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
IMG_5365.JPG


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.
IMG_4359.JPG


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!
IMG_4361.JPG


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!
IMG_4362.PNG


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!
IMG_4364.JPG


We had a mild wait to get through security and were soon enjoying some bagels at our gate with 30ish minutes to spare.
IMG_4365.JPG


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.
IMG_4366.JPG

IMG_4367.JPG

IMG_4369.JPG
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Yeah, I try to tell people 3 day is a good minimum... I think you have to be the special Disney type to want to do 5 or more. 3 feels rushed for new people.. but at 4-5 you really get to do everything (including multiples).)

Yeah, I think a 5-night trip with a 3-day hopper is ideal if you're coming from the east coast. Dealing with the lag and time change warrants one recoup day, IMO, and then I would do 2 back-to-back days, a rest day, then a park day.

It's hard to explain to people convincingly how it has almost the same amount of attractions as WDW.. yet you don't need more than 3-4 days really to experience the majority of what you want :)

Yup! It was around 10:00 on our first morning of CA and I told @imahistorygeek "Oh my God, we've ridden 9 rides already and its not even 10:00! We'll be done with this park by 1:00!"
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
So it was still early for our Incredicoaster FP but the posted wait time was just 5 minutes so we decided to get a ride in and save our FP since we had til 9 to use it. Now, we have obviously never ridden California Screamin' so I can't compare it but this ride is AWESOME! From the launch, to the sounds, to the theming, and even the fresh baked cookie scents, this ride rocks! I'll post a ride video soon of one of our many trips on this hit.
IMG_4581.JPG

IMG_4582.JPG

IMG_4583.JPG

f4f15376-6ae3-4fc8-aa70-d0249f789c20.jpg


As soon as we got off the ride it hit 8:00 so we could now get another FP so we grabbed one for Goofy Sky School since TSMM was down. We decided to make our way towards Goofy. Along the way I noticed a cool little popcorn machine. What I didn't realize was that something is missing from this picture. More on that later.
IMG_4585.JPG
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
There was one other distraction along the way that turned into the most frightening ride of the whole trip. A ride that nearly brought 2 out of 3 of us to tears from fear. The ride that I couldn't get my head around as being the one thing that would scare my two ladies. Any guesses?
Yup, Mickey's Fun Wheel terrified my two ladies! Things were all cool until we got about a third of the way up when our gondola had a big shift and there was this screeching sound...from the girls! It was quite comical and I got to enjoy two experiences at once. The ride did afford some interesting pictures of the parks.
IMG_4586.JPG

IMG_4587.JPG

IMG_4588.JPG

IMG_4589.JPG

IMG_4590.JPG

IMG_4591.JPG

IMG_4592.JPG

IMG_4594.JPG
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
So after Mickey's Wheel of Death we made our way to Goofy's.
IMG_4596.JPG

IMG_4597.JPG

IMG_4598.JPG


Goofy's Sky School is essentially a smaller version of Primeval Whirl only slightly smaller and a lot more painful. I would have grabbed more picture but they weer VERY aggressive in making sure you were not holding anything during the ride. After we got off the ride TSMM had opened up so we grabbed a FP that would open in a few minutes. We figured we would knock a few things out while over here so we made our way back. First up was the Golden Zephyr. This ride looked a lot more fun from the ground

IMG_4599.JPG

IMG_4600.JPG

IMG_4601.JPG



Isnt this magical...
IMG_4603.JPG
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
We continued back towards TSMM but hit up one more ride along the way. This one was cute and actually fun for a kids ride.
IMG_4604.JPG

IMG_4605.JPG


After our swing we continued along the pier.
IMG_4606.JPG

IMG_4607.JPG

IMG_4608.JPG


As we approached our destination we saw a familiar WDW scene, a long FP queue.
IMG_4609.JPG


This line gave my ladies a perfect opportunity to visit Señor Buzz Churros. They went with one Caliente Churro and one Super Galaxy Churro. According to my DW the Caliente was the best churro she has ever had.
IMG_4611.JPG

IMG_4610.JPG
 

fractal

Well-Known Member
There was one other distraction along the way that turned into the most frightening ride of the whole trip. A ride that nearly brought 2 out of 3 of us to tears from fear. The ride that I couldn't get my head around as being the one thing that would scare my two ladies. Any guesses?
Yup, Mickey's Fun Wheel terrified my two ladies! Things were all cool until we got about a third of the way up when our gondola had a big shift and there was this screeching sound...from the girls! It was quite comical and I got to enjoy two experiences at once. The ride did afford some interesting pictures of the parks.
View attachment 329053
View attachment 329054
View attachment 329055
View attachment 329056
View attachment 329057
View attachment 329058
View attachment 329059
View attachment 329060

@raven24 would attest to this.
 

imahistorygeek

Well-Known Member
Mickey’s Death Wheel is the perfect name for it. I’ve never been so scared and laughed so hard in my life. Those swinging cars are no joke.

We rode it three times (I think). We didn't experience the full effect the first time, but the 2nd and 3rd...well, lets just say never again. Honestly, I think you forget how scary it is until you're actually in that gondola swinging. On the 3rd time, someone riding with us told us how to make them swing higher. It involved standing up. That was a great, big NOPE.
 

ThemedScream

Active Member
You know what I love? Flying swings!! :happy: It's an old amusement park ride that isn't as popular anymore, but I always loved that ride. Never been to DL, but out East, there were a few of those around.

I love the swings also. Sometimes when it's slow at night they'll ask if I want to just stay on and I'll ride it 4 or 5 times in a row. The one at DCA is a Wave Swinger by Zierer. There's an identical model a few miles down the freeway at Knott's as well :)
 

youngdeb

Active Member
I know my fear of heights well enough to know that a turn in a swinging gondola would not go over well. It took me a full turn around on Mickey's "Fun" Wheel in a non-swinging gondola to not be holding on for dear life.
 

lostpro9het

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
After our TSMM we weer finally ready to use our original Incredicoaster FP. I decided to try my hand at recording this trip.

2a1a67af-b4b6-48d5-b623-f76bb8f4b85b.jpg


We then decided to head towards our GotG FP. I paid a little more attention to some of the details of PP including the little icon that moves over the archway!
IMG_4622.JPG

IMG_4621.JPG

IMG_4623.JPG


We weer about to make our turn out of PP and saw no wait for Little Mermaid so we figured we'd give it a go to see how different it as, it really wasn't.
IMG_4624.JPG

IMG_4625.JPG

IMG_4626.JPG

IMG_4628.JPG

IMG_4629.JPG

IMG_4630.JPG
 

LadyBelle

Well-Known Member
In the Parks
No
We rode it three times (I think). We didn't experience the full effect the first time, but the 2nd and 3rd...well, lets just say never again. Honestly, I think you forget how scary it is until you're actually in that gondola swinging. On the 3rd time, someone riding with us told us how to make them swing higher. It involved standing up. That was a great, big NOPE.

I saw it in action on a vlog I watched while on break. This would be me:

giphy.gif
 

Register on WDWMAGIC. This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.

Back
Top Bottom