Snapshots of Magic

A lot of people have asked me how I can keep going back to Disneyland so often. My answer is simple: It's the magic!

I thought I would take the opportunity of an 11 hour drive to write a little about it. I just hope I can give a peek at the fun I've had.

A while back my friend told me that I have to do a character breakfast as part of my Disney experience. We combined that advice with a desire to see Disney's Grand Californian Hotel and went to breakfast at the Storytellers Cafe.







My friend was right. We had an amazing experience. In fact that breakfast was just the start of a very magical day at Disneyland. Maybe my next blog will be about that day. It's a great example of what I'm talking about, but I promised snapshots, not a long story.

We enjoyed our breakfast so much that we've been back four times since. The Grand Californian didn't disappoint either... Every time we go there I am awed by it's beauty and it's attention to detail. It's my goal to stay there for a few nights someday... But it's pretty expensive, so it probably won't be any time to soon.









Obviously these aren't the best quality pictures. I just wanted to show a little bit of the beauty if the lobby and lobby floor.
The thing about the breakfast at the Storytellers cafe is that the characters aren't the most exciting. It's Chip & Dale along with some of their woodland friends. No Mickey, no Minnie, no Donald. The upside is that it's some of the best food in the resort and it's the least expensive character breakfast.

Having eaten there so often we have made a few discoveries. Of the four times we've eaten there it has only come close to disappointing us once; this trip actually. This trip we started our breakfast a 7:50 am, later than we ever have before. What we found out is that it gets really busy the later into the day you arrive.

The crowd wasn't too bad when we arrived. But people kept arriving throughout breakfast. This meant that the characters didn't really have enough time to interact with us. It also meant that the food had to be prepared faster to keep up with the demand. It was still good, but not totally amazing.

Lesson learned: go to breakfast early. It avoids the rush, the characters have more time for each of the kids, the food is better, and you have plenty of time before the parks open.

We have been to Disneyland on crowded days and on slow days. It seems obvious that it's better to go when the parks are not crowded. It's important to have a plan for dealing with the crowds. It's possible to have fun on a crowded day, but it means you have to compromise on your to-do list.

Yesterday was as busy as I've ever seen it. It turns out there was a huge charity event at the park yesterday morning, and the park was full of the participants. It was so bad that we couldn't even park at the Mickey and Friends lot; nope, we had to park off-site at the Garden Walk mall.

If you're at Disneyland for several days, one crowded day isn't that bad. If you're only there for one day you need to reassess what you consider most important to do while at Disneyland. For us it meant that we had to ignore most of the rides at Disneyland. We also spent more time at California Adventure.

Lesson learned: It's better to go for multiple days, one day makes it difficult to get everything done, especially with kids.

California Adventure is smaller than Disneyland, but it's also less crowded. It's a great way to escape the crowds at the bigger park. It also has some if my favorite rides; Soarin' Over California and Toy Story Midway Mania are both amazing rides.







California Adventure is marketed as a park for older guests. It is smaller than Disneyland, but Disney is pouring millions of dollars into improving the park.

They are adding a whole new area to the park based in the Pixar movie 'Cars'.

They are creating a whole new nightime spectacular to compete with Fantasmic, and they are redoing the entire Pacific Wharf area. Below is a picture of the empty lagoon and all the equipment they will need fir the new show "World of Color". Sorry about the quality of the picture but I had to take it from the cage on the Fun Wheel.







Speaking of the Fun Wheel... If the newly remade Mickey's Fun Wheel is any indication... It's working!













The other great thing about California Adventure is that there are always interesting things to discover. Between the Aladin stage musical at the Hyperion Theater, the future of the park at the Blue Sky Cellar, or learning how to create "magic" at the Animators Workshop. There are plenty of things to see that have little or nothing to do with rides.







This time the Animators Workshop had a really cool display on zoetropes, the turn table would spin fast, it didn't really seem to make much of a difference until they started flashing a strobe. All of a sudden the spinning table came alive with the different characters being animated by your mind processing the spinning images. How COOL is that?!

Going back to Disneyland I feel like I should point out what Disney does right. The magic of Disney is found in the details. They believe in taking care of the guests... But that's just a small part of it. They try to take care of the small details. Even the ones that guests aren't likely to see or notice.







Candy corn stalks






Candy corn grapes






Sign on the Monsters Inc ride







The little details make it fun to keep coming back to see what you can find this time. Disney makes you want to come back to find that next hidden Mickey, or to meet that next character you've been trying to find, or to see what little changes they have made. It's even worth going on the Jungle Cruis over and over agan to see what new corny jokes gave been added to the tour.

Sometimes that level of detail can be overwhelming. That was the mistake we made yesterday. We wanted to see and do everything, but we were spread to thin and ended up robbing ourselves of time by trying to do it all without a real plan.

Lesson learned: plan your time. Don't try to do all of both parks in one day, you'll run out of time. Focus on what you really want to accomplish. You might be able to do a few things in both parks. But trying to hit all the highlights of both parks can make it hard to really experience either park. Although I do admit that a well planned approach would help you to do more than we did. It's very inefficient to walk back and forth "Willie-Nillie".

The highlight of the trip yesterday was absolutely the Halloween Screams fireworks show.



















It was probably the best fireworks show I've ever seen. They devoted different parts of the show to different villians. There were new fireworks I hadn't seen, lasers and projections that were cool, a flying ghost dog (Zero), and flame jets shooting 20 - 30 feet tall.

Anyway, this has been a long blog to not really talk about our trip. I fear I didn't accomplish my goal. I guess my next blog will have tell the story of our most magical day at the Disneyland resort.

For now I'll end with one last but of magic. After the first time we took Ryan to Disneyland when he was about 21 months old we asked him if he had fun. He couldn't say much, but he nodded his head very enthusiastically and said, "Again... Please!!" The look on his face will stay with me forever. You can't tell me that's not real magic!