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Solo trip to Disneyland

GadgetGuru

Premium Member
Dec 2, 2011
2,461
2,350
Seattle, WA
Hi all!

You might remember me from impromptu, horribly planned trip (Impromptu Unplanned 1-Day Trip to DisneySea! | Inside Universal Forums) to DisneySea a couple years ago.

I’m in LA for a work thing, so you know what that means: Solo Weekend Trip to Disneyland! I’ll be at Disneyland from Thursday evening November 15th to Sunday November 18th.

I’ve only ever been to Disneyland once as a kid and I don’t remember it at all. I don’t even know if DCA was open at the time. I’ve been to Universal Orlando a ton and I’ve done Disney World plenty, although less frequently.

Before my trip starts, I need to know what I should do and what you’d like to see from my trip report! I don’t know if I’ll structure my report as a day-by-day or talk about the parks land-by-land (like my last report), so any advice on writing a great trip report would be awesome too!
 
MaxPass. Just leaving now after a week at the resort and the $10 per day was totally worth it. Didn't even work like normal FP. At times I was skipping 45 minute lines instantly.
 
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Disneyland is great because it's so similar to UOR's compactness and layout.

There's so much to suggest and so many new things since you last went. I always recommend picking up The Unofficial Guide to DLR for restaurant reviews, attraction descriptions, and touring plans. But here are some of my suggestions:
  • The RSR hype is real
  • Go to Carthay Circle for a martini in the bar downstairs. One of my favorite things to do.
  • Every non-screens based attraction that are shared between WDW and DLR are different. While everyone is different I find every ride is better at DLR except for Splash Mountain, and Haunted Mansion's differences are a wash.
  • Grizzly River Run isn't some bad raft ride like Kali, it's up there with Popeye as a quality raft ride. Make sure to ride it if you can.
 
  • The RSR hype is real
I'm so excited. Probably the ride that I'm looking forward to the most!
  • Go to Carthay Circle for a martini in the bar downstairs. One of my favorite things to do.
I've already got a dinner reservation for Carthay Circle + a lunch reservation for Blue Bayou. Thanks for the martini suggestion!
  • Every non-screens based attraction that are shared between WDW and DLR are different. While everyone is different I find every ride is better at DLR except for Splash Mountain, and Haunted Mansion's differences are a wash.
Haunted Mansion Holiday should be up-and-running, so that'll be a must-do. I've got enough time (2 half days and 2 full days) that I really have no excuse not to hit everything
  • Grizzly River Run isn't some bad raft ride like Kali, it's up there with Popeye as a quality raft ride. Make sure to ride it if you can.
It's that good?! I knew it was better than Kali, but anything close to Popeye means I'll have to ride it. I'm not usually a fan of water rides because you end up drenched, but I might have to make an exception for Grizzly then.
 
My trip starts tomorrow! I’m winging it a bit, but I do have some dining reservations.

  • Carthay Circle dinner tomorrow
  • Blue Bayou lunch Sunday
Christmas festivities seem to be in full swing and I can’t wait!
 
Just had my first day at the resort! I'm pretty wiped out honestly. But, I did write about Carthay Circle, because it's a fantastic restaurant. (Pictures will be up later when I talk about the rest of my day!)

Carthay Circle

I want to pretense this by saying that I’ve been to fancy restaurants. I’ve been to a 3 Michelin star restaurant before.

I’m saying that because this was a surprisingly hard review to write. Whenever I found something to nitpick, I found myself asking “Would you say this about any other theme park restaurant?”

And the answer was always no.

It’s unbelievable that Disney built a restaurant like Carthay Circle inside of a major theme park. This place shouldn’t exist. It’s wild that Disney built it and hasn’t seem to have drastically watered down the intention behind it after some time.

Let’s start with service. This wasn’t just the best service I’ve seen in a theme park. This was some of the best service I’ve seen in a restaurant. Everybody, from the greeter to waiter, took time to explain the story and the details of the restaurant. My waiter wove me the full story of why the restaurant was special and its place in history. He was funny, engaging, and just a great guy. If you ever go to Carthay Circle, ask for James.

