Disneyland trip report

[Mushe]

Feels a little silly to do for Disneyland, but there’s so much new since we went last year!

We took DS (8) on a two day trip as his birthday present, delayed until after the holidays and again because he got a stomach bug.

Love:
- We stayed at the Springhill Suites convention center, which is really new. We’ve also stayed at the Residence Inn next door and Hyatt house across the street, among others, and this is our favorite! Super easy to walk to the park, has CVS right downstairs, has mini fridge and microwave, and a full bedroom door to help us all sleep better. The pool deck is good viewing for fireworks, although the pool itself is just for dipping. We didn’t use it at all. We have Bonvoy points and stayed for free. They were fantastic about letting us reschedule the very day we were supposed to travel last month.

- Galaxy’s Edge was so cool! We camped out at the train depot at opening on Friday, and got boarding passes for Rise of the Resistance. I think I was in the wrong place (up the stairs), but it ended up ok. We had group 71 and got the notification to board at 2:30pm. We immediately went to the land and walked on to Millennium Falcon in about 20 minutes. My DS bought himself a custom droid on day 2 ($100), which he loves. It was really neat to have an area for the droids to play with each other. Blue milk was meh but fun to try. Oga’s was loud but, again, fun to try. Drinks were weak. 😆 Rise was AMAZING! I had such a good time, and my DS loved it.

- Park hoppers: We love to park hop at Disneyland, although I hate how much it increases the price. I bought 6 one day park hopper tickets through a charity auction, for I think $700? It was a little less than rack rate when we bought them. I love the ease of max pass, but it was annoying to spend an extra $120 for our two days.

- Food: We lucked out with the food & wine festival timing! It was fun to try some bites, but the two drinks we tried were ridiculously overpriced at $14 and didn’t seem like they had any booze. It was so hard to get to the kiosks, though. Lines were nuts on our main CA day, Saturday. I was pretty impressed with most of our food. H and I generally split an adult meal and DS would get a kids meal. We don’t seem to get that hungry when we’re there.

Hated: That’s more emotion that I have about this, but...
- Since it’s so new, it felt like Galaxy’s Edge got crazy quickly. We couldn’t even see the lightsaber displays because of some clueless adults draping themselves over the display just chatting. 🙄 I preferred that DS get a droid anyway, but sheesh.

- Water filling stations. Come on, Disney! They’re hard to find, and I saw a recent article that CA doesn’t have any. We filled up before leaving the room, but I drink a lot of water and needed to be strategic to keep my bottle full.

[alleinesein]

RE: water filling stations. They have slowly been adding them to the parks but you can always get ice water at any quick service location for free. I pop into Alien pizza planet for ice and then fill up throughout the day.

I've did opening day for ROTR and it was insane. You didn't walk into Dok Ondar's because so many people wanted to check it out. I lucked out and spent a decent amount of time the night before playing with the sabers in there. The CM popped a blade in and just let me do my thing for a good 15-20 minutes.

[Mushe]

Thanks! I didn’t realize they’d give ice water anytime. I was stoked to find a random bottle filler on the way out of Millennium Falcon.

[luv2rn4fun]

Glad you guys were able to do your DS’ Disney trip! Sounds like you had a great time!! We were actually there on Friday too...ride times weren’t bad- seemed like everyone was there for the Food and Wine Festival, ROTR, and the new parade.

As for CA Adventure/water refills...I usually use the drinking fountain in Cars Land (by Flo’s and the bathrooms) to refill bottles. Good to know we can get ice for free- will be doing that from now on!

[Mushe]

Mar 3, 2020 23:14:44 GMT -5 luv2rn4fun said:

Glad you guys were able to do your DS’ Disney trip! Sounds like you had a great time!! We were actually there on Friday too...ride times weren’t bad- seemed like everyone was there for the Food and Wine Festival, ROTR, and the new parade.

As for CA Adventure/water refills...I usually use the drinking fountain in Cars Land (by Flo’s and the bathrooms) to refill bottles. Good to know we can get ice for free- will be doing that from now on!

Aw, I’m sorry we missed you! We only did CA a tiny bit on that Friday afternoon. I finally enticed DS back on grizzly river run, after he’d been soaked at WDW a few years ago.

[luv2rn4fun]

Mar 5, 2020 0:01:41 GMT -5 Mushe said:

Mar 3, 2020 23:14:44 GMT -5 luv2rn4fun said:

Glad you guys were able to do your DS’ Disney trip! Sounds like you had a great time!! We were actually there on Friday too...ride times weren’t bad- seemed like everyone was there for the Food and Wine Festival, ROTR, and the new parade.

As for CA Adventure/water refills...I usually use the drinking fountain in Cars Land (by Flo’s and the bathrooms) to refill bottles. Good to know we can get ice for free- will be doing that from now on!

Aw, I’m sorry we missed you! We only did CA a tiny bit on that Friday afternoon. I finally enticed DS back on grizzly river run, after he’d been soaked at WDW a few years ago.

How fun! Did he like it better this time!?! Mine totally wouldn’t like Grizzly River Run- they don’t like the tiny bit of splash on pirates (although they do tolerate it 🤣). I had a similar experience on Fri getting DS1 to finally ride Radiator Springs again (he loved it the first time until it became a race car LOL)- he ended up going twice and wanted to go a third time! I can’t wait for them to be able to go on the bigger rides (DS2 is only 37” so it will be a good year or more)!

[alleinesein]

I love Grizzly River but I never get wet enough on it. I want to get soaked and never do.