Missouri to DLR - Take 2 - Oct 2013 - Updated: Trip Report Complete

[MarbleBob]

I'm so glad you finally went on your trip. I enjoyed the first day recap! Suddenly I'm hungry for a little burger

Thanks! Yeah, I could eat one (or two) of those right now!

A very nice start to your first day at the DLR. The DLH room looks very nice and the food porn looks good.

The schedule during your visit looks good and it is nice to see that you fit LittleTokyo in the schedule.

I like the fisheye pictures.

Very nice update.

Thanks. I'll have some pictures of Little Tokyo up soon. Ninja Potato really LOVED Anime Jungle!

YAAY!! I have been waiting for you guys to get back and start your report....and I LOVE photos!!!

Cool! More photos to come

I'm really enjoying your trip report. I've just crossed that CS place by Pinoccio off our list.

How nice that you and your wife got to sneak away for some adult time. Thanks for sharing the magical moment when the cast member had Mickey sign the picture for your little one.

Looking forward to more

Yeah, there are many much better CS places to have a meal!

Nice report. I'm on board.

Thanks! Glad to have you along

 

[mvf-m11c]

The Village Haus Restaurant at DL is okay but I barely eat at that place since most of the food on the menu is the same as the other restaurants at the whole Resort.

After reading about Trader Sam, I might have to stop in there one day. I am not a drinker so I might go in for the food.

Very nice pictures of you and your family at Cars Land. Every time I see Luigis Flying Tires it is sad that they don't use the beach balls when the ride opened in 2012.

The food looks good at PGG which PrincessInOz, franandaj, and I had during our September trip.

Very nice updates.

 

[MarbleBob]

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, Trader Sam's is really worth a visit, even if you go for the food and drink water/soft drinks. We went back with the kids before going to the Halloween party on Oct 15. We ordered 3 or 4 things off the menu and they were all great. Stay tuned for the photos when we get to that post

 

[disnemimi]

Wow Bob, this is an awesome trip report. The pictures are fantastic. That "pickle" is just the cutest. I must add the Disneyland Hotel just rocks. It is my favorite resort hotel in Disneyland and WaltDisneyWorld. Of course, the Polynesian does come close!! Can't wait for more.
Mimi

 

[PrincessInOz]

We liked the food at Garden Grill as well. I think it might be the must-go place for us in DCA now.

 

[rachaeld]

I am loving this trip report. The photos are brilliant, what sort of camera are you using?

 

[luulu1999]

Wooo whoo Cards!!! Bringing it back to STL can't wait!!!! I have now marked Village Haus off my list also and added garden grill thanks, and because I how awesome it looked I have decided to split our trip and stay the last 4 days at the DLH instead of all offsite I am soooo excited about it!!! Loving your report

 

[MarbleBob]

Wow Bob, this is an awesome trip report. The pictures are fantastic. That "pickle" is just the cutest. I must add the Disneyland Hotel just rocks. It is my favorite resort hotel in Disneyland and WaltDisneyWorld. Of course, the Polynesian does come close!! Can't wait for more.
Mimi

Thanks mom! Thanks for all of your support through the summer/fall. The vacation wouldn't have been quite as fun/comfortable without your help I agree, Disneyland Hotel is now my favorite too. Would love to go back some day!!!

We liked the food at Garden Grill as well. I think it might be the must-go place for us in DCA now.

Same here!!!

I am loving this trip report. The photos are brilliant, what sort of camera are you using?

Thanks for the compliment! By far, most of the photos are from an Olympus Pen E-P3 (I took about 1,500 photos with it during the trip.) It's a Micro 4/3 interchangeable lens camera that's about 2 years old. There are newer/better versions out there now, but I do have a couple nice lenses for it. I'm not the greatest photographer, but I can get some decent shots from time to time

A few of the photos are from my iPhone or my wife's 5yr old Canon point and shoot. And the photos with characters/group shots will usually be from the Photopass+.

