Disneyland Tips For The Browns

August 20, 2010

This blog post is being written by special request. Its a collection of some of the tips that we've accumulated over the many times that we've visited the Magic Kingdom. These tips will be slightly edited, here and there, specifically for the Brown family, who will be visiting Disneyland during Halloween 2010.

Ok, so here are some of our tips...and remember, you asked for this.

Pre-Disneyland Preparations

Check out Disneyland maps online before you go so you can discuss which rides everyone is interested in. It's good to know which rides that you don't want to miss out on and to create a basic list of rides to help you plan your day. You'll also want to know which rides are usually crowded, have fast passes, and to familiarize yourself to the general layout.
When you make your ride list, put them in 3 categories: Must Do, Would Like To Do, and Might Want To Do. Also, indicate the rides that are usually crowded.

After you arrive at your hotel and get settled in, go to a store to get some provisions. We like to stock up on bottled water and food that we can eat for a quick breakfast. We usually bring a bunch of water into the park every day. Even during colder weather, having water is a must. You can get dehydrated pretty quickly and you don't want to be drinking soda or juice all the time, not to mention that buying bottled water in the park will cost you at least 4x as much.
We try to get an early start in the morning so we usually just eat a quick breakfast of fruits and some sort of pastry or muffin in our room or on the way to the park to maximize sleep time and not have to "waste" time sitting at a restaurant.
We usually shop at a Trader Joe's, mostly because we bring home snack-stuff from there as omiyage, but if you just want the water and snacks, there are Albertson's that are closer.

Ride Strategy

Our main strategy at Disneyland goes something like this:

• Get to the park early. We try to get there 15-30 minutes before the park opens. If it isn't that crowded, we get there right before the gates open. Also, if you can get an early entry pass, use that to get in even earlier. The lines at the gates move pretty quickly, so don't worry if they look long. You'll more than likely have to wait a little longer inside the park once you get in anyway.
• Once the park is fully open, head straight to your highest priority ride and ride it. A lot of people say to get a fast pass first, but we find that it wastes time and is not really necessary. Then go down your list to each ride, try to plan it so the rides are near each other, if possible. As soon as you hit a ride with a wait time that is longer than 30 mins, either get a fast pass for it, if you can, or just wait in the line to get a bit of a rest. It'll probably be around 10:00 by this time and depending how crowded it is, you will have been able to get on 5 to 8 rides.
• The park should be filling up with people at this time so we usually eat a little snack and rest for a little while. We sometimes try to get on a couple more rides, although, no matter which ride you pick, you will probably have to wait in a line. So if you've done most of what you wanted to do on the prior days or have ridden enough rides at the Disneyland park, this is a good time to move over to the California Adventure Park to get in some rides over there before lunch. If you time it right, you can apply the same opening strategy there since they open later in the morning.
• Around lunch time, we usually leave the park to get some food and then either do something else or get a bit of rest at our room. This is usually the most crowded and the most hottest time of day, so your time is probably better spent refueling and re-energizing.
• We head back to the park at around 5:00 or 6:00 when it gets a little cooler and most people are heading out of the park to get dinner. We try to hit some of the Must Do and the Like To Do rides at this time.
• Later in the evening, it'll start getting crowded as people come back for the fireworks show. We then shift to the Might Want To Do list to find rides with shorter lines.
• Repeat again the next day, switching up the rides in the morning.

Parades and Firework Show - People setup early for these. If you want to see it, you will want to find a good spot early too. Grab a good spot and defend it well.
Parade and Firework times are also the best times to get on rides. If you've already seen the show or will see it later, use this time to take advantage of the shorter lines, especially at Fantasyland or at It's a Small World.

Fast Passes - We use them but not as vigorously as other people seem to. We usually get around 1-2 per day. But there are times that by the time we can get use them, we've already ridden on a lot of stuff. Its the same type of feeling you get when you are served an extra piece of pie after eating way too much dinner...you don't really want it but you know it'll be good and you certainly don't want to waste it.
Don't get me wrong, though, do try to get fast passes if you can, it's pretty sweet when you get to cut past a long line.

