Originally Posted By AutoPost This topic is for Discussion of <a href="http://www.laughingplace.com/News-ID10037850.asp" target="_blank"><b>Latest: Disneyland Resort Expansion Continues with New Parking Lot Opening</b></a> <p><span lang="en-us"><font face="Arial">As part of its current expansion, Disneyland Resort celebrated both the opening of its new Toy Story Parking Lot today as well as a unique public-private partnership that will utilize idle Orange County Transportation Authority (OCTA) buses and provide employment opportunities for OCTA bus drivers.</font></span></p>
Originally Posted By TP2000 I parked there on Friday, and don't plan on parking there ever again. There's a 20 minute bus ride to get to the park. It's a 5 minute trip if you drive like a normal person, but Disney has the buses doing this bizarre maneuver where they drive to the Paradise Pier Hotel first and then enter the tram route there behind Pizza Omm Mow Mow and then go to the bus loading area off Harbor Blvd. I'm not making this up, that's actually the route. I won't park in the Toy Story lots ever again. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Shame on you Disney.
Originally Posted By mousermerf But... but.. I thought the parking setup at DLR was so brilliant and surface lots like at WDW were so pedestrian and old fashioned..
Originally Posted By TP2000 Surface lots are old fashioned. So are buses. Put those two things together, and then make the bus ride longer than it needs to be, and it's really stupid. The one nice thing on this was that OCTA got to hire back a dozen bus drivers they had recently laid off. Other than that, the Toy Story lot is dumb.
Originally Posted By mousermerf You have to admit, at this point even the worst WDW parking lot experience is better then what's becoming the average parking experience at DLR. The traffic around the resort combined the congestion into the strcture or surface lots and then the congestion and confusion at the transportation itself.. not good. Makes parking at MGM or AK at the back and riding the tram sound like fun.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros In a way, the route does make sense. I think the driving factor behind the decision was to have the busses park in the otherwise unused Lion King Tram dropoff area (Why haven't they started the Simba lot tram yet? Wasn't that supposed to start last summer?). If they drove directly up Harbor Blvd, they would have to pick up guests from the normal bus lanes, which could cause a couple problems. First, it might confuse people as to whether they are getting on an OCTA bus, or they are getting on the bus back to where they parked (since they're just leasing standard OCTA busses, right?). Second, it would put a lot of guests in the areas that are already pretty busy with hotel guests using the various ART shuttles. Trying to get the thousands of guests who parked in the Toy Story Lot back to their cars would be a lot easier if they could completley separate them from the other busses. However, if the route really is 20 minutes instead of 5 (which sounds about right, thinking of the route they are taking), then it just doesn't make any sense at all. I'm sure they could get some official-looking wrap on the busses to show off that they are going to the Toy Story lot, which would eliminate that confusion. To separate the guests from the ART and hotel shuttles, they could use the taxi stand, since they just moved all taxi pickups to the area next to the ESPN Zone and the old taxi stand isn't being used. I'm not sure exactly how much room is over there, but it seems like they could figure out a way to make it work. And does anybody else think that part of the reason they're using OCTA busses instead of the coaches is they can cram a lot more people on them legally? They're designed to have passengers standing, which means they can fit a lot of people in there, just like the busses at WDW. They also load faster (wider aisles, 2 doors when it's time to exit, fewer seats to try to stake out), which does lead a bit to higher efficiency. Plus, the busses would have just been sitting there unused otherwise, so I'm sure they got a good deal on them! Anybody else think it's a little odd that they got 20 busses, but only 15 drivers? I'm sure I'll get a chance to experience the lovely wonders of this lot sometime in the coming months, but I think I'll still do my best to avoid trying it out. When that day comes, I'm sure I'll have a much more fully informed opinion on the matter than my mindlessly speculative rambling that I just gave you.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Some more points to ponder from the press release... "... and 50 two-bedroom equivalent Disney Vacation Club villas..." Two bedroom 'equivalent'? Does that mean that it's really not 2 bedrooms? I know space is at more of a premium in DLR than WDW, but I hardly think that a bedroom and a living room with a pullout couch should count the same a a 2 bedroom unit. I'm not completely familiar with the DVC units in the GCH (or anywhere else for that matter), but it seems like 2 bedrooms is 2 bedrooms anywhere. "The first major attraction based on Disney’s classic “The Little Mermaid” debuts in 2011." What about Mermaid Lagoon in TDS? I guess you could claim that individually none of the attractions are major (the theater show might count!), but overall, it's certainly more than worthy of the title of 'major'. These days, The Voyage of the Little Mermaid in the Studios in WDW is hardly 'major', but I remember it being quite a big deal when it first opened. I'm not sure if it would qualify for E-ticket status, but it was definitely a big deal, with all sorts of new technological and stage tricks involved.
