AlliGirl
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- May 6, 2011
After our romp through the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, we headed north towards Critter Country. En route, we got our first ever look at the exterior of the Haunted Mansion being decorated for the Haunted Mansion Holiday layover.
We were disappointed that it wasn’t opened just yet, so we couldn’t experience the ride. We’ll have to return for the holidays one year to check it out.
We finally made it to Critter Country only to find that The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was temporarily closed. This was a shame, because we really enjoyed this ride when we rode it last summer. It’s almost an exact replica of the WDW version, but it just feels newer and cleaner. The ride being closed wasn’t too big of a deal, because we just love exploring Pooh Corner. The whole area is very well done.
I am a huge fan of Winnie the Pooh, and I absolutely love the shop back here!
Our plan was to pick up a Tigger Tail and wait to see if the attraction would reopen soon. If you haven’t tried the Tigger Tail from Pooh Corner, DO IT! It’s a sweet marshmallow treat dipped in caramel and white chocolate and covered in orange sprinkles and chocolate syrup. If you think that sounds too sweet, it is. We split one amongst the 4 of us.
It's the sort of thing I would normally turn down, but it's honestly really good! Lots of different textures mixed in.
We found a seat right next to the Rivers of America at the Hungry Bear restaurant and enjoyed our Tigger Tail and a coke while waiting on the attraction to reopen. Unfortunately, it never did. However, we enjoyed our nice break on the water.
The only area left to explore was Mickey’s Toontown, and it was quite a trek to the other side of the park. Now, I have a particularly good sense of direction, especially when I’m in a Disney park. Picture this… We were out front of the Hungry Bear and Alli’s mom was CONVINCED that it would be shorter to walk towards Pooh Corner in order to get to Toontown. Now if you’re familiar with the park layout, you’ll know that not only does going that way not get you to Toontown, but it doesn’t get you anywhere… It’s a dead end. Now, I would have politely corrected her. However, she decided to challenge me. “You guys go that way and we’ll go this way and we’ll see who gets to Toontown first!”… I wasn’t about to argue, so we set off in the direction of Big Thunder Mountain and the moms set off in the direction of a dead end at Pooh’s Corner. We were approaching Big Thunder Ranch (R.I.P) when they caught back up with us.
Once my mom saw the error in her ways, she must have sprinted to catch up with us! That was a good laugh.
When we arrived in Toontown, we picked up some Fastpasses for Roger Rabbit’s Cartoon Spin for 4:55.
We especially loved this ride on our last visit and we were excited to check it out again. We explored for a bit before taking a break in the shade to wait out the time until our Fastpass window rolled around.
When our window finally arrived, we approached the ride only to find out that it was temporarily closed. Ok now I was starting to get upset. But we didn’t have time to sit around and wait for it to reopen. So we headed out of Toontown, with hopes to return on another trip.
We had seen a lot over the course of the day and we were headed towards the park entrance to hop over to DCA. My mom had been raving about Radiator Springs Racers and she had to ride it again before we headed home. But first, as we were trekking through Fantasyland, we decided to do the Castle Walkthrough. Walking through the castle is something that we think is extra special, because you can’t exactly enter the castle in WDW (not for free, that is!). Some of the effects on the walkthrough are impressive. It’s a fun exhibit. Look out for the Maleficent shadow towards the end of the walkthrough.
After the Castle, we headed over to DCA.
It was dusk, it had been a very long day, and we were looking for some alcohol. So we headed straight towards Pacific Wharf for beers and margaritas.
I decided to get two margaritas from Rita's, one strawberry and one regular. After drinking about half of both, I just threw caution to the wind and decided to mix the two. Delicious.
Now that we were nicely buzzed, it was time to hit up Goofy’s Sky School one more time. We really do love this underappreciated Paradise Pier gem.
I just had a couple beers from the assorted counter service locations. The line at the fancy beer cart was very long, so I went wherever there wasn't a line.
After Goofy, it was time to head over to RSR, but we had no Fastpass. We had never ridden the ride without one, so we were interested to see how this would play out.
We hopped in the single rider line and we were sitting in our cars after 25 minutes. My mom and I even got to share a racer. She had really wanted to ride this attraction again, so I was happy that she got to live it up one last time before the trip was over.
So, this was Scott, my mom, and I's fourth time to ride RSR counting our previous trip. All three of the previous times, we had gone down Luigi's side and gotten some cool new white wall tires. We had never gone down Ramone's side, and we're the kind of people who like to do EVERYTHING at Disney so we wanted to see that side at least once. When we were getting placed out of the single rider line, Scott and I got placed in two consecutive cars. Which meant, one of us was going down one side and one of us was going down the other. When we pulled up to the fork in the road, my car was going in to Ramone's! I was really glad I got to see the other side for once, and hopefully Scott will next time too. Though, I do think the Luigi side is cooler.