Now, for the food. James did a wonderful job explaining the menu and giving me his honest opinions. I was stuck between steak and the pork chop. He walked through the whole process of how the pork chop is cooked and gave it a great endorsement (despite it being cheaper than the steak). I got it on his suggestion alone.

Let’s start with drinks. I got the Carthay Manhattan. Great drink. The cherrys on top were probably the best part. I got the drunk mostly because of the special ice cube (it’s a sphere! it’s special!).



Next, food. I got the biscuits and the aforementioned pork chop. The biscuits live up to their hype. They’re more like deep-fried hush puppies than biscuits. They’re filled with cheese (and some other stuff that’s less easy to taste) and served with an apricot honey butter. I might’ve eaten some of the butter right off my knife. It was so good. The biscuits were equally delightful. I ate an entire order by myself because I have no willpower.

Then comes the pork chop. I never really liked pork chops as a kid, so I tend to avoid them. I love you Mom, but your pork chops aren’t good. This pork chop was like a steak. Thick cut with a bone through the middle. Cut like butter. Dripping with flavor. This is the best pork chop I’ve ever had by far. My waiter commented that “it’s hard to believe you’re inside a theme park.” I couldn’t agree more.

I wanted to get dessert. I really did. I had already eaten three days worth of calories though.

If I had to say one bad thing, it’s that it took a while for my entree to come out. Did I care? Not really. This was my freebie day. I was in no rush. Could I see people being more frustrated? Probably. I spent roughly 90 minutes there from walking in to leaving. It’s a busy place (by fine dining standards) and they handle the traffic pretty well, but not flawlessly. Don’t come here looking for a fast table-service meal.

Last thing: price. The couple sitting next to me actually left after seeing the menu. I’m assuming the prices scared them off. I have no issues spending money on great food, so I’m a bad person to talk to about how expensive my dinner was. The meal came out to $80 pre-tip. I made it an even $100 post-tip. That’s just for me remember, since it’s a solo trip. Was it worth it? Absolutely. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I’m writing this day-of, so there’s a good chance I might do it again.
 
(I promise I’ll upload some pictures. Mobile makes it a bit of a pain)


Here’s how I’m thinking of structuring this report. I did a lot of back and forth during the trip. That seems a little boring to read about. And, truthfully, it all blends together at this point. So, I’m gonna talk about things the first time I experienced them. And then, I’m not really going to talk about them again. You don’t want to hear about the three times I sucked at Buzz Lightyear, right? The timeline won’t make much sense because I’ll be talking about all three times I did Buzz during the only time I talk about Buzz. Sounds weird, but let’s run with it! It makes sense in my mind.

Thursday: First day at Disneyland!

First, can we talk about how crazy close the resort is to Anaheim? I’m staying at the Anaheim Hotel and it was literally two blocks from the resort entrance. The city basically surrounds the resort and you can forget that really easily.


Aside about my hotel - very (very!) lightly themed in a 50s style a la Cabana Bay, ridiculously close to the parks, and the rooms were alright. I don’t care a ton about the rooms, so it got the job done. If you’re looking for a cheap place close to the parks, check out the Anaheim Hotel. I think they renamed recently, so it’s hard to find them.


Now, security. Boy, security at the parks is a pain! The lines go on forever. If you have a bag, the longest line in the parks is the security line. They don’t advertise the super short no-bags line well, so keep a look out for it.


I thought I loved Universal’s layout, but Disneyland has them beat. It’s so easy to go from one park to another. They’re a couple hundred feet apart tops. The walk to between Universal Orlando parks is a hike by comparison. Plus, the parks share ticket booths which makes the walk even shorter (why doesn’t Universal do that?)


I spent most of Thursday at California Adventure because of my Carthay Circle reservation.

Buena Vista Street

The first thing I noticed was how small the park is. Pictures make Buena Vista Street look really spacious. It’s a beautiful entrance land, it really is. But, it’s a lot more compact than Main Street or even Port of Entry.