Originally Posted By TP2000 Excellent point on Mermaid Lagoon. I'd bet a churro the cubicle dweller in TDA who wrote that marketing drivel, er, text has never been farther than Las Vegas, much less Tokyo, and has no idea the Mermaid thing has already been the subject of an entire land in a Disney theme park. Ah, to ride Scuttle's Scooters again and hear the lap bars pop up in perfect unison to the theme song! ;-) As for the ridiculous Toy Story lot, the OCTA buses are wrapped in a rather attractive and whimsical Toy Story design. They are very prominently marked as "GUEST SHUTTLE", and they bear no resemblance to a regular city bus on the outside. Mouseinfo has some good pics of the buses, and an apparent ribbon cutting (?!?) for this new parking lot. <a href="http://www.mouseinfo.com/forums/disney-parks-news-info/91466-march-19-2010-grand-opening-toy-story-parking-lot.html" target="_blank">http://www.mouseinfo.com/forum...lot.html</a> I get why they want the buses on the tram route and tram loading area, that makes a lot of sense. The 20 minute trip to the Paradise Pier Hotel and back to get to the tram unload area is what makes no sense. On the return trip, the buses turned right out of the tram route and on to Disney Way, and the return trip took 5 minutes.
Originally Posted By trekkeruss If someone couldn't park in the Mickey and Friends structure, what would prevent them from parking at GardenWalk? It's closer and a smidge cheaper, yes?
Originally Posted By SuperDry ^^^ If they have an AP that includes parking, then GW isn't cheaper. And, guests without APs are likely to not be ultra-familiar with the resort area, and will probably just follow the signs.
Originally Posted By mousermerf I have learned to ignore the signs that try to direct me away from Mickey and Friends - they lie. I hate being lied to.
Originally Posted By jmuboy Parking at the DL resort is a MESS and a 2nd parking deck needs to be built now. Disney needs to press forward with this NOW before DCA get even more popular and the Toy Story Lot can no longer handle the additional cars.
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt In terms of modern transportation Orange County is hopelessly stuck in the 1960's. In addition to improving the DLR parking situation, the region needs to have a serious come to Jesus session in regards to public transport. There is just no logical excuse for why Anaheim continues to rely solely on personal automobiles to move people in an out of the resort area. The people responsible for this are very shortsighted and it goes far beyond Disney management. I find it incredibly ironic that 50 years after Walt Disney's presented his vision for EPCOT, with its efficient movement of the masses, nothing like it has yet to materialize right outside of Disneyland's gates.
Originally Posted By believe >>>>Parking at the DL resort is a MESS and a 2nd parking deck needs to be built now.<<<<< Why build when you can buy ? The Garden Walk with parking lot, that is. Instead of taking a couple of years to build a structure, they can buy GW today, and use it tomorrow!
Originally Posted By TP2000 Al Lutz had mentioned that Anaheim government was working on a new transit plan that involved mass transit linking with the high speed rail. That's all a decade away, but Lutz made mention of a "spring announcement" or some such website from Anaheim. It should be interesting to see what they are proposing. For the record, I know we've got a lot of young'uns and out of towners around here, but I can't be the only one old enough to remember the 70's, 80's and 90's at the Disneyland parking lot. Trying to leave that lot after fireworks on a summer night was often total gridlock, with cars honking and streaming out on to Harbor and Katella, only to be met with more gridlock as they inched their way through tacky streets to the much smaller Santa Ana Freeway of the day. It was a total mess at the end of the night, and it makes today's Resort District with busy but moving and aesthetically pleasing motoring environments look like Shangri-La by comparison. It could get really UGLY with traffic around Disneyland 20 years ago!
Originally Posted By TP2000 That parking gridlock pre-dates my own memory as well. My grandparents used to tell a very funny story about getting separated in the Disneyland parking lot while trying to find their new Cutlass after the fireworks on July 4th, 1964. After an hour of searching in rows endlessly backed up with idling cars, Grandma and Grandpa split up, and then promptly got even more lost. It took a long time for Grandma to find a security gaurd, who was also stuck in the gridlock in his golf cart, but somehow all were reunited at the Cutlass around 1:00 AM. But they didn't get home until after 2:00 AM due to all the traffic still around Anaheim at that late hour. Grandpa claimed he wrote a scathing letter to Walt, but that may be a fabrication on his part. Trust your elders kids, things used to be worse than they are today.
Originally Posted By mousermerf But the 4th of July is the exception not the rule - Epcot unload tons of guests every day at 9:20pm without a hitch, but the 4th and other holidays lead to backups and delays in that process, despite it still being smoother then the other parks.
