food items - especially sweets like Halloween-decorated apples and cookies.

Lots of Halloween merchandise - both quite a collection of Nightmare Before Christmas stuff and Disney Halloween plush, pins, Mickey ears, etc.

Goofy's Candy Corn Acres at DCA, which features character greetings and "corny" shows.

Over at DCA, one thing that is NOT back this year is the Halloween decorations around the Tower of Terror - the last couple of years there has been a glowing-eyed bat banner outside, and decayed Halloween party decorations inside, but those were missing this year. Golden Screams has also not returned.

I collected menus from some of the Disneyland and DCA restaurants, and there have been some significant changes in the Blue Bayou lunch, dinner, and kid menus. Price is up, of course. Cafe Orleans also has a few changes, though mostly in their dessert items and the kid's menu. I think the kid's menus were changed just about everywhere that I looked. More "healthy" options - like a turkey dog, or string cheese, fruit, and yogurt, or a turkey wrap. All kid's meals come with fruit (e.g. grapes or apples) though parents can request chips or fries. Prices have gone up slightly - most kid's meals start at $6.99 now - and the price of the Arroz con Pollo Toddler Meal has gone up from $2.99 to $3.99.

Ariel's Grotto had the most significant changes, though - they have completely redone their menu with more of an Italian theme. It actually looks a whole lot more interesting to me - I might actually consider eating there now. They've also changed their pricing - $29.99 if you eat outside, and $31.99 if you eat inside. (Sorry, I didn't get a kid's menu for Ariel's, but maybe someone has one they can photograph and send to me???)

Some of the updated menus:

Blue Bayou Lunch

Blue Bayou Dinner

Blue Bayou Kids

Cafe Orleans

Cafe Orleans Kids

Tomorrowland Terrace (updated kid's menu)

Ariel's Grotto

Wine Country Trattoria Kids

(You can always find all the menus on our Disneyland Menus page.)

We had a very nice lunch at the Wine Country Trattoria at DCA - that's one menu that had NOT changed at all. With the demise of the Vineyard Room, that's my favorite park table service restaurant now. Kristin had the Tuscan Salad and I had the Chicken Bruschetta Salad. They were both really good.

An unexpected surprise - I ran into my IRC friend JD in line at Soarin'. I knew he had an upcoming trip to Disneyland, but thought it was in October. After Soarin' we all went to Grizzly River Run - JD and I got drenched, but Kristin escaped most of the water. It was nice to see JD!

Toy Story Mania continues to be way fun - Kristin had never been on it before but she had a good time, and she scored very well - better than I did my first time!

(If anyone would like to help with All Ears menu updates for Disneyland, please let me know - it can be as simple as taking a picture of a menu and emailing it to me. You can contact me at laurag at allears dot net)

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Thought I'd post a trip report from my day trip to Disneyland on Thursday - I went up to spend the day with my "Evil Twin" Pam and her son Mark. (No, we're not really twins, but we look like sisters - so we say we are twins separated at birth - separated by several years, different parents and birth places on opposite coasts, that is. Oh, and by the way, SHE is the "evil twin". :-) )

Left San Diego at 6:35 and had NO traffic, which really surprised me, so I was parked in the parking garage by 8:00, and back at Space Mountain by 8:15 where I met my ET and her son.

I thought the park might be fairly crowded since this is the first week that those who have the Southern California Annual Passes have been able to return to the parks since June, but the park was pretty uncrowded for the first couple of hours. We pretty much walked onto Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Haunted Mansion. We wanted to ride Indy but it was down. :-(

We also went over to Pirate's Lair, since Mark and Pam hadn't been there yet. We hung back at the entrance to Dead Man's Grotto and let everyone else go in first so that we could take our time going through there, and play with the special effects, like the chest holding Davy Jones' heart and the treasure area with Pintel and Ragetti's pop-up head and swing-down arm and eye. Mark and Pam found some things I hadn't noticed before - down at kid's eye level there is a "cursed treasure window", where you can see a box filled with gold coins until you reach in to touch it, and then it disappears. And there's another view into a different treasure chest which has a genie in a bottle. Fun stuff. :-)

Jack Sparrow was not in his usual meet-and-greet spot, but when we left the island he was waiting to board the raft to go across.

After a late breakfast (Mickey pancakes!) at the River Belle Terrace we went over to DCA - both Mark and I really wanted to ride Toy Story Mania. He'd done the one at Walt Disney World earlier this summer. Unfortunately when we got back there the line was 70 minutes long. Why, oh why did Disney NOT make this a Fastpass attraction??? Seems like a really bad decision to me.

So we did a couple other things - Orange Stinger and Mulholland Madness, though MM went down for about 10 minutes while we were in line. I still say that's the scariest ride in the park - every time we go around one of those 180 degree turns I have visions of the car flying off the track. <shudder>

We'd gotten Fastpasses for Grizzly River Run and Soarin' on the way in, and it was time to use those. Mark got pretty drenched on GRR - he was sitting right by one of the openings in the raft. Pam and I were in the middle and not quite so wet, but we were both glad we had quick-drying shorts on!!! (I always feel sorry for the people who wear blue jeans and ride GRR - they end up having to walk around in wet jeans for the rest of the day!) The Fastpass line for Soarin' was all the way up the ramp almost to the building entrance, so even with the FP we had a 15-20 minute wait. The standby time was posted at 35 minutes - I'm not sure I believe that.

For "lunch" we had ice cream from Bur-r-r Bank Ice Cream - yummy. Mark was pretty tired (they had had a long day the day before, plus early entry already) so we went back to their hotel, the Howard Johnson's Anaheim.

I'd read a lot of good reports on this hotel, but I'd never been there...I'm happy to say that it seems to be just as nice as they say. The room was on the order of a Walt Disney World moderate, I would say - except that not many moderate rooms have a view of fireworks, and a number of the HoJo rooms can see the Disneyland fireworks - including their room. Earlier this summer the hotel opened a new water park area called Castaway Cove - it has a number of water features including a spiraling water slide. Mark had a lot of fun there, and the water seemed to revive him.

We went back to DCA later in the afternoon. At the information booth at the front of the park I asked the wait time for Toy Story Mania - still 60 minutes. So we went to Monsters, Inc. instead, which had only a 5 minute wait. I pointed out the Attention All Monster Passengers sign, which I think is really funny, but most people seem to miss it. And we also took a look at the Harryhausen's menu that is posted on the wall - how does some Yukitori or Ice Scream sound to you???

We got about 3/4 of the way through the ride when it stopped. And after a couple of minutes the lights came on. And then we were told that there had been an automatic shutdown of the ride due to proximity sensors on the cars (people weren't loading/unloading fast enough, apparently), and they walked us out of the ride. Which was kind of interesting for me, but I felt bad for Mark and Pam since this was their first time on the ride. No "sorry for the inconvenience, here's a Fastpass for you", either - just a "try back later" attitude. (If you're counting, that's three rides so far that had problems...and they'd had an issue with Space Mountain the day before.)

By the time we got out of there the Pixar Play Parade had started...but we were hoping to get around it to get back to Toy Story Mania, thinking the line might be a little shorter. The parade seems to be back to its original version - the stilt-walking chefs and bungee-jumping rats in the Ratatouille segment are back, as are the twirling acrobatic cowboys on the Toy Story float. When we were there a few weeks ago I saw that the "bug's life" float was back to its original configuration with the flower swinging bugs in the center - that was taken out of service not long after the parade started because one of the swings broke during the parade. Hopefully the original parade has been running all summer - I haven't seen the full parade since early May, when it was still missing the more acrobatic elements.

It took a while to make it back to Toy Story Mania, and the line was down to 45 minutes by then. The CM told us we'd picked a good time - that once the parade ended it would be over an hour again. The line kept moving well, and we were on the ride in a little less than 45 minutes.

Man, that ride is a lot of fun!!! Mark and I rode together and he beat me by a substantial margin (31,000 points), but he was nice and didn't gloat *too* much. :-) He noticed that at the end when your scores come up, if you keep shooting, it shows up on the screen as confetti.

We had dinner at the Farmer's Market - they still have the California Wrap on the menu from the Food and Wine Festival. (Other restaurants that have kept the F&W menu items are Pacific Wharf Cafe and Award Wieners.) The wrap seemed smaller to me, though. For $7.99 it wasn't very much food. I really wanted to eat at the Pacific Wharf Cafe, but as usual the line was ridiculously long, and it's always very slow moving. (And they also replaced my favorite salad - the Nicoise - with the F&W festival Mandarin Chicken Salad. Which is good, but the Nicoise was better!)

I needed to get on the road after that, since I had to drive home and go to work the next day. Pam and Mark walked me to the tram, and we said goodbye, though I'll see them in San Diego, too.

Other random observations from the day...

• I saw the new Mark VII Monorail Blue go by a number of times - but never
  when I had my camera out, of course. It looks very swoopy and modern.

• The weather was GREAT - a summer day in southern California just doesn't get any better! It really wasn't too hot at all.

• The parks were not as crowded as I expected - though Pam told me DL was really busy when they went back after I left. Soarin' never had more than a 45 minute standby wait posted - and it's usually an hour - same for Grizzly River Run. I think Toy Story Mania is pulling a lot of people back to Paradise Pier and off the other big rides.
  

