Trip Reports
10-16-2005, 06:35 PM
* Time of Year: Summer
* Travel Method: Personal Car
* Resort: DLPH
* Accommodations: Standard Room
* Ages Represented in Group: Pre-School, Elementary, Adult
* Disneyland Experience Represented in Group: Frequent
* Comments: Steve and his family drove down from the San Francisco area for a quick trip to Disneyland that also included Universal Studios and Legoland. Steve provides some great details on the trip as well as some personal warnings about the Magic Kingdom Club (to join, or not to join, that is the question).
Summary: A whirlwind car trip with young children. Including Universal Studios & Legoland. No major rides, no long waits. A warning about joining the Magic Kingdom Club.
Day 1: Leave the SF Bay area and drive down rt. 101 to LA. (I plotted the course on Mapquest on the Internet and I had to force it to take me on 101, it wanted to take me on I-5 which is faster but extremely hot since it's through the desert, I put in several coastal cities as destinations. Its a prettier drive anyway). I have a camcorder with a swivel screen and I built a rig to hold it so my two kids in the back seat could watch cartoons. This only worked for a while, they had never driven that far so "are we there yet?" was a pretty common query. We stopped at a public rest area and found one of those hotel/motel coupon books that had a 10% off coupon for the hotel we already booked. Also there was a coupon for Universal Studios (I almost bought tickets on the Internet but this coupon was a better saving and no postage charge). The drive was fairly comfortable and uneventful until we hit the Ventura Freeway just outside LA (that one is always jammed). We arrived at our Hollywood Blvd Hotel in time to take a short walk.
Day 2: Visit friends in LA, See The Chinese Theatre and the walk of fame shop on Hollywood Blvd see the exhibit at the Motion Picture Academy (It's open to the public) We bump into a friend who just happens to have a free pass in his pocket for Universal Studios (just being at the right place at the right time).
Day 3: Universal. We check out of our hotel, and drive 5 minutes to Univ. and have breakfast there. Not bad but overpriced. We look around the place but since it's still early so we decide to go E.T. since it's OK for my small children and might have a line later. We walked the long, long, long way down to the lower part of the park. This is really a lot of escalator (maybe a world record) and seems to take 15 minutes to get there, listening to Universal promotional audio the whole way. Make sure you do everything you want to do in the lower area at one time you won't want to take this trip more than twice. The kids were a little scared at the beginning of E.T. especially the police with guns but they liked the fantasy environment in the last part. Then we went to the FX show, which had three parts: a visual FX show about Back to the Future, a Psycho related show, and a sound FX show featuring The Klumps. My kids really enjoyed the BTTF part and then we took the option to miss the Psycho part, and we were the only ones watching the set up for the Klumps sound FX show, so my son got to play with some of the sound making tools but he was to shy to appear in the show. But everyone enjoyed this, too. The only other must see in this section was the Jurassic Park ride which I wanted to see but the splash at the end seemed so huge and it wasn't hot that day, I just didn't want to do it. So now we take the long escalator back to the main area and it was about time for The Rugrats Magic show, this is the only reason to be here as far as my kids were concerned. They loved this show and got to pose with the costumed characters at the end; when we saw the show a second time my daughter wanted to pose again (we didn't have time). We all wanted to see the western stunt show but this is sort of a weak parody of stunt shows and it seems like it would only be funny to people who've seen a lot of western stunt shows. I'll give Univ. credit they had a huge canopy to protect the viewers from the sun and they had a clown to entertain before the show. We tried to see the Waterworld show but it was full so we went to the Woody Woodpecker play area and of course this is great fun for my kids even though it's similar to playyards they've played in at home. Now we go early for the Waterworld show and wait in our first long line but this show is really worth it especially the climax. Great stunts and not too much time spent on the "story". We go to have dinner at City Walk and be sure you give yourself time to see all the food choices there. It's a great place especially when the lights come on. We bid farewell to Univ. a little after dusk (I'm careful to avoid rush hours) and drive to Anaheim.
There is a lot of construction and our map and internet directions are out of date so I follow the signs to "Hotels" and we make it to The Disney Pacific Hotel. We check in with enough time to see the Fantasy in the Water show at neighboring Disneyland Hotel, I knew this was the only chance we'd have to see it and my son loves fountains. The show has water spays and colored lights synchronized to music but it nothing special and it goes on way too long. We go back to our room. From there we have an excellent view of the new Disney park unfortunately there is scaffolding on our hotel so we have an obstructed view of the lake and the peeled orange and the MM roller coaster. The new park looks impressive but I can't help thinking it's a throwback to the kinds of parks that Walt Disney wanted Disneyland to be different from. It's almost time for the fireworks I look for a place to view the show even though I don't know what direction Disneyland is. There is a fire escape door propped open and the view is very good, I run to get my family so they can see it too.