Before our night ended, we wanted to close things down back in Disneyland. It would have felt wrong ending our trip in DCA. Whenever we take a trip to WDW, we always have to close out our last night in the Magic Kingdom. It only felt appropriate that we close out our last night here in the OG Disney park.
IT. WAS. INSANE. We entered DL at 9:20, promptly as the firework show was happening. Main Street was packed like you wouldn’t believe. At one point, my mom asked, “Where are we going?!” and I responded with, “Wherever this crowd takes us!” There was no deviating from the flow of people being ushered down the sidewalk. We were being herded like cattle and there was no changing that. We just had to cross our fingers and hope we ended up in the same spot. On the bright side, we got to experience some of the Main Street projections. The Tangled lanterns were amazing.
The crowd might've been stressful, but I was really glad that we got to see what the projections looked like on Main Street! There were some variations to the scenes that were really cool!
By the time the current of guests let up and we could open our eyes and take a breath, we had ended up in Tomorrowland.
Which was good, because were headed towards the Alice in Wonderland ride. This ride is closed down during the fireworks, so we thought we’d be clever and hop in line as soon as the show was over and be some of the firsts to get on. First of all, we were not the only ones who had this idea. 2nd, the ride probably took 45 minutes to reopen. So we ended up standing in a very crowded line for what seemed like forever. Worth it. This is our favorite dark ride. We couldn’t leave without riding it.
After Alice, we were just sort of wandering around, looking for one last thing to ride. Well of course we were naturally pulled towards Adventureland, where we had to hit up the Jungle Cruise before departing.
Our skipper wasn’t very good, so this experience was sort of lacking. But it was interesting seeing the ride at night. It has a much different look and feel than it does during the day.
As a former WDW Skipper, I don't like saying that a Skipper "wasn't good." Everyone has their own style of delivery, but you have to have some heart in it, even if it was the 30th trip around the river that day. I go more in to detail about riding the Jungle Cruise at night on our last Trip Report, so I won't repeat myself.
The park was still open, so before we left, we visited our favorite snack location once more, Jolly Holiday. I got a grilled cheese with a cup of tomato soup. The grilled cheese was ok, but the soup was delicious. Dipping the sandwich into the soup made for an excellent late night snack.
When we started our trip, Alli had her sights set on one souvenir and one souvenir only: the Disneyland 60th Anniversary stein. She had plans to buy it before we left. When she attempted to purchase the stein from Jolly Holiday, the cast member informed us that they only had one left, and it was cracked. She was crushed. So, as you can imagine, I earned some serious boyfriend points when I ran over to Coke Corner to buy one of THEIR last ones.
I knew that this was the one souvenir I just had to get. Apparently it was pretty delicate, because the Cast Members at Jolly Holliday were saying that any of the steins had broken. I should have purchased the stein earlier in the trip, one of the times that we were walking out of the park, but it just kept slipping my mind! I'm so glad that Scott came through for me!
As I’ve said previously, it had been a long day. It had been a long FEW days. Alli and I typically spend months planning our Disney vacations. And here we were, at the end of one, when we had no intentions of even coming not three days earlier. Everything worked out perfectly. We achieved our goal of seeing the new 60th anniversary additions, and everything was amazing and completely worth it. On top of that, we were able to spend a weekend having a blast with our moms, which is not something that happens too often anymore. It was an amazing vacation and we’re both so thankful for all of you reading along and commenting. Until our next Disney trip (now Scott, we really need to get down to business on planning that)…
Scott and Alli
Signing off.
Wait a minute! You're forgetting! We said we were going to explain how we felt about a quick two day in the parks trip, as opposed to our normal long trips. I would say, that I was a little bummed about missing out on several favorite rides due to them being down while we were trying to ride them. That was the downside of only having two days, wasting an hour waiting around for a ride felt much longer and afterwards we were bummed both that we didn't get to ride and that we wasted valuable park time. However, we had an amazing two days! We went in with the mindset that everything we got to do was great, not that it was only great if we got to do everything. But hey, I still really want to go back and hit the things we missed, and my mom is running the half marathon over Labor Day Weekend again…Scott, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
All I'm thinking about is that bacon mac and cheese cone from Cozy Cone. And I agree 100%. We didn't have our usual down-to-the-minute itinerary, and that was ok. We went into this with the mind set that going to Disney and missing a few attractions was better than not going at all. We flew by the seat of our pants and it turned out great. "Spontaneous Disney Trip" is something that we can officially cross off of our bucket list. But maybe next time we'll leave the spontaneity to someone else.