And a few things Lee and I noticed on our visit several weeks ago:

• Award Wieners has a new seating area - they took out the outdoor section of the Muppets Inc. queue and put in tables and chairs. Still left the Muppet stuff there, though. It looks like there's quite a bit of shade there.

  

• The parking lot trams have a new seat - it's more of a rubberized surface than the slick fiberglass, and not so slippery.

• As I mentioned in my Toy Story Mania blog entry there are two new food stands on the Boardwalk - Hot Dog Hut serves (surprise!) hot dogs, chips, and drinks, and Don Toma's offers turkey legs, chimichangas, and drinks.

• The Snow White 75th anniversary exhibit has been removed from the Animation Building, and the animation screens have returned to running the various clips from classic animated movies. I missed those during the Snow White exhibit.
  

Thanks to Mark and Pam for sharing some of their vacation with me - I had a great day.

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So last Sunday, after we toured the Disney Magic, Lee and I stopped by the Disneyland Resort on our way back to San Diego. Hey, it wasn't THAT far out of the way! :-)

And we *finally* got to try out Toy Story Mania! We hadn't been to the parks since Memorial Day, so this was the first chance we'd had (it opened June 17).

It was great fun!!! I could've done it over and over again...but the line was 45 minutes long (which is short when compared to the 90-120 minute waits for Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage last summer), but that's still about 25 minutes too long for me to be willing to do more than once. Unlike the attraction at WDW, there's no Fastpass at the one in California.

I'd like to say that I have new appreciation for the great photos that Chelsi Murphy took during the Annual Passholder Previews, which she shared with us in this blog entry and in this Wandering the Land feature. There's several that she managed to take during the ride, and that's *really* hard - the cars spin you around pretty fast as they move through the attraction, and then you get caught up in playing the games themselves! So thanks again, Chelsi!

As I mentioned, we had about a 45 minute wait to get on. For the first 10 minutes or so we were entertained by Mr. Potato Head, who talked to people in the queue and told bad jokes...but he never removed his ear. Still, that's one very impressive audio-animatronic - his lips move and his eyes are very expressive.

It was a warm sunny afternoon, but not as hot as it often is in the summer. Most of the queue is outside, but most of it was shaded either by the building or by a whole bunch of beach umbrellas, so those gave us a break from the sun.

I'm rather disappointed in the queue itself. Other than Mr. Potato Head it's pretty boring - there are a bunch of posters that describe how to play and "advertise" the games, but that's it - other than that it just snakes back and forth. (Quite different from the queue in Florida - you can see pictures of it in Mike Scopa's blog HERE.) The queue is very deceptive, too - after you pass by Mr. Potato Head and make a turn, you can see people on the other side of the wall getting ready to get on the ride, but noooo...you go around the next turn, and instead of joining them, suddenly there's a whole lot more queue!

The loading process seemed pretty fast and efficient and they got us out of there quickly. Lee hadn't seen pictures of the ride vehicles, so he was surprised that you sit back-to-back with other people.

Once the ride started...wow. We got whirled away without much chance to look at what's going on around us...and then we're at the first game trying to figure out how to fire and aim. Though actually it was quite easy, and it's SO nice to be able to see what I'm shooting - so unlike Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters! It seemed to me that a lot of the high-scoring targets were actually closer to the bottom of the screen, so I started focusing a bit more there. After our "practice" pie-throwing round we were whirled away to the next game, and so on. So we threw eggs and popped balloons with darts, broke plates with baseballs, tried to throw rings over little green guys (I thought that was the hardest) and then ended up at the shooting gallery where we got a "bonus" round. It was really a lot of fun, but it went way too fast!

Of course the most important thing was that my score was higher than Lee's. :-)

And here's my prize...If this photo appears fuzzy to you, put on your 3-D glasses. :-)

A few other notes...Lee wears glasses, which can sometimes be an issue with the 3-D glasses, but he had no problems seeing at all.

In the queue I noticed a couple of signs cautioning about motion sickness, which at the time I thought seemed a bit of an overreaction, but after riding it I can understand why they posted it. The ride really does move fast and spin you around a lot - and that could bother those who are sensitive to motion.

You exit the ride on the opposite side of where you got on...and to get back outside again you have to climb a flight of stairs that takes you back over the track, then go down a flight of stairs on the other side. Which, surprise, surprise, puts you into a gift shop. I assume there's a different arrangement for those who can't climb stairs, but I don't know what it is.

While we were in line I noticed a couple of new food stands that have been set up along the boardwalk in front of Toy Story Mania - a hot dog place and a snack place which sells drinks, turkey legs, and chimichangas.

I wanna ride again!!! So I'm looking forward to some morning when I can get there at park opening and ride several times with little/no wait.

Have you visited the Disneyland Resort recently? Share your experiences in our Disneyland Rate and Review Area!

AllEars Reader Chelsi Murphy attended the Annual Passholder Preview of Toy Story Midway Mania! at Disney's California Adventure on Tuesday, and has kindly shared her experience in this guest blog.

My husband and I received an email a few weeks ago announcing the Toy Story Mania sneak preview for annual passholders. You had to pick times you were available to go and enter your pass number. Lo and behold an email arrived instructing winners to bring a copy of the confirmation, along with a valid Disneyland annual pass for each member of the party, to the West information booth "at least 30 minutes before your time slot." Our time was between 10 am and 3 pm on June 10th. We, being very excited to see this new ride, arrived at 9 am at the designated booth and exchanged our email for our passes

This gave us plenty of time to get through security and wander over to California Adventure and wait for the park to open. Once inside and allowed past the main holding area, we walked over to the Paradise Pier Boardwalk where the new ride is located, along with an estimated 100 or so other lucky pass holders. Mr. Potato Head was not out and working this morning to greet us. He was having a few mechanical issues but there was plenty of signage to help us along the way.

Once in line we had both passes and our annual passes checked three times before finally getting the go ahead to pass through to the main line to get our 3-D Glasses.

Along the walls of the waiting area are what resemble circus posters explaining how to play games once on the ride.

At this point you are divided up by groups to get on your cars. They resemble a cross between the Buzz Lightyear car and your cab from Roger Rabbit. You sit in pairs, each with their own shooting device and you share a score and information screen.

When you take off, you should have your glasses on ready to go. You pass by great big scenes of all your favorite games as a kid.

Once you come to a stop, a giant 3-D video screen comes on and you are in an interactive video game. Depending on what you hit you will have different experiences: Some symbols are worth more points than others and some shoot air or water at you when you hit them. You make your way through different areas and each time you stop you play a shooting gallery style new game. I know if you hit certain things, a new game may come up on your screen but you are going so fast and having such a good time, its hard to concentrate on hitting exactly the right pattern!

At the end, your screen comes on to tell you your score, accuracy and give you a prize! We both got Rabbits! They also have a giant screen at the end that gives high scores of the day and month.

Some pictures while you're waiting to exit the ride.

This was at the end of the ride and I thought – “how does this help me now?”

When we first exchanged our email for our pass they told us depending on the crowd size we would be able to ride it again. We asked and sure enough they let us back in line. The unfortunate part was that by the time we were about to receive our 3-D glasses they made an announcement that the ride was down and that everyone should go enjoy other areas of the park and check back in later. This is Disney code for "this is going to take a while." My husband and I and most who had already ridden left the line happy we got to do it once.

The ride is amazing to look at and a heck of a lot of fun – and should not be missed. I can’t wait for my next opportunity to enjoy it, I just hope the others waiting for their 1st opportunity yesterday eventually got on.

I'm just back from a short overnight trip to Disneyland - we went up to attend Taste - the final signature event of this year's Food and Wine Festival. Taste was fun - I'll have more information and pictures up later.

We stayed at the Paradise Pier - the last time I stayed there was almost 11 years ago, when it was still called the Pan-Pacific. We had a room with a view of the Paradise Pier area of DCA - it was really pretty at night:

And in the early morning:

It also gave us quite an interesting perspective for viewing the Pixar Play Parade, which has changed (again) from what I saw a couple of weeks ago, as I reported in this blog entry. Lightning McQueen and Mater were back at the beginning and end of the parade. And the stilt-walking chefs of Ratatouille also returned - though there were only three of them.

From the room we could see many of the floats on the parade route

The biggest change, though, is the return of the "bug's life" parade unit - Heimlich and his many parts plus the float. The float was modified significantly - only the front part with Flik and Atta on the swing is there now. It looks a little odd when you compare it with the size of the floats for all of the other units.

Even with the "bug's life" float back, the weird Toy Story Tinker Toy creature is still part of the parade (but don't get me wrong, I think it looks pretty cool):

The acrobats have not returned to the Toy Story float - it's still just the monkeys hanging on the bar.

A while ago I talked about the Prince Caspian Pre-Parade that was coming to Disneyland at the end of April, and I had a chance to see that. I didn't notice any swooning females, but Caspian looked pretty good. And the horse was quite beautiful, and BIG.

He had quite an entourage - the banner bearers in front, the standard bearers, plus the courtier leading the horse - but it was his final attendant who cracked me up - The Royal Pooper Scooper. :-)

During Magic Morning I had a chance to get a close look at Jingles, the lead horse on the King Arthur Carrousel, which was dedicated to Julie Andrews last month. If you look closely you can see Mary Poppins' umbrella on the rump. Her initials, JA, the number 50, and Mary Poppins' boots and flying silhouette are on the saddle. It's really beautiful - so detailed!

