Trip Report There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow - Disneyland Edition

Take two young'uns and set them loose in Disneyland for a weekend for one of the biggest opening days in park history. What could ~possibly~ go wrong?

(First trip report. Please bear with me.)

Cast:
Me + lil' (and by little I mean 6'3") brother. High school graduate, turning 18 in two weeks, lucky to have such a kind and generous sister who would give him such an amazing birthday/grad present.

May 31 through JUNE 2 (thanks for the catch, @krisri18), Paradise Pier Hotel (club level because we're fancy kiddos), SW:GE reservations on Saturday, dining at Storytellers' Cafe on June 2. This was initially supposed to be a WDW trip but we changed plans when the SW:GE opening dates were announced. We are huuuuuge SW fans, and after I scored a summer internship out here in beautiful CA, we decided there was no point in trying to brave May crowds for nothing, when we could brave opening day crowds for Smuggler's Run, Cars Land, the refurb'd castle, etc.

We're geographically MUCH closer to WDW, so we've only been to DL once before - in '14 (when your college football team makes the Rose Bowl, you go, and you go hard). Lil' bro and I are very excited to go back, as it was Jan. 2 when we went and we rode maybe 10% of the rides because of the crowds. (Also, Star Wars.)

Going to try to post at the end of every park day, and going to try to be entertaining. Stay tuned for more.

*

Sidenote: does anyone remember those old Disney Channel bumpers? I need to figure out how to post those between trip reports. Seems a bit more entertaining than blank space. :cautious:
 
Last edited:

chimchimcheree

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
DAY 1 (or, Disneyland scores a convert)
Live from the Paradise Pier Hotel: it's currently 12:08 AM and both parties are exhausted. I'm a law student and the fun never ends - was up very late last night finishing a fairly important assignment that I had procrastinated thoughtfully worked on. So, the wake-up time of 4:10 AM was quite unfortunate, and even my excitement was insufficient to keep me from hitting the snooze button for twenty more minutes.

Part I (wow, I'm writing this like a legal brief...)

Finally, though, lil bro and I rousted ourselves from bed, dragged ourselves to the shower, and hopped in my car. Once the first song on our 'The Wonderful World of Walt' playlist kicked off, it began to sink in that we were off to the Happiest Place on Earth. It took us a little under half an hour to drive southeast from where we were staying. One lesson I have quickly learned is that you can leave for the California highway system at three in the morning and you will still be in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The good thing was that we'd left early enough so we had enough time to check into the hotel (Paradise Pier, premium view club level), drop our stuff with bell services, and run up to the club lounge for breakfast before hightailing it to California Adventure (hereafter DCA).

Part I(a)

If you can afford to spring for club level, do it. Food can be one of *the* biggest money pits in the parks (I've been showing more restraint on bubble wands as I've gotten older), and we've been able to skip breakfast, dinner, and snacks so far. Dole Whips remain the exception, naturally. Club level also came with mousekeeping bringing us a small tray with a Mickey and Minnie iced cookie--one for each of us--and four Ghirardelli chocolate squares. My nap was interrupted, but my taste buds were thrilled.

Part II

The paaaaaaarksssssss. First stop was DCA to take advantage of extra morning magic, and the park was deserted. We went straight on Radiator Springs Racers. It was our first time on it - it was still very new in Jan. '14, so we weren't able to ride previously. Lil bro and I were underwhelmed because we felt it didn't live up to the hype, and was just a differently themed Test Track. To be fair, we felt the same way about Seven Dwarves Mine Train and all the publicity that got us excited for a ride that was...tame.

We had snagged a fastpass via MaxPass (see Part II(a)) for Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, I'm about the biggest Twilight Zone fan there is. I themed a high school Emily Dickinson poetry project as an episode, I watch the New Year's marathons every year, and I totally watched that really bad '90s TV movie with Kirsten Dunst about the Tower of Terror. So, when I found out that ToT had become GotG, I was livid. So, I had my reservations going into the ride. (I tried to temper my expectations - I've never seen GotG and I'm not much of a superhero person, weirdly enough, but I love the GotG soundtrack, so I figured I'd at least be able to rock out.)

Y'all.

Y'all.

Obviously the new ride is a retrofit, but it is fresh and fun. ('So nice I rode it twice.') The music changes each time you ride it, and the randomizer created the wildest drop sequence. (That being said, if they touch ToT in Florida, I'm going to stage a hostile takeover of TWDC.)