Disney Queue Engineering.
This is something that I've possibly spent way too much time thinking about, but I've been in a lot of lines at Disney and had ample time to notice, what I consider to be a pretty amazing evolution in the ride line. This may not help you that much in planning your trip, but you know me...I like to share.
I'll be nice and give you the abbreviated, although probably less coherent version.
There are two major things that Disney has done. The first is that on the newer rides, the number of riders per minute has probably improved by at least 10x from some of the older rides. They do this by either creating more seats on each vehicle, building multiple tracks, and/or streamlining the loading of passengers. This, obviously means that more people get on the ride and in a shorter wait time. You can see the difference by comparing the wait at rides in Fantasyland and Soarin' over California or Indiana Jones.
The second thing is that they try to make the wait experience much more pleasant by giving people things to see or do while they wait and by moving people along in bunches. They advance large groups of people from one section to another, with each section separated by a significant distance so it seems as though you made a lot of progress. They also seem to move the line at just the right time intervals. Whenever I think to myself, "why is this line not moving"...bam!! you start to move, and not just a couple of steps, but by a large enough amount to make me feel much better about waiting in line. This may not make the wait time shorter, but it psychologically makes you feel better.
Just something to think about as you wait in line.

Ride Overview

Here are a list of some of the rides that we like, ones that we think may be worth checking out, and some to avoid.

• Indiana Jones - Great ride, but probably not for small children. This is usually our first stop of the day. Lines can get really long at times. Fast passes are totally worth it when the lines are long. Mrs. K favorite ride.
• Haunted Mansion - This is a must see during the holiday season because they redo the ride with a Nightmare Before Christmas theme. This is my personal favorite.
• Soarin' over California - Probably the best ride at either park. Worth going to California Adventure just for this ride alone. I believe there is a height limit on this ride.
• Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters - Cool shooting game. My personal best...565,000....beat that Mr. Brown.
• Peter Pan - Of all the rides in Fantasyland, this is by far the best one. Long lines all day long but well worth the wait. Good to go here early in the morning.
• Pirates of the Caribbean - If you haven't seen the new Johnny Depp version, its worth a look see. For some reason, at certain times of the day, this ride can be completely empty.
• It's a Small World - I'm probably alone in this, but I think everyone should ride this at least once.
• Jungle Cruise - Almost exactly the same since the opening of the park, but still fun.
• Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin - Making it spin a lot is fun....but tiring.
• Big Thunder Railroad - There's a lot of details to check out along the ride.
• Matterhorn Bobsleds - Fun ride. Lines are almost always long here, but they move faster than you'd think.
• Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage - Lines are super long and they move slowly. In my opinion, unless you really really like Nemo, it's not worth the wait.
• Monsters, Inc. - Fun ride. I like the personalized exit message from Roz
• It's Tough to be a Bug - Fun show
• Toy Story Midway Mania - This is another Must Do at California Adventure. I don't remember my score, but I do remember that it was really fun.
• Disney Railroad - When you need to take a little break, catch the train. Make sure you go around the entire park at least once.
• Tom Sawyer's Island - If you want to kill some time...It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be.
• Tower of Terror - Probably not good for the kids but the ride is one of a kind. There's a lot to see in the wait line as well.

There are probably a lot of other good rides that I missed. I'll list them in the comments if I remember any.

Food

For the most part, we don't really eat at the parks except for a couple of things. The first is the Turkey Leg. It's huge and tasty. They sell it at a vendor cart by the statue of Walt and Mickey at the end of Main Street. If you're not in the mood for turkey, the Chimichanga that they sell there is also good. The other thing that I always always get is the Peanut Butter Cookie. Swee peanut butter, thick graham cookie, all covered in chocolate. Best cookie ever...EVER.