The sparkling/chasing lights that are on the floral Mickey at the entrance to Disneyland cooperated with me a lot better than they did when I was there with Lisa Berton back in March - this time the light show was running almost continuously. It's more impressive in person when you can watch the lights as they move and twinkle, but hopefully you get the idea.

And now that I'm back from Disneyland I'm leaving for Disney World, where I'm planning to blog live this week. A little bonus trip for me - but I'll be writing more about that in my next blog entry.

Warning: This blog entry contains explicit chocolate photos. Not recommended for non-chocoholics.

Chocolate Souffle was the star of the first Sweet Sundays demonstration of this year's Food and Wine Festival, prepared by Napa Rose's pastry chef Jorge Sotelo, and his assistant Sergio.

Chocolate Souffle

Makes 8 servings

6-1/2 ounces 62% Scharffen Berger Dark chocolate (or other chocolate with cocoa content no higher than 72%)
1/2 C. plus 6 T unsalted butter
5 large eggs, separated - bring to room temperature before separating, 4 hours or overnight
1/4 C. plus 3 T sugar
1 T all purpose flour

All the ingredients were set out in advance.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bring a pan of water barely to a simmer. Place the chocolate and butter over the pan of water. Heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is melted.

Chef Sotelo finishes melting the chocolate.

In a mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks and 1/4 cup sugar together until thickened slightly and lighter in color. Whisk in the flour and then the chocolate mixture.

Place the egg whites in a metal bowl and place over hot water until warmed slightly. Add 1 T of sugar and whip with an electric mixture on medium speed until soft peaks form. Gradually add 1-1/2 tablespoons more sugar. Turn the speed to high and add the last 1-1/2 tablespoons sugar and whip until the whites form stiff peaks.

Chef Sotelo warms the egg whites.

Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg whites.

Sergio pours the chocolate as Chef Sotelo mixes it into the egg whites by hand.

Divide the mixture among 8 buttered ramekins, filled 3/4 full. Place the ramekins on a baking tray and bake about 9 to 10 minutes. The tops should be puffed and feel firm to the touch but are very liquid in the center.

The batter can be made the day before and poured into the ramekins. Remove from the refrigerator one hour before baking.

Chef Sotelo demonstrates the technique of making fancifully shaped garnishes out of hot sugar "taffy".

He finishes a heart-shaped decoration, while a finished corkscrew-shaped decoration sits on the counter.

And voila, the finished souffle, garnished with a white chocolate medallion, a crunchy cookie and a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Looks good enough to eat! It was yummy.

Out-of-town friends gave me the excuse to play hooky from work one afternoon last week and spend some time at Disney's California Adventure and Disneyland. And I thought I'd share a few observations.

My friend AK and I attended the Miner Family Wine Tasting Seminar at DCA's Food and Wine Festival. I was pleased to see that even on a Thursday afternoon the tasting area was about 3/4 full! There was also a very good turnout for the cooking demonstration, though we didn't attend, so I don't know if it was full. (By the way, the Miner Family Rosato is still a very nice wine!)

When we went over to Disneyland, AK suggested that we ask about using the "Observation Oupost" viewing area at the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. The Cast Members weren't as organized/helpful with this as they could have been, but eventually we got in there. The CM at the end of the Nemo line told us we needed to go to the exit, rather than waiting in the 45-minute line, so that was nice. So we walked in the Exit...and then stood there for several minutes while various CMs walked by and ignored us. We finally got the attention of one, and explained we wanted to use the viewing room, and he said, sure, but someone was in it (the light outside was red), but when the light turned green someone would come and get us.

So after a few minutes the light turned green, but no one came out of the room, and no CMs paid any more attention to us. We finally asked another one who looked over, saw the green light was on, and took us over there and got the experience going for us. (It turns out the exit is on the opposite side of the room, which is why we didn't see anyone come out.)

I must say that with that high-definition large-screen TV, I think the viewing is actually better in the room than it is when you're looking out of the tiny little porthole. The narration at the beginning and the end is a little different, since the sub captain welcomed us as those joining them from the remote marine observation post. But once the sub leaves the docks, the narration and sights are the same.

Marine Observation Outpost logo

Back over at DCA I watched the Pixar Play Parade with my friends Randi and Rick. I hadn't seen the parade since opening day on March 14 - the following week the "bug's life" float failed during the parade (one of the "flower swings" actually detached from the float, but fortunately no one was hurt), and the parade was on hiatus for almost a week while they ran safety checks. There are a few differences in the new version. The "bug's life" segment has not returned - instead they've added this weird "TinkerToy" creation that precedes the Toy Story section. (I'm sorry these photos are not of great quality - I wasn't expecting to have any reason to take any!)

Lightning McQueen, who originally led off the parade, and Mater, who closed it, were both missing, too. And in the Ratatouille section, the chefs who lead it out weren't on stilts...and the rats weren't bungee-jumping. In my original blog on the parade (HERE) I noted this: "I found the Ratatouille float a little bit creepy - the jumping rats were ok, but there were several rats hanging upside down in some ropes looking rather lifeless. It just looked odd." Apparently I'm not the only person who thought so, because the upside-down rats are gone.

Original Ratatouille float - note the "hanging rats"
on the front and on the spoon.

New Ratatouille float - the rat on the front
is now perched in the mouth of the pitcher
and the one on the spoon is hanging by his tail

On the Toy Story float the acrobatic cowboys and cowgirls who used to swing on the high bar were also MIA - now there's several large "Barrel of Monkeys" monkeys hanging on the bar.

Now, for all I know a few of these things, especially the more acrobatic components like the bar performers and the stiltwalkers, could depend on the availability of cast, and are still part of the parade during its busier weekend performances. But I thought it was interesting that the parade had changed so much in just its first month!

After the three of us had dinner at the Wine Country Trattoria (review to come, which will also include comments from acclaimed food critic "Cheap Rick") we took a quick trip through Monstropolis and then used our Tower of Terror fastpasses. Maybe after seeing the Pixar Play Parade we were on a monkey theme, since Rick suggested posing for the photo in the classic "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" poses. That was fun, and the photo turned out well. After another drive through Monstropolis (where Roz said the same thing to us she had the first time), it was 8:00 and DCA was closing, and I headed home, since it was a "school night" for me. Though it was a short trip, I really enjoyed my time with AK, Randi and Rick - nice of them to give me the excuse to get away from work for the afternoon. :-)

I was checking out Disney's California Food and Wine Festival website (http://www.disneyland.com/foodandwine) last night and noticed that some new things have been added recently.

Most weekends are going to feature a celebrity chef who will be conducting cooking demonstrations as well as book signings. In addition to Chef Jamie Gwen, who will be there every weekend, Cat Cora is scheduled on April 12-13, Bret Thompson on April 19-20, and both Nancy Silverton and Guy Fieri on April 26.

Hmm...with all those chefs around, I hope there aren't too many cooks in the kitchen...

A new "Signature" event has been added: A Special Evening with the Gallo Family Winery is scheduled for Sunday, April 20. This dinner will be held from 6:30-9:30 p.m. at the Vineyard Room restaurant inside Disney's California Adventure. The cost is $85/person.

I hadn't planned to be at the parks that weekend but that sounds intriguing...I love Chef Tae's food!

The Daily Schedule for the Food and Wine Festival complimentary events is now up on the web site also, so I've been checking out things I want to attend on the weekend of the 11th-13th and the weekend of the 2nd-3rd.

Ghirardelli Sweet Sundays...oooooooooooh! (Every Sunday at 11:00)

Wine and Chocolate...oh my. (Every weekend at 5:30)

They're starting the Festival off right as far as I'm concerned - Delicious Desserts on April 11 is the very first demonstration. Also that weekend are demos for Gilroy Garlic and Melissa's Produce, and a What's for Brunch session on Saturday.

With the Festival going to a daily schedule this year, there's many more wineries represented - 24 if I counted correctly. Beer tasting sessions will feature either the returning Karl Straus Brewing Company or (new this year) Widmer Beers. Don Julio Tequila sponsors tequila tasting sessions every weekend, and there's a new Mixology 101: Drinks 1-2-3 session offered every Monday afternoon.

If you haven't made plans yet to attend any of the Signature events...The Napa Rose Cooking School is sold out, but there are still tickets left for all of the other events, though some are getting close to capacity.

I plan to try to blog live from the Festival the first weekend, so there will be lots of photos and reports coming both here and on the AllEars.net Disney's California Food and Wine Festival web page, which is HERE.

Please send me any reports or comments that you have, too!

The new Pixar Play Parade officially opened at DCA on Friday evening (there were several preview performances). I was on-hand for the first official parade, which started at 5:15. I claimed a spot on the edge of the parade route at Sunshine Plaza (where it starts) about 4:00 - turns out I didn't really have to be there quite that early for a front-row seat.

Prior to the parade Cast Members went down the parade route warning guests that they would get slightly wet...I'd heard the parade involved water, but didn't know how much, and I worried a bit for my camera.

A few minutes before the parade started we heard the voice of Mike Wazowski (Monsters, Inc.) making a few announcements - and heckling Roz, who seems none-to-pleased with her role as drum majorette (complete with twirling baton!).