 

[MarbleBob]

Wooo whoo Cards!!! Bringing it back to STL can't wait!!!! I have now marked Village Haus off my list also and added garden grill thanks, and because I how awesome it looked I have decided to split our trip and stay the last 4 days at the DLH instead of all offsite I am soooo excited about it!!! Loving your report

Yeah! Go cards!!!

DLH is awesome, you won't regret it!!! Make sure that you spend a lot of time exploring, because there are a lot of hidden gems to stumble upon

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 3 - Continued...

OK, so we left off with eating lunch at Garden Grill. At this point, the plan was to head over to Ariel’s Undersea Adventure, ride it, and then split up. Steph, Ninja, and Buddy would ride Grizzly River Rapids and I’d take Pickle over to ride a few rides in the It’s a Bug’s Life area.

On our way over to the Little Mermaid ride, we saw that they were having a Fineas and Ferb dance party right outside the entrance. We had to stay and watch for a few minutes!!!



“S” to the “I" to the “M" to the “P", Squirrels in my pants. Squirrels… Squirrels...

OK, time to ride the Little Mermaid. We all wanted to ride this one! Except for Buddy. I think he secretly liked it though. The rest of us thought it was awesome.

Then we split up. Pickle and I headed over to ride Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train.



It was actually a really long line. Took about 30 minutes. But Pickle absolutely LOVED it! Stephanie called while we were about to get on the ride and Grizzly River Run’s line was like 40 minutes, so they decided to grab fast passes and head our way. They were waiting for us when we got of the chew chew train.

Next up, let’s ride the bumper cars!!






The theming in this area is amazing. Love the giant crayons, and how the benches were made to look like they were assembled from giant popsicle sticks. Really cool!

All right, let’s go try the lady bug ride. Bad idea, it was a super, super long line. Took like 35/40 minutes. About half as fun as the Mater Jamboree, but still it had an amazing theme to it.



At that point, Ninja was “done”. It was getting hot and too crowded. Pickle wanted to go back to the hotel and swim anyway. So, the three of us headed back on our own, and then Buddy and Stephanie stayed back to ride Grizzly River Rapids before taking a break.

We arrived back at the room around 1:25pm

Ninja stayed back to rest and I took pickle down to the pool. I didn’t bring my phone or a camera, as I intended to swim with her. We tried out both pools and the Mickey hot tub. Pickle was nervous about the watersides, but she had a lot of fun on the “kiddie” version at the base of the monorail tower.

After an hour or two, we came back to the room. Stephanie had been taking a nap, but was waking up as we arrived. With everyone refreshed, we decided to head back to California Adventure.

We had ordered a Photopass +, but forgot to bring the redemption certificate with us on Sunday. We didn’t want to waste time on it during the morning, so we stopped to pick it up on our way back into the park. Now we are in business!

Stephanie and Buddy had grabbed fast passes for Soarin’ earlier so we went there first. This is my favorite ride at Epcot by far, so we enjoy riding the original. This was also Pickle’s first time on this ride, as she was never tall enough to ride it on our previous WDW trips.





After Soarin’ we decided to spend the rest of the afternoon/evening in Carsland before heading over to the World of Color showing at 9pm.

First stop was Flo’s V8 for dinner. Our first Photopass stop before we headed inside...



Once we were inside, Buddy looked at the menu and balked. Man, he’s a picky eater. I gave Stephanie my order and agreed to take him over to Cozy Cones to see if he might find something over there. Nope. Just popcorn or churros for him. You want popcorn for dinner? Oh well, we’re on vacation. Who cares? I've got better things to worry about



We made it back to Flo’s just in time to help carry the food from the counter to a table. We looked around and decided to eat outside so that we could watch the cars cruising through RSR.

Stephanie and I both had the turkey. It was tasty, but the corn was sort of funky…



Ninja Potato had the roast beef. She was disappointed in it. I thought it was OK, but it was cold. She hated the funky corn.