We were disappointed that it wasn’t opened just yet, so we couldn’t experience the ride. We’ll have to return for the holidays one year to check it out.
We finally made it to Critter Country only to find that The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was temporarily closed. This was a shame, because we really enjoyed this ride when we rode it last summer. It’s almost an exact replica of the WDW version, but it just feels newer and cleaner. The ride being closed wasn’t too big of a deal, because we just love exploring Pooh Corner. The whole area is very well done.
I am a huge fan of Winnie the Pooh, and I absolutely love the shop back here!
Our plan was to pick up a Tigger Tail and wait to see if the attraction would reopen soon. If you haven’t tried the Tigger Tail from Pooh Corner, DO IT! It’s a sweet marshmallow treat dipped in caramel and white chocolate and covered in orange sprinkles and chocolate syrup. If you think that sounds too sweet, it is. We split one amongst the 4 of us.
It's the sort of thing I would normally turn down, but it's honestly really good! Lots of different textures mixed in.
We found a seat right next to the Rivers of America at the Hungry Bear restaurant and enjoyed our Tigger Tail and a coke while waiting on the attraction to reopen. Unfortunately, it never did. However, we enjoyed our nice break on the water.
The only area left to explore was Mickey’s Toontown, and it was quite a trek to the other side of the park. Now, I have a particularly good sense of direction, especially when I’m in a Disney park. Picture this… We were out front of the Hungry Bear and Alli’s mom was CONVINCED that it would be shorter to walk towards Pooh Corner in order to get to Toontown. Now if you’re familiar with the park layout, you’ll know that not only does going that way not get you to Toontown, but it doesn’t get you anywhere… It’s a dead end. Now, I would have politely corrected her. However, she decided to challenge me. “You guys go that way and we’ll go this way and we’ll see who gets to Toontown first!”… I wasn’t about to argue, so we set off in the direction of Big Thunder Mountain and the moms set off in the direction of a dead end at Pooh’s Corner. We were approaching Big Thunder Ranch (R.I.P) when they caught back up with us.
Once my mom saw the error in her ways, she must have sprinted to catch up with us! That was a good laugh.
When we arrived in Toontown, we picked up some Fastpasses for Roger Rabbit’s Cartoon Spin for 4:55.
We especially loved this ride on our last visit and we were excited to check it out again. We explored for a bit before taking a break in the shade to wait out the time until our Fastpass window rolled around.
When our window finally arrived, we approached the ride only to find out that it was temporarily closed. Ok now I was starting to get upset. But we didn’t have time to sit around and wait for it to reopen. So we headed out of Toontown, with hopes to return on another trip.
We had seen a lot over the course of the day and we were headed towards the park entrance to hop over to DCA. My mom had been raving about Radiator Springs Racers and she had to ride it again before we headed home. But first, as we were trekking through Fantasyland, we decided to do the Castle Walkthrough. Walking through the castle is something that we think is extra special, because you can’t exactly enter the castle in WDW (not for free, that is!). Some of the effects on the walkthrough are impressive. It’s a fun exhibit. Look out for the Maleficent shadow towards the end of the walkthrough.
After the Castle, we headed over to DCA.
It was dusk, it had been a very long day, and we were looking for some alcohol. So we headed straight towards Pacific Wharf for beers and margaritas.
I decided to get two margaritas from Rita's, one strawberry and one regular. After drinking about half of both, I just threw caution to the wind and decided to mix the two. Delicious.
Now that we were nicely buzzed, it was time to hit up Goofy’s Sky School one more time. We really do love this underappreciated Paradise Pier gem.
I just had a couple beers from the assorted counter service locations. The line at the fancy beer cart was very long, so I went wherever there wasn't a line.
After Goofy, it was time to head over to RSR, but we had no Fastpass. We had never ridden the ride without one, so we were interested to see how this would play out.
We hopped in the single rider line and we were sitting in our cars after 25 minutes. My mom and I even got to share a racer. She had really wanted to ride this attraction again, so I was happy that she got to live it up one last time before the trip was over.
So, this was Scott, my mom, and I's fourth time to ride RSR counting our previous trip. All three of the previous times, we had gone down Luigi's side and gotten some cool new white wall tires. We had never gone down Ramone's side, and we're the kind of people who like to do EVERYTHING at Disney so we wanted to see that side at least once. When we were getting placed out of the single rider line, Scott and I got placed in two consecutive cars. Which meant, one of us was going down one side and one of us was going down the other. When we pulled up to the fork in the road, my car was going in to Ramone's! I was really glad I got to see the other side for once, and hopefully Scott will next time too. Though, I do think the Luigi side is cooler.
