Park It Right Here!

Okay, so now that I have the food out of the way...

We are Disneyland fans. I love it. I've talked about it before. I don't know why because it's not like we are huge Disney movie people and people in animal costumes that cover their faces freak me the fuck out..but still. Love Disneyland. And Christopher loves Disneyland. We've done more family vacations there than anywhere else, including his high school graduation gift.

But Land. Not World.

Brent went to World once as a little kid and he and I went to World and Epcot once when we were first married and stationed in Orlando and that was it. We've talked about it over the years but the flight is long and why would we go to Orlando where the weather is worse and the flight is longer when we could just go to California?

But once Christopher started reading more about Disney World and the things they had that Land didn't he wanted to go check it out. And as I am a sucker for Disney and the opportunity to spend time with my son I was sold. And as Brent loves us and wants us to be happy he was on board too. The one shift we made was Christopher was in charge of the planning. He and I talked about things and he gave us all options, but the planning was on him. Because let me tell you World takes planning.

So what did we think?

We thought it was a lot. Like a lot. We also realized that for us even with it being a lot what would take other people 6 days still only takes 4. Our biggest problem was that everything was too far apart to really capitalize on that.

See in Disneyland we stay at one of the resort hotels which gets us early entry into one of the parks each day. We knock out a good chunk of the popular rides in that time and then use MaxPass to get our first FastPass for the day and go back and forth between the two parks as needed. We are often "done" with our top list by the afternoon of day one. We generally go for 2 to 2 1/2 days and hit up our favorites multiple times and have plenty of time for shopping and goofing off. It's so easy.

World is not like that. I got us the park hopper passes but would not bother with that going back. It's too much time to start at one park and then ride the bus to another. You can't use the FastPass system the same way. Your passes are booked out months before you get there and you have to use all three before you can book another. Which usually means that there aren't any left to be had. Because you can't book out too many FastPasses you are inline for rides quite a bit, and even with the FastPasses we were often in line for 20 minutes or so.

Because it's crowded.

Like insanely crowded.

Christopher chose the time of year that is historically the lightest attended. It was still crowded. Part of that was the opening of Galaxy's Edge so people who had put off vacations came during what was usually an off time. And part of that is Disney has been aggressively marketing those downtimes to markets where people are on vacation in February. So even though it wasn't as bad as it can get in those parks it was as crowded as a holiday in Disneyland.

Crazy crowds.

The parks are bigger though. Like Hollywood Studios is bigger than California Adventure (the equivalent park) and The Magic Kingdom is bigger than Disneyland. The streets are wider. The lands have a little more open space. So that's nice, but they fill all of that extra space with so many more people. Staying on park doesn't really get you much benefit, because there are SO many more on park hotels that most of the people are staying at the park.

We did do an after hours event on Friday and that was great. It was an extra ticket and limited people so the lines weren't terrible at all. It was cold and we did end up in a couple of long lines at the beginning that if we had known we would have avoided but it was still really nice. You could walk without getting elbowed and lines moved super fast. But again, another ticket, so added expense.

I didn't want to carry my camera around, sometimes it's an extra trip through security if you have one and if you can skip that bag line, then skip that bag line, so I only have a handful of pictures I took myself. And then I have a TON of pictures from them. I bought the Memory Maker and made the boys stop at almost every place I saw a camera person. So I have a lot of those shots. The funny thing (to me) is that they had you do the same poses at each stop no matter where it was; which would be odd, EXCEPT...one of them was TA DA! So I have a Grand Finale Series of TA DA shots with not only Christopher and me but all three of us! At about the third shot when I realized this was going to be a thing I started to get giddy thinking about it. A game within our visit. Gotta love that.

So let's see what are the highlights? First off that Christopher planned everything. I know I keep mentioning that but honestly I think I would have been overwhelmed or not at all prepared if he hadn't done the research and set us up. It's hard for a Land person to understand how complicated World is. Dinner reservations 6 months in advance? FastPasses picked 3 months out? What? Why? But he did it and that was perfect.

Parks:
Hollywood Studios: This is where their Galaxy's Edge is. If you are a big Star Wars fan I bet this is awesome. As it is we aren't that kind of fan so it was cool but not COOL. The new rides were really interesting. The Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run is a really cool concept. It's a video game inside a ride. Everyone has a part to perform. I think if you are the pilot it is the most fun and you get the best view. As a gunner my controls were off to the side so to see what I was supposed to be doing for our mission I couldn't really watch the front of the ride to see what the ride actually was all of the time. But still pretty cool.

The boys were the pilots. I would have rather been an engineer because they have the least to do.

For Rise of the Resistance you have to get to the park and be scanned in before it opens and then use the app to get a boarding group if you want to ride. And even then you might not get a boarding group, or you might get a high number and the ride shuts down so you miss your chance to ride. All sorts of maybes. We did this park our first day so we would have other chances if we didn't get in the first time. And since there was a marathon we didn't know about so all of the roads were closed around our hotel and it took an hour for our Lyft to get us and get us to the park we were ready to do just that. But we slid into the park with 3 minutes to spare and got Boarding Group #24. Whew! Better to be lucky than good!  And it was a cool ride. I don't have pictures, there are a lot online if you are interested, but I didn't take any. I was too busy looking at everything. And there is a lot to look at. I think you could ride it a few dozen times and see something new. And the cast members are full on in character the whole time. No friendly Disney smiles here. It was very fun.

These are not the crowds you are looking for...

The other highlights of Hollywood Studios was the OG Tower of Terror. I have nothing against the reskinned Guardians of the Galaxy version in California Adventure, except that Tower of Terror didn't need a reskin. It's a great ride with a fully realized story. I would have rather seen them do something new but I get it that in California space is an issue and since they are turning that area into Marvel Land it will fit. But...

Also Toy Story Land was amazing. Technically we really explored this on Friday when we could get Slinky Dog Dash FastPasses but still...it's very cool. Much better than Cars Land in Adventure. But to be fair, we aren't Cars fans so that whole area is kind of lost on us.

The boys also really enjoyed the Rock n Roller Coaster. Me? Not so much, it goes upside down and that's not my favorite. But they really liked it.

Over all Hollywood Studios vs. California Adventure is kind of a wash for me. Hollywood Studios has a few better rides and the aforementioned MORE ROOM but it's still a 3/4 day park for us and since it's not just across a walkway it's not convenient for park hopping.  And did I mention the crowds? For instance if we hadn't gotten passes for Slinky dog the lines were well over two hours almost the whole time! Crazy!

And I just realized I need to pare this down because I'm not giving highlights so much as breakdowns. So let me sum up...

Or break this into another blog. Which given I just had major download issues and I want to take a nice socially distanced walk while it's still sunny I'm going to go with that...And I'll leave you with these two shots from HS.

So here we are just chilling at Hollywood Studios...

And here we are Brent still chilling, Christopher having a ball, and me FREAKED THE FUCK OUT...