Pickle had the mac and cheese. And, with the trend, she didn’t like it either.



So all in all, Flo’s was cool. Stephanie and I thought the food was pretty good, but the kids were bummed. I don’t think I’ll ever need to eat there again.

On our way out, we decided to get another Photopass picture on the main drag.

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 3 - Continued some more...

Turns out that there were two photographers standing there. One of them was like, “Hey, you guys have a Photopass+. I can walk around with you for a while and take a bunch of pictures. Sort of like a tour guide.” Um, are you kidding? Yes, please!!!! How cool is that!

He probably spent 30 minutes with us, walking around, pointing out hidden mickeys, sharing stories, etc. We really lucked out.

Here are some of my favorites from that group of photos








(He told us to look lost)







That was fun!! We parted ways with the photographer and then decided to shop through the stores and explore some more.



And then it started to get dark. Carsland at night is amazing with all the neon lights!!!









Fillmore’s hippy beads...



Dance party!!!



At this point, without much time left to ride any more rides, we decided to get to World of Color early for good viewing spots. I think we got in line around 7:30. That’s a long time to wait for a 9pm show, but I was on my scooter so it wasn’t too bad. Buddy and Stephanie stopped to get a "glow with the show” hat. Anyway, we ended up with a pretty good spot. We were in the blue section and were able to get spots right up on the top of the steps in the center “circle area”. Not bad at all!!!



Pickle had been looking forward to this event for weeks, and guess what? She gave up about half way through it and crawled into her stroller and went to sleep. I guess she should have napped instead of swimming. Oh well! Stephanie and I had seen it before, but none of the others had. Everyone enjoyed it. Even my mom, who I was facetiming with my iPhone so that she could see it live for a little while Great show!!





At that point, we were all exhausted and pretty much headed straight back to our room and went to sleep immediately. Night, night….

 

[rachaeld]

Thanks for the compliment! By far, most of the photos are from an Olympus Pen E-P3 (I took about 1,500 photos with it during the trip.) It's a Micro 4/3 interchangeable lens camera that's about 2 years old. There are newer/better versions out there now, but I do have a couple nice lenses for it. I'm not the greatest photographer, but I can get some decent shots from time to time

A few of the photos are from my iPhone or my wife's 5yr old Canon point and shoot. And the photos with characters/group shots will usually be from the Photopass+.

Thank you for this, when I first started reading and seeing your photos I was thinking it must have been a DSLR and I really don't want to be taking mine with me on our trip - but don't want to rely on my p&s either. I think I better do some research, a new camera sounds like the perfect thing to buy on holiday (price would be heaps cheaper in the USA than in NZ).

 

[MarbleBob]

Yeah, before I bought my camera, I was always jealous of the awesome photos that my sister took with her DSLR and I wanted something better than a point and shoot. However, I had an SLR in college and hardly ever used it because it was so big/heavy. I knew that I wanted something smaller, but still with interchangeable lenses. At first, I considered the Sony NEX cameras, but after a bit of research, I decided that the Micro 4/3 was a better format for me. The M4/3 cameras have come a long way in the last couple of years and the new ones blow mine away. Oh well...

Currently, the Olympus OM-D E-M5 is the king of the crop, but there are other good/cheaper options from Olympus and Panasonic. My dad has the Pen E-PM1 which is an entry level camera with limited external controls. It functions as a point and shoot, but you can set aperture/shutter/iso/whatever from onscreen controls. It's perfect for him and it takes great photos. I think the Pen E-PM2 is more in between, same sensor as PM1 but more external buttons/controls for various settings...

For more information about these cameras, I suggest some of Cory Disbrow's posts on the Disney Photography Blog...

http://www.disneyphotographyblog.com/olympus-mirrorlessom-d-photo-examples-disney/

http://www.disneyphotographyblog.com/dslr-dying/

 

[MarbleBob]

So, coming home from work today, I saw that Stephanie had stacked all the tickets and room cards from (last week) on the kitchen counter. I decided to take them up to the "stash". I've been keeping most of our tickets/keys since we started doing Disney vacations regularly when Ninja Potato was a toddler. I didn't realize just how big the stash had grown. Yikes!!!