The parade includes sections representing all of the Disney-Pixar movies: Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Cars, Monsters, Inc., "a bug's life", Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. The floats have a lot going on - they can all spray water, for one thing - and there are lots of characters on board or accompanying the float. The larger floats have some additional surprises, like bugs swinging on giant daisies, bungee-jumping rats, and cowboys and cowgirls twirling on a high bar. My favorite was The Incredibles float - that segment starts off with Mr. Incredible, Elastigirl and Frozone all riding their own hovercrafts (and I wonder if there's really a Segway buried underneath all of that fiberglass), followed by the VERY large Omnidroid - with baby Jack-Jack perched on top. Not to worry for Jack-Jack, though - every so often he bursts into flame! And that looks really cool. (They didn't do the flame effect at Sunshine Plaza, though - I saw that back at Paradise Pier.)

In addition to the aforementioned bugs, rats, and cowboys, there are also a number of talented parade performers cast as dancing bugs and monsters, puppeteers with Dory, Nemo, and Marlin puppets, stilt-walking chefs, and those guys on the bouncing stilt things.

The parade is a little over 20 minutes long - after it ended at Sunshine Plaza I zipped over to Paradise Pier via Condor Flats and the Grizzly Peak Recreation area and caught up with the beginning of the parade in front of the Golden Zephyr. I really didn't need to worry about getting a spot for the parade an hour early - I got a front row spot in Paradise Pier even after the parade had started! But it was nice to see it twice - and as I said, I saw the fire effect which I'd missed in Sunshine Plaza, and also saw one of the high bar twirlers - they weren't in action yet at Sunshine Plaza, either.

I think the parade is a lot of fun, though since it doesn't have a performance stop, it's missing the interactive component that Block Party Bash and the Parade of Dreams have. Still, there are lots of characters walking the route and they greet the guests. The floats are complex and really visually interesting. And even Hopper (the menacing grasshopper from "a bug's life") has a smile on his face!

But...I could've done with a lot less water. While nothing was drenching and probably isn't going to damage a camera, my lens got drops on it a couple of times when I didn't see the water coming in time to shield it. I understand that in cooler weather they'll blow bubbles rather than spraying water.

I found the Ratatouille float a little bit creepy - the jumping rats were ok, but there were several rats hanging upside down in some ropes looking rather lifeless. It just looked odd.

Still, overall I liked it, and think it will be quite popular with guests, particularly the younger ones who have grown up with the Pixar movies.

You can see a gallery of parade photos on AllEars.net HERE.

I had a new experience last Friday - I got to tour Disneyland with a fellow All Ears staff member - All Ears Picture This! blogger Lisa Berton. We hit both parks, all three resorts and Downtown Disney.

It was a beautiful southern California day - they don't get much better. Lisa was taking lots of pictures, since she's going to try to fill in a lot of the things that we don't currently have in the Disneyland section of AllEars. Let me tell you that it was a real treat for me NOT to be taking photographs - it was great to leave it in the hands of a professional.

There were a lot of characters out and about and many of them are total hams when it comes to getting their picture taken. Pluto kept striking all kinds of different poses for Lisa, and putting his ears in various positions. My favorite was when he rolled them into round Mickey Mouse ears. :-) I was surprised to see the Mad Hatter over in DCA outside the Animation Building - I guess they'd let him escape from Disneyland for the afternoon!

I've found another fan of the Orange Stinger - Lisa enjoys flying around on it, too, so we had fun doing that. And we checked out the S.S. Rustworthy play area. They've cut waaay back on the water effects (no more water cannons - and I don't think that's such a bad thing!), so it's pretty hard to get wet these days. But you can try "surfing", or steering the ship, or ringing the ship's bell, or pushing buttons for the foghorn, dropping the anchor chain, and throwing a life preserver.

We caught a bit of High School Musical 2 before heading over to the Paradise Pier for dinner. At this point we REALLY wished that the back entrance that Paradise Pier guests used to be able to use to enter DCA was still open! We used the Grand Californian's egress instead.

We had a very nice dinner at the PCH Grill at the Paradise Pier - but I'll write more about that later.

After dinner we went back to Disneyland - by way of the Disneyland Hotel and Downtown Disney. Last month I wrote about the new floral Mickey inside the entrance, and how it has new sparkling lights that show up better at night. Of course just as we walked up the lights *stopped* twinkling. We waited for a few minutes but no luck - we think Tinker Bell was mocking us. Eventually we gave up and went into the park and found a spot in the hub for the Remember...Dreams Come True fireworks.

Though we had a good view of the castle and a great view of the Matterhorn, we had an obstructed view of the fireworks - they were off to the left of the castle, and mostly blocked by some trees. I'm beginning to wonder if there is any spot where you get a good view of *everything*. The show proceeded just fine until Tinker Bell's flight...the spotlight went on her and she flew about 50 feet...and then she stopped. And kind of swung in place. Eventually they turned the spotlight off and the rest of the show continued, but she was stuck there for at least 5 minutes before they were able to get her apparatus moving again and she finished her descent. Normally she makes a return appearance near the end of the show - not that night! The rest of the show appeared to be unaffected.

On our way out of the park we checked the floral Mickey again - sure enough, it stopped twinkling just as we arrived. Guess that's my new mission in life!

I thought I'd post some follow-ups to a couple of previous blog entries.

Last week I wrote about the new House of the Future, coming to Disneyland in May. (That blog entry can be found HERE.) One thing the article didn't mention is that it was going in on the ground floor of Innoventions. We asked a Cast Member when we were there last week who confirmed that. There have been quite a few changes to the upper floor of Innoventions since we were last there - the Disney Interactive gaming area has received several different kinds of "virtual gaming kiosks", and the Virtual Resort area has been replaced (at least temporarily) by a Segway demonstration. The ASIMO demonstration and Stitch's Picture Phone areas are still there, though.

My second follow-up has to do with DCA's upcoming Food and Wine Festival (original blog entry is HERE). The Signature events for the Food and Wine Festival went on sale Friday morning. Though the web site with pricing information was supposed to be up earlier in the week, it didn't go on-line until they opened it for reservations, so no one knew how much the events were going to be until it was time to sign up for them. That made it a little bit difficult to know what the budget would stand, though fortunately DCA's events don't sell out immediately...at least not yet.

As I expected, there were price increases almost across the board - the most notable being that Taste went from $100 last year to $125 this year - though it's still $10 cheaper than Party for the Senses at Epcot. (Though it still requires separate admission to DCA, and since May 3 is a blockout day for all but Premium Passholders, a lot of people attending will have to pay an additional $40 for a blockout day ticket, or otherwise pay for park admission to DCA.) The Festival Wine Receptions also went up $10, to $55 (though this year they include a premium viewing location for Disney's Electrical Parade, which wasn't running during the Food and Wine Festival last year), and the Taste Wine Like an Expert class is up $25, to $45, though its format will be different this year. The Napa Rose Cooking School went up a whopping $75, to $400/person, and the Celebrity Chef dinner went from $145 to $185. Interestingly enough, the price of the Winemaker dinners stayed the same - $125.

As of this writing, nothing has sold out yet, and there still seems to be plenty of availability for all of the events. Check out http://www.disneyland.com/foodandwine to make reservations.

There have been a couple of recent news items about Disneyland on non-Disney sites that I have found interesting, so I thought I'd share, in case anyone else is interested..

My husband Lee sent me this link to an article published in the New York Times on February 10... "Will Disney Keep Us Amused?" talks a bit about the expansion planned for DCA, but mostly it's a lot of interesting info about the new Toy Story Mania attraction - including a statement that it is opening in June, something that I have not heard before. All I've ever seen from Disney is: "Opening Summer 2008." Sounds good to me. :-)

The other news item is an AP piece published on Febuary 13, and available in various news outlets on the web, including this Google page: Disney Revives 'House of the Future'.

The original House of the Future opened at Disneyland in 1957 and closed in 1967 - this new one is scheduled to open in May. It's 5,000 square feet and they say it "looks like a normal suburban home" - but I can't say there's any "normal suburban homes" in my normal suburban neighborhood that are 5,000 square feet!

Anyway...sounds like it will have lots of gadgets like lights and thermostats that automatically adjust when people walk in the room, with things like artwork and music that are customized to different individuals. And presumably there's some kind of priority system that determines whose preferences take precedence when more than one family member is in the room. :-) Hmmm...I'll have to find out about that...

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jim Ames, the producer of Disney's California Food and Wine Festival, about this year's upcoming Festival.

This is the Festival's third year, and it keeps getting a little bigger (and I think a little better) every year. The major change this year is that the Festival will be held daily from April 11 - May 5, rather than just on weekends like it was the first two years. Hence a new name this year - Disney's California Food and Wine Festival.

The Festival will be expanding from the Pacific Wharf and Golden Vine Winery areas into the Bountiful Farm area as well. Among other things, this expansion allows for larger areas for the demonstration kitchens - Jim said they were turning guests away at almost every demonstration last year, and the expansion will allow them to accommodate more guests.

Expanded Festival food offerings will be available - in addition to the Festival Marketplace at the Lucky Fortune Cookery (which will have 9-10 tapas-style items on the menu, plus beer and wine), other counter service restaurants in the park will be serving up special Festival menu items. These items will be in keeping with the existing menu and price point at each location. For example, Award Wieners will be offering a hot dog with peppers and onions and a beer sauce. Other participating restaurants include Corn Dog Castle, Pizza Oom Mow Mow, Cocina Cucamonga, Pacific Wharf Cafe, and Farmer's Market.

