10/2-10/2 trip report

[LadyDarling]

Alrighty! Here goes. Be patient with my spelling and all. I'm EXHAUASTED! But here's what I remember!

We arrived Saturday around 3pm. We checked into our hotel (The Four Points Sheraton in Fullerton) and headed into the parks after lounging around in for a bit. What a great way to get my mind off of all the HUGE stress I've had lately! I owe this weekend entirely to my wonderful husband's TLC. He's soo cool! :kiss: Alright - I won't bore ya'll with snuggly stuff (though sometimes it's SOO HARD!) . :zipit:

Tonight, we had dinner at the Wine Trattoria in DCA. We both had the house Pinot Grigo (would not recommend it), the Harvest Minestrone soup (which was INCREDABLE), and we split the lasagna (wouldn't recommend this for folks like me who aren't used to eating greasy food - the creamy cheese sauce was just too oily and heavy for my tastes). Overall, the meal was around $30. Then we headed over to Disneyland Park. Our goal? To get a great view for the fireworks tonight from Main Street (something we barely do).

While we were in the parks tonight, we waited about 15 minutes to ride Pirates of the Caribbean. The hairy legged fellow is still missing, but overall, a great ride, just like always! Some of the characters looked as if they had recieved a recent touch up (or maybe it was just more magical for me due to my wonderful husband's thoughtfulness - he puts prince charming to shame sometimes).

Please read on for more!

 

[LadyDarling]

We also hopped in line for the Haunted Mansion Holiday. The wait was 25 minutes. While he gotnin line, I grabbed fast passes for about 30 minutes out. We rode through once and both noticed different things than the years previous to it! Here's my quick list from both rides (we rode Pooh in between):
1) No maps were given out to "find oogie" but the voice over when you step out of the stretch room is still there (OOgie saying something like, "Fine me if you can.").
2) All the "packages" were opened in the boarding area this time.
3) We noticed that the garland adorning the lamps as you make your way from the portrait room to the doom buggies aren't just dead wood. They have mini pumpkins and holly berries on them. Very nice combo. Maybe I just never noticed this before though.
4) The creepy doll sitting on top of the coffin in the Conservatory was holding a hammer this time and he had a box of nails beside him as if he was keeping the coffin open or closed. Kudos to anyone who can read the label on the box of nails, but I think it said "Nightmare Coffin Nails" or something like that.
5) In the ballroom scene, on the table, near to the woman who is blowing out the candles, is a large pie which looks like it has a black cat baked inside it! The tail sticking out rotates. Never noticed this before. I think some of the table setting (gingerbread stuff) was new as well, but I may just be foggy on last year's stuff.
6) In the graveyard scene, if you look off into the backdrop, on the left side of the doom buggy, right before you turn to see the singing pumpkins, you can see the tower of Jack's laboratory all lit up.
7) Never noticed the flying reigndeer following the two ghosts who bicycle in circles before.
8) In Madame Leota's room, they've added a creepy nutcracker on a table in the foreground whose jaw opens and closes by itself. It's eyes are also fiberoptic, so they change colors and glow (creepy).
9) Also in Madame Leota's room, there is a pentagram type design made by cards behind her. Last year, it was a large Oogie Boogie card.

We did a lot of walking around and window shopping, since one of our motivations of coming up was to get mouse ears and get some carepackage shopping done. I forgot to mention that at the Wine Trattoria, we got a couple of free kids coloring/puzzle books and crayons (which I can give to my nephew-in-law/god-son-in-law). They are really cute. Timon and Pumba star in them talking about park safety.

Read on yet again for more!

 

[LadyDarling]

We settled in for the fireworks at a spot right across from the Carnation Pavillion. They were brillant as always! There was 1 tree in our way, but it was a great spot to relax. Hubby held down the fort while I headed off and came back with snacks (hot chocolate and a chocolate chip cookie - about $8 from Pizza Port). The swing band was playing in the Carnation Plaza before hand, so the music was great. Since this was the only evening entertainment though (other than the DCA's Electrical parade), it was pretty busy, but a good time was had by all. The castle pyros were GREAT! And Kristen's right - no Tinkerbell.


We went to bed pretty much after that. But it was a night of hotel horrors!

Now - let me say that our hotel room for $100 off travelocity.com wasn't "bad". It was a nice King room. But we did have some problems. For 1, the toilet had been clogged since we checked in. Since neither of us "dropped a bomb" or used the toilet too much in our first hour or so there, we didn't notice it until now - almost midnight. We called the front desk and they sent a maitinance guy up... who really didn't seem to know how to use a plunger at all. After 20 minutes of working at it (and sloshing water all over the bathroom floor), he said he needed a different plunger and left for about 5 minutes, returning with the same plunger again and going to work. All in all, a 5 minute task took him about 1/2 an hour, if not a little over, but at least it was a problem that was quickly responded too... My dear husband was left to wipe up all the water left on the bathroom floor and the toilet seat.... Now, we're just about ready to hit the hay when our neighbors come into thier room... From the voices, there were at least 6 of them, mostly VERY loud giggly women talking about... well... things they only talk about in the "adult" section of book stores, so I'll leave ya'll to your imaginations. But we were exhausted. We tried to sleep through it for about an hour, thinking they'll get tired of it and quiet down. It didn't work. By now, it's about 1:30am. We call the front desk and ask them to ask the room to quiet down. It takes about 30 minutes for that to get done (via a security guard knocking on there door, followed by a frantic "Jim! Quick! Put your clothes on!" ). THey quiet down... for about 15 minutes. We call down again and complain (we usually don't complain, but foul language and at that indecent hour... I'm glad we don't have kids in our room with us!). We hear the phone ring in thier room (it's loud in that hotel), a few hushed voices, and they were down to a very dull roar for the rest of the night. YES! :sohappy: Peace at LAST! I'm not someone who needs it silent to sleep. In fact, I don't like it that quiet, but that was crazy.... :snore: :snore: :snore:

So - we get up and check out.... and guess what? Our toilet plugs AGAIN (on only liquid!!!!!). SO my husband lets the front desk know. They gave us the managers card. My Hubby talked to the manager, letting him know that we completely understand that he can't control our noisey neighbors, but that toilet thing... you don't pay $100 for a room and have the plumming back up - along with having to sop up the water ourselves after the maitience man. I know we sound horribly picky, but - we expect to get what we pay for.

