Disneyland Bucket List

        Over my years of visiting Disneyland I've gotten to do some pretty great things, from being in an old parade when I was nine (dancing with Baloo no less) to having the most magical conversation with the Fairy Godmother. That being said, there's still a ton of experiences I'd love to have. So, here's a list of some things I'm hoping to do at Disneyland!

Don't you want to see when this sign lights up?

• See the Lighting Ceremony in Cars Land: Every night when they switch the neon on in Cars Land they do a little ceremony in which the lights slowly come on and they play a song from that moment in the movie. It seems so magical and I can't wait to see it!
• Meet Mulan: I've met Mulan before, but it was a very long time ago. She's at the top of my list of who I want to meet!
• Eat at Big Thunder Ranch Barbecue: With the impending arrival of Star Wars Land the days are numbered for Big Thunder Ranch. I've never had the barbecue there but I've heard it's amazing so I definitely want to try it before it's gone!
• See the Disneyland Forever Fireworks From Every Viewing Area: I love that Disneyland worked so hard to make the fireworks more accessible and I want to experience every viewing area that they've created (and hopefully see the Matterhorn light up as Mount Wannahockaloogie).
• Ride the Carousel with the Pearly Band: I love the Pearly Band and I love going on the carousel so getting to ride around as they play would be amazing!
  
• Ride on the Columbia: I haven't been on the Columbia in a very long time, so I think it's time to go on again.
• Ride in the Lily Belle Train Car: It's pure Disney magic and history and I want to experience it so badly!
• Have Megan Be the Rebel Spy: My best friend Megan love Star Wars and she's been hoping forever that she would be the rebel spy on Star Tours. Let's hope it happens soon!
• Pin trade with Cast Members: I've been collecting pins for years but I've never really gotten in on the trading part. I'm hoping to change that and I know the easiest way to get started is by trading with Cast Members, so that's my next step!
• Go on the Canoes: This is just something that I've never done and think looks like fun.
• Ride in the Wheelhouse of the Mark Twain: Again, it's just pure Disney Magic and I would love to experience it.
• Go to the Tiki Room: It's shameful that I haven't done this before, so I'm hoping to correct that soon (preferably with a Dole Whip in hand)!

        So, that's my list! I tried to keep things realistic, hence the lack of the Dream Suite. Hopefully I'll be able to accomplish everything here in the next year!

D23 Expo Announcements and Reactions

        As pretty much everyone knows, the D23 Expo was last weekend in Anaheim. I couldn't go, but I'm almost glad that I couldn't. All of the coverage that I saw of it, mostly through Instagram and Disney's blogs, made it seem exceptionally crowded and packed with a ton of things to see and do. Frankly, I probably would have had more than one panic attack had I been there, not mention I would have spent all of my money on the exclusive and limited edition merchandise, so being at home with my cats wasn't so bad.

        So many exciting things were announced and it's all a bit overwhelming so I'm focusing on what I found most interesting and sorting it all into a few categories.
Parks:

• Star Wars Expansions: This has been a long time coming, and with the new movies fast approaching, it was something that I don't think could be stopped. Now I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan (I haven't seen the movies since I was very little and, frankly, don't even remember them that well) but I'm still excited for these lands. It'll be a new challenge for the Imagineers and I'm curious to see just how immersive the lands are. It will be interesting to see what exactly we lose to gain these lands, especially at Disneyland. Before the official announcement I know that there was talk of losing Toon Town, but now it seems like we'll only be losing Big Thunder Ranch and some of the backstage areas nearby. It's sad that we won't have the seasonal events in the Ranch anymore, but I'm really excited to see what new rides and other sorts of attractions Disney has in store for us.
•  Toy Story Land at Hollywood Studios: While I've only been to Disney World once, I'm still always intrigued by any news from that resort. This land sounds like a ton of fun and a great way to show off the Imagineers' theming capabilities!
• Pandora: The World of Avatar: Ever since it was announced, I haven't been thrilled with the prospect of this land. I personally didn't like Avatar that much and I don't think that it matches the tone of Disney very well, but I understand that it's got a ton of potential for immersion. The art shown this weekend certainly makes it all seem exciting but I'm still very skeptical.
• Soarin' Around the World: I have extremely mixed feelings on this new version of Soarin' Over California that will feature new footage from all over the world. I absolutely adore Soarin' as it is, but I've also thought that it needed to update its footage for a long time. I don't think that this change will ruin the theming of the newly redone Grizzly Peak Airfield in California Adventure, as I've seen some people say, because it's still aviation themed. That being said, though, I do hope that they'll end the ride by focusing in on California and arriving at Disneyland.

