Originally Posted By gadzuux I did something I almost never do this weekend - I visited DLR alone. Not by choice either - I happened to be in the area on biz and I was able to break free early friday afternoon. Two shakes later, I'm checking in to anaheim holiday inn. I booked it through 'priceline' at the last minute, entering $75 for fri/sat, and this is the hotel that bingoed back. Not bad at all. Location is a bit far and dreary - on south manchester running parallel with I-5 - with four lanes of one way traffic, it's essentially a long on-ramp. But the place itself is nice enough. Comfy beds, reasonably quiet, and relatively new. I even had a view of the crystal cathedral beyond all the mobile home villages. I bought the two day hopper, along with the ART pass for $122 + $6, but only realized after I arrived at about 5pm that DCA was closing at 6pm for their 'spooktacular' whatever, so I never set foot inside DCA until the next day. Visiting DL alone changes things quite a bit. I've only done it once before, many years ago. I'm not quite as interested in racking up a high ride count, just picking and choosing among the favorites. In the meantime, the people watching is always fun. I enjoy watching people literally run while pushing a stroller, and the expression on the kid's face as he's weaving and bobbling through other people. I was surprised at how many people were in the park on a late october friday - especially with all the fires in the larger area, I was kind of hoping for a quiet day at the park. No such luck. Although it wasn't 'crowded' it was definitely comfortably full - especially the fireworks and first showing of F! Call me crazy, but in many ways friday felt busier than the following day - saturday. I visited the "new" TSI this visit. In fact it's the first time in probably thirty years since I've been over there. No great shakes. They had a little skit and some balladeers - they even had a singing character on the raft. I've never been big on interacting with characters, and will go out of my way to avoid it. On the raft, you're stuck. Fortunately it was a brief trip across. I also caught the entirety of the parade on this visit - another rarity, although I'd seen POD 'en toto' once before, back in 05/05 when they kicked off the whole 50th shebang. I liked it even less this time than the time before. I know disney can put on a parade that I enjoy because they've done it several times - but not in a long time. For one thing, I don't like that so much depends on where you happen to be standing when the parade lurches to a stop. As it happened I was right in front of the 'sebastian' float, and not much happens right there. On either side are some dancers - on the right are four girls in seaweed leotards tossing rubber balls around (I think they were supposed to represent pearls), and to the left are two guys wearing leotards not much different than the chicks on the right. At no time did the male and female dancers interact - they stayed as far apart from each other as possible. Meanwhile other floats as they passed by looked like they had the potential to be more interesting during their showstop. I guess I'll never know. I watched the band at TLT - sandbox - and they had some decent cover songs, and they tried to get the joint jumpin' but it wouldn't budge. Not their fault, they did what they could but it's a tough room. Had my second visit to 'nemo' (45 minutes, 11pm) and while I'm impressed with the technological acheivement, I won't need to visit it again for a long time. But that's okay, the subs were never a favorite of mine. In my harsher voice I'd say that it reminds me of 'pooh' in that it was a boatload of money for not very much in return. I rode the train this visit - again something I don't usually take the time to do. It's especially enjoyable at night, but the dinos are looking reeeally old - and I mean that in a bad way. I thought the park itself looked super - as good as I've seen it ever. Day Two was largely DCA for the first several hours. My legs were already a bit tired from the day before, and I made a major goof first thing outta the chutes. I was riding the ART shuttle from the hotel to the park, and for some reason we made a stop at the corner of harbor and katella. I decided that I wanted to stop at coco's first before going into the park, so I took the opportunity to jump off the shuttle while it was stopped. From there I walked along katella over to DLDrive, essentially walking the southern border of DCA. Nice walk and interesting in it's own way. I get to the restaurant and stoke up on a big breakfast, and then set out to walk the rest of the way to the park entrance, up DLDrive, and then cut through the GCH to DTD and on to the esplanade. Just as I'm approaching the bagcheck area, I realize that I left my $60 sunglasses on the table back at coco's. This is almost a mile away and I just walked it once. But there's nothing fer it, I want my sunglasses, and so I have to backtrack all the way to the restaurant. They have them, thank you very much, and now hoof it back a third time. Fortunately I'm alone, and I can be remarkably patient with my own screw-ups. I'm also an excellent walker with a lot of stamina. Good thing too. I was more interested than usual to visit DCA. Like so many people, I've been reading about all of the changes and upgrades in the pipeline for this park, and it may well be my last visit for this current incarnation. I gave a closer inspection to the murals out front, and indeed there's a lot of detail embedded within them, though the tiles were larger than I had remembered. I really hope they find a place for these somewhere else and that they're not destroyed. I won't miss the sun plaza - it's a charmless place that seems to discourage lingering. I watched BPB from there, and there were