At this point, it's about 7:15. We still have another 45 minutes before the park opens...which I'll go into tomorrow. I'm totally beat, and I need my strength for *drumroll* STAR WARS LAND.
 

chimchimcheree

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 1, part 2 (or, can we take a nap yet)

Part I

Sorry for how long this took! We ended up spending two very long days in Disneyland/DCA and were completely wiped by midnight (YIKES). So anyway, we've ridden GOTG for the first time and we are absolutely stoked. We think, "well, before we ride it again, we need to see what else is available." Let me just say that there are *no* wait times. Yes, it's EMH. Yes, it's Friday morning. But we don't fastpass anything - we're literally walking on to every ride. So we are pumped to walk onto Incredicoaster. Now, lil bro is not a huge Pixar fan, and he was a little disappointed that Paradise Pier was now Pixar Pier (I loved it). He missed the old theming for whatever reason - I love the Incredibles and saw Incredibles 2 twice in theaters, so I was totally on board with the theming switch.

SO! We basically ride a loop of Guardians-Incredicoaster-Toy Story Midway Mania, with some Goofy's Flight School thrown in for good measure, until the park officially opened at 8 AM. At about 8:30, we were pretty bored with riding the same rides five times in a row, so we decided that we needed to upgrade to parkhopper. I'm on a budget, so getting the bill for $110 for the two of us hurt pretty bad at first, but it ended up being worth it.

Part II - on to Disneyland!

The place was *literally* teeming with Star Wars fans. It was pretty funny - the rest of the park was absolutely empty. We had our pick of rides--including our love-to-hate ride, the Matterhorn. We always joke that Matterhorn opened with the park in 1955 and has not changed since. I also got to go on Snow White's Scary Adventures for the first time since it closed in WDW in 2012 - still as simple and terrifying as I remember. I think I went on the WDW incarnation of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride maybe one time before it became the (infinitely superior) Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh in the late '90s.

I'm glad I have no memories of it. I've SEEN Ichabod and Mr. Toad and I was still lost as to the actual plot of the ride. (Maybe because I haven't seen it since Blockbuster existed, but...) I made poor lil bro sit through that because who wouldn't jump in an old English auto for a ride to Hell?

We also got a chance to check out the Hyperspace Mountain theming! I was absolutely *OBSESSED* with it, with the caveat that WDW's track is superior to DL's, but as the über-nerd in the family, DL's SW battle theme was positively incredible. (And, it was A+ hype for SW:GE.)

We also hit up the usual suspects (all the old cross-park favorites, such as Mad Tea Party and Big Thunder Mountain) and treated ourselves to a massive Dole Whip. Let it be known I could actually subsist on Dole Whips for an extended period of time. I spent more money on Dole Whips than merchandise, FYI. We were enjoying ourselves, enjoying the compactness, *not* enjoying the mindtrip we experienced every time we tried to get from Adventureland to Frontierland on WDW-brained autopilot and kept ending up in New Orleans Square.

TOMORROW: How long can we keep our energy up on no sleep? Disneyland fireworks? We can walk everywhere?? And where are all these teenagers coming from?? The end of day one, next!
 

MySmallWorldof4

Well-Known Member
DAY 1 (or, Disneyland scores a convert)
Live from the Paradise Pier Hotel: it's currently 12:08 AM and both parties are exhausted. I'm a law student and the fun never ends - was up very late last night finishing a fairly important assignment that I had procrastinated thoughtfully worked on. So, the wake-up time of 4:10 AM was quite unfortunate, and even my excitement was insufficient to keep me from hitting the snooze button for twenty more minutes.

Part I (wow, I'm writing this like a legal brief...)

Finally, though, lil bro and I rousted ourselves from bed, dragged ourselves to the shower, and hopped in my car. Once the first song on our 'The Wonderful World of Walt' playlist kicked off, it began to sink in that we were off to the Happiest Place on Earth. It took us a little under half an hour to drive southeast from where we were staying. One lesson I have quickly learned is that you can leave for the California highway system at three in the morning and you will still be in bumper-to-bumper traffic. The good thing was that we'd left early enough so we had enough time to check into the hotel (Paradise Pier, premium view club level), drop our stuff with bell services, and run up to the club lounge for breakfast before hightailing it to California Adventure (hereafter DCA).

