Surprise Disneyland

Obligatory Christmas Tree Picture

Sometimes the stars align and fortune smiles on the lowly Disney fan and good things happen. Our company has a small office in the Los Angeles area just over the coastal mountains near Malibu.  The Networking Team was called upon to help the office move down a floor requiring  a rework of their networking infrastructure allowing me a chance to travel to L.A. Ordinarily,  The our plan is to go down mid week to prep, then execute the move on Friday evening and Saturday morning.  If all goes well we have Sunday off and return to the office on Monday to clean up the unknown, unknowns.  The move went very well so I had the Sunday off.  Of course, being overcome by the special kind of crazy that lies within many Disney fans,  I invited a friend and a Coworker to go with me to Disneyland.   What a magical place Disneyland is.

Main Street, Disneyland decked out for the holidays.

Many of the same attractions exist in both Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom, however, there are a few Attractions that you can only find in Disneyland now.  Some of these attractions opened when Disneyland first opened in 1955 and some of them remain among my favorites to this day.  Every time I go, which unfortunately is never as often as I would like,  I try to hit at least one of these Opening Day attractions.  Last time I visited Disneyland, I went with Mr. Toad on a wild ride through the English country side and the streets of London.

Tomorrow Land

A bit of Garland and lights.

My choice for this trip was Snow White's Scary adventure. The issue I have with both the 7 dwarfs Mine Train and Snow Whites Scary adventure is the abruptness of the story telling.  Both attractions seem to be buzzing along and suddenly stop mid story with a "and they all lived happily ever after" ending.  Snow White's Scary Adventure went from a scene with the evil queen to the end of the story with out any of the messy "waking Snow White by the Prince" business.  This kind of surprised me, simply because Disney Imagineers have always been the ultimate story tellers within attractions.  Honestly, I liked both attractions. I feel the 7 dwarfs Mine train's ride vehicle is a bit cramped but the ride is fun with the roller coaster aspect and the state of the art animatronics,  but the story seems to have let the attraction down a bit.  Snow White's Scary adventure doesn't have the state of the art animatronics. All the Snow White attraction in Disneyland has going for it is the story telling. It was good as far as it went but there wasn't enough, and I could see how some smaller children might be frightened by some of the scenes in the attraction.  Mr. Toad was a better attraction in my estimation.

Small World at Disneyland looks very different.

Awesome

We can all agree that Disneyland is a magical place.  In Disneyland, Walt and his Imagineers laid the foundation for all the Disney Theme Parks all over the world.  I would love to go do Disneyland anytime of year.  However,  the holidays in a Disney park are especially magical.  The holidays bring things to Disneyland has that I wish the Magic Kingdom would adopt. We all have experienced the ear-worm that is the Small World attraction.  You leave the attraction humming the Sherman brothers song so firmly stuck in your head that you might thing that surgery would be the only way to extricate it.  I love the attraction.  The animatronics are not as complex as other attractions but that hardly seems to matter when you have hundreds of them all operating at the same time.  Now imagine taking that all of that movement and music and overlaying a holiday theme on top of it.  My poor excuse for writing skills cannot really do justice to the spectacular show that visitors to this attraction get.  Think of the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights on a smaller scale with.. well... actual animatronic dancers all through the attractions.  Maybe I am easily impressed, but I was in awe of the whole thing.  I wish that Disney could do a similar overlay at the Magic Kingdom.

All these internal Small World pictures were taken without flash.  

I took a lot of pictures.  I couldn't get over how neat it was.

Haunted Mansion. Frankie Enoch took these photos. My battery was gone.

In New Orleans Square sits the Disneyland version of the Haunted Mansion.  We fast passed this attraction because the standby wait was consistently 60 minutes or longer throughout the day. Those of you out there that are familiar with the Haunted Mansion Know that there are 999 happy haunts that are always looking for one more to join them.  During the Holiday season, Jack Skellington and the demons and ghosts from Halloween town take over the Mansion and make it their own.  Oogie Boogie, Lock, Shock and Barrel, along with Jack and Sally claim residence in the the Mansion bringing Danny Elfmans wonderful music to life.... Or death as the case may be.  Some of the old haunts are still there but with a new song to sing or a new twist to their performance. Even the ball room has a huge holiday tree... at least a huge holiday tree in spirit.  I love the original Haunted Mansion.  Transporting this attraction to Halloween town only makes the experience even more fun for the Holidays.  Disney needs to bring the Nightmare Before Christmas Haunted Mansion overlay to the Magic Kingdom.

The Whole Nightmarish Gang

Till Next Time Jack.

Some of the attractions are very much the same as their Walt Disney World Counterparts.  Star Tours was awesome.  Much of the new cannon has been incorporated in the attraction without any spoilers to The Last Jedi.  It is very much the same as Star Tours in Hollywood Studios. (As a quick side note, I was able to see the Hollywood sign as we drove to Disneyland from Malibu.  Cool, Huh?) The Pirates of the Caribbean attraction was, in most ways very similar to Pirates in the Magic Kingdom save for the fact that Disneyland Pirates adds more scenes to the tale.  I think the Disneyland Pirates is a better version, but there is no way that I will not visit the Pirates attraction at Walt Disney World.  This classic attraction will never go out of style for me. We rode the Matterhorn and Space Mountain. Both attractions were a blast.  Space Mountain may have been one of the first Roller Coaster attractions I ever road when we visited Disneyland when I was 10. The Matterhorn was unfinished business for me.  When I was young and visited Disney,  we didn't have enough E tickets to ride the Matterhorn.  I fixed that a couple years a go on the trip preceding this one by riding the Matterhorn attraction at last some 40 years after my first visit to Disneyland. Another big difference between the Disneyland and the Florida parks is the fact that most of the queues are outside.  The weather in Southern California permits a comfortable wait, for the most part, outside of the attractions.  A down side to the outdoor queue location is the fact that it tends to block the walkways if the main switchbacks fill.

At the end of the day, which park do I think is better?  Well, I would have to answer Walt Disney World.  Disney World has so many more attractions and so many other experiences that Walt's Florida Project's Gift of Space makes possible. I really loved Disneyland.  The original park will always hold a place in all our hearts.  But, Walt was about change and updates and while you get some of that in Disneyland, Walt Disney World has the room to make it happen.  Given the chance I will always go back to the original Disneyland park, and I would like to visit California Adventure again. But I dream of going back to the lands in Florida for the food, the attractions and everything that goes with them. °O°


As a postscript to this lengthy entry, I wanted to thank my friend Frankie Enoch for Haunted Mansion pictures. My phone battery was depleted by the time our fast pass rolled around and she took the photos for me.

Also, I wanted to mention that all the pictures taken in the dark rides were made with available light.  No flash was used to take them.  It is most irritating to me to see flashes from cameras in dark rides, so if it comes down to getting a photo and using a flash, I will always choose not to take a picture.