Originally Posted By dlandcrazy2 My pass expired yesterday. Am I sad, not really. It had been almost 8 months since I used my pass the last time. I have some great memories of the park...talking with Walt Disney in 1961 in front of Frontierland Gate, growing up going to the park probably 3 or4 times a year, my husband proposed there in 1974, having premium passes, the 50th anniversary and yes, even working there. It began to lose its luster when they started with the passes, then all the "Disney Special Events" and on a personal note, when Joey from Pirates died. It is unbelievable how one cast member can make the visit magical. I know that this not earth shaking or going to change the world today. I just wanted share some of my thoughts.
Originally Posted By dlandcrazy2 My pass expired yesterday. Am I sad, not really. It had been almost 8 months since I used my pass the last time. I have some great memories of the park...talking with Walt Disney in 1961 in front of Frontierland Gate, growing up going to the park probably 3 or4 times a year, my husband proposed there in 1974, having premium passes, the 50th anniversary and yes, even working there. It began to lose its luster when they started with the passes, then all the "Disney Special Events" and on a personal note, when Joey from Pirates died. It is unbelievable how one cast member can make the visit magical. I know that this not earth shaking or going to change the world today. I just wanted share some of my thoughts.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I definitely felt the burn out after a while of having an AP. It got to the point where going to the parks felt more like a burden than an exciting privelage, so I decided to not renew. I've been back many times since then, but I stand by my decision. In large part, the revolving door of marketing campaigns led to it. When every single day is supposed to be The Most Unique Day Ever, they all start to blend together and feel very phony. As with many things in the world, they've tried to personalize the campaigns, making them about YOUR birthday, YOUR memories, and YOU getting pulled into the parade. What I enjoy about DL is the approachability of everything, where you go to it on your terms; too much recently has felt like they were forcing me to have a good time at a Disney-branded experince, rather than allowing me to find something that really spoke to me Yes, Disney's always been over-the-top, but it seems like it's gotten especially bad in recent years. That said, I'm returning to DLR this weekend for the first time in a year, and I'm really looking forward to it!
Originally Posted By Dr Hans Reinhardt I've noticed that a lot of the burnout here comes from people who go often - more than once a year. Take a break for a few years and you'll appreciate the place with new eyes. Sounds like you need it.
Originally Posted By Tikiduck I'm planning a return trip in the middle of September after five years of self imposed exile. With all the new additions that have happened in that time, I could not help myself. I stopped going for most of the obvious reasons, but after all this time, I find myself surprisingly giddy in anticipation.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip Yes and no. Yes, because it is becoming increasingly difficult to afford at trip to Disneyland, especially if you stay in a Disney hotel (which I always do). If you can't afford to go there, there is no Magic at all. No, because unlike WDW, Disneyland has done a very good job of retaining its Magic.
Originally Posted By tashajilek I agree, going too often is the biggest problem. I now go to one Disney park a year and have really been looking forward to my trips. I am also glad in some ways that I don't live near the parks. I couldn't imagine being one of those people who go every weekend.
Originally Posted By mawnck <---- Not sure when, or if, I'm EVER going back. Can report that two years and one Carsland apparently were't sufficient. (Even though I thought Carsland was really cool.)
Originally Posted By DDMAN26 I try to get to one of the parks every 4-5 years and it's still a special feeling. If I want a few times of year it wouldn't be special anymore.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan The problem is when you stop going for awhile, you really get how expensive it has become. I haven't been to DL since 2009. I started toying around with the idea of a trip and wow, it really has gone way way up. I'm pretty sure this has been the longest break I've had from Disneyland. I think I burnt myself out going too often for several years in a row. Every time I start to want to go again, I calculate the cost and my mind begins to ask "Where ELSE could we go for that much money?"
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>Every time I start to want to go again, I calculate the cost and my mind begins to ask "Where ELSE could we go for that much money?"<< I think that this is the biggest thing for me. Yes, it's still a fun experience, but when you start considering all of the associated costs with a DL or WDW trip, you realize pretty quickly that it's tough to justify the 'value' of the experience for the price. I've found that a week in WDW is comparable in costs to a week in Europe (both including airfare); to put it simply, WDW can't compete with Europe. DL's costs are even worse, and as much as I lvoe the place I can't imagine ever spending a whole week there All of my recent and forseeable future Disney trips have been to participate in the runDisney races. These are also outrageously expensive in comparison to other options, but are very well managed. If it weren't for the races to bring me back, I think it would be much longer between visits; I'm already planning a couple race trips (both to WDW and DL) where I don't think I'm going to visit the parks outside of the races
Originally Posted By Tikiduck No frills here, this trip is going to be solo and budget. Solo because no one else can afford it. Budget because there is no way I can justify the prices at the Disney hotels. I don't think you have to stay at a Disney hotel to have a good time. In fact, I kind of get a magical feeling thinking about all the money I am saving. Disney is not the only draw here either. If I had to spend the whole time at the resort, I would not be making this trip.