Part I(a)

If you can afford to spring for club level, do it. Food can be one of *the* biggest money pits in the parks (I've been showing more restraint on bubble wands as I've gotten older), and we've been able to skip breakfast, dinner, and snacks so far. Dole Whips remain the exception, naturally. Club level also came with mousekeeping bringing us a small tray with a Mickey and Minnie iced cookie--one for each of us--and four Ghirardelli chocolate squares. My nap was interrupted, but my taste buds were thrilled.

Part II

The paaaaaaarksssssss. First stop was DCA to take advantage of extra morning magic, and the park was deserted. We went straight on Radiator Springs Racers. It was our first time on it - it was still very new in Jan. '14, so we weren't able to ride previously. Lil bro and I were underwhelmed because we felt it didn't live up to the hype, and was just a differently themed Test Track. To be fair, we felt the same way about Seven Dwarves Mine Train and all the publicity that got us excited for a ride that was...tame.

We had snagged a fastpass via MaxPass (see Part II(a)) for Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, I'm about the biggest Twilight Zone fan there is. I themed a high school Emily Dickinson poetry project as an episode, I watch the New Year's marathons every year, and I totally watched that really bad '90s TV movie with Kirsten Dunst about the Tower of Terror. So, when I found out that ToT had become GotG, I was livid. So, I had my reservations going into the ride. (I tried to temper my expectations - I've never seen GotG and I'm not much of a superhero person, weirdly enough, but I love the GotG soundtrack, so I figured I'd at least be able to rock out.)

Y'all.

Y'all.

Obviously the new ride is a retrofit, but it is fresh and fun. ('So nice I rode it twice.') The music changes each time you ride it, and the randomizer created the wildest drop sequence. (That being said, if they touch ToT in Florida, I'm going to stage a hostile takeover of TWDC.)

At this point, it's about 7:15. We still have another 45 minutes before the park opens...which I'll go into tomorrow. I'm totally beat, and I need my strength for *drumroll* STAR WARS LAND.
Welcome to the boards. I love how you write. Emily Dickinson poetry as a theme for a Twilight Zone episode? Love that. Which poem did you use?
 
Last edited:

chimchimcheree

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 1, part 3 (or, feed the birds??? **** the birds!!!)

Previously, on There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow - Disneyland Edition...Dole whips! No wait times! The Matterhorn! Mr. Toad's Wild Ride! Stumbling around New Orleans Square!

With that, we had a GREAT lunch around 11:30 that day at French Market. Lil bro got beef stew in a bread bowl and I got a plate of jambalaya with jalapeño cornbread. We're from the deep south (our mother was actually born in Louisiana) and we gave it our southern seal of approval. We were both incredibly exhausted and I was waiting for a text from Paradise Pier letting us know our room was ready. We were literally hanging on by a thread at this point, but we both knew check-in wasn't until 3 PM so there was no point in getting our hopes up. So, we just kept fastpassing our way around Disneyland.

Half that time we spent in the Indiana Jones queue. Seriously. The number of jokes we made about a minotaur jumping out at us at the end, about the queue being longer than the ride track, etc....Disney. C'mon, man. (Also, not enough Harrison Ford in the queue. If I'm going to wait in line that long, at least give me the eye candy.)

After Indy and debating whether to get another Dole Whip, we hit up Jungle Cruise. We were waiting to hit Splash Mountain when the weather warmed up a bit, and my weather app said the sun would come out at 1-ish, so we decided to go towards Toontown.

But first, let me tell you about our nemesis. Her name is Rosita. She is an animatronic cockatoo (at least, I think she is) at The Tropical Hideaway in Adventureland, and she is a non-stop dispensary of absolutely atrocious jokes. ("The back of the boat was mean to me. It was quite stern." :banghead:) Birds became a serious problem for us, actually - both real and fake. On our way out of New Orleans Square towards Critter Country later that day, some large bird smacked lil bro in the head!! Whether it was a kamikaze or had a terrible astigmatism we're not certain, but lil bro is convinced he was divebombed by some kind of gull. (Bad sister laughed hysterically. Sorry, kiddo.) Another bird literally gave me the evil eye after I wouldn't give it any (more - oops. Never feed the birds, guys. The bird lady was wrong) cornbread at French Market. Then there were baby ducks who kept getting under our feet towards Main Street and we kept thinking we were going to step on them!!! These California birds, man...

