Trip Report Loco goes west! A DLR trip 4 years in the making!

Now that the clothes are washed, the lawn mowed, and I’ve made my return to work(booooo!) it’s time for me to start another TR before I forget more details that I didn’t take note of!

Who: Myself and Mrs. Loco, A. I call her A because I’m too lazy to type her entire name.
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Where: Uhhhhh, Disneyland, with a few stops throughout Orange County.

When : September 14-19.

Why : Because we wanted to. It was also a celebration of both of our September birthdays.

Enough with the details though, you’re here to see pictures and to read my thoughts on Walt’s Disneyland right? Let’s get started!

Day one, travel day.

We originally had this trip planned for September of 2018. Unfortunately A’s father was nearing the end of his battle with cancer, and we decided we didn’t want to be out of town at that time. Our next trip to CA was planned for June of 2020, but we all know why we didn’t get to go on that trip. Needless to say, we were nervous some large life-altering event would happen before we were able to go on our trip. Thankfully this didn’t happen. Third time really is the charm I guess!
Sweating Flowers In The Dirt GIF by Paul McCartney


Our flight out of Dallas was at 10:30 am. We live a few hours from love field. I decided to stay at a hotel not far from the airport the night before, rather than getting up early and trying to fight through morning rush hour traffic to get to the airport. This turned out to be a wise idea. Even from our hotel it took 45 minutes with traffic to get to our parking spot!

Travel day selfie!
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Thankfully things weren’t nearly as hectic inside the airport and we made it through security and to our gate with plenty of time for some Whataburger breakfast!

Our steed for the trip out.
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Southwest sent us a dozen drink coupons about a month before our trip. It was a fun flight!
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Living Music Video GIF by Dierks Bentley


The flight itself was smooth and in three hours we were in sunny Southern California. Long Beach to be exact! This was a great little airport! Much closer to Anaheim than LAX, and much more affordable than John Wayne!
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Baggage claim was located outside(literally) the terminal. Our flight’s bags began unloading almost immediately, which is a nice change from Orlando or love field!
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The Uber pickup area is steps away from baggage claim, and soon we were on our way to Anaheim. This day was added on after our initial booking, so I ended up having a different hotel called the Cortona Inn and Suites. Unfortunately they were having some sort of plumbing issue and weren’t able to get us our room. Instead they comped us a night at the much nicer Hyatt next door!
Fuck Yeah Yes GIF


Up next : a super early dinner, and a short walk around downtown.
 

Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Travel day continued.

Some palm trees for my friend @Darstarr
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I took this picture to remember how much gas cost, I didn’t notice the billboard until later! Snoop would approve!
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Snoop Dogg Yes GIF


We had a bit of an issue getting our room at the Hyatt. The girl working the front desk had never done a room credit from another hotel, so we had to wait for the manager to show up and show her how. This took about 45 minutes, but luckily our room was ready once they figured things out.

We relaxed in our very spacious(sorry I forgot room pictures) room for a bit before deciding to go out in search of food. We ended up at the pizza press at Anaheim hotel.

This was my pizza. It was quite tasty
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A’s pizza. Also tasty, but not as much.
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We were already feeling the effects of the time difference after our late lunch(or is it early dinner?). We pressed on toward Downtown Disney.
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We made it!
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We immediately were met with one of the big differences between DLR and WDW. They still do the old style security bag checks here. I wasn’t a fan before, and I’m still not a fan of this time consuming and inefficient method of security screening.
Disgusted Design GIF


We had no real destination in mind, just wanted to walk around and stay awake.
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They had some really nice floral displays set up for the company wide diversity celebration.
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Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Travel day continued.

A few more displays
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You can see the weather was picture perfect. They had been suffering a heat wave the week before we arrived, but temps never got above the low 80s our entire trip and were usually in the 70s. A stark difference from what we’re used to!
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We browsed a few shops along the way. I had to talk A out of buying all of this for our dog pickle.
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A’s favorite Lego display. I don’t know why she relates to that movie so much! 😂
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We made it all the way across dtd and kept going to the Disneyland Hotel to have a look around. There was some work being done around the sorcerer hat.
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We ended up relaxing in the shade near these guys. The work on the new DVC tower was in full swing and quite loud.
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A wanted to see the Halloween display at Grand Californian, so we started that way. I wonder who this person cheers for?
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The Oogie Boogie display.
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We headed back to DtD via the grand Californian entrance which happened to put us right in front of salt and straw. Might as well get a little sugar boost! Half a scoop of spiced goat cheese pumpkin pies, and half a scoop of Beechers flagship cheese with apple pie. So good!
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We were running out of steam pretty quick. The traveling and the time change were really taking a toll on us. We headed back to the room and stayed up as long as we could. We made it to 8 pm! 🤣

Up next : Our first day at Disneyland!
 

fractal

Well-Known Member
Travel day continued.