It’s a beautiful entrance land though. The shops have a great 1920s department store vibe. The street car is great and adds a fun dynamic to the area. The front of the land - in front of the theater - works amazingly for street parties and DCA has a bunch of them. The Theater may not be as photogenic as a castle, but it’s the perfect icon and I love it.


Dinner wasn’t for a couple hours, so I did what Touring Plans told me to. Beeline straight to Guardians.

Hollywoodland

Hollywoodland is to the left of the theater. It’s...alright. I see what they were trying to go for. It just doesn’t feel as fully-formed as many of the other lands in the park. The Marvel construction has made it super hard to navigate around.

The land has some nice Hollywood facades (like DHS) but also has a lot of boring soundstages. There’s a small theater at the end with a large blue-sky mural that seems like it was supposed to be the weenie of the land. Guardians has obviously overtaken it.


Guardians

I ended up riding Guardians twice on my trip.

First, the dance party! They do a cute show right outside the ride. The crowd is really big. If you time the line right, you can get some views of the show from the line.

Now, the building. I remember how much the forums complained about it. It’s not that bad. You can get some nice close-up pictures of it. It’s a weird building, but it’s not as disgusting as many fans would have you believe.


The queue is split into two parts. Orlando’s E-tickets have spoiled me with long queues. The Guardians queue is super short. The vast majority of it is outside and not really themed. The inside part is cool, but short. I don’t understand why everybody loved the DCA Tower of Terror so much. There’s just not enough space to make a fantastic queue like Orlando. The Guardians queue has a lot of cool Marvel references nonetheless. If you Fastpass, you’ll probably miss the inside queue. That’s how fast Fastpass goes.


Aside - Get MaxPass. I don’t care what the price is. I went through 6-8 FPs a day. It’s worth every penny. Changed the way I theme park. Disney, please bring it to Orlando. I’ll pay whatever you want.


The pre-show is fantastic. Probably my favorite theme park preshow. The Rocket AA is great, the script is funny. There’s a small joke at the end where Rocket steals a Walkman. It involves a robot hand and everything. Blink and you’ll miss it. I love the little details like that. That preshow made the ride worth it.


After the pre-show, you’ve got one more small queue segment before you hit the ride. That part of the queue has the old Matterhorn Yeti in it (fun detail, thanks rando in line for telling me that!) but otherwise kind of boring.


The ride itself is fun! The sheer terror of the plummet kept me on afraid the whole time, but the short scenes are fun. Very Guardians.


There’s an on-ride picture that you can download for free with MaxPass. Have I mentioned how amazing MaxPass is yet?


Cool, I did Guardians. Still had time to kill, so time for a FastPass: Incredicoaster!
 
(Yep, still behind on pictures)

Alright - time to head to Pixar Pier. Pixar Pier is in the furthest back side of the park. Maybe it’s the Festival of Holidays or the Marvel construction, but it doesn’t take much to make this park feel crowded. Pixar Pier is great because it’s in the back of the park and it’s quite open. Lots of breathing room. I purposefully avoided Cars Land on the way there because I didn’t want to spoil that until Radiator Springs Racers.


Pixar Pier
Pixar Pier got a lot of hate for being an easy cash-grab. Luckily, I never saw the old boardwalk. So, I don’t have any preconceptions about the land pre-Pixar.


The land itself is gorgeous. Especially at night. It absolutely nails the Coney Island boardwalk vibe with all of the individual lights, the Ferris wheel, the waterside walkway. The hustle and bustle (it’s one of the busier lands) just adds to the atmosphere. This might be the only place where I’m okay with the carnival games. They’re really well-themed and have some decent prices. Expensive games, but what are you going to do?


The food offerings seemed quite good too. Lamplight Lounge seemed to have some killer people-watching views...and some killer lines. Never made it down there. The various Pixar food carts seemed to have pretty standard food offerings. Most of the exteriors were good for a chuckle. The concept art made a couple of them (Angry Hot Dog) look more elaborate than they are. A couple are buildings while a couple are just carts.