Toontown was absolutely empty, and I basically dragged my brother onto Roger Rabbit. Did anyone else ever have a VHS tape with Roger Rabbit spinoff cartoons? Like, where Jessica leaves Roger to babysit Baby Herman? Just me? Well, I love Who Framed Roger Rabbit? so I was STOKED for this one. And what a kid ride!! If you like the tea cups, this is a powered-up version of the tea cups. Basically, your ride vehicle follows the track, but the steering wheel lets you spin the ride vehicle at certain moments. It's...yeah. A+ in my book. Even lil bro, Mr. "I'm Too Old For This," enjoyed it. (To be fair, he also enjoyed Alice in Wonderland.)

By this point, though, our feet hurt (20,000+ steps on our relative Garmin watches) and we just couldn't take it anymore. So we decided to give Splash Mountain a whirl since the sun had come out and then head back to Paradise Pier via monorail to collapse in the club lounge.

To make a long ride short: Splash Mountain is better at WDW than Disneyland. The story is clearer, the track is more engaging, the audio is cleaner, the drop is steeper, and the animatronics are in better condition in Orlando. That was our one major gripe about DL - the "mountains" are more like hills. (@ matterhorn - get it together, dude) We want sharper bank turns and steeper drops!!!!

I don't want to bore you with details of our waiting and shoveling uncrustables down our throats, but we want to give props to the Paradise Pier club level castmembers for being EXCEPTIONAL. They were attentive, prompt, and fun. (Lil bro actually volunteered to clear plates from tables, as he felt so bad that the sweet Thai castmember whose name I *cannot* remember at this point - it begins with an A, and if you know her name, PLEASE tell us because she was just the nicest human being I have ever met - had to bus the tables.) Our room was ready at 3:30 and we literally limped upstairs and...

SCREAMED. There were Pixar balls for throw pillows, and if anyone knows where we can purchase them, that would be great, since the front desk rejected our offer to purchase them. Disney Home, get on it. We then threw on pajamas and collapsed in bed for a very pleasant nap.

Until room service started banging on our door around 5 pm. I wanted to ignore them (lil bro didn't even wake up, lol) but they used a master key to get into the room (that was a yikes, but we should have put out the door sign), so I ran to the door. It was worth it. They'd brought us chocolate and two frosted sugar cookies on sticks for us - one Mickey and one Minnie. So, we forgave them. ;)

Our plan was to eat appetizers in lieu of dinner and then go back to DCA, which we did, but we ended up leaving fairly early after all the fastpasses magically vanished and teenagers in mortarboard mouse ears started to overrun the place. The wait times got fairly out of control, and the only ride we managed to actually get on was Grizzly River Run, and that was because it was about 62 degrees outside. Lil bro was not pleased, but I've been in school in the midwest for almost four years now, so I was out in a t-shirt and shorts. We figured out fairly quickly that it was grad night (excuse me, "grad *nite*") so we skedaddled out of there fairly quickly and retreated to Disneyland.

We rode basically everything we rode earlier in the day, throwing in Astro Orbitors and one more gratuitous Star Tours trip for me. (I was the rebel spy back in WDW once, and I was trying to be so fortunate again. No luck.) We managed to wriggle onto Autopia and not choke on the gas fumes, OR smack whoever did the safety voiceover as "Bird," the squeaky, annoying character who only made our wait experience a cycle of nails-meet-chalkboard. (Disney has *got* to switch those vehicles. Jeez.)

At this point, it was 11:45 and the park closed in 15 minutes, so we decided it was time to monorail out and prepare for another day.

That's all for day 1! Coming up tomorrow: Day 2 - our reservation for GALAXY'S EDGE.
 

chimchimcheree

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Day 2 (omg finally, Galaxy's Edge!!!!)

We overslept. And by overslept I mean we missed EMH/magic morning at Disneyland. But, when you're exhausted, you sleep. (And then consume half the coffee in the resort, if you're me.) We make it just after opening, and it's surprisingly not that crowded. We weren't surprised Friday wasn't crowded because CA schools are still in session, but since it was a weekend, all bets were off.