Films:

• Disney Animation: I've been quietly optimistic about Zootopia for a long time. It just sounds like fun and I'm always happy to see Disney balancing fairytale and non fairytale films. We didn't get much news about it though which is disappointing but understandable considering it's coming out in only a few months. Moana, meanwhile, is something that I am bursting with excitement for! It just sounds absolutely fantastic, with the directors of some of my favorite Disney movies directing and with an amazing setting and concept I have very high hopes for this movie. I'm also just so, so happy to see Disney still working on adding diversity to their films. The last movie to talk about for Disney Animation Studios is Gigantic, which we still don't know much about. One thing we do know, though, is that it's about a human boy and a young giantess. I get the feeling that this movie is going to be a lot about friendship and if Wreck-It Ralph is anything to go off of, that'll be amazing.

• Pixar: A lot of the news surrounding Pixar was about the footage shown from The Good Dinosaur which was apparently fantastic. I'm trying to keep my hopes low after having a lack luster experience watching Inside Out, but I'm still excited. Of all of Pixar's up and coming films many of them are sequels. There was a line of posters at the expo showing a poster for all of their announced movies that are still in production, and most of them were sequels. I trust Pixar to make good sequels, but I'm worried that they'll overwhelm the original ideas that will also be debuting. The other original idea that was discussed was Coco which has something to do with Dia de Los Muertos. Not much is known, but it's supposed to be another great high concept film, so I'm hopeful.
• Live Action: Frankly the only thing I really care about from the news about further live action films is that ORLANDO BLOOM WILL BE BACK FOR PIRATES 5! (This is all I've wanted since I saw On Stranger Tides.)

Merchandise: Not a ton to say here but there is supposed to be a ton of new merchandise coming this fall (some from Tokyo!) and it all looks very intriguing. I haven't ben thrilled with a ton of the merch that Disney has sold for a long time, so anything new is exciting.

Overall, an incredible amount of exciting news was shared at D23 and the future of Disney looks very bright.

All of the pictures and news discussed here can be found on the Disney blogs.

   