Other restaurants around the Disneyland Resort will be offering a special prix-fixe Vintner's Menu during the Festival. These multi-course menus will be available from Napa Rose, Steakhouse 55, the Vineyard Room, Ralph Brennan's Jazz Kitchen, and Catal.

Also new this year will be the Sparkling Bar, located on the Upper Terrace of the Golden Vine Winery (in previous years the site of one of the demonstration kitchens). At this location champagne and sparkling wines will be available by the glass and various wine country tapas will also be for sale.

The Taste event will be returning on the final Saturday evening (May 3) of the Festival. This year tickets will be available to the general public, and not just to Annual Passholders. In response to guest comments, Jim told me there will be more sit-down tables available this year, but they feel they can do that without making the event feel cramped and overcrowded. That was one of my favorite parts about last year's Taste event - it was easy to move around the room to the various food and wine stations, but we could still always find a table (even if it was a standing table) where we could set our plates and glasses down and eat.

Other "ticketed" events returning this year are the Winemaker Dinners, the Napa Rose Cooking School, the Festival Wine Receptions (which this year include special viewing of the Electrical Parade), and the Taste Wine Like an Expert classes.

Registration for the ticketed events begins on February 15. To register, visit http://www.disneyland.com/foodandwine. The web site should go-live by February 10, if not before.

More information on the Festival and its events is available on AllEars' Disney's California Food and Wine Festival page, where we'll be adding more information on the schedule, menus, events and prices as it becomes available, and once the Festival starts we'll have event reviews and guest comments.

Disneyland has renamed "Early Entry" to "Magic Morning", and changed the days - it's now Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. It's still available to DL Resort guests every day it's offered during their stay, otherwise it is offered one day of most 3- 4- or 5-day park hoppers. There's more detailed information on the AllEars.net page HERE.

I was surprised that Disney's Electrical Parade (which will always be the Main Street Electrical Parade to me, even though it's at DCA) is still running - usually it ends after the holidays. But according to the schedule, DEP continues on weekends/holidays through March 9, then nightly through March 31 (and perhaps beyond, but that's as far out as Disneyland's calendar goes at the moment).

The new Pixar Play Parade starts at DCA on March 14.

In honor of the Snow White "Fairest of them All" 70th anniversary exhibit in the Animation Building, Snow White has a meet and greet spot outside, with the Seven Dwarfs' cottage as a backdrop. She seems to be very popular.

Rancho del Zocalo in Frontierland has some good-looking desserts! They have coconut flan and tres leches cake, and a special chocolate praline "Year of a Million Dreams" cake (all $4.99 each). The tropical fruit plate ($4.59) also looks really good...if it's nice ripe fruit that would be delicious!

There's a big crane on the south side of the Grand Californian where they are working on the new wing that will be part DVC and part regular hotel rooms.

I made a quick commando-type trip to Disneyland/DCA on Friday - my objective was to take photos of as many menus as I could since I haven't updated them for AllEars in a while. (And if anyone out there is interested in helping with that in the future, please let me know!) I'm used to sticker shock when it comes to food prices at Disneyland, but I'd just like to say that I find the breakfast menu at Storyteller's Cafe to be ridiculously overpriced. $17.59 for a Mickey waffle????

But back to my day...I took my GPS runner's watch with me, since I was interested in seeing how far I walked - I hit all three hotels, Downtown Disney, and both parks, and covered 6.95 miles in 3 hours and 24 minutes. It was all the pictures that slowed me down! :-)

It was a beautiful, beautiful day - sunny and clear and in the mid-60s. Which isn't warm by southern California standards, but I'm sure most of the rest of the country would be really happy with those kind of temperatures in mid-January! (And no, this picture is not upside-down!)

Despite the awesome weather the parks were quite uncrowded - the only attraction that had much of a line was (what else?) Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage - 55 minutes at 11:00 in the morning.

This is the final weekend for "it's a small world holiday" before the attraction goes into a lengthy rehab - it'snot scheduled to re-open until November. So I guess there's no reason to remove the holiday decorations inside - it'll be holiday time again when it reopens. :-)

Construction on Toy Story Mania at DCA continues - they are working on the walkways in front of the attraction now so you can't walk all the way around Paradise Bay - if you're at California Screamin' and want to ride the Sun Wheel you have to walk all the way around the Bay. No official opening date for the attraction has been announced - still listed as "Coming in 2008".

"The Toy Story *what?*" is what I'm sure you're all asking! At least, that's that *I* said when I saw the sign outside the Animation Gallery inside DCA's Animation Building.

According to a Pixar press release, the zoetrope is a "kinetic installation... an early cinema device that created the optical illusion of static images in motion. The 7' (high) x 12' (diameter) zoetrope, which is cycled to synchronize with the artscape installation, features characters from both Toy Story films and uses a series of strobe lights to make the Toy Story characters Buzz, Woody, Wheezy, and others revolve around a central spindle, out of which hordes of toy soldiers parachute down."

And from a Disney press release: "Originally created for the '20 Years of Pixar Production Art Show' at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Zoetrope creates the illusion of movement by presenting a rapidly changing sequence of images - actual three-dimensional models - of characters from both Toy Story films: Woody, Buzz Lightyear, cowgirl Jessie, horse Bullseye and even the little green Aliens. The figures are mounted on a spinning disk and lit with a strobe which creates a sense of continuous motion, as if the characters have actually come to life before your eyes."

Initially I thought it looked like a carousel - only with Toy Story characters instead of horses. But when you take a closer look, you can see that the characters' poses vary.

We stood in the room for a couple of minutes, then all of a sudden the room lights dimmed and the lights inside the zoetrope became brighter. It started to spin, and music started to play. At first everything was just a blur, but then the strobe light effect began and the characters appeared to be moving in an animated sequence - Woody rode a bucking Bullseye, Jessie spun a rope up and down, Buzz walked on top of a ball, the green army men parachuted down, and my favorite, the penguins and the little green guys collaborated in a stunt where the penguins catapulted a green guy into the air and then he dove into a hole in the floor. One really interesting thing - the display was spinning counter-clockwise, but all of the action, except Buzz on his ball, appeared to be moving clockwise.

The "show" is a couple of minutes long, and it's really very cool to watch.

I took a video with my digital camera and put it on YouTube - unfortunately the quality suffered in converting it to something YouTube could handle, and the video frame rate doesn't match up with the strobe rate so the animation isn't as smooth, but it'll still give you the idea.

Toy Story Zoetrope video

Back in November (yeah, I know, not a very up-to-date blog entry, is it?) Disney opened a Snow White 70th Anniversary exhibit in the Animation Building at DCA. The exhibit is in the main room of the building - sort of a maze-like set-up of walls with some photos and artwork and copies of cels from the movie. Interesting to see some of the sketches and concept art, and read snippets on how they come up with various ideas, etc.

For those of you familiar with that part of the Animation Building, you know that there are a bunch of projection screens overhead, which usually are showing scenes, artwork, etc. from lots of Disney animated features - but for now it's only Snow White.

Which brings me (finally) to the point of this blog entry...how to have some fun at the exhibit. On the outside of the exhibit's "walls" are life-size sketches of various characters from the movie. Life-size enough that with a little imagination and placement you can insert yourselves. :-) So Lee and I had a little fun with that when we were there a couple of weeks ago.

Hmmm...I'm not quite sure I like the way Snow is looking at him!!! Though I can't blame her for wanting to upgrade to someone much more manly than the "girly prince" that Disney stuck her with...

Happy New Year, everyone!

This has been rumored for a while, but on October 17, 2007 the Disney Company finally made it official, and announced a "significant multi-year expansion plan" for the Disneyland Resort - most of which looks to involve major changes to Disney's California Adventure.

You can read the full press release HERE, but here are some of the points that I find most interesting.

1. Disney will be bringing more of "Walt Disney" to DCA, and at least at the entrance to the park, the theme will reflect the 1920s California to which Walt came as a young man, with a new park icon modeled after the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Inside the theater will be an interactive "Walt Disney Story". The entry plaza itself will be completely revamped into more of a 1920s California main street environment, complete with Red Car trolleys traveling the street. Bye-bye Golden Gate Bridge!

2. Pixar and more Pixar...in addition to Toy Story Mania, inspired by the characters from Toy Story and scheduled to open the summer of 2008, there will be a new "Cars Land" area, featuring the world of Radiator Springs, three new attractions, and new restaurants and shops. "The new land will substantially extend the total area of Disney’s California Adventure park" - guess that means the Timon parking lot (the last remnant of the original Disneyland parking lot) is finally going away.

3. FINALLY DCA will be getting a "signature nighttime spectacular", with waterside viewing alongside Paradise Bay for 9,000 people. Disney's World of Color will include water effects, animation, lighting, and music. (This has been on my "wish list" since the park opened!)

4. Paradise Pier will host the new state-of-the-art Little Mermaid attraction, as well as a Mermaid Grotto play area for kids. Nice to see the classic-style Disney animated movies getting a little bit of attention!

5. The Hollywood Pictures Backlot will be getting some "special ticketed events and chances to hear first hand from innovative directors, writers, and animators" - whatever that means. Maybe they will finally use the gorgeous Hyperion Theater for full-length shows - though they'll need to put restrooms in first!

6. No timetable in the press release, other than "over the next several years", but since the Preview Center isn't scheduled to open until late 2008, I suppose it'll be at least a year or two or three beyond that.

7. I find it interesting that Disney did not put a dollar figure in their press release, though other sources have put the cost at 1.1 billion, which is just about the original cost of building DCA.

