Laura's Disney Lines

As many of you know, when considering a trip to Walt Disney World, the issue of whether to stay on-site or off-site can be rather hotly debated. At WDW staying on-site certainly has advantages with its access to Disney transportation, proximity to the parks, and the wide range of resorts (and room rates!) available.

At Disneyland it's really not so much of an issue, though.

Location, location, location.
Though Disneyland was originally built in the middle of an orange grove, the city of Anaheim grew up all around it, and it's surrounded by its own variety of hotels with a wide range of prices and amenities. In fact, all of the Disney-owned hotels (Disneyland Hotel, Paradise Pier, and Grand Californian) are all "high-end" hotels, so those traveling on a more modest budget have no choice but to choose an "off-site" hotel. Proximity of the Disney hotels is a non-issue, though, since several of the off-site hotels are actually closer to Disneyland's entrance than the Disney hotels! Just a short walk (~5 minutes) across Harbor Blvd are several moderately priced hotels that provide clean-but-no-frills accommodations at a much lower rate than any of the Disney hotels - and there's that shorter walk to the parks, too. Now, there's also no theming at those hotels, either, but some of them do offer a complimentary continental breakfast, free parking and high-speed internet, *without* the "resort fee" Disney charges.

So what about transportation?
The Disneyland Resort is a "walking" resort - other than the trams from the two parking areas, the only Disney transportation is the monorail, and it only has two stations: one inside Tomorrowland, and the other at the far end of Downtown Disney. It's closest to the Disneyland Hotel, but it's really not so convenient to any of the hotels that I'd consider it a factor in deciding to stay there.

That Disney theming
Of the three Disney hotels, only the Grand Californian was originally owned and built by Disney - the Disneyland Hotel and the Paradise Pier were originally built by third parties, and later acquired by Disney. So a lot of the "Disney" touches in terms of design and theming are missing from those two hotels. Both hotels were constructed as very ordinary rectangular high-rise towers (three at the Disneyland Hotel and one at the Paradise Pier) - pretty boring and quite a contrast from the beautifully designed Grand Californian across the street.

The Disneyland Hotel has done a lot of remodeling and renovation in recent years, and it does have a lot more of the "Disney resort feel" these days. The grounds and landscaping are quite nice, and the Neverland Pool area can compete with any of the WDW pools. The Paradise Pier suffers from a lack of space, though - the hotel itself takes up all of its lot, and there's not much room for niceties like landscaping. The pool area is actually built on top of the convention center.

You notice I haven't really mentioned the Grand Californian - it's really in a class by itself, at least in comparison to the other Disneyland hotels, and reflects Disney resort theming at its finest. And it has the price to go along with that, too...

So...on-site or off-site?
Well, in my opinion, at Disneyland it's really a matter of economics. If you can afford to stay at one of the Disney-owned hotels you're going to get more of a Disney experience in terms of theming, service, and room decor than you will at any of the off-site hotels. But as far as proximity to the parks goes, a number of the off-site hotels are better choices, as well as being much more inexpensive.

What about you? Where is your favorite place to stay at Disneyland, and what do you like about 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

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.