Originally Posted By LuvsDsnyTrips I have been going twice a year to DL since 1998...and have been to DW 2 times ever... I (guess) you could say I am addicted... I love going and sometimes even on the plane back....I am already planning my next trip. However, I am now married to someone that is nowhere as keen to Disney or anything associated with Disney as I am. I am going in October with my youngest son and then I already know (even though I have said this before)....I will not be returning again for awhile. Besides some health issues (nothing major)...the costs are certainly rising and I have other things I need to be doing with my moulah (money). When at DW...I feel like I have to stay on site....but, at DL...I feel like I don't have to. To me....totally two different vacations... Plus, I like planning out my dining....and pampering myself and my family while on vacation... And dining to me...means at least one nice sit down restaurant a day...and that adds up (cost wise)...
Originally Posted By LuvsDsnyTrips I might also add.......I have 10 "piggy" banks that I am "feeding" and I (seriously) plan on paying for our next vacation to DW in cash from those banks... I am guessing about December or late fall 2015
Originally Posted By hbquikcomjamesl I think I may be an expert on passholder burnout. I had a full-blown unrestricted pass (the name of the product changed over the years, so I speak generically) for about a quarter-century. My first few passes have pictures from a Polaroid 4-up ID camera; the last few have black-and-white laser-printed pictures. And every year, my pass was a birthday present from my mother. I was never one of those passholders who felt they had some sort of special privileges beyond what I was legitimately entitled to; quite the contrary, if the line for a given attraction was longer than I cared to wait, I knew that I could come back any time. What happened? A lot of things changed. My life changed: in 1980, I was a struggling full-time undergrad, with very little disposable income. I'd had perhaps three vacations, all of them family vacations, two of which were car-trips to North Dakota, with a brief side-trip to Yellowstone on the way home. I couldn't afford concerts, or live theatre; I could barely afford movies, but because of my pass, I could afford Disneyland. In 2006, I had held a job for over a decade, I had season tickets to a series and a half at Hollywood Bowl, and with two vacations a year, I'd been to Walt Disney World, and Colonial Williamsburg, and the big three museums of Chicago, and was well on my way to visiting all 50 states before my 50th birthday. My family situation changed: while still single, and still living at home, my parents were getting up there in years, and only weeks before a Spring vacation that included my first visit to Alaska (after everything was already booked, and most of it was etched in stone), my mother developed an almost-fatal abdominal problem. I chopped the first few days off that vacation, and would have chopped even more off of it, had she not come home from the hospital when she did. At that point, I felt like if I went to Disneyland, I'd be abandoning my mother for the sake of going somewhere I'd literally been to over a hundred times, while if I didn't go enough times to break even on the cost of the pass, I'd be spitting on a very expensive birthday present, as well as giving my mother's money to a very profitable corporation without getting her money's worth in return. (I don't have any qualms about not breaking even on my San Diego Zoo membership, or my California State Railroad Museum Foundation membership, but they're non-profits. The world changed: gas prices had gone from under a dollar a gallon to perhaps as much as three dollars. We had gone from relative peace and prosperity to being stuck in a pointless war. The pass perks changed. Before DCA, not only did my pass include free parking; it included free parking, subject to space availability, within easy walking distance of the main gate. After DCA, parking, though still free, was in an enormous parking structure. For at least the first 20 years, the magazine subscription was to a Disney-centric magazine, filled with coverage of what was going on at WDW, and Disney movies, and so forth. Then that ceased publication, and what did I get instead? a worse-than-worthless rag called "Family Fun," that only served to rub rock salt into the open wound of my not even having a girlfriend, much less a family. Disneyland changed. Hoping to create something approximating Epcot's Test Track, they built the Rocket Rods, which quickly tore themselves apart, doing a number on the old Peoplemover right-of-way in the process. Much of DCA appeared to have been built on the cheap: an off-the-shelf Wild Mouse rollercoaster, a dark ride that delivered bad taste and a few in-jokes, where I was expecting a mini-GMR, an exhibit sponsored by Mission tortillas that was only the most recent in a long line of Disney attractions and restaurants that