Trip Report The “lets count the ways Land is greater than World” as seen through the eyes of the #noobsfromgeorgia.

Whelp, this may be a record start of a TR for me. I’m sitting in LAX right now waiting to board and doing my best to put off grading the 30 term papers I need to have done by Monday so why not start this report! There is no true PTR to reference for this trip other than the breadcrumbs I dropped over in the Deja Vu TR. The lowdown is as follows:
The crew: DW, DD, and Myself

Lodging: 1 night at Paradise Pier and 4 nights at The Grand Californian.
The plan: 2 days at Disneyland and 2 days at California Adventure in the following order CS/DL/CA/DL

Despite the title, I promise this wont be a dump on WDW TR but it was hard to ignore the things that DL does so dang well. That said, lets do this.

This journey starts with a night at the Holiday Inn & Suites Atlanta Airport-North. We’ve stayed here once before for a Disney trip and had a great experience. What is nice about this place is you get to park your car for the length of the trip just for staying the night at the hotel and they shuttle you to and from the airport. This is especially nice when you have an early flight, which we did. The accommodations are nice enough and serve the purpose.

We let yelp help us find dinner and found a fantastic taco stand located in a hole-in-the-wall in the bad side of town. Worth it!

As I said before we had to fly out at 06:13 which meant we had to get up early. Andrew W.K woke us up at 04:10 so we could get down to the lobby for the 4:40 shuttle. This was still better than the 3:00 wakeup call we would have had to do if we drove straight from home!

My naive mind had me thinking we would be the only folks at Atlanta’s Hartsfield–Action-Jackson- Atlanta International Airport and Spaceport. Yeah, it was hopping!

We had a mild wait to get through security and were soon enjoying some bagels at our gate with 30ish minutes to spare.

This was our first time flying American and I would absolutely fly them again! The complementary in-flight movies/TV on demand for laptops and iDevices was appreciated and every row had charges to plug your devise in! We got seated and I immediately had to embarrass the kid before watching The Avengers: Half Ya’ll Gonna Die.

 

[lostpro9het]

Finally caught up after starting late on this TR. I will also be in WDW for New Years I'm curious to see just how crowded it will be.

I know NYE and probably the 2nd will be a madhouse but I'm hopeful for some moderate crowds after that. We have ADR at Il Mulino late on NYE and plan on viewing the EC fireworks from the boardwalk/Swalphin area.

After lunch we decided to head back to the resort to relax a bit before we close out the park. Before we left we decided to watch Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln. The waiting area had plenty of wonderful things to look at before the show.

Finally it was our time to view the show. It was well done, very patriotic, and the animatronic has aged very well. There was no filming allowed during the show so this is all you get for pictures.

As we exited we caught Goofy doing what Goofy does.

On our way to the resort we made a short detour so the DD could pick up a little something from the Disney Store.

 

[lostpro9het]

When we arrived in our room we noticed housecleaning had visited and left some holiday cheer.

While the DD chose a traditional form of resting in the room, the DW and I made for Hearthstone Lounge to relax outside with a few libations.

The DD went with a Walk the Plank which was a mixture of Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye Whisky, Orange Juice, Orgeat and fresh Lemon Juice.

I went with the bourbon flight.

Which included a Creek Disney Select Single Barrel.

We sat there for a while sipping and enjoying the weather while thinking about what a great trip we have had.

EDIT:
HA! Cant say K n o b apparently #ohthehumanity! #savethechildren

 

[MegRuss626]

HA! Cant say K n o b apparently #ohthehumanity! #savethechildren

Not the four letter word I expected preceding “Creek”

 

[LisaBelle]

Great report so far. Love hearing all about DLR. LOVE the pins series that came with the gift cards.

 

[lostpro9het]

Not the four letter word I expected preceding “Creek”

Ha! In retrospect, I see what you're seeing ;-)

Great report so far. Love hearing all about DLR. LOVE the pins series that came with the gift cards.

Thank you, ma'am!

So it dawned on us earlier in the day that we've been here for four days and not done the one iconic thing all Disney visitors should do, Monorail! We finished up our drinks and made for DTD to hop on the ride. It was a unique experience getting to take the monorail from outside of the park to the inside of the park. The layout of the interior is different as well. There is more of an emphasis for folks to sit down than stand like at WDW. Despite their age and smell, I think I prefer the WDW trams BUT really like the views and how you can exit the tram inside the park at DL. No true winner here.

We decided to go grab some caffeine after our ride with a plan to catch the next parade and flag retreat.

 

[flynnibus]

By castle walkthrough they meant the sleeping beauty attraction that is a walk through set of diaramas. It’s a dl classic that went away after 9/11 but was restored and brought back a few years ago. You have to kinda know about it because the entrance is pretty low key on the back of the castle.

On the monorails... you don’t really notice it from outside... but the dl ones are significantly smaller on the inside. That in part is why there is no standing... there simply isn’t the headroom in the curved roof compared to the wdw design . The open floor design of the wdw monorails is a modern reversion of the design which made them more stroller and ecv friendly (it took out a bench)

 

[lostpro9het]

So we decided to give the parade another go to see if the previous night was just an off night. Sadly, it wasn't just an off night. This parade drags on! I'm sure some folks love it but tat song and the huge delays between floats is just tiresome. The floats, though, were cute and entertaining. The next three posts are dedicated to the parade.

 

[lostpro9het]

Parade continued.