Day 3: Disneyland: Of our two days here this is the only one with early entry. Since we couldn't use our Magic Kingdom card at the Hotel we have to buy our tickets at the park luckily the ticket booths are open early and there are no lines. We go straight for Dumbo both my kids wanted this, my wife didn't want to ride luckily my two children and I all fit in one elepha nt. The next thing they wanted was Small World, I didn't think there are ever very long lines for that so I tried to steer them somewhere else but it was Small World they both wanted. The Small World section wasn't even open yet, so we went on some small rides: Mr. Toad (a bit too scary), and Alice (they liked this one). Now we ride Small World. There is a large (350+ lbs) man in the front of our boat and when he leans the boat leans noticeably, my son shouts "We are going to die" he is sure the boat will capsize. The large man smiles good naturedly and tries to sit straight up. There is no mishap but at one point the boat gets stuck for a minute. After this my son refuses to go on any water rides. Now on to Tomorrowland and we see "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience" This is one of my favorite shows and the floor shaking as we "shrink" was pretty convincing (maybe better than Disneyworld). At this point we took a snack break and my son was playing with the straw in his grape juice; my wife waned him not to squirt the juice out but he ignored her and squirted juice on her sweater. Oh No, now we go back to the hotel where I try to scrub the sweater clean and my wife tries to teach my son a lesson. My elbow grease gets the stain out and we decide to check out the Disney Hotel next door, we have a nice lunch in a sandwich shop next to the pool explore for a hour and then go swimming, it's a nice pool but the line for the slide is too long we just relax and then move to a smaller shallower pool nearby. My son throws up in the swimming pool, I clean it up as best I can, there is no life guard so I find a worker who says they may have to close the pool. Now everyone's ready to go back to the park and we get back just in time to see the parade, some nice costumes but not their best parade. We rode the train to Fantasyland. We get in line to see the Animazement show. This is probably the hit of our whole trip everyone loved it. It's sort of a greatest hits musical show and one number is tied to another. A cheap fast dinner follows then we ride the circus train. Then we explore Toontown, but it's getting too dark too appreciate it. We decide to get in position to see Fantasmic, It's about 30 minutes before the show and it's getting pretty full we walk further and find a spot almost right in front. I was afraid that the structure holding the lights and projectors would block our view but it raised up just before show time. This is an amazing show don't miss it. Walking back to the entrance we see the fireworks show we were even in a position to see Tinkerbell. We ride the tram home.
Day 4: Disneyland: We head straight for Toontown and ride Roger Rabbit's Car-Toon Spin since it's the most popular, no lines but the wait area is just about the most interesting part. It's a little scary for my kids. Mickey & Goofy's house is more their speed. In Fantasyland my son is fascinated by the boats that go inside the whales mouth so he is briefly overcoming his aqua phobia long enough to ride the Storybookland Canal Boats, the same scenes as the circus train but much closer view. We have a chance to ride Small World again but my son is still scared and refuses to ride. We wander over to Frontierland and New Orleans Square. I checked out the gallery above the Pirates for the first time ever, There's some nice artwork there. Then we had the best meal of our trip at the Blue Bayou Cafe it was about 11:45 and we went right in without any wait or reservations. Unfortunately they couldn't accept our Magic Kingdom card (Don't buy this it's a rip-off, we could have gotten the same hotel discount with our American Express card) Here's my big mistake of the trip: I took my son to the Haunted Mansion, which is one of my favorite rides. I really wanted to take him on the Pirates but he was sure the boat would sink, so since he likes Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice I figured HM would be fun. I described everything I could remember but nothing prepared him for all the ingenuity of that place. I finally convinced him that boats were OK especially since it's the only way to get to Tom Sawyer Island (I remember this was one of my favorite places when I was a kid) This is good for 1 hour of exploration. Tarzan's Tree house was a big disappointment, they took out the coolest part of the Swiss Family version: the aqueduct. Walking around Adventureland we stumbled upon some Agrabah storytellers who act Aladdin it was pretty funny. Next the Tiki room, this is the original version not as good as the new version at WDW, but as usual my kids liked it. We went to Innoventions, I miss the Carousel of Progress but this was pretty neat, lots to explore and since they limit the number there's something for everyone. We get to use fastpass on the new Autopia fastpass is great but this ride is nothing special and at one point the car in front of us stalled so we had to wait while they fixed it. We decide to go home on the monorail, the wait is much longer than before the construction but this is probably the best overall view of the park sine they took out the skyway. We check out and hit the road for Carlsbad, Ca. Before we leave the area we ate dinner at a family restaurant called "Tiffy's" about a block from the hotel, it was bad and too expensive; the only good thing was a player piano they had.