Being huge Disney fans, I wonder how tall that stack will get before our days come to an end. Hopefully it'll grow several times over!!!

 

[MarbleBob]

Oh, and happy Friday everybody!!!

 

[PrincessInOz]

Happy Saturday!


Great pics. And you did well with that PP photographer. That is one set of fantastic pictures of the family.

 

[tksbaskets]

WOW I hope a PP + Photographer wants to go with my family in December. What a special treat.

We can't wait to see Cars Land. Last trip to DL we had the beautiful view of "we're building magic" construction walls.

Thanks for taking the time to share. I'm enjoying your trip.
TK

 

[mvf-m11c]

Very nice updates from CL.

All of the pictures with the family are very nice especially the photopass ones.

I am too not a big fan of the food at Flo's V8 Cafe. I do like the inside and outside of Flo's V8 Cafe but the food on the other hand is different.The corn medley was not that good in my opinion as well.

That is a lot of tickets and room cards for over the years.

 

[MarbleBob]

Happy Saturday!


Great pics. And you did well with that PP photographer. That is one set of fantastic pictures of the family.

Thanks! Happy Monday!?!?! (It's still Sunday here )

WOW I hope a PP + Photographer wants to go with my family in December. What a special treat.

We can't wait to see Cars Land. Last trip to DL we had the beautiful view of "we're building magic" construction walls.

Thanks for taking the time to share. I'm enjoying your trip.
TK

Thanks! We were in the same boat as you. Stephanie and I went on a parents only trip to DL back in 2010 and we could see lots of construction on Carsland as well as the Little Mermaid ride. It really made us want to come back!

Very nice updates from CL.

All of the pictures with the family are very nice especially the photopass ones.

I am too not a big fan of the food at Flo's V8 Cafe. I do like the inside and outside of Flo's V8 Cafe but the food on the other hand is different.The corn medley was not that good in my opinion as well.

That is a lot of tickets and room cards for over the years.

Thanks again for the feedback. I'm very happy with those photo pass pictures too. What a great experience

 

[MarbleBob]

Day 4 - Tuesday, October 15

We decided to let the kids sleep in a bit on Tuesday. The game plan was to do some shopping in Downtown Disney in the morning, eat at Trader Sam’s for lunch, and then get ready and head over to Disneyland park the Halloween Party around 3pm.

We wanted to eat breakfast at Tangoroa Terrace around 9:15 and then get to DTD around 10am for when the stores opened up. I was up and ready around 8am, so I decided to grab my camera and explore the grounds for a little while. I brought my my tripod and panoramic head with me, and I thought that I’d try and get some 360 degree spherical panoramas…

Making immersive panoramas is new territory for me, and I have a bit more learning to do in order to get perfect shots every time. That being said, I feel like these are decent and a couple are really good. (I think the hotel room panorama turned out really clean and looks good. Getting the free Hugin photo stitching software to deal with up and down shots was tough.)

Each of the following images are stitched together from 9 individual images. 6 horizontally, one pointing directly up, one pointing directly down, and then another pointing down, but offset about 10 inches so that I could “mask” the tripod out of the final image.

Anyway, I highly recommend that you click on the "interactive 'immersive' 360 degree version for each panorama below, as it will load up in an interactive version where you can drag your mouse to “look” around in sort of a virtual reality view. (The interactive images are hosted on my personal website, which is a work in progress and doesn’t have very much content yet.)

First up is the hotel room. I actually took these photos when we arrived on day 1, but I just finished creating the panorama today, so I'm including it here.

Click here for interactive "immersive" 360 degree version of the photo




The next few panoramas are from my tuesday morning “walk about”.