A few more displays
View attachment 668544

You can see the weather was picture perfect. They had been suffering a heat wave the week before we arrived, but temps never got above the low 80s our entire trip and were usually in the 70s. A stark difference from what we’re used to!
View attachment 668551

We browsed a few shops along the way. I had to talk A out of buying all of this for our dog pickle.
View attachment 668543

A’s favorite Lego display. I don’t know why she relates to that movie so much! 😂
View attachment 668545

We made it all the way across dtd and kept going to the Disneyland Hotel to have a look around. There was some work being done around the sorcerer hat.
View attachment 668556

We ended up relaxing in the shade near these guys. The work on the new DVC tower was in full swing and quite loud.
View attachment 668546

A wanted to see the Halloween display at Grand Californian, so we started that way. I wonder who this person cheers for?
View attachment 668547

The Oogie Boogie display.
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We headed back to DtD via the grand Californian entrance which happened to put us right in front of salt and straw. Might as well get a little sugar boost! Half a scoop of spiced goat cheese pumpkin pies, and half a scoop of Beechers flagship cheese with apple pie. So good!
View attachment 668550

We were running out of steam pretty quick. The traveling and the time change were really taking a toll on us. We headed back to the room and stayed up as long as we could. We made it to 8 pm! 🤣

Up next : Our first day at Disneyland!

Can't wait!
 

Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day two - Disneyland!

Our early bed time served us well for getting up early for RD. We had our luggage stored and ate breakfast at the hotel before making the walk over to Disneyland. The hotel was right at a mile from the front gate, and took us about 20 minutes with all the crosswalks.

Early morning selfie while waiting for security.
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We were towards the front of the crowd and made it through security fairly quickly. There were only a few parties ahead of us at the gate!
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They opened the gates about 30 minutes before park opening. We’d finally made it to Walt’s park!
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It was so great to finally be here after years of delays. We had decided to purchase genie plus for at least the first day or two to make sure we got as many attractions done as possible on our first trip. You can not purchase genie plus without first entering the park if you don’t include it on your ticket(we didn’t), so I logged on to get started, and immediately encountered problems.
Season 9 Eye Roll GIF by The Office


Genie was only showing my ticket as having been scanned in to the park, despite the fact that A was standing right next to me in the middle of town square. We headed over to city hall to see if we could get it straightened out. Love all the trees around the park!
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Guest relations informed me that despite my purchase of genie plus for two people, I’d only been charged for one(which would not turn out to be the case, but more on that later). They scanned A in again and I was able to finish my purchase and make our first reservation of the day for Indiana Jones.

That business out of the way(for now), we made our way down Main Street!
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Tiny castle!
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We joined the small group waiting near Adventureland for RD. Once the park opened we broke away from the masses headed for Adventureland(and SWGE), and headed through the castle to fantasyland.
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Our first stop was Snow White. It was a walk on.
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I vaguely remember the Snow White attraction at MK. I know this one was updated recently. We really enjoyed it!
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Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day two continued.

Next up was another dark ride that has been removed from WDW.
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Our ride as we learned that if you drive drunk you will die and go to hell! I do not remember this ride very well at all, so this was mostly new to me and super bizarre, in a good way!
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Next up was Pinocchio, which I forgot to get any pictures of.
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Go Away Ugh GIF by Saturday Night Live

It was probably my favorite of the classic dark rides. Geppetto was out and about.
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We’d been in the park less than 30 minutes and already had three rides in, things were looking good. Storybook land canal boats only had a five minute wait, so we went there next. We waited way more than five minutes.
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We enjoyed our trip down the canal, but would not make it back onto this attraction the rest of the trip.

It was time for our Indy LL, so we were off to Adventureland next. Unfortunately(or maybe fortunately) the ride was went down just before we arrived. We were given an anytime multiple experience LL and were able to book another LL(BTMRR) immediately.

On to our next attraction. Another first for us!
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We were excited to see the special version of HM!
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I love the New Orleans style mansion.
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I don’t really know Nightmare Before Christmas very well, but I’m always excited for new experiences.
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Loco_driver

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I'm in and I love these decorations at the gates!!
Well welcome to the party friend!

Excited for your trip report. I enjoy others trips to Disneyland since I haven't gotten there yet. I still have issues making the 2 hour direct flight to Orlando. But, hopefully soon, my anxiety will let me fly to California LOL.
The flying doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the stress of dealing with the airport. We are lucky to have pretty similar distance flights to both coasts though!
 

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