Getting Stuck on Peter Pan's Flight // Magical Memories

        Back in January, my best friend Megan and I took a trip to Disneyland on a rainy Friday afternoon. We knew that Peter Pan's Flight would be closing for refurbishment soon and that it would be our last chance to ride it as it was, so we got in line and waited 45 minutes to board our pirate ship and take our trip to Neverland.
        It started off great, of course, because that ride, even before its refurbishment, was one of the most magical attractions in all of Disneyland. As we flew over the streets of London, however, we heard an announcement reminding people to keep their hands inside of the ride vehicle. And then, after entering the Neverland room, just as we were about to circle the island, our ship stopped.
        Now I had never truly been stuck on a ride before, so I figured we would keep going momentarily, as had happened whenever rides like Haunted Mansion and Indiana Jones had paused. Then the lights came on. It was interesting, at first, to look around the room with the lights on. We saw Neverland in better detail than ever before, as the volcano continued to smoke. We could also see what created the stars around the room, fiber optics stretching out like branches from the wall. It was okay, for a while.
        But as the time passed by, panic set in. We hadn't seen or heard from a cast member and we were left dangling in the air. Maybe dangling is a bit dramatic, because having looked up at the track in full lighting I can tell you that it's not lightweight, but I'm afraid of heights, really afraid of heights, so it still felt exceptionally precarious to me. It didn't help that there was a little girl in the ship behind us that kept voicing aloud all of the worries that were running through my head.
        "How are they going to get us down?"
        "How long are we going to be up here for?"
        "What's wrong with the ride?"
        Megan and I were still discussing the details of the room that we could never see before when a cast member finally came in. He asked how everyone was doing and assured us that we would be out soon, but that just set a whole new wave of worry on me, because he never said how we would be getting out. In our ship, Megan and I tried to guess how they could possibly get us down the perhaps 10 ft. difference between us and the floor. The only thing we came up with was a ladder, which made me panic because I did not want to have to face my fears that day by climbing down a tall ladder.
        After about fifteen minutes of being stuck, it occurred to us that we should have eaten before hand because neither of us had eaten in hours and were starting to get hungry. We were already rationing our quickly emptying water bottles. Around the twenty minute mark, another cast member came into the room, but he didn't even say anything to us. He just walked around Neverland and went into the next room. Boredom had set in, because it turns out that there's not much to do inside of a pirate ship and cell phones can't connect to the internet from Neverland, and I was still stewing in worry about how exactly we would get off of the ride.
        Twenty-five minutes after we had stopped, I found out that I had worried for nothing. A cast member approached the boat in front of us, on the other side of the island, and after she did something to it, it started moving. Once they disappeared into the next room, she came and sent our ship on its way. The rest of the ride was odd. We moved along the track with all of the lights on and none of the sounds. The weirdest thing we saw was Tiger Lily, essentially coming out of the ground and missing her lower half.
        After we disembarked and finally left, we saw that, of course, there were still people not so patiently waiting to ride. It was sprinkling and we made our way to the Jolly Holiday Bakery and split a cinnamon roll, celebrating our survival.
        In retrospect, that whole experience is hilarious. We were only so eager to ride it that day because of its impending refurbishment, so essentially the fact that the ride needed work was why we got stuck. And frankly, it was great ride to get stuck on. We got to see behind the scenes and we weren't in uncomfortable restraints. I've seen videos online of other Disneyland rides breaking down and I can say assuredly that I would choose Peter Pan's Flight every time, ten feet off the ground or not.
       

       

Disneyland Official App Review

        Disneyland has finally released its own app! I haven't gotten the chance to use it in the park yet, but after messing around with it for a few days I've got a ton of thoughts about it, so let's jump right in!

Positives:

• Finally an official app to check wait times from anywhere in the parks! I've used some of the unofficial apps before and, frankly, they just weren't that reliable. As previously stated, I haven't used the app in the park yet, so I'm not sure how this one is, but I'll certainly feel more comfortable trusting it than I do with the others.
• Character meet information! While I'm not sure if it's real time, it's great that this app gives guests knowledge about where their favorite characters might be. I and other frequent guests may know where to find Cinderella and Genie, but for people going for the first time or the first time in forever, it'll probably be loads of help!
• Dining prices! Of course, the app doesn't give full menu information (more on that later) but it does allow people to have an idea of how expensive each location is. It does so by giving a rating ($, $$, or $$$) for how much an average meal for an adult costs. Again, for first timers and more casual Disney fans, that feature will probably help out a lot.
• As someone who always forgets to grab a time guide upon entrance, this next feature is particularly exciting: show and parade times! Gone are the days of needing a time guide and having to dig it out of your bag to double check! Seriously, I can not tell you how happy this makes me! I feel like the times for Mickey and the Magical Map are constantly changing and I've heard more than one inaccurate announcement about it on the train, so I'm quite pleased that I'll have those times in my pocket from now on.
• Easier access to information about guest services is another great feature of the app. I personally have found it kind of difficult to read the park maps in regards to these things and so I really love that they've got their own category in the app.     