Day 3: Legoland: We knew very little about this park, so we didn't know what the popular rides were and how to avoid the lines. This park is perfect for kids in the age range of mine 3-6. They enjoyed the interactive play areas where you squirt water at Lego animals and jump on patterns to make music. We rode on helicopters you can spin them around and make them go up and down, don't worry these are made out of metal as is most of the stuff in Legoland, only the decorations are made of Lego. We see a cool looking ride where you pedal your own car on an elevated track and yet another where you can raise yourself up a tower, these were about 90 minutes wait, we passed. We took a boat ride around the center of the park where the amazing Lego sculptures reside. The best part of the park is the recreations of major US cities. New York is awesome and it was cool to see San Francisco since we live close. We also saw some shows which have little to do with Legos one was about firefighting and had some pretty good acrobatics, another was a silly story about medieval dragon fighters (unfortunately no dragons to be seen, just some overacting). It was hokey but the kids liked it; and we saw a very good and funny ventriloquist who had bird puppets. I think the humor was a little over my son's head I enjoyed it more then he. We saw a show that was supposed to be Mark Wilson magic behind the scenes. Wilson is on video and he talks to the two live performers and the tricks they give away are only the most basic and simple and of course keep the best secrets to themselves. We also rode Safari Jeeps and Jousting ponies and Storybookland boats. There are animated figures and even though the movement is primitive (similar to Dept store displays) since they're Legos it's somehow magical. Before we leave the park I go to guest services and request a map of the area and suggestions for food and the guy directed me to two Freeway stops north, much better than eating at the park.
Day 4: We drive to Thousand Oaks, which I calculated would be about two hour's drive and check in to our Motel.
Day 5: We leave as early as possible to try to avoid the Fri coming home from work crunch in the Bay area, we would have made it too except for a accident just before San Jose. The kids are better on the ride back; I show them the home videos of the trip on the ride back. They just love The Rugrats and Animazement shows.
Steve Segal
* Travel Method: Personal Car
* Resort: DLPH
* Accommodations: Standard Room
* Ages Represented in Group: Pre-School, Elementary, Adult
* Disneyland Experience Represented in Group: Frequent
* Comments: Steve and his family drove down from the San Francisco area for a quick trip to Disneyland that also included Universal Studios and Legoland. Steve provides some great details on the trip as well as some personal warnings about the Magic Kingdom Club (to join, or not to join, that is the question).
Summary: A whirlwind car trip with young children. Including Universal Studios & Legoland. No major rides, no long waits. A warning about joining the Magic Kingdom Club.
Day 1: Leave the SF Bay area and drive down rt. 101 to LA. (I plotted the course on Mapquest on the Internet and I had to force it to take me on 101, it wanted to take me on I-5 which is faster but extremely hot since it's through the desert, I put in several coastal cities as destinations. Its a prettier drive anyway). I have a camcorder with a swivel screen and I built a rig to hold it so my two kids in the back seat could watch cartoons. This only worked for a while, they had never driven that far so "are we there yet?" was a pretty common query. We stopped at a public rest area and found one of those hotel/motel coupon books that had a 10% off coupon for the hotel we already booked. Also there was a coupon for Universal Studios (I almost bought tickets on the Internet but this coupon was a better saving and no postage charge). The drive was fairly comfortable and uneventful until we hit the Ventura Freeway just outside LA (that one is always jammed). We arrived at our Hollywood Blvd Hotel in time to take a short walk.
Day 2: Visit friends in LA, See The Chinese Theatre and the walk of fame shop on Hollywood Blvd see the exhibit at the Motion Picture Academy (It's open to the public) We bump into a friend who just happens to have a free pass in his pocket for Universal Studios (just being at the right place at the right time).