I had gone downstairs before breakfast and bought a relatively inexpensive Disneyland sweatshirt. (Sidenote: TWDC should put me in charge of merchandise. Their hoodie selection is paltry and I am the undisputed queen of schlub-wear.) I really wanted a spirit jersey but was I willing to drop $70 on one? Of course not! That's what the sale section at shopdisney is for.

Our trip through Disneyland that morning was largely the same as all other days - fastpass the mountains, ride It's A Small World, make fun of the Matterhorn, etc. We also did some more character hunting, which scored us visits with Sleeping Beauty and later at DCA, Goofy. (Yesterday we met Pluto, Mary Poppins, and the Evil Queen from Snow White. The Evil Queen was hands down the best character interaction we have ever had. Second place was when Goofy tried to steal my grandmother in 1999.) I know you're all chomping at the bit for my take on SW:GE, so I'll just skip the rest of Disneyland (tl;dr: more Dole Whips) and get down to the entertaining part.

We were able to pick up our wristbands for SW:GE starting at 9 AM at Launch Bay. We were required to have wristbands, which had a color and a planet that denoted our reserved time block. We had 11 AM to 4 PM, blue color, Kessel. ("she made the kessel run in less than twelve parsecs") We queued up and wandered through Launch Bay until we reached the reservation station, which had an assortment of cast members stationed at multiple kiosks. We presented the email I'd received with the QR code that got us our wristbands, and then on our way out of Launch Bay, we had to have them scanned by another cast member (why they couldn't do it at the kiosk, I don't know) to activate them. Otherwise, they wouldn't work.

We lined up outside Critter Country after going to the wrong entrance. (There is a specific GE entrance. They didn't tell us this, nor were there signs posted.) The proper entrance is right by Hungry Bear Restaurant, just FYI. They started soft-entering people at about 15 'til to keep the crowd from choking Critter Country, so we were technically in GE before 11. Kudos to the cast members for running the show so smoothly and flexibly.

We got into SW:GE proper (i.e. everyone could see the outpost) just shy of 11. We were given by the front desk a brochure with a lot of information, most notably the special lingo used by SW:GE cast (i.e. "bright suns" means good day/hello).

The theming is on point. It is incredible. It looks amazing. Visually and aurally, it is wholly immersive and stunning. It is a little sparse on Easter eggs - there are some, and there was a Buzzfeed article I should have read but didn't that pointed out where they are. I wish it had been a tad more detailed, but I'll explain why momentarily.

Everything is ridiculously expensive. That did not stop anyone from walking around with strollers so stuffed with packages that you couldn't see the kid inside anymore. :oops: That being said, lil bro tried on the *coolest* Kylo Ren outfit (complete with cummerbund) and proceeded to do his Emperor Palpatine impersonation. There was a $125 Yavin IV (awards ceremony - poor Chewbacca) Leia dress that I came *this close* to buying because it was soft, authentic, made impeccably well, and would make me look killer. Common sense prevailed at the last minute, however. We also thought of getting food, but YIKES. YIIIIIKES. Theme park food is expensive, but for the portion sizes (basically a hot dog wrapped in pita with some kind of slaw) you were paying $14 and up. No. Just...no. The most we paid for food was at Bengal Barbecue in Adventureland, where lil bro and I split a rice plate with two skewers. That was ~$17. We did not try blue (or green) milk for the same reason. I can't remember the price off the top of my head, but lil bro and I decided that money was better spent on Dole Whips.

You will run out of things to do fairly quickly. We joined the initial crush for Smuggler's Run and ended up waiting around 25 minutes to ride the first time. The Falcon is...well, I cried. I started sobbing, ahahaha. She's lifelike, she's true to the films, and she's every tweenage nerd's dream come true, finally in the flesh. Smuggler's Run is a great ride. It's kind of like Star Tours, but more interactive. I don't want to spoil too much, so if you don't want to know what happens, skip to the second ****SPOILER**** indicator and keep reading.

****SPOILER****

Anyone remember Hondo from Clone Wars? He's back and borrowing the Falcon from Chewie (still not over Han's death, sorry) to steal coaxial cable to help the Resistance. Just can't get caught by the First Order, naturally. There are two parts to the queue: the exterior leading to the pre-flight entertainment and the queue leading to the ride vehicle. The latter took forEVER to get through because that's where the bottlenecking gets bad. You're basically going through different hallways within the Falcon up towards the cockpit, where you're split into teams of two (for a total of six guests per vehicle). One team will act as pilots, the second will act as gunners, and the third will act as engineers. Pilots have the most interactivity, working down to engineers, who basically slap buttons when they light up.