One other Disney type eatery that we liked was the Earl Of Sandwich, which I think is in Downtown Disney. We each ordered a sandwiches and they were all good. And the prices were very reasonable.

And finally, the place that we always go. It may not be for you but we love it. In-N-Out burger. There are a couple located within a 5 min. drive from Disney. Order it "animal style".... extra sauce, grilled onions, and they grill the burger with mustard. Yum. Shakes are good there too.

Miscellaneous

Disney Pins - If you aren't into character autographs, you can try collecting pins. They sell them at practically every store. One cool thing that you can do is to buy a cheaper pin set....doesn't matter what kind they are. Then go to any Disney employee that is wearing pins and ask them to trade. They will trade any pin they have. Find Disney people with lots of pins ...they are more fun.

Ponchos - October/November may be the start of rainy weather. We bring a set of ponchos from Longs (they go on sale every now and then). They are much more durable and cheaper than ponchos from Disney. Although the Disney ones have Mickey on them. You can also wear them on the water rides to try to stay relatively dry.

And those are my tips. Have fun at Disneyland!!!

If you have any questions or want more info, feel free to leave a comment.

Reggie!! Reggie!!

July 31, 2010

Need to take short detour from the West Coast trip for this little update. This past weekend, we went out to play darts with Mike and Kat. We used to do this all the time, back in the day. But not so much after we all had kids. Anyway, we had a free night out and decided to dust off the darts.

Since we haven't been out too much, we really didn't know where to go. A quick search on Yelp took us to Martini Zoo. Looked promising, menu seemed ok, and they had dart boards. We got there early, and setup near the dart boards and started playing a few games.

Later on in the evening a couple of guys came by the dart boards and asked how to play. I was explaining how to play cricket and couldn't stop thinking that this guy looked a lot like Reggie Miller. He was leaning over a counter so I couldn't really tell how tall he was.

Well....long story short. It turned out that it really was Reggie Miller. I thought it was pretty cool that I even got to talk to him a little, but Michelle decided to take it up a notch. A little later on she went over to talk to them and somehow got him to come over to play some darts with us. Part of that conversation went something like this.

M: "Hey, my husband said you have a sweet three-point shot"

R: "Naw, naw"

M: [slapping him on the arm] "Yeah you do."

Kat, Reggie, and Michelle

So Mike and I ended up playing 8 games with them. We managed to win 6 despite being a little nervous. Mike played awesomely. He had a 7 mark round and also brought us back from being behind in a couple of games. Reggie and Nate were pretty good and we only barely won a couple of those games due to a little better dart strategy.

Mike, Kat, Nate, Ryan, Reggie

Needless to say, it was a very memorable evening. Reggie, Nate, and the rest of his friends were really cool and we all had a great time.

2010 West Coast Road Trip - Part 1

June 2 - June 11 2010

This year we decided to take a trip to the West Coast, driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and then to the Grand Canyon and back again. It took us a long time to figure out where we were going to go since we all agreed that we wouldn't be going to Disneyland again. Don't get me wrong, we really liked Disneyland, but there are just too many other things to do and see. So this time.......its gonna be a Road Trip!!!

We love driving around.....some of our best family bonding times have been during our driving excursions around the Island. This will be our longest drive to date, so hopefully there will be a whole lotta bonding going on.

The Planning

We initially wanted to do this during spring break so that we could catch some MLB spring training games in Arizona, but the timing on that didn't work out to well. So we swapped spring training for the Grand Canyon. The way we wanted to plan our trip was to figure out several "big" things to do and find a bunch of other interesting, smaller things that each of us wanted to do at each destination. We also spend a lot of time researching interesting/good places to eat.

The Big Things

Since this was the first time we visited Las Vegas as a family, we decided to see some of the more established type shows. We picked Cirque Du Soleil and a Lance Burton magic show.