Well, I'm excited...I've always liked DCA even as it is now, though I freely admit that it could use something more. Everything looks good on paper...I hope the Imagineers will get free reign to bring us new attractions that are of that Disney quality that has been a bit elusive at DCA, and that they don't get dumbed down because of budget issues.

I made a quick weekend trip to Disneyland and actually spent the night up there for a change - mainly because I was doing the Segway tour which started at 7:15 a.m., and would have meant getting up *really* early if I left from San Diego!

I met my friend Patty at my hotel on Saturday (Best Western Park Place Inn - more on that in a later blog), and she surprised me with a Disneyland birthday button! My birthday was the day before - I've never had a birthday button before. And it was fun - CMs at the turnstiles and in the park said "Happy Birthday, Laura!", and so did several guests, and I got singled out for some special attention by the Laughing Stock Company, and the Mariachi Divas over at DCA sang "Las Mañanitas" (the Mexican birthday song) to me and two other birthday people who were watching.

There were banners up at the parks (mostly where you saw them on your way out) advertising this year's Disney's HalloweenTime, which starts on September 21 - a week earlier this year. It was very festive last year, with great decorations! I hope to visit this weekend.

Now that summer is over the park is a lot quieter (even on Saturday it wasn't horribly busy, and it was a beautiful day - sunny and shorts weather, but a lot cooler than it had been in the last month!), and the Nemo line is down to something semi-reasonable - 45-60 minutes most of the time.

I don't think I've mentioned this before - the "yellow submarine" monorail that they premiered at the Finding Nemo grand opening is still decorated and has been in use ever since the opening (though they removed the conning tower!) - it's really cute - we saw it zooming around a number of times.

The construction of Toy Story Mania at DCA is beginning to take a more visible shape - as Patty pointed out to me the facade is taking on more of a Victorian look than the seaside amusement park look of the rest of the area. There's rumors that there are lots of changes coming to DCA (especially Paradise Pier) in the next few years, so maybe this is the start of it?

I saw the Remember fireworks at Disneyland that night from a spot near the castle where I could actually see the projections on the castle for a change. There's some really cool stuff - stars during the Main Street portion, flying spooks and hitchhiking ghosts during the Haunted Mansion section, skull and crossbones for Pirates, a moving duck target during the Frontierland Shooting Gallery bit (that's my favorite - it just quacks me up), crazy swirls for Toontown, "water ripples" for the Submarine Voyage, and a "light speed" pattern for Star Tours. I like that show more each time I see it.

The next morning Patty and I did the Segway tour - but you can read all about that HERE. It was a lot of fun - I liked it even more than the Epcot Segway tour, I think.

While waiting for the tour to start I *finally* got a decent picture of the new cloud-patterned "CALIFORNIA" letters in front of the park - just in time for them to change to the Halloween candy corn, I'm sure!

After the tour I wandered around the Disneyland Hotel taking pictures - and eventually found the Disney Vacation Club (DVC) sales office and models that are way on the far side of the Dreams (aka Bonita) Tower. I asked about the Grand Californian DVC, and they said they had no news on that...but it was finally announced earlier today. The press release is HERE.

Other news bits...

Ariel's Grotto at DCA will be starting a daily character breakfast on September 21, which runs through January 6. Breakfast will be served from 8:30 to 11:30 - $25.99 for adults and $13.99 for kids. Since the park doesn't open until 10:00, Cast Members will direct guests to the restaurant either from the main entrance or the Grand Californian entrance. Priority seating arrangements can be made up to 60 days in advance by calling Disneyland Dining: 714-781-DINE (3463).

And there's a new tour for the Halloween season - Disney's Happiest Haunts tour runs daily September 21-October 31. It starts at 6:00 at night and visits three attractions - Tower of Terror, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Haunted Mansion Holiday. From what one of the guides told us, each tour guide gets to assume the persona of a character of their choice - like a pirate, or a miner or a psychotic actress. The tour includes creepy stories, and it's not for young children or those who might be easily frightened. Lee and I are signed up for the tour on September 28, so we'll know more after that. In the meantime, what we know about the tour is HERE.

It was a short trip but a lot of fun!

That seems to be a fairly commonly asked question...and the short answer is yes, if you're willing to accept a less-than-optimal fireworks view.

For those of you who aren't as familiar with the Disneyland parks...at Disney's California Adventure (DCA) Disney's Electrical Parade (DEP) begins at 8:45, and the Remember fireworks at Disneyland (DL) start at 9:25. That's a pretty tight time schedule, but since the two parks are right next to each other it's quite easy to go between them, at least under normal circumstances.

On a recent Friday night visit Lee and I decided to try to see both shows. First step was to see the DEP from some place closer to the beginning of the parade (which starts at Paradise Pier) rather than the end - we chose a spot near the Golden Dreams Theater, which is right next to a walkway that goes around Grizzly Peak and past Soarin' and then out to Sunshine Plaza. The last float of the DEP passed us at about 9:10, and we were off and running (well, ok, walking quickly, but many people tell us we might as well be running!). The parade was still going at Sunshine Plaza (it was about halfway through) when we scooted by and out the exit. (As we have Annual Passes we didn't have to worry about handstamps.)

I don't know if we just managed to get out early or if it just wasn't very crowded that night (or maybe a little of both) but we arrived at the entrance to Disneyland and there were only a few people in line at the turnstiles - we walked into the park at 9:21 and found a spot on Main Street near the candy store which had a clear view of the castle. Unfortunately it turned out not to have a good view of the fireworks - they were going off to the left of the castle instead of over it, and our view was blocked by a big tree. :-( Oh well. We had a good view of all of the changing lights on the castle and were far enough back on Main Street to really appreciate the perimeter fireworks that go off from the buildings on Main Street.

So, you CAN see both the Electrical Parade and the Remember fireworks in one evening, but you have to plan it right and get a little bit lucky with the number of people who have the same idea...and you have to realize that you won't get a great spot for the fireworks. As an alternative, we saw a number of people sitting in the Main Entrance Plaza between DCA and DL who were planning to watch the fireworks from there - but of course from there you can't see the castle or hear the music. I've also heard that the Mickey and Friends parking structure has a good view of the fireworks - though it has the same lack-of-castle-and-music issue.

Laura

Well, ok...make that Disney's Electrical Parade, now that it's at Disney's California Adventure and not Disneyland.

But it's still a "spectacular festival pageant of nighttime magic and imagination in thousands of sparkling lights and electrosynthomagnetic musical sounds!"

These days it runs at DCA during peak seasons, which generally means the two weeks around Easter, mid-June through Labor Day, and about three weeks during the Christmas holiday season.

We saw it on a recent Friday night visit - there were a fair number of people waiting in the area around Sunshine Plaza, but about 10 minutes before it started we walked up the parade route to a spot near the Golden Dreams Theater and had a front-row seat right on the edge of the parade route. We also saw the parade a lot earlier than all those people who were at Sunshine Plaza, since it starts at Paradise Pier and ends in Sunshine Plaza.

Soon enough the lights dimmed and we heard the first strains of that very bouncy Baroque Hoedown. Makes me smile just thinking about it. The Electrical Parade is by far my favorite - SO much better than SpectroMagic! (And I know there's at least two people out there who agree with me!) Lee leaned over partway through the parade and asked me what happened to the scary clowns, but nope, there's nothing creepy about the Electrical Parade - it's all whimsical and fun.

One thing we'd never noticed before is the music coming from the spin-around turtle, bees, and snail. They actually have their own "electrosynthomagnetic musical sounds", sort of a slower, deeper, more plodding-paced one for the snail, and a higher-pitched, faster snippet for the bee. I thought I recognized a bit of the melody for "Golden Afternoon" from Alice in Wonderland in there. For some reason I'd never really noticed the Cheshire Cat on the front of Alice's float - he fades in and out, so maybe he's just usually faded out when I see him!

When I told someone at work that we'd seen the Electrical Parade he asked me if they'd switched it to using LED lights yet. Gasp! I was horrified! It wouldn't be the Electrical Parade if they didn't use light bulbs, would it???

Laura

We made another trip to Disneyland on the afternoon/evening of Friday, August 17...thought I'd share a few observations...

With the "Year of a Million Dreams" extended through 2008 (doesn't that make it "Years of a Million Dreams?" the banners in the main entry plaza have changed...and the letters in front of DCA that spell out "CALIFORNIA" now have a blue-sky-and-clouds look, like the "Dream" mouse ears.

The waits for most attractions were less than an hour (15 minutes for Indy, 5 for Pirates, 10 minutes for Buzz, etc.), but Finding Nemo was still two hours.

This was a first for us - the standby line for Big Thunder Mountain was shorter than the Fastpass Return line! Since the attraction loads on two sides they send Fastpassers to one side and standby riders to the other, so we got on faster than a lot of people who had Fastpasses!

We saw the Ratatouille "pre-parade" float with Remy and Emile - since it doesn't fit into the Parade of Dreams it gets to be its own mini-parade.

On our raft ride over to Tom Sawyer Island at about 4:25 we saw one of the Pirate Stunt Show characters climbing up to the "crow's nest" waiting to make his grand entrance - which was still about 10 minutes away. I recognized this particular actor as one that had been playing Jedi Master Endo Valaris in Jedi Academy...from Jedi Master to Pirate...guess he went over to the Dark side!