Before our night ended, we wanted to close things down back in Disneyland. It would have felt wrong ending our trip in DCA. Whenever we take a trip to WDW, we always have to close out our last night in the Magic Kingdom. It only felt appropriate that we close out our last night here in the OG Disney park.
IT. WAS. INSANE. We entered DL at 9:20, promptly as the firework show was happening. Main Street was packed like you wouldn’t believe. At one point, my mom asked, “Where are we going?!” and I responded with, “Wherever this crowd takes us!” There was no deviating from the flow of people being ushered down the sidewalk. We were being herded like cattle and there was no changing that. We just had to cross our fingers and hope we ended up in the same spot. On the bright side, we got to experience some of the Main Street projections. The Tangled lanterns were amazing.
The crowd might've been stressful, but I was really glad that we got to see what the projections looked like on Main Street! There were some variations to the scenes that were really cool!
By the time the current of guests let up and we could open our eyes and take a breath, we had ended up in Tomorrowland.
Which was good, because were headed towards the Alice in Wonderland ride. This ride is closed down during the fireworks, so we thought we’d be clever and hop in line as soon as the show was over and be some of the firsts to get on. First of all, we were not the only ones who had this idea. 2nd, the ride probably took 45 minutes to reopen. So we ended up standing in a very crowded line for what seemed like forever. Worth it. This is our favorite dark ride. We couldn’t leave without riding it.
After Alice, we were just sort of wandering around, looking for one last thing to ride. Well of course we were naturally pulled towards Adventureland, where we had to hit up the Jungle Cruise before departing.
Our skipper wasn’t very good, so this experience was sort of lacking. But it was interesting seeing the ride at night. It has a much different look and feel than it does during the day.
As a former WDW Skipper, I don't like saying that a Skipper "wasn't good." Everyone has their own style of delivery, but you have to have some heart in it, even if it was the 30th trip around the river that day. I go more in to detail about riding the Jungle Cruise at night on our last Trip Report, so I won't repeat myself.
The park was still open, so before we left, we visited our favorite snack location once more, Jolly Holiday. I got a grilled cheese with a cup of tomato soup. The grilled cheese was ok, but the soup was delicious. Dipping the sandwich into the soup made for an excellent late night snack.
When we started our trip, Alli had her sights set on one souvenir and one souvenir only: the Disneyland 60th Anniversary stein. She had plans to buy it before we left. When she attempted to purchase the stein from Jolly Holiday, the cast member informed us that they only had one left, and it was cracked. She was crushed. So, as you can imagine, I earned some serious boyfriend points when I ran over to Coke Corner to buy one of THEIR last ones.
I knew that this was the one souvenir I just had to get. Apparently it was pretty delicate, because the Cast Members at Jolly Holliday were saying that any of the steins had broken. I should have purchased the stein earlier in the trip, one of the times that we were walking out of the park, but it just kept slipping my mind! I'm so glad that Scott came through for me!
As I’ve said previously, it had been a long day. It had been a long FEW days. Alli and I typically spend months planning our Disney vacations. And here we were, at the end of one, when we had no intentions of even coming not three days earlier. Everything worked out perfectly. We achieved our goal of seeing the new 60th anniversary additions, and everything was amazing and completely worth it. On top of that, we were able to spend a weekend having a blast with our moms, which is not something that happens too often anymore. It was an amazing vacation and we’re both so thankful for all of you reading along and commenting. Until our next Disney trip (now Scott, we really need to get down to business on planning that)…
Scott and Alli
Signing off.
Wait a minute! You're forgetting! We said we were going to explain how we felt about a quick two day in the parks trip, as opposed to our normal long trips. I would say, that I was a little bummed about missing out on several favorite rides due to them being down while we were trying to ride them. That was the downside of only having two days, wasting an hour waiting around for a ride felt much longer and afterwards we were bummed both that we didn't get to ride and that we wasted valuable park time. However, we had an amazing two days! We went in with the mindset that everything we got to do was great, not that it was only great if we got to do everything. But hey, I still really want to go back and hit the things we missed, and my mom is running the half marathon over Labor Day Weekend again…Scott, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
All I'm thinking about is that bacon mac and cheese cone from Cozy Cone. And I agree 100%. We didn't have our usual down-to-the-minute itinerary, and that was ok. We went into this with the mind set that going to Disney and missing a few attractions was better than not going at all. We flew by the seat of our pants and it turned out great. "Spontaneous Disney Trip" is something that we can officially cross off of our bucket list. But maybe next time we'll leave the spontaneity to someone else.
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