Day 3: Universal. We check out of our hotel, and drive 5 minutes to Univ. and have breakfast there. Not bad but overpriced. We look around the place but since it's still early so we decide to go E.T. since it's OK for my small children and might have a line later. We walked the long, long, long way down to the lower part of the park. This is really a lot of escalator (maybe a world record) and seems to take 15 minutes to get there, listening to Universal promotional audio the whole way. Make sure you do everything you want to do in the lower area at one time you won't want to take this trip more than twice. The kids were a little scared at the beginning of E.T. especially the police with guns but they liked the fantasy environment in the last part. Then we went to the FX show, which had three parts: a visual FX show about Back to the Future, a Psycho related show, and a sound FX show featuring The Klumps. My kids really enjoyed the BTTF part and then we took the option to miss the Psycho part, and we were the only ones watching the set up for the Klumps sound FX show, so my son got to play with some of the sound making tools but he was to shy to appear in the show. But everyone enjoyed this, too. The only other must see in this section was the Jurassic Park ride which I wanted to see but the splash at the end seemed so huge and it wasn't hot that day, I just didn't want to do it. So now we take the long escalator back to the main area and it was about time for The Rugrats Magic show, this is the only reason to be here as far as my kids were concerned. They loved this show and got to pose with the costumed characters at the end; when we saw the show a second time my daughter wanted to pose again (we didn't have time). We all wanted to see the western stunt show but this is sort of a weak parody of stunt shows and it seems like it would only be funny to people who've seen a lot of western stunt shows. I'll give Univ. credit they had a huge canopy to protect the viewers from the sun and they had a clown to entertain before the show. We tried to see the Waterworld show but it was full so we went to the Woody Woodpecker play area and of course this is great fun for my kids even though it's similar to playyards they've played in at home. Now we go early for the Waterworld show and wait in our first long line but this show is really worth it especially the climax. Great stunts and not too much time spent on the "story". We go to have dinner at City Walk and be sure you give yourself time to see all the food choices there. It's a great place especially when the lights come on. We bid farewell to Univ. a little after dusk (I'm careful to avoid rush hours) and drive to Anaheim.
There is a lot of construction and our map and internet directions are out of date so I follow the signs to "Hotels" and we make it to The Disney Pacific Hotel. We check in with enough time to see the Fantasy in the Water show at neighboring Disneyland Hotel, I knew this was the only chance we'd have to see it and my son loves fountains. The show has water spays and colored lights synchronized to music but it nothing special and it goes on way too long. We go back to our room. From there we have an excellent view of the new Disney park unfortunately there is scaffolding on our hotel so we have an obstructed view of the lake and the peeled orange and the MM roller coaster. The new park looks impressive but I can't help thinking it's a throwback to the kinds of parks that Walt Disney wanted Disneyland to be different from. It's almost time for the fireworks I look for a place to view the show even though I don't know what direction Disneyland is. There is a fire escape door propped open and the view is very good, I run to get my family so they can see it too.
Day 3: Disneyland: Of our two days here this is the only one with early entry. Since we couldn't use our Magic Kingdom card at the Hotel we have to buy our tickets at the park luckily the ticket booths are open early and there are no lines. We go straight for Dumbo both my kids wanted this, my wife didn't want to ride luckily my two children and I all fit in one elepha nt. The next thing they wanted was Small World, I didn't think there are ever very long lines for that so I tried to steer them somewhere else but it was Small World they both wanted. The Small World section wasn't even open yet, so we went on some small rides: Mr. Toad (a bit too scary), and Alice (they liked this one). Now we ride Small World. There is a large (350+ lbs) man in the front of our boat and when he leans the boat leans noticeably, my son shouts "We are going to die" he is sure the boat will capsize. The large man smiles good naturedly and tries to sit straight up. There is no mishap but at one point the boat gets stuck for a minute. After this my son refuses to go on any water rides. Now on to Tomorrowland and we see "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience" This is one of my favorite shows and the floor shaking as we "shrink" was pretty convincing (maybe better than Disneyworld). At this point we took a snack break and my son was playing with the straw in his grape juice; my wife waned him not to squirt the juice out but he ignored her and squirted juice on her sweater. Oh No, now we go back to the hotel where I try to scrub the sweater clean and my wife tries to teach my son a lesson. My elbow grease gets the stain out and we decide to check out the Disney Hotel next door, we have a nice lunch in a sandwich shop next to the pool explore for a hour and then go swimming, it's a nice pool but the line for the slide is too long we just relax and then move to a smaller shallower pool nearby. My son throws up in the swimming pool, I clean it up as best I can, there is no life guard so I find a worker who says they may have to close the pool. Now everyone's ready to go back to the park and we get back just in time to see the parade, some nice costumes but not their best parade. We rode the train to Fantasyland. We get in line to see the Animazement show. This is probably the hit of our whole trip everyone loved it. It's sort of a greatest hits musical show and one number is tied to another. A cheap fast dinner follows then we ride the circus train. Then we explore Toontown, but it's getting too dark too appreciate it. We decide to get in position to see Fantasmic, It's about 30 minutes before the show and it's getting pretty full we walk further and find a spot almost right in front. I was afraid that the structure holding the lights and projectors would block our view but it raised up just before show time. This is an amazing show don't miss it. Walking back to the entrance we see the fireworks show we were even in a position to see Tinkerbell. We ride the tram home.