 

The Disney Gallery (above the Pirates of the Caribbean) is closed, which means no more Fantasmic! dessert buffet on the balcony...but Riverside Premium seating for Fantasmic! is still available.

Disney's new High School Musical 2 movie premiered Friday night, and a new street show at DCA, High School Musical 2: School's Out, opened on Saturday, replacing the High School Musical Pep Rally.

The three towers at the Disneyland Hotel now have signs over the entrances with their new names: Magic (formerly Marina), Dreams (formerly Sierra) and Wonder (formerly Bonita). The hotel map signs scattered around the property have not yet been changed to reflect the new names, though.

We had dinner at Hook's Pointe (review to come) - Lee noticed that there's a map of Never Land on the ceiling.

The Fantasy Waters show at the Disneyland Hotel has been gone for a while, but the fountains and lights still put on a little bit of a show - we seem to have been there at just the right time to see it.

Until next time...

Laura

The Vineyard Room is the "fine dining" table service restaurant at Disney's California Adventure. It's located on the second floor of the Golden Vine Winery and is an open-air/patio restaurant - most of the tables are under a roofed area, but there are no walls. (There's also an uncovered patio area.) There are views of the park from most of the tables, either looking out towards Paradise Pier and the Pacific Wharf or "a bug's land" with the Tower of Terror in the background.

The restaurant was not really that busy - we arrived about 10 minutes before our 5:50 Priority Seating Time (which I'd just made that morning!) and very few tables were occupied. The restaurant wasn't full at any time during our leisurely dinner, though about 75% of the tables were occupied by the time we left.

In addition to the regular menu items, the restaurant offers a three-course prix-fixe menu - on past menus this has looked pretty intriguing, but the current offerings of Watermelon Soup and and Filet Mignon just didn't sound that appetizing to me.

Our server started us off with some excellent (and very chewy!) sourdough bread, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar to dip it in. I would've preferred warm bread, but this was still pretty good. They have a very nice wine list, with a fairly large selection of wines available by the glass - I recognized many of the labels as wineries that have appeared at the Food and Wine Weekends the past two years. We both ordered a glass of the Miner Rosato Sangiovese. It was served chilled, and was quite refreshing on a warm summer evening. A member of the wait staff brought us an appetizer "compliments of the chef" - this was goat cheese and candied nuts and some minced herbs atop a thin slice of toasted bread. It was very good - we'd have been happy to have the chef serve us appetizers all evening! :-)

We saw Executive Chef Gloria Tae at one of the Food and Wine Weekend cooking demonstrations several months ago. Interesting background - she actually did not attend a cooking school, but started working in an entry-level position at the Vineyard Room back when Robert Mondavi ran it when DCA first opened. She stayed after Mondavi pulled out and has worked her way up to her current position. She seems to be very creative in the ingredients she combines together, and everything has a lot of flavor.

For our appetizers, I ordered the Smoked Chicken Flatbread, and Lee ordered the Soup of the Day - mushroom soup. The flatbread was absolutely incredible - smoked chicken with small dices of spinach and pieces of braised radicchio, with ricotta and fontina cheese, all atop an excellent crispy crust. We both really enjoyed it. Lee's mushroom soup was in a light broth rather than a creamy soup - it looked like the mushrooms had been sauteed in the broth and then lightly pureed - there were still small pieces of mushroom in it. He said it was very good - I tried it, but I'm not a mushroom fan, and it tasted like mushrooms. (There's no picture of it because, to be honest, it doesn't look very appetizing in a photo - looks like a bowl of mud!)

Lee ordered the Rib-eye Steak, which was served pan-roasted with sweet corn gratin, balsamic onions and haricot verts in a cabernet reduction. While not quite as tender as the tamarind beef filet that California Grill used to serve, he said it was really good. I had the Roasted Vegetable Fondue. This was a plate of nicely roasted vegetables (potatoes, carrots, red and white onions, asparagus, eggplant, green and yellow squash and red peppers) that came with a white cheddar fondue, which was served in a toasted brioche box. There was also a bit of apricot mostardo sauce drizzled on the plate. It was really good - the veggies were so nicely prepared that they didn't really need to be dipped in the fondue, but tasted very good with the cheese, and once most of the cheese was gone, the brioche box itself was excellent - Lee helped with that.

For dessert I had the Chocolate Variations. This was a sampler of three different desserts - orange milk chocolate creme brulee, guanaja chocolate turtle ice cream, and manjari chocolate hazelnut torte with cherry coulis. That wasn't quite what I received, though - the creme brulee was milk chocolate and hazelnut, while the torte was chocolate and orange. I detest chocolate and orange together, so I knew I wouldn't like that part, but the creme brulee and ice cream were good. (My chocolate creme brulee is better, though - I use the recipe from Fulton's Crab House which I found on AllEars - it's HERE, though I use dark chocolate and not milk chocolate, and bake it at 325 for about 30 minutes. It's really easy!)

Lee had the Apple Blueberry Crostata - roasted Granny Smith apples and blueberries, Drambuie caramel sauce and vanilla bean gelato. He enjoyed it, but said the berry crumble I made recently was better. :-) The pastry had an interesting texture - not quite as crisp/flaky as puff pastry, but crisper than pie crust.

It was an excellent dinner, leisurely paced - we were there for about an hour and a half. Our server was just ok - he didn't ask us if we wanted more wine, nor offer us coffee or after-dinner drinks with our dessert. The rest of the wait staff was pretty good, and kept our water glasses filled, though one of them was in a bit of a hurry to remove Lee's dinner plate when he still hadn't quite finished eating!

Two thumbs up from us - we'd definitely eat there again.

The menu is available HERE.

Bon appetit!

Last Friday Lee and I drove to Disneyland in the afternoon (took us about two hours from San Diego, which wasn't nearly as horrible as it can be at that time of day) and spent the evening at DCA and Disneyland.

I was pleasantly surprised at how *un*crowded it was - on a Friday night in the summer I was expecting it to be very busy, but it really wasn't bad. Waits in the Paradise Pier area of DCA were 30 minutes or less for most attractions - I don't think California Screamin' was even that long - maybe 20 minutes.

It had been a warm day (in the low 90s) but by the time we arrived it was mid-80s with a nice breeze and very comfortable. Even as the evening wore on it was great - often times it gets a bit chilly at night and you need a light jacket, but I was comfortable even at 11:00 that night in shorts and a sleeveless shirt - and for those who know me, you know how unusual *that* is! :-)

We went to DCA first and watched a bit of the Miner 49ers who were performing near Grizzly Peak, and then went to the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail area, because I wanted to see the "The Magic of Brother Bear" show. It was predictably corny and mildly entertaining. The Challenge Trail play area was uncrowded, and we took the opportunity to play around a bit ourselves - Lee traversed the rock climbing wall with ease and we both went into Kenai's Spirit Cave to place our hands on the glowing paw print and find out what kind of animal spirit lives inside us. On Lee it couldn't make up its mind...the display started off with a moose (dependable, honest) and ended up as a skunk (curious, adventurous). And the second time he tried it he was a wolf (wise, loyal). I was a beaver (hard working, industrious).

We had a wonderful dinner at the Vineyard Room (more on that in a future blog entry) before wandering over to Disneyland for the rest of the evening. I can't remember the last time I was there in the evening when the crowds were that low. I didn't check the board for wait times, but at 8:15 we only waited 10 minutes to get on Buzz Lightyear and Astro Orbiter was only using about 1/4 of its queue. The line for Nemo only went back to Fantasia Freeze - and it was only a single line (no switchbacks) until it reached the area near the seagull buoy. Which I'm sure means it was still close to 90 minutes, but that's better than 2 or 2-1/2 hours!

Our objective for the evening was to *finally* see the Remember...There's Magic in the Stars fireworks show. We've tried to see it four times - once we couldn't find a place to stand and ended up wandering around and around in the "you must keep moving" pathways, once we saw it from the balcony of the Disney Gallery after we'd done the Fantasmic! dessert buffet, but it was an obstructed view, and twice we've been on Main Street, with a good viewing spot, and the show has been cancelled due to high winds. Sigh.

This time we got a spot near the hub about 25 minutes before the show started and the show went off at 9:25, just as planned. It was incredible!!! Wonderful fireworks, so well synchronized to the music. It's even better than Wishes at the Magic Kingdom (though the two share a lot of music). But Wishes doesn't have the tribute to the different "lands" that Remember has. And Tinker Bell's flight is amazing - she flies not just once but twice, AND she circles around the castle instead of flying in just a straight line. I have no idea how they do that, but it looks great.

We'd planned to go home after that, but decided to stay for the 10:30 Fantasmic! instead. We wandered over to the Rivers of America area about 10:10. There were still lots of viewing areas open, but we scored a prime spot just behind the light tower at center stage. This looks like a horrible spot initially, because you can't see the stage through the light tower, but we knew that about 10 minutes before the show the light tower is raised into the air, so those behind it have a great view of the river and the stage on Tom Sawyer Island. That's also where the sound booth is - we were behind that and could watch the sound engineers at work. I can tell you that the running time of the show is 23 minutes and 37 seconds because I could see the show clock. :-)

Again, the entire area really wasn't very crowded - I've been in New Orleans Square packed like a sardine and unable to move after Fantasmic! ends, but on this night we could move around pretty easily. Even when we got out to the parking lot trams the crowds weren't bad - we could've caught a tram with only a short wait, but we decided to walk back to the parking garage instead.