 

[lostpro9het]

Last of the parade.

 

[lostpro9het]

After the parade stuck around so we could see how DL flag retreat compares to WDW

I gotta say it, DL flag retreat > WDW flag retreat. They did a great job.

After retreat, we were running out of daylight and quickly made our way towards fantasy land.

The reason for our haste is we wanted to see the IASM lights come on. We arrived with a few minutes to spare and caught the lighting.

 

[lostpro9het]

After IASM's illumination we did some riding. First with SM

We followed that up with some Autopia with a DD in a good mood.

Here good mood extended into challenging me, again, in Buzz and just about pulled off a win but dads rule.

 

[lostpro9het]

After Buzz, we cut across the hub to catch a BTMR trip one last time. We stopped in the hub long enough to grab on pic.

DL BTMR is still > WDW BTMR

After our railroad trip it was time for our Thanksgiving dinner. We wedged our way through the crown towards the Blue Bayou. WE checked in and were quickly seated. We weer presented the same bread service as last time and menus. We already knew what we were getting today so we handed the menus back to our server and ordered 3 thanksgiving dinners.

Despite the look from my poor picture the food was actually very good and, IMO, better than what I had during our previous BB dinner.

After dinner the DD was done and asked if she could go back to the room. We let her go and made our way over to Indy fr single rider before heading to watch Fantasmic. No pictures of Fantasmic but I've got to say it was awesome! We've only seen the WDW version once and wasn't impressed enough to visit it again. The DL version, though, would be a must do for me each time we visit. They did a fantastic job with the effects and music. After the show we did the "Noob sprint" sprint to the hub to catch the fireworks. It took some looking and some luck but we found a decent enough space to view the show. The show...well, there were some fireworks and some animations on the castle but nothing compared to WDW. After the fireworks the DW decide she was done too. With that we said goodbye to DL and made our way back to the room.

 

[Rista1313]

The light of IASW was great!

 

[lostpro9het]

We packed up, cleaned up, and slept great in our final night at VGC. We woke up to another beautiful day!

We had a couple hours til our SuperShuttle was to pick us up so we ventured out to DTD. It was Black Friday and I was anticipating some shopping madness going on but in fact there wasn't any! Most all the shops were holding regular hours and not much was happening other than folks heading to DL/CA. Full disclosure, I stalked the Lego store a few times hoping they would be having an early opening with some kind of Voltron discount door buster. Sadly, they didn't open early or have any sales but I still had a merry Christams. We made our way down to Earl for some breakfast.

We each ordered a breakfast sandwich and a drink and enjoyed them while doing some people watching.

We made some friends while we ate.

After breakfast we hit the Disney store one more time because the DW felt the need to buy.

After that, we went back to the room until it was time for our shuttle. We lucked out again with traffic and made it to LAX from VGC in less than 40 minutes! We went from curb, to security, to gate in roughly 10 minutes! It still blows my mind how small LAX is. I was expecting something grander. The flight home was uneventful and we arrived early which was nice.

So that's it, folks. DL is done for us for now. I've pretty much covered my likes and dislikes and wont bore you with a complete recap. I will say that I cant wait to go back. I still think a 4-day ticket would be better than a 3 day hopper. I think Id like 5 day trip with a rest day between the two park visit days. I am in no rush to visit Paradise Pier Hotel again but would stay at VGC again in a heartbeat. We may need to schedule a Halloween visit next. Wont be 2019, though, as we have our Bermuda Cruise planned. We are going to let our APs expire this year and either cruise more or hit up DL again. We even talked last night about renting our 2019 Poly points and doing a DCL cruise out of Miami in lieu of WDW. Time will tell.

Up next: Well, tomorrow morning, 04:00ish, we head down to WDW for the week. Despite my morose perspective of WDW in this TR I am excited. We've never done NYE at WDW and for the DD's birthday we are doing the Epcot Aqua Seas Tour again. So if you're at EC Thursday around lunch and see a tour group swimming in The Seas, you're probably looking at us! We've got a 1-bdrm at BCV and I am looking forward to some pool time at Stormalong too.

Coming soon: After this week we have a few days in late May at BWV to say goodbye to our APs. We will be kid free that trip and have nothing planned at this point other than rooms.

Anyhow, thanks for following along and I hope I've inspired you to visit the west coast if you've been on the fence about it. But be forewarned, you may never look at WDW the same!

 

[Zipadeelady]

Great report @lostpro9het, I hadn't even considered DL but now I'd love to give it a try in the future. Thanks for sharing.

Let me know if you decide to rent out your points

 

[MerMom1981]

Enjoyable TR as always!
I feel just a little more prepared for our first trip coming up in June, so thanks for that
We're doing a mini Griswold road trip from Grand Canyon to Disneyland aka "Wally World"
Just no Aunt Edna

 

[mcstensrud]

Awesome TR! Makes me want to go back to DLR and The GC. I did the Storybook Canal ride for the sole purpose of looking for the Disney Cats ! Not sure my DH will go as we moved to Florida in June from Mass to be closer to WDW and the cruise port. Maybe we will catch up with you in May for DVC MM.Happy New Year @lostpro9het and @imahistorygeek

 

[MickeyCB]

Thank you very much for the great trip report, loved following along. Enjoy WDW for New Years Eve!

 

[coachwnh]

Great report. Have a great time in WDW!

 

[Rista1313]

Great TR! Thanks so much!