We also wanted to see a baseball game during this trip and decided to go see the Dodgers since we had already seen the Angels on a previous trip.

The Smaller Things

Blake wanted to check out M&M World and the Coca Cola store in Vegas, I wanted to see the Hoover Dam, and Michelle wanted to see the Natural History Museum in Las Vegas, the Shark Pool at the Golden Nugget, the Pinball Hall of Fame, and I think she secretly wanted to go to Disneyland...I tried to ignore that one.

So thats going to be our family trip this summer. I'll follow this post up with some of the various things that we did. It was a great trip and we managed to do a whole lotta fun and interesting things. Stay tuned for more...

Mahi Time

May 16, 2010

One of our regular trips around the Island, but this time we went along with the Mahi clan.

We stopped off at turtle beach. There were 2 or 3 on the beach and a whole slew (bale ?) of them in the water. Mike had cool sun glasses that literally made the water disappear. The swimming turtles just popped out of the water and could be seen as clear as day.



We grabbed some lunch at Ted's Bakery and took it to eat at Turtle Bay. We spent most of the day swimming there. On the way home, things eventually turned to the red cups.



And then later, a friendly game of Horseshoes.



As always, a fun day with the Mahis.

A Bask of Crocs

June 18, 2010

I've been waiting for a sale on Crocs for the longest of time now. I really like Crocs, they are more comfortable and keep your feet cleaner and more protected than slippers and quicker to put on and off than shoes. My only gripe is that they are so expensive. I just bought a new pair for $30 after I wore a hole through the soles of my first pair and I had them for at least 3 years, so I really shouldn't complain. But still...

Then I heard about a Crocs warehouse sale. I ended up buying 3 pairs of black Crocs for $5 a piece and a couple of "fancy" ones for $10. The black ones do have this ugly yellow strap that says Maui Lifeguard on them, but I'll probably remove or replace those. So now I have Crocs that will probably last me for the next 20 years. Very cool and slightly disturbing at the same time....but I'm all happy now.

Mom's Birthday

June 16, 2010

We went to 3660 On The Rise to celebrate my mom's birthday. It's been at least 5 years since we've been to 3660 for dinner. The food was great...much better than I remember it. The waiter mentioned that they change up the menu items and the sauces for their dishes a little bit every month or so. I had the Ahi Katsu and the New York steak...both of these were awesome.

This was also the first time we got to see baby Shaun. He's only 2 weeks old and already into fine dining.

Window Tinting

May 15, 2010

The upstairs of our house gets really hot during the summers, so I decided to try to cool it down a little by tinting the windows. I also want to install one of those attic fans. I heard that helps a lot too...but that's for another day.
I decided to test out my tinting skills on one of our 3 pane windows that gets hit really hard by the afternoon sun. I figured that I'd do one just to see what it looks like and to see how hard it would be.

The installation didn't go too bad....but it didn't turn out as nicely as I wanted. It also took me about 3 hours to do 3 1.5 x 3 foot panes. Kind of long, but I think I can cut down on the time a lot since I learn a couple of things during the test run.

1. You need to leave a small border at the edge. The smaller the border the nicer it looks, but if you put the tint right up to the edge and it goes slightly over, the tint will pop up. Took me a long time to figure out that this was the reason it was popping up. I kept going back to smooth it over and a minute later it would pop up again.

2. Once you have the tint cut to the size of your window and placed nicely, you need to squeegee as much of the water out as you can. If you don't, the tint won't stick well and it starts to peel off at the top and you need to start all over again.

3. Use a sharp razor and take your time when cutting the edge. The edging on my tints have large gaps here and there, is crooked in places, and have jagged edges on some spots. I really hate that. But that's what happens when you try to stretch a razor.



Here's a look at the finished window. FYI, It just looks clearer because the un-tinted windows are really dirty. I did a quick test of the heat blocking at around 2 in the afternoon and it really does block almost all of the heat. Hopefully I can finish up the rest of the windows before the end of the month.