It was really a great evening - we'll have to do that again sometime - there's lots of restaurants at the Disneyland Resort that we haven't tried yet! And I want to see Remember from a place where I can see the projections on the castle walls and the Matterhorn - those were blocked from our viewpoint.

Laura

Don't ask me why this occurred to me in the shower the other day, but I started wondering about which Walt Disney World park Disney's California Adventure most resembles, at least in terms of the attractions.

With Animal Kingdom, it shares "It's Tough to Be a Bug".
Walt Disney World Attraction
Disney's California Adventure Attraction

With Epcot, it shares Soarin' Over California and Turtle Talk with Crush.
Soarin at Walt Disney World
Soarin at Disney's California Adventure

With Magic Kingdom it shares...hmmm...nothing at all! (Though they both have a carousel...)

With Disney-MGM Studios, it shares MuppetVision 3D, Playhouse Disney, and Tower of Terror. Also the High School Musical Pep Rally. The Animation Buildings at both parks offer similar activities, too, such as the Animation Academy and the interactive Ursula's Grotto/The Sound Stage and Beast's Library/You're a Character stations.
Tower of Terror at Walt Disney World
Tower of Terror at Disney's California Adventure

Well...I guess that answers that question. :-)

Laura

I've been asked about "Tips" for visiting Disneyland...so here's a few
things that I hope will be helpful.

1. Be at the park when it opens. You can do a LOT of rides in the first couple of hours after the park opens when most of us lazy southern California people (who have to drive in from somewhere else) are still arriving. If you're not staying within walking distance make sure you allow enough travel time to be at the front gate when the park opens - if you're driving and parking at the Mickey and Friends parking structure, make sure you allow time for the tram ride, too. The parking structure usually opens an hour before the park does - though it opens at 7:30 on mornings when the park opens at 8:00.

2. Use Fastpasses, especially for popular rides like Indiana Jones, Space Mountain, and Soarin' Over California. Here's a tip...the Fastpass machines for Roger Rabbit's CarToon Spin at Disneyland and Grizzly River Rapids at DCA are not linked in with the rest of the Fastpass network, so you can get a Fastpass for either of those, and then right after that get a Fastpass for some other ride.

3. If you want to eat at the Blue Bayou, Ariel's Grotto, the Plaza Inn Breakfast with Minnie, or Goofy's Kitchen, make Priority Seating arrangements in advance by calling Disneyland Dining at 714-781-DINE (3463). And if there's *any* table service that you really, really want to try, make a PS in advance so you won't be disappointed. Sometimes you can walk up to table service restaurants and be seated without much of a wait, and sometimes you can't.

4. Toontown opens an hour after the rest of Disneyland does - and right after it opens is a great time to be there and interact with the characters before it starts to get crowded.

5. Saturdays and Sundays are going to be busy days at any time of year - unless it's raining. If you must be there on a weekend, be prepared for crowds and long waits. Attractions that are usually uncrowded even on busy days are: Disneyland, The First 50 Magical Years in the Opera House on Main Street, Innoventions in Tomorrowland, The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh in Critter Country, the Enchanted Tiki Room in Adventureland, and Honey, I Shrunk the Audience in Tomorrowland. The first two shows of Aladdin and Jasmine's StoryTale Adventures are usually walk-ins, though later shows fill up.

6. If you have a ticket that allows you to parkhop, then do that. Disney's California Adventure (DCA) doesn't open until an hour or two after Disneyland does, so start your day at Disneyland, and when people start pouring into the park around 10-11:00, head over to DCA and get a Fastpass for Soarin', see Aladdin, ride Monsters, Inc., etc, and enjoy DCA while it's least crowded. If you want to head back to Disneyland later in the afternoon for the parade you can easily do that.

7. By all means spend time in the Animation Building at DCA. There's two different shows (Turtle Talk and Animation Academy) in there, plus interactive activities in the Sorcerer's Workshop. We like just sitting in the main gallery and watching all of the animation on the video screens - there are clips from almost all of the Disney animated movies. It's a nice place to relax and take a break, especially on a hot day.

8. See the Aladdin show at DCA. It's a wonderful live show with great musical numbers, comedy, elaborate staging and special effects. My favorite place to sit for overall viewing is the front row of the Mezzanine level, but I think if you're in the first couple of rows of the Orchestra section you feel like you're part of the show yourself!

Until next time,

Laura

I recently returned from a week in Yosemite National Park. While I enjoy Disneyland and Walt Disney World it's Yosemite that is my "Happiest Place on Earth". :-) It was a great week for me - I wish I was going back a lot sooner than I am.

But now to somehow tie that to Disney...it occurred to me that there are a number of places where Disney has incorporated Yosemite (or elements of it) in their attractions/resorts:

The American Adventure at Epcot features a scene with John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt in Yosemite. Though that scene always makes me laugh, since it features a place that doesn't exist - they appear to be on top of Sentinel Dome (with the famous Jeffrey Pine on top), but Teddy is standing on a rock outcropping that looks like one known as "The Visor" and that's on top of Half Dome - yet Half Dome is visible in the background. Nevada Fall (visible from neither Sentinel Dome nor Half Dome) is also in the background.

The Golden Dreams movie at Disney's California Adventure has a scene with John Muir in Yosemite. John Muir is portrayed by actor Lee Stetson, who has been performing a one-man show as John Muir in Yosemite since 1983. It's a great show - I've seen it lots of times. (Though not this year...my choice was John Muir or a hot fudge sundae...and I went with the hot fudge sundae!)

In the "Soarin'" attractions at both Epcot and DCA we get to soar through Yosemite Valley...we fly towards a majestic Yosemite Falls, leaping from the canyon walls in all its springtime glory, and then make a right turn towards the distinctive monolith that is Half Dome. I love that scene.

I find that both the Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World and the Grand Californian at Disneyland remind me a bit of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite - it's quite spectacular. Lots of stone and enormous wooden beams. We had breakfast there last week - the dining room is very large and has these huge high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows. Fortunately it does not have the noise level of Whispering Canyon, though. :-)

So did I miss any Disney/Yosemite connections?

On Saturday night, Lee and I attended the "Taste" event, which is a new addition to Disney's California Food and Wine Weekends this year. It's very similar to Epcot's Party for the Senses - except that Taste was better.

If you're not familiar with Party for the Senses or Taste - both are food and wine tasting events. Guests pay one price for admission ($100 in this case), and then can partake as much as they wish from a series of food and wine tasting "stations". At Taste, each of the fourteen food stations featured a different dish and chef from one of the Disney parks, resorts, or Downtown Disney restaurants. (You can find the menu HERE.) The portions were sample-sized, but very nicely plated and presented. For example, my favorite was Cafe Orleans' Cajun Spiced Shrimp, served on a corn cake with ratatouille and a drizzle of Mornay sauce. As you can see from the photo, it looked really good, and tasted even better. The wine tasting stations featured one of nine different wineries, each pouring at least three different wines. There was also beer from the Karl Strauss Brewing Company available.

And as if that weren't enough...there were several cheese and fruit stations, which later in the evening were turned into the dessert stations, featuring an assortment of delectable desserts. (My one complaint is that there wasn't enough chocolate. But then there's never enough chocolate...)

So why did I like Taste so much more than Party for the Senses? It was Party for the Senses (PftS) on a smaller scale, that's why. PftS is in a huge building (the former Millenium Village at Epcot) which accommodates a large number of people. I found it quite crowded and overwhelming - there were too many people and too many food and wine choices. At Taste you could realistically try one of everything without completely stuffing yourself, and you could move around the room without feeling like a salmon swimming upstream. In addition to "standing tables" inside, Taste had quite a few tables *and* chairs set up outside, which gave people the option both to sit and to get away from the noise a little bit.

And I must also admit that I was somewhat predisposed to enjoy Taste when I found out who the entertainment for the evening was going to be - a group called "Barrage". We saw them several years ago at Epcot and really liked them...and they put on a good show at Taste, too. They are kind of hard to describe, but here's a blurb from their web site: "Barrage - A high-octane fiddle-fest that features an international, multi-talented cast performing an eclectic mix of music, song and dance." Picture a group of young and very energetic violinists accompanied by drums, electric guitar, and bass. They played everything from Irish reels to Duke Ellington to Bolero. All while jumping around the stage, step dancing, and even singing. Whew.

Taste started at 6:30 and ended at 9:30 - I hadn't expected that we would be there for the entire time but we were. Promptly at 9:30 the lights inside the building were turned up and we got the polite Disney announcement: "Thank you for coming. We hope you will visit again soon." Translation: "It's over, so get out of here already!" On the way out they handed out nice bags for us to carry our souvenir wine glasses in - that was a very thoughtful touch.

We had a really good time. I'm not sure this is something that we would want to do *every* year, but we certainly enjoyed it. We will be going to Epcot's Food and Wine Festival this fall, and had planned to attend Party for the Senses...but now I'm wondering if I really want to do that - it might be quite a disappointment after Taste. (And the only night we have for PftS also happens to be the night of the Tower of Terror 13K, which Mike Scopa has written about in his blog. We thought it sounded like a lot of fun - but it conflicts with PftS. Of course a lot of people would say that given the choice between running and eating we'd be crazy to choose running...but that's just the kind of people we are.)

"Taste"fully yours...

Laura