Does the day get better? Answered in the next installment!

 

[LadyDarling]

We got to the park and had breakfast at the River Belle Terrace. This just isn't our day! The service was so slow that our food was cold by the time we got it. We ate it anyway though, and just relaxed, watching folks hurry by, and the Mark Twain sail around the Rivers of America. While my hubby was getting food - I was getting fast passes for indiana jones. We hopped onto that next. GREAT FUN! That new snake is INCREDIBLE! Everything seemed a little more polished and the effects were WONDERFUL. The new snake is lightyears above the old one, and looks great. :sohappy:

We strolled around some more and tried the shooting arcade. It went down while we were shooting, but they offered to give us our money back, so it was okay. Lines weren't too bad today at all. Splash moutain had a 35 minute wait. We got fast passes for it and checked our time. See, while hubby was getting breakfast, I was also making lunch PS at the Blue Bayou. We arrived early and were able to get a waterfront table. The service was great, if a tad swift (gotta clear up those tables!). We shared the Calimarie (which was okay - not great), and the seafood salad (which was good, but WAY too much food for 2 people! You could have had 3 eat from that bowel!). After a couple of Mint Juleps (yum yum) and some hot tea, we headed to Main Street. On whim, we thought "Hey, let's try Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln again. We haven't tried it in years." Turns out that was a HIT! A show that we used to SLEEP THROUGH is now entertaining and moving! If you haven't seen this in a long time, they've added some great effects and given it more of a "story". It really was fun - and nice to get off our feet for a while.

From here, we headed into DCA. We walked over to Tower of Terror, but it was too long a wait (35 minutes). We instead went over and saw "Muppet Vision 3D". It had been a while and I recently rented "Muppet's Treasure Island" to cheer myself up one day. It was still great fun - especially since most of the audience had never done it before. I noticed, for the first time, a sign on the front desk that said something like, "For help, yell "Free donuts!". It was pretty funny. BTW, you can now meet and greet Miss Piggy on Hollywood Blvd! And they are selling some really cute beanies of the muppet characters (Rizo and Bean Bunny were my favs, though I didn't pick them up this time).

So how else can you spend some laid back time at Disneyland? Read on, oh fellow, faithful Disney adventurers!

 

[LadyDarling]

The Final Installment! WHew!

We stopped off at the gift shop and picked up my little sister's mouse ears! I have to give kudos to a gal from the Gay Day group who was at the counter. We were trying to figure out how to spell Charollette (see? I still can't spell it!). :hammer: I think she got it right for us and we added it to the hat (a pink Minnie one). We also picked up some Salt water taffy and a couple pairs of sunglasses (needed 'em as we both broke/lost ours).

From there, we headed into Downtown Disney and more specifically "World of Disney". We picked up a couple of t-shirts. They have these great new screen print, mens, fitted, long sleeve shirts with vintage movies on them (a blue on of the skeleton dance, a black one of The Black Cauldron, a green one of Fantasia - featuring the Chernabog -, and a brown one, but I can't remember what film was on it). I ended up getting the black one for ME! For him,we got a dragon t-shirt (they've got some great new ones for the fall!). We also went "grocery shopping". A couple of boxes of Mickey Macaroni. Don (my wonderful husband) is a big Nightmare Before Christmas fan (to the point where we have Jack gaurding/greeting at our bedroom door in his big statute), so we picked him up a mug with Jack's face on it.

We got a couple of granitas at Wetzles Pretzels for the ride home (1 blue rasberry and 1 kiwi strawberry).

Overall - a good time was had by all. Kudos to those who read this far! :kiss:
~Jay
PS. We later called the hotel manager. He's offering us a free night in an upgraded room to try them again. We'll let know how that goes! We might be up there next month or towards the end of this one again. We'll see.

 

[stranger]

6) In the graveyard scene, if you look off into the backdrop, on the left side of the doom buggy, right before you turn to see the singing pumpkins, you can see the tower of Jack's laboratory all lit up.

I've never noticed it before...something new to look for.

On whim, we thought "Hey, let's try Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln again. We haven't tried it in years." Turns out that was a HIT! A show that we used to SLEEP THROUGH is now entertaining and moving

The first time I watched the new Lincoln show I couldn't stop giggling because of the earphones. I'm very ticklish and just the sensation of someone talking or blowing in my ear had me giggling. :lol:


Thanks for the trip report and glad you had a good time shopping.

 

[RU42]

Quite an adventure, thanks for sharing!

RU

 

[LouDisney]

Thanks for your report.

 

[dreamteacher]

cool report

 

[LadyDarling]

Just as a quick update, we did recieve an apology letter from the hotel, redeemable for a free night. The problem is...It was typed up by the guy my husband talked to and refers to him through the entire thing as "Mr. J. Darling"..... That's me!!!!! He's Don... geez...