The two extra rides they’re building will be a huge help. There’s a couple glaring dead spots in the land and it’ll greatly help with density. I love Disneyland’s density and I’m convinced almost every theme park should be denser now.


Incredicoaster
I’ll preface this by saying I couldn’t handle big roller coasters as a kid. My rule of thumb was that anything with a loop was out of the question. I’m better as an adult, but my childish hesitation still kicks in.


First - the queue. It’s a really basic queue. I had a FastPass, so I got to skip the serpentine, but I still got to literally look overhead of it and bemoan the poor folks stuck in the endless line. Besides a little queue video and some murals, not much to the queue. I could see it getting real boring real fast.


Now, the ride itself. The coaster is great. Not terribly rough and not as intense as I was scared it might be. The loop is no big deal and it doubles as a great visual for the ride.


The Incredibles scenes were pretty meh. It’s super hard to tell a story on a roller coaster. You’re just going too fast. The best show scene is the first, where you see an interior of Edna’s house. There’s a decent amount of things to see...but even out of the gate, you’re still going too fast to appreciate it. The entire story is basically told through audio, but between the wind and adrenaline, you don’t pick up everything. Most of the show scenes are very basic.


Does it make the ride worse? No, not at all. That’s the gift of never riding California Screamin. I have nothing to judge it against.
 
Glad you enjoyed Carthay Circle! Here's the crazy part: it's probably the second or third best restaurant on property (Napa Rose and Walt's are as good or better).
 
Glad you enjoyed Carthay Circle! Here's the crazy part: it's probably the second or third best restaurant on property (Napa Rose and Walt's are as good or better).
That’s crazy! I wanted to do Napa Rose, but figured it would take too much time away from the parks. Had I known that MaxPass would’ve saved so much time (and had my LA friends not reached out), I would’ve tried to make a reservation
 
I’ve still got time for one more (quick!) ride before Carthay Circle. On the other side of the lagoon is Paradise Gardens. The name alone - Paradise Gardens vs. Paradise Pier, the old Pier name - tells you quite a bit about the land. It mostly exists to give killer views of the Pier. There’s a couple small flat rides and The Little Mermaid. Not a fully formed land, but that’s alright.

The Little Mermaid
I haven’t been to the Magic Kingdom since construction ended on New Fantasyland. Yeah, it’s been a while.

During New Fantasyland construction and opening, I had a bit of a weird fascination with the ride. Old school dark-ride, based on a movie I love, great music, killer queue? Sign me up. I knew the California Adventure version existed, but I didn’t care.

Now that I was in California Adventure, I really wanted to check it out. Little Mermaid was a top-5 most anticipated ride in DCA for me. Weird, yes.

The queue for the ride is pretty boring. Maybe it’s because the line was so short. The building seems lovely and a nice change from the rest of the park’s architecture.

The ride was very nice if not a little quaint. Probably should’ve expected that. The AAs were good. The Under the Sea scene was big and bold with a lot going on. The music was still great. After riding all of the Fantasyland dark rides, Little Mermaid seems like such an anomaly. It’s such a large ride (compared to the super small Fantasyland dark rides), but it’s not as big and bold as its size would indicate.

If the line is short, give it a ride. I wouldn’t wait more than 20 minutes for the ride.

Goofy Sky School
But wait, you might be thinking, I thought you only had time for one more ride? So true. I rode this Saturday night and I can’t think of a way to make it fit into this strange format I’m doing.

This is yet another roller coaster that tries to tell a story but has issues because the ride just goes too fast.

The queue is super standard. The ride itself is cute. Small spinning coaster with some cutouts about flying. Very small, very quaint. I wouldn’t wait too long to ride this.

Side note - these kind of spinning wild mouse coasters (is that right? I’m going off of decade old Roller Coaster Tycoon knowledge) are terrifying. You’re high up, spinning on a track. At any moment, you feel like the car is going to whip itself right off the edge. Terrifying.
 
Great report! :thumbsup:

MaxPass is worth every penny. I'm praying that it's still going when I visit next year for Star Wars. Even if it doubles in price, I still think it would be good value.