Negatives:

       

• I love the wait times, but I don't love that you can't sort by land. Of course you can just look at one land on the map, but that gets messy. I'd really like it if in the list mode you could organize according to land instead of just alphabetically.
• You don't have access to restaurant menus. On Disneyland's website you have access to the full menus of most restaurants and I think it'd be great to add that to the app, or at least have links to them. They do tell you the cuisine type of each restaurant but I know that for me a full menu would be of much better use.
• On top of that, there's no way of looking at just one style of cuisine. I wish that you could sort the restaurants by cuisine type, because if you're in the mood for Italian it'd be nice to just look at the places that serve that type of food.
• Not really a true negative but I do find it odd that a major promotion point of this app is that pass holders can use it to enter the park when you can't use it for Fastpass and discount services. I guess it's nice to not have to retrieve your pass in order to park hop but it still seems silly that there's not much use for having your pass on your phone.

        Overall, I'm really excited about this app and I'm really looking forward to all of the things Disney can do with it through updates. I can't wait to use it on my next trip to the parks!

Disneyland's 24 Hour Celebration// May 22-23, 2015 // (A Very Late) Trip Report

        This past May was the first time that I've ever been able to attend a 24 hour event at a Disney park, so you can bet that I was not going to miss it. It turns out that I couldn't go for a full 24 hours, but my best friend Megan and I were there from 1:00 PM to 6:00 AM, and those 17 hours were some of the craziest I've ever had.

        May 22nd also happened to be the day that we had to move out of our dorm room, so that morning was spent loading up our cars and cleaning, and then making the 45 minute drive to our hotel on Harbor Boulevard. We settled into our room, each had a snack, and then headed for the park. We had tried to plan out some of what we wanted to do, but even with that preparation we were nervous things wouldn't go very well. As soon as we got onto Main Street, it was apparent that we should have been even more nervous.

So realistic.

        People were already lining up for the Paint the Night parade, with their blankets spread out across the vast majority of the route. We immediately went to get Fastpasses for Space Mountain, and got even more evidence of how crowded it was when the return time was already for 1:30 AM. With that on our minds, we rushed to get in line for the just refurbished and re-opened Matterhorn. The wait was somewhere around an hour and half, and I'm glad we did it to start the day because later on there was no way we'd have had the patience for it. Once we got into our bobsled and started our ascent, though, it was clear that the wait was worth it. The Matterhorn is one of my favorite rides, so I was more than a little skeptical of the changes, but just seeing that animation through the ice on the climb up the hill was enough to make me solidly a fan of the updates. The new figures of Harold were amazing too and the photo opportunity nearby was a perfect way to cap off that first leg of our day.

        At that point, we were both hungry and decided that it was now or never to go get the special macaroni pizza that was being served at Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta in California Adventure. It was fantastic, so fantastic that I forgot to take a picture of it, but let me assure you, pizza topped with macaroni, bacon, and pesto is one of the most amazing things you could ever put into you mouth. Now, we felt pretty good about ourselves at this point, and as we headed to the front of the park so that we could go back to Disneyland. Once we were out of DCA, however, and in a giant line that wrapped around itself in the esplanade, we started to panic. They were only allowing reentries, and only ones who had been inside of Disneyland before 2:00 PM. We barely made it, but we did, and we couldn't even be mad about how crowded Main Street was.

        Taking note of how crowded the whole of Main Street was, though, we decided to abandon our plan of seeing the first showing of Paint the Night, and try for the the second one at 1 AM instead. We were still trying to figure out how we would see the fireworks as we headed off for Big Thunder Mountain. For the rest of the evening, we did rides, so many rides. The lines were surprisingly short, probably because everyone was already waiting for the parade and terrified to leave their spots.We rode Big Thunder, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Jungle Cruise in just a couple of hours. Then we went to the 7:15 showing of Mickey and the Magical Map, the last showing of the day.

        Maybe it was because it was the last show, maybe it was because it was the start of the sixtieth anniversary, maybe it was because only people who love the show bothered to show up that day, but that showing of Mickey and the Magical Map was by far the most fun and magical that I've ever seen. Everyone, the crowd and cast, was so happy and energized. Everyone was singing and laughing and cheering. It's frankly indescribable just how joyful that half an hour was.