Your goal is ostensibly to collect as much coaxial cable as possible during the run, but in truth, your goal is to avoid as much damage to the Falcon as possible so you collect as much money from your run as you can. (Lil bro and I were *terrible* pilots. It'll take a couple rides to get used to; also I have really terrible depth perception. It's why I'm literally the worst at games like Midway Mania and Buzz Lightyear - my aim is always off.) We rode twice and were engineers and pilots; you can trade with people in the cockpit with you if you want.

The visuals are incredible. Also, I got to take us into hyperspace twice. Twelve-year-old me was having a full-on fangirl meltdown. The ride vehicle is not as sensitive as I would like, though, and at some points it felt like my control of the vehicle was a bit off. Like, autopilot had taken over. I guess it's self-preservation to keep bad pilots from completely destroying the Falcon?? No clue.

Twice was satisfactory for us - we didn't want to hustle through the queue and watch the ride video again and pilot the same mission three times, which I guess is a knock on the ride, so we started walking around Batuu.

****SPOILER****

Batuu is cool, but it's...smaller than I expected. There's a lot of bare space. The stores blend in well, and we visited all of them. The merchandise ranges from fantastic (the costumes - there was a full orange flight suit and I WANTED IT SO BADLY) to the ridiculously lame (overpriced notebooks). We expected a bigger marketplace at the new outpost, and more than just merchandise carts you'll see around the rest of the park at the old outpost.

First Order Stormtroopers, Rey, and Chewbacca were out that day. The Internet says you may see Poe Dameron and an all-new character named Vi at Batuu, but we didn't see them. We met Chewbacca and he gave me a huge Wookie hug after lil bro trash-talked my piloting skills (he insisted he didn't steer us into things, which was a rotten lie), so that made my day. Unlike previous silent iterations of Chewbacca, this one does the FULL WOOKIE RANGE OF NOISES. You can have a conversation with Chewie! That was a nice touch.

The sticking point everyone's wondering is whether the park is worth going to without Rise of the Resistance opening. It's not. I spoke to a cast member who said that RotR is supposed to be the mainstay ride of the park (the E-Ticket, if you will), with Smuggler's Run as a secondary ride. That was kind of distressing to hear, and we did end up leaving at 2:30, a full hour and a half before our time was up. Quite simply, we ran out of things to do. We looked at the merchandise (after literally waiting in line to get into the stores), we tried on costumes and tried out lightsabers, but we kept balking at the prices. We rode the one ride twice and took the requisite photos. We tried to catch Rey but had no luck.

If you're thinking of GE, just wait for a year or two. Seriously. The only suggestion I would make is that if you can't wait and you have the means to come out to DL (not sure how it'll work at WDW), come after June 23 when the virtual queue has begun so there is *some* crowd control and not just the general public collapsing in on SW:GE. We didn't plan this trip for SW:GE, it just happened to coincide. If you find yourself in that situation, definitely go, because it's a cool place and the crowds will be managed. Otherwise, wait a while.

Before I finish for the day, I want to make one quick observation. My family has been going to Disney World since my mom started going in '77. My first trip was '96. My brother's first was in '04. We've been to DL once before, and only for a day. We would appropriately label ourselves WDW fanatics. However, both my brother and I had decided that if we were given the choice of DL or WDW for our next trip, we would hands-down pick DL. I can go into that more tomorrow, but it's something for you fine readers to gnaw on.

Tomorrow - so, what did you do next?
 

Rista1313

Well-Known Member
Day 2 (omg finally, Galaxy's Edge!!!!)

We overslept. And by overslept I mean we missed EMH/magic morning at Disneyland. But, when you're exhausted, you sleep. (And then consume half the coffee in the resort, if you're me.) We make it just after opening, and it's surprisingly not that crowded. We weren't surprised Friday wasn't crowded because CA schools are still in session, but since it was a weekend, all bets were off.