Next up is the bridge that goes over the pools.


Click here for interactive "immersive" 360 degree version of the photo



Here’s the main lobby. This one has the worst stitching with lots of overlap artifacts. I’ll probably go back to the software and try again for a cleaner result in the future.

Click here for interactive "immersive" 360 degree version of the photo



Back to the main pool area. I wish I was sitting in that hot tub right now!!! (For some reason, the horizon isn’t flat/level on this one, I’ll probably try re-doing this one too.)

Click here for interactive "immersive" 360 degree version of the photo



Finally, this one is from right in front of Tangaroa Terrace. It’s fairly good, but has some stitching errors on Adventure Tower.

Click here for interactive "immersive" 360 degree version of the photo



So, I ended up walking around taking shots for about 45 minutes before heading up to the room. In addition to the panoramas above, I got a few other random shots too…

Heading out of the lobby of the Fantasy Tower (the main building), you turn right to head over to the gift shop or left to head towards the parks. (And of course, you can get to the gift shop from inside the lobby.) I headed right and went towards Steakhouse 55.



Here’s a shot of the monorail slides from the bridge. I had to hold the camera up high in order to get it above the glass walls/rails.



Here’s one up close to the watersides. You don’t realize it but, with the fisheye lens, I had to get up really close


Leaving the waterside area, towards Trader Sam’s, you can see the awesome monorail emblems on the gate.




Between the gate and Trader Sam’s, you’ll find the outdoor fireplace area. This was a perfect to place to relax after a couple drinks on Sunday night. Imagine dark/evening lighting, a cool 60 degrees or so, live music from the bar area, a warm fire, and your true love. Nice!!



Here’s the entrance to Trader Sam’s



And another view of Tangaroa Terrace on my way back to the room



At this point, it was about 9am, so I headed back to see if everyone was ready for breakfast. And yes indeed, they were! The kids were excited to get their Disney bacon fix. For some reason, they think Disney bacon is the best bacon that you can get. I’m not sure that I agree about that, but I do agree that Disney bacon is very good!!! Hmm…. Now I want some bacon!!! Anyway, we arrived at Tangaroa Terrace and ordered our meals.

I should have grabbed a photo from the entrance, but they have kiosks with touch screen computers for you to order “hot” items from the kitchen. It’s really a nice setup. It even has the option to order sides and substitute items. How convenient!!

Here’s a peek at the guys making food in the kitchen



If you didn’t want hot items, they had lots of baked goods as well as fruit and yogurt.





So, we made our choices and headed to the checkout lane. It’s counter service, but they cook the food to order and bring it out to you a few minutes later.



Here’s the drink area





We decided to eat outside again. SoCal weather in October is amazing!!!

Time for a visit with Goofy again? Nope, just Stephanie and Pickle acting goofy while we waited for food.



Buddy possibly wondering how he ended up with such a crazy family...



Ninja saw the baked goods inside and thought that this pineapple lemon muffin looked good. It was indeed good, but sort of weird/unusual too. Too bad they didn’t have a Dole Whip machine because that would be my first choice for a pineapple treat.



It's hard to see in the photo, but there were chunks of pineapple inside.



Then they brought out our food and we started eating immediately. Oops, forgot to get the food shots first! Oh well, I got a couple before it was too late.

Stephanie ordered the french toast with warm banana-caramel sauce. Oh my goodness. That was insanely good!!!



It came with bacon too, but she donated it to the children’s bacon cause.

I ordered the bacon, eggs, and potatoes. It came with a biscuit and bacon, but I donated them to the cause too.



The kids ordered sides of bacon on their own, and then shared the muffin biscuit, and some of our food too. All in all, an enjoyable breakfast. (I think this was our only “sit down” breakfast of the week as we usually preferred to save time by eating in the room or on the way to the parks.)

I guess that's it for now. Up next will be shopping in DTD and the Halloween Party. Yahoo!!!