I have to ask, Do you think Guardians is better than ToT?

The hotel you stayed at was getting renovated or built during my last trip but I got a major Cabana Bay vibe from it. I thoroughly enjoyed staying at Pop Century this year but I don't think I could ever justify staying at a Disney hotel in DL with how close the other hotels are. With how close everything is to DL and with both parks being directly opposite to each other is a huge factor in why I enjoy DL as an experience more than WDW.
 
Great report! :thumbsup:

MaxPass is worth every penny. I'm praying that it's still going when I visit next year for Star Wars. Even if it doubles in price, I still think it would be good value.

I have to ask, Do you think Guardians is better than ToT?

The hotel you stayed at was getting renovated or built during my last trip but I got a major Cabana Bay vibe from it. I thoroughly enjoyed staying at Pop Century this year but I don't think I could ever justify staying at a Disney hotel in DL with how close the other hotels are. With how close everything is to DL and with both parks being directly opposite to each other is a huge factor in why I enjoy DL as an experience more than WDW.
MaxPass is the best thing about the resort. I wish WDW had it over the FP+ mess.

Ummm...that’s a hard one. I’ve never done ToT in California before. The Florida queue is way better than the Guardians queue, but the CA queue space is just so small. I couldn’t imagine the ToT CA queue being good. The Guardians pre-show is far better than the Florida ToT pre-show, no question. ToT ride itself in Florida is probably better because of the fourth dimension stuff (where the car moves through the scene). TL;DR - Guardians is probably better than ToT CA but not ToT FL.

My hotel was trying to go for a Cabana Bay vibe. But, it’s really, really lightly themed. The 50s retro vibe doesn’t leave the lobby. I’m actually a little more conflicted about on-site than I was at the beginning of the trip. My hotel was closer than on-site. But, security lines were so long. It wiped away most of the convenience. I would’ve loved to grab a sweatshirt from the hotel at night...but I wasn’t going to brave that security line more than once per day. The price difference is so big (would’ve more than doubled my total trip price!!) that I won’t stay on-site in Disneyland ever though.
 
Carthay Circle is over and the park is about ready to close. California Adventure closes like 3 hours earlier than Disneyland daily, because why not?

Still time for one more ride. It’s time to go back to Hollywoodland for...

Monsters Inc.
Yet another ride that I was looking forward to in a really weird way. The ride’s amazing history (checkout the Defunctland episode!) and my love for Monsters Inc. (its an underrated movie - fight me) made this ride a must do. Just like Little Mermaid, I was weirdly looking forward to this ride.


I’ll start with the facade. This is probably the biggest time where my expectations were bigger than reality. Pictures make this facade look like a massive island overshadowing everything around it. I didn’t expect the facade to be wedged next to things and I expected it to be a little taller and a lot wider. Still a fun facade.


The queue was pretty meh. They didn’t put too much queue work in the Superstar Limo conversion. Lots of references to a Monstropolis Taxi company. Some cute flyers (especially the sushi menu) and some interesting world-building details. If this line was long, this queue would not be enough to entertain me. There was a whole part where the focal point of the queue was a series of payphones that you couldn’t touch or interact with. Weird.


The ride isn’t as bonkers as everyone wants you to think. After hearing about Superstar Limo and all the fan hype, I was expecting this ride to be Riverdale-levels of terrible. The Mona Lisa of awful dark rides. Didn’t quite get that. It was a solid dark ride. The monster AAs were good, especially Roz with her Santa hat at the end. The sets were nice. The yellow government characters from the agency-I-can’t-remember weren’t as garishly awful as I was anticipating. It was actually a let down. I was expecting garbage that would make me weep with joy. I got a pretty good ride instead.
 
I really like the Monsters Inc ride. I didn't know/cared that people didn't think it was good. :lol:
The ride has a colorful and fascinating history that I think colors many peoples’ opinions. The fact that it rose from the corpse of “Disney’s worst attraction” (Defunctland) makes some think that it’s some kind of Frankenstein abomination built from bubble gum and toothpicks. I personally liked the ride too!
 
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