Day 4: Disneyland: We head straight for Toontown and ride Roger Rabbit's Car-Toon Spin since it's the most popular, no lines but the wait area is just about the most interesting part. It's a little scary for my kids. Mickey & Goofy's house is more their speed. In Fantasyland my son is fascinated by the boats that go inside the whales mouth so he is briefly overcoming his aqua phobia long enough to ride the Storybookland Canal Boats, the same scenes as the circus train but much closer view. We have a chance to ride Small World again but my son is still scared and refuses to ride. We wander over to Frontierland and New Orleans Square. I checked out the gallery above the Pirates for the first time ever, There's some nice artwork there. Then we had the best meal of our trip at the Blue Bayou Cafe it was about 11:45 and we went right in without any wait or reservations. Unfortunately they couldn't accept our Magic Kingdom card (Don't buy this it's a rip-off, we could have gotten the same hotel discount with our American Express card) Here's my big mistake of the trip: I took my son to the Haunted Mansion, which is one of my favorite rides. I really wanted to take him on the Pirates but he was sure the boat would sink, so since he likes Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice I figured HM would be fun. I described everything I could remember but nothing prepared him for all the ingenuity of that place. I finally convinced him that boats were OK especially since it's the only way to get to Tom Sawyer Island (I remember this was one of my favorite places when I was a kid) This is good for 1 hour of exploration. Tarzan's Tree house was a big disappointment, they took out the coolest part of the Swiss Family version: the aqueduct. Walking around Adventureland we stumbled upon some Agrabah storytellers who act Aladdin it was pretty funny. Next the Tiki room, this is the original version not as good as the new version at WDW, but as usual my kids liked it. We went to Innoventions, I miss the Carousel of Progress but this was pretty neat, lots to explore and since they limit the number there's something for everyone. We get to use fastpass on the new Autopia fastpass is great but this ride is nothing special and at one point the car in front of us stalled so we had to wait while they fixed it. We decide to go home on the monorail, the wait is much longer than before the construction but this is probably the best overall view of the park sine they took out the skyway. We check out and hit the road for Carlsbad, Ca. Before we leave the area we ate dinner at a family restaurant called "Tiffy's" about a block from the hotel, it was bad and too expensive; the only good thing was a player piano they had.
Day 3: Legoland: We knew very little about this park, so we didn't know what the popular rides were and how to avoid the lines. This park is perfect for kids in the age range of mine 3-6. They enjoyed the interactive play areas where you squirt water at Lego animals and jump on patterns to make music. We rode on helicopters you can spin them around and make them go up and down, don't worry these are made out of metal as is most of the stuff in Legoland, only the decorations are made of Lego. We see a cool looking ride where you pedal your own car on an elevated track and yet another where you can raise yourself up a tower, these were about 90 minutes wait, we passed. We took a boat ride around the center of the park where the amazing Lego sculptures reside. The best part of the park is the recreations of major US cities. New York is awesome and it was cool to see San Francisco since we live close. We also saw some shows which have little to do with Legos one was about firefighting and had some pretty good acrobatics, another was a silly story about medieval dragon fighters (unfortunately no dragons to be seen, just some overacting). It was hokey but the kids liked it; and we saw a very good and funny ventriloquist who had bird puppets. I think the humor was a little over my son's head I enjoyed it more then he. We saw a show that was supposed to be Mark Wilson magic behind the scenes. Wilson is on video and he talks to the two live performers and the tricks they give away are only the most basic and simple and of course keep the best secrets to themselves. We also rode Safari Jeeps and Jousting ponies and Storybookland boats. There are animated figures and even though the movement is primitive (similar to Dept store displays) since they're Legos it's somehow magical. Before we leave the park I go to guest services and request a map of the area and suggestions for food and the guy directed me to two Freeway stops north, much better than eating at the park.
Day 4: We drive to Thousand Oaks, which I calculated would be about two hour's drive and check in to our Motel.
Day 5: We leave as early as possible to try to avoid the Fri coming home from work crunch in the Bay area, we would have made it too except for a accident just before San Jose. The kids are better on the ride back; I show them the home videos of the trip on the ride back. They just love The Rugrats and Animazement shows.
Steve Segal