traffic flow problems. Right before the parade stepped off, everthing was blocked and you couldn't pass over to HPB from the plaza. Once the whole procession had passed through the backstage gate, they then could allow guests to walk behind. But there was a good solid ten minutes where people were essentially forced to just 'hang out' in the plaza, and they didn't like it. The enhancements to the 'monsters' and 'muppets' area are not all that impressive. The area was largely deserted on my two passes through. There's a smoking area in front of the old 'millionaire' building that brought over a few stragglers like me, but the rest of the area was almost bleak and a bit depressing. I don't care for the facade of 'monsters' - garishly colored, resolutely 2-D flat, and not very clever. I don't care much for the ride either, but that's another story. I did enjoy what will likely be my last visit to the 'muppets'. It's so old that it's actually jim henson performing and while it needs to be sent packing, I hadn't seen it in awhile and thought it was fun. Again. I have high hopes for the improvements to the hyperion. It could transform the area from what it is today into something more impressive. I had a good time watching people get soaked by the big geyser on GRR. For some reason, watching people get soaked never gets old. I discovered the single rider trick at 'soarin' and 'screamin' - nice feature. Watched "HSM2" - like BPB it's very youthful and energetic, and while it's not pitched at me, it's at least better than the cornball schmaltz over at POD. I'm more than disappointed that they intend to keep MM. I wandered back to the sitdown area by burger invasion, pizza omm-ow-ow, and the tugboat. It was hell on wheels back there. You're directly underneath MM, you've got kids clanging a big metal bell repeatedly, the punjent smell unique to mccdonalds, and the screams from 'maliboomer' along with the big metallic whooshing noise. Really really awful. Horrible place, and needs to be wiped clean. If they think they can somehow rip out the rest of it and keep MM, they need to think again. As I was passing through the edge of GCH (for the third time in an hour!) I peeked through the construction wall. These new DVC condos appear to back up against the ugly blue MM soundwall. It's unthinkable that they could keep this nasty little mad mouse in the middle of all the upgrades going on all around it. Big finish was the fireworks and F!. Watched the fireworks from the DLRR platform at the end of main street and then saw the late show for F!. Love the fireworks, and the DLRR platform is a painless alternative - and a great show. I'm a longtime fan of "F!" but it's getting long in the tooth. Like all shows, it needs to be freshened up. Not likely any time soon though. In all, it was a pleasant trip to the parks - different than usual because I went alone. It's probably been about fifteen years since I last went alone, and I may do it again someday, but probably not if I can possibly drag someone along with me.
Originally Posted By friendofdd Thanks for an interesting report. Actually, your description of the area around burger invasion sort of reminded me of the Santa Cruz pier when I used to go there in the 50s. So it may be authentic Californian flash back. Wish I had known you were there. It would have been great to meet you and people watch with you for a while.
Originally Posted By gadzuux Again - kind of 'last minute'. Honestly, if priceline hadn't accepted my offer, I probably wouldn't have gone. After re-reading my post, I wanted to comment on the differences between the loaders on 'soarin' and on 'screamin' - two different worlds. One facet of the single rider feature is bypassing the line entirely. For instance, out in front of soarin' people are tightly packed in the switchback queues, then down the main corridor, and then the side corridor to the load area. Walking past that enormous queue to the very bottom, and then watching the loaders do their job with quiet efficiency, like stacking pancakes. The castmembers at 'soarin' were efficient and calm throughout the entire process. Contrast that with 'screamin' where they're standing on a load platform, and they appeared to be almost at their wits end - barking orders at people, pointing madly, reprimanding others to not stand where they are standing - looking almost overwhelmed by it all. Even with the single rider ticket, I was never in a particular hurry to be seated, and on 'screamin' allowed several people to go in front of me while I watched the process. One of them was a boy of about ten or twelve or so waiting with me. There were about five of us 'single riders' and the loader kept telling us forcefully that we must stand back and out of the way, by an elevator door. That was fine until the elevator arrived with five more people on it. We now had about ten people total, and we couldn't all fit in the alotted area. This boy was getting impatient and I let him go in front of me. She waves him forward and he walks out onto the middle of the platform waiting for instructions about which lane to stand. She asks him for his 'single rider' slip of paper and he doesn't have one. The loader tells him that he can't ride without it, and that he's going to have to take the elevator back up and over and out. I was surprised she could be so harsh, but then again she had been at best 'curt' and bordering on mean the entire time. The kid actually did what she said and left. I made eye contact with her a couple of times after that, and was able to convey my opinion to her non-verbally. I saw her again a couple hours later in a different position, and we exchanged looks that time too. So kudos to the 'soarin' castmembers for making it look easy. And 'screamin' could polish up their load skills while still remaining pleasant.