I had gone downstairs before breakfast and bought a relatively inexpensive Disneyland sweatshirt. (Sidenote: TWDC should put me in charge of merchandise. Their hoodie selection is paltry and I am the undisputed queen of schlub-wear.) I really wanted a spirit jersey but was I willing to drop $70 on one? Of course not! That's what the sale section at shopdisney is for.

Our trip through Disneyland that morning was largely the same as all other days - fastpass the mountains, ride It's A Small World, make fun of the Matterhorn, etc. We also did some more character hunting, which scored us visits with Sleeping Beauty and later at DCA, Goofy. (Yesterday we met Pluto, Mary Poppins, and the Evil Queen from Snow White. The Evil Queen was hands down the best character interaction we have ever had. Second place was when Goofy tried to steal my grandmother in 1999.) I know you're all chomping at the bit for my take on SW:GE, so I'll just skip the rest of Disneyland (tl;dr: more Dole Whips) and get down to the entertaining part.

We were able to pick up our wristbands for SW:GE starting at 9 AM at Launch Bay. We were required to have wristbands, which had a color and a planet that denoted our reserved time block. We had 11 AM to 4 PM, blue color, Kessel. ("she made the kessel run in less than twelve parsecs") We queued up and wandered through Launch Bay until we reached the reservation station, which had an assortment of cast members stationed at multiple kiosks. We presented the email I'd received with the QR code that got us our wristbands, and then on our way out of Launch Bay, we had to have them scanned by another cast member (why they couldn't do it at the kiosk, I don't know) to activate them. Otherwise, they wouldn't work.

We lined up outside Critter Country after going to the wrong entrance. (There is a specific GE entrance. They didn't tell us this, nor were there signs posted.) The proper entrance is right by Hungry Bear Restaurant, just FYI. They started soft-entering people at about 15 'til to keep the crowd from choking Critter Country, so we were technically in GE before 11. Kudos to the cast members for running the show so smoothly and flexibly.

We got into SW:GE proper (i.e. everyone could see the outpost) just shy of 11. We were given by the front desk a brochure with a lot of information, most notably the special lingo used by SW:GE cast (i.e. "bright suns" means good day/hello).

The theming is on point. It is incredible. It looks amazing. Visually and aurally, it is wholly immersive and stunning. It is a little sparse on Easter eggs - there are some, and there was a Buzzfeed article I should have read but didn't that pointed out where they are. I wish it had been a tad more detailed, but I'll explain why momentarily.

Everything is ridiculously expensive. That did not stop anyone from walking around with strollers so stuffed with packages that you couldn't see the kid inside anymore. :oops: That being said, lil bro tried on the *coolest* Kylo Ren outfit (complete with cummerbund) and proceeded to do his Emperor Palpatine impersonation. There was a $125 Yavin IV (awards ceremony - poor Chewbacca) Leia dress that I came *this close* to buying because it was soft, authentic, made impeccably well, and would make me look killer. Common sense prevailed at the last minute, however. We also thought of getting food, but YIKES. YIIIIIKES. Theme park food is expensive, but for the portion sizes (basically a hot dog wrapped in pita with some kind of slaw) you were paying $14 and up. No. Just...no. The most we paid for food was at Bengal Barbecue in Adventureland, where lil bro and I split a rice plate with two skewers. That was ~$17. We did not try blue (or green) milk for the same reason. I can't remember the price off the top of my head, but lil bro and I decided that money was better spent on Dole Whips.

You will run out of things to do fairly quickly. We joined the initial crush for Smuggler's Run and ended up waiting around 25 minutes to ride the first time. The Falcon is...well, I cried. I started sobbing, ahahaha. She's lifelike, she's true to the films, and she's every tweenage nerd's dream come true, finally in the flesh. Smuggler's Run is a great ride. It's kind of like Star Tours, but more interactive. I don't want to spoil too much, so if you don't want to know what happens, skip to the second ****SPOILER**** indicator and keep reading.

****SPOILER****

Anyone remember Hondo from Clone Wars? He's back and borrowing the Falcon from Chewie (still not over Han's death, sorry) to steal coaxial cable to help the Resistance. Just can't get caught by the First Order, naturally. There are two parts to the queue: the exterior leading to the pre-flight entertainment and the queue leading to the ride vehicle. The latter took forEVER to get through because that's where the bottlenecking gets bad. You're basically going through different hallways within the Falcon up towards the cockpit, where you're split into teams of two (for a total of six guests per vehicle). One team will act as pilots, the second will act as gunners, and the third will act as engineers. Pilots have the most interactivity, working down to engineers, who basically slap buttons when they light up.