presented insulting stereotypes of Mexico. The Disney organization had changed. I'd read the horror stories about the CMs who'd agreed to work the PotC movie preview party not getting to actually see the movie, or even to go to other areas of the park, or to the backstage chow halls. And then, to "commemorate" the 5th anniversary of the WTC Atrocities, where NBC had run a news retrospective, what did Disney-owned ABC run? A propaganda miniseries that tried to lay the blame on President Clinton. And I had changed. I had been to places that had inspired parts of Disneyland, and that had inspired books I'd read. I could afford to go places I never could as a university student, and I was beginning to realize that because of Disneyland, I'd spent far more time in museums hundreds of miles away than I'd spent in museums that were practically in my back yard. I hadn't been to the museums of Exposition Park since my last elementary school field trip there. I'd heard that there was an aviation museum at the Chino airport (actually, there are TWO), but I'd never had time to take a look (they're worth the trip, at least if you see both of them). Every time I thought about visiting a local museum, I considered the fact that I hadn't yet broken even on my Disneyland pass, and since I didn't want to abandon my mother just for the sake of going someplace I'd been to over a hundred times before, I ended up going nowhere, and spending the weekend quietly reading and napping. And then, I got myself suspended from another Disney-centric BBS, because the powers that be misinterpreted my completely serious opinion on when children should have a separate (but preferably connected, or at least adjacent) room from their parents as tasteless, flippant, off-color humor. At the time, I was spending my New Years Eves in Disneyland: the usual New Years Eve bacchanals are not much fun if you're a teetotaler, whereas in Disneyland, I could at least surround myself with people ringing in the new year cold sober. Well, 2006 was winding down, and I arrived at Disneyland, with a Blue Bayou reservation, only to find that it was packed, and under full lockdown (they might not have even been admitting hand-stamp re-entries, for a while!) and I found myself wandering DCA and DTD with no dinner reservation, and not a whole lot of appealing choices for dinner that weren't booked solid. To say the least, I had a lot of time to retrospect. And it was right then and there that I realized that my pass had turned from boon to burden. With each passing year, I get a little bit closer to getting another pass. One-day hoppers have gotten so expensive that the break-even point is about as low as it's ever been. But I haven't quite gotten far enough to actually do it. And now, my Saturdays are mostly spoken for, docenting at the International Printing Museum, in Carson. But I still go to Disneyland at least once a year. And they can't get rid of all the Magic: Walt's fingerprints are all over the park, and it is, after all, the only Disney park that opened to the public within his lifetime.
Originally Posted By berol I was wanting to do something other than Disneyland on L.A. trips at the same time its prices starting taking big jumps. I went once since 2008, a 3-day only from request. I might get an AP in March. I'm leaning heavily towards taking my 1st Knotts visit instead.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance I still love going to Disney, still have young children which is a bit part of the fun for me, and we only go once a year at the most. But it's been 2 years since we've gone, and don't know if we'll get back next year. It is getting just too dang expensive, and even if I can swing it, there is the nagging feeling of guilt inside telling me, I could do another vacation for half the cost, and spend the other money one something else we need. I've considered taking a trip focused on other parts of California and just stopping over night in Anaheim and spending a couple days at the parks, but you can't do that without buying tickets for 4 people that cost almost $700. For just 2 freaking days at the parks! That's insane.
Originally Posted By EighthDwarf hbquick, I enjoyed your post, and your perspective, immensely. Disneyland is a wonderful place but there are so many wonderful places in the world that we are selling ourselves short if we restrict our vacation time to Disney properties. For those who can't do both a trip to somewhere new and a trip to DL in the same year, I would suggest skipping DL at least every other year (if not more often). Make sure you see New York, Rome, Paris, London and Florence before you ride Pirates too many times. Disneyland is a special treat, the dessert if you will, but the great cities and museums of the world are the sustenance we need to thrive. Has Disneyland lost some of its magic? That's a personal question everyone must answer for him/herself. But if it has for you, I would argue that you have found the magic in something else. And that's perfectly ok.