        After we left the theater, we did a grand tour of Fantasyland--well, of most everything in Fantasyland that isn't a dark ride, anyway. We hit the tea cups, we soared with Dumbo, and we rode our white horses around the carousel. All of this was at dusk, and it truly felt like there was pixie dust in the air.

        The panic was starting to set in, though, that we still hadn't figured out how we would see the fireworks. We desperately wanted to see them on Main Street and take in the new projections and everything else that came with the new show, but given that the parade would be there we didn't know how we would do it. In this confusion we got in another ride on Big Thunder, and then wandered into the Emporium. We figured that, if nothing else, we could shop. We took advantage of the slow crowds inside of the store to wander and actually found a pretty decent deal on some 60th anniversary totes. The parade started up outside, and we stood by one of the doors, half admiring merchandise and half watching the show over the heads of the people on the sidewalk outside. While there, we figured out what we would do. We stood by that doorway for the entirety of the parade, and as soon as it was over, we joined the crowd rushing into the middle of Main Street. Our view was surprisingly good, and all we had to do was wait.

        The Disneyland Forever Fireworks show is my favorite thing about the Diamond Celebration. The music selections are fantastic and flow together so well. The songs come from throughout Disney's history and even included some that I never would have guessed. (That Nemo sequence!?!) Standing in that crowd and singing along with everyone was spectacular, and tiring, and maybe made it okay that after the last pyrotechnic Megan and I immediately rushed to the sidewalk and claimed our spot for the second showing of Paint the Night, which would start three hours later.

        During our wait for the parade, we enjoyed coffee and humorous Cast Members, both of which were greatly needed. It also gave me a chance to take some artsy pictures of our Space Mountain Fastpasses, because how often do you get a Fastpass marked for 1:30 AM?
        I'm not going to lie, Paint the Night is not my favorite, it seems a little too jumbled and the style of many things (like Belle's float) aren't really up my alley, but in that moment, after waiting for hours and having had a very stressful and busy day, it was fun. It was just the kind of release we needed. Also, it happens to feature my three favorite princess all as a part of one float, so it gets bonus points for that. Our experience of Paint the Night was also special because we witnessed it have to stop, as Goofy, true to form, dropped his paint brush and had to wait for a Cast Member to retrieve it. In the end, it took them somewhere around ten minutes to do so, so we got Goofy hamming it up right in front of us for an extra hunk of time.
         The rest of the night/day were kind of a blur. We went to Space Mountain, adventured with Indiana Jones, and got pastries at the Jolly Holiday. One of the things that we definitely wanted to do during our 24 hours was meet one of the big 5 in their pajamas. We headed over to Toon Town and got in line for Minnie. What then ensued was a monstrous wait that nearly broke us. I never like to complain about CMs, they have very hard jobs especially during special events like that. However, the two who were supposed to be handling Minnie's meet weren't doing their job, and so what should have been a forty minute wait, was more like two hours. They allowed everyone from large groups to take pictures individually and to take their own separate pictures of just Minnie (who rotated with Donald and Daisy at one point). It was nightmarish. The end picture was okay, but they had allowed it to go on for so long that when it was finally our turn, Megan and I each had rushed experiences with hardly any interaction.
        From there we went for a delirious ride through Storybookland on the canal boats, and then one last spin on the carousel. With about an hour and half until six, and with the sun slowly rising, we went over to New Orleans Square and rode Pirates for our last attraction. Then, we took a few last pictures, and then went to Town Square for our send off.
        Later, after going back to our hotel and each passing out for most of the day, Megan and I heard about the nightmare stories of those who never even got to go into Disneyland that day. I feel so grateful that I was able to go to the 24 hour celebration, that I got to be there for the kick off of the Diamond Celebration, and that I got to do it all with my best friend. There were many things that I wish I could change about that trip, but also loads of memories that I will fondly remember forever. All in all, it was a pretty great way to spend 17 hours of my life.