Your goal is ostensibly to collect as much coaxial cable as possible during the run, but in truth, your goal is to avoid as much damage to the Falcon as possible so you collect as much money from your run as you can. (Lil bro and I were *terrible* pilots. It'll take a couple rides to get used to; also I have really terrible depth perception. It's why I'm literally the worst at games like Midway Mania and Buzz Lightyear - my aim is always off.) We rode twice and were engineers and pilots; you can trade with people in the cockpit with you if you want.

The visuals are incredible. Also, I got to take us into hyperspace twice. Twelve-year-old me was having a full-on fangirl meltdown. The ride vehicle is not as sensitive as I would like, though, and at some points it felt like my control of the vehicle was a bit off. Like, autopilot had taken over. I guess it's self-preservation to keep bad pilots from completely destroying the Falcon?? No clue.

Twice was satisfactory for us - we didn't want to hustle through the queue and watch the ride video again and pilot the same mission three times, which I guess is a knock on the ride, so we started walking around Batuu.

****SPOILER****

Batuu is cool, but it's...smaller than I expected. There's a lot of bare space. The stores blend in well, and we visited all of them. The merchandise ranges from fantastic (the costumes - there was a full orange flight suit and I WANTED IT SO BADLY) to the ridiculously lame (overpriced notebooks). We expected a bigger marketplace at the new outpost, and more than just merchandise carts you'll see around the rest of the park at the old outpost.

First Order Stormtroopers, Rey, and Chewbacca were out that day. The Internet says you may see Poe Dameron and an all-new character named Vi at Batuu, but we didn't see them. We met Chewbacca and he gave me a huge Wookie hug after lil bro trash-talked my piloting skills (he insisted he didn't steer us into things, which was a rotten lie), so that made my day. Unlike previous silent iterations of Chewbacca, this one does the FULL WOOKIE RANGE OF NOISES. You can have a conversation with Chewie! That was a nice touch.

The sticking point everyone's wondering is whether the park is worth going to without Rise of the Resistance opening. It's not. I spoke to a cast member who said that RotR is supposed to be the mainstay ride of the park (the E-Ticket, if you will), with Smuggler's Run as a secondary ride. That was kind of distressing to hear, and we did end up leaving at 2:30, a full hour and a half before our time was up. Quite simply, we ran out of things to do. We looked at the merchandise (after literally waiting in line to get into the stores), we tried on costumes and tried out lightsabers, but we kept balking at the prices. We rode the one ride twice and took the requisite photos. We tried to catch Rey but had no luck.

If you're thinking of GE, just wait for a year or two. Seriously. The only suggestion I would make is that if you can't wait and you have the means to come out to DL (not sure how it'll work at WDW), come after June 23 when the virtual queue has begun so there is *some* crowd control and not just the general public collapsing in on SW:GE. We didn't plan this trip for SW:GE, it just happened to coincide. If you find yourself in that situation, definitely go, because it's a cool place and the crowds will be managed. Otherwise, wait a while.

Before I finish for the day, I want to make one quick observation. My family has been going to Disney World since my mom started going in '77. My first trip was '96. My brother's first was in '04. We've been to DL once before, and only for a day. We would appropriately label ourselves WDW fanatics. However, both my brother and I had decided that if we were given the choice of DL or WDW for our next trip, we would hands-down pick DL. I can go into that more tomorrow, but it's something for you fine readers to gnaw on.

Tomorrow - so, what did you do next?

Thank you for your review.... can I please ask you a question? Yes? OK! Is there "jerkiness" to the ride? If so... how much? Hubby is disable with back issues... and he keeps insisting the ride doesn't move, but from the videos I've seen, I do see some movement?
 

chimchimcheree

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Thank you for your review.... can I please ask you a question? Yes? OK! Is there "jerkiness" to the ride? If so... how much? Hubby is disable with back issues... and he keeps insisting the ride doesn't move, but from the videos I've seen, I do see some movement?
It's a fairly smooth simulator. It's not as jerky as Star Tours, but I can't say there is no movement. If the Falcon "hits" something or is hit, it'll vibrate and shake a bit.
 

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

Back
Top Bottom