Disneyland Trip Reports
Topic: DL Surpises for Pattens, Part 1

#	Author	Message
1	TinkerbellPatten Tue 6/3/2008 9:35p	We have just returned from our long-awaited DL/DCA trip and I couldn't wait to sit down and tell you all about it. Beware: I am wordy. So if you have the patience, here goes... Trip: May 26 - 31 Our family of four(me, hubby, DS16, DD10)started out in San Diego where we spent one day at Balboa Park. We did the Pompeii exhibit at the Natural History Museum. Yes real artifacts and real body casts recovered from Pompeii, it was sobering but worth seeing although much smaller than other touring exhibits such as Titanic. It's a very exclusive exhibit only showing in 4 U.S. museums, I'm glad we did it. The kids love museums and the Pompeii exhibit did not disappoint; although it was small enough that it took only about 2 hours to see all of it including the movie that goes with it. After this we had lots of time to go to the beach but the kids weren't interested in this. They knew that Anaheim was our next stop so there was no way they were going to "waste time" at a beach! Their suggestion was, we're APers now, we can use our APs and maybe get a few hours of park time in before they close so let's get there, mom and dad! (They're chips off the old block.) So we arrive at Hojos and find we're in bldg 2 (which incidentally now has the new beds in all the rooms by the way for all of you who are interested!) The beds were definately heavenly. This is a much appreciated improvement, I'm happy to report that Hojos was great in every respect. A friend of ours was supposed to join us and we had a room reserved for him but he got sick the morning of checkin and had to cancel last minute. Hojos was kind enough to not charge us for the late cancellation, much appreciated! We loved our room and our beds and of course the staff too. Saw the workers pouring and smoothing cement in the new pool area, it's coming along nicely. The garden pool was in use but never too crowded during our stay. We beat feet over to the park, arriving about 7 pm so we had only 3 hours. We hoped we'd get a ride or two in before park closing. SEVEN attractions later, we closed out the park. It was great! It was unanimously voted that we start out with Haunted Mansion since this was the main purpose for our trip. (Note: we always go during the holidays and we're "sick to death" of the Tim Burton theme. Don't beat me up for it but hey it's the truth.) We loved this "regular" version much better. After this we rode POTC, Jungle Cruise which is so fun at night, BTMRR which is also so fun at night, Buzz, Star Tours and even Astro Orbitor, which believe it or not was practically a walk-on just before closing. DD10 gave an Astro Orbitor CM a thank-you note because he had called her "Princess" and he sure did appreciate her note. He grinned and kept thanking her, then showed the other CMs the note. We gave out other thank yous to CMs but this guy really seemed to appreciate her note more than the other ones did. I wish I could have gotten his name, he was so nice. But it was dark enough and so much going on with people in the way and I didn't get his name. :-( So to the CM that was so kind at Astro Orbitor at closing time on Tuesday night, thank you again for being such a great guy. Hope you see this. You made my daughter's day when she saw how much you liked her note. The next day was our first full day in the park, Wed. May 28th. We slept in late (we have a bad habit of this, we always intend to be there at rope drop but just can't manage it!) so we elected to go to DCA since it opens later, we could make it to rope-drop there. I told hubby about Soarin' operating before park opening (something I learned here, thanks to all you LPers with the great info!) So we are Soarin' early, feeling special because we had known this secret, exit the ride to see the rest of the park is now open and head over towards Screamin'. Near the Pacific Wharf bridge, some other park guests excitedly show us their Dream Fastpasses and shout, run, run, they're giving them out right there!!! So we run, run, and get the last 4! Yes we were actually Dreamed! Thank you, thank you, thank you, to those fabulous folks who were so kind to give us this great info and in the nick of time! The Dream Team was handing them out on the Pacific Wharf bridge at 10:30 a.m. We were ecstatic. I told hubby how many of you LPers are locals and go to DL/DCA all the time and still have not been dreamed yet so that he would understand how lucky we are that we won these. We felt like we had won the equivalent of the Disney lottery. Spent the rest of the day flashing our Dream FastPass lanyards and feeling like royalty as we bypassed the lines in both parks. Hubby and I were also celebrating our Anniversary this day, so we attached our Mickey and Minnie DL Anniversary buttons to our Dream Fastpass lanyards. Then I felt even more like a winner. My hunny is the best prize of all. Part 2 coming up...
2	Mrs ElderP Wed 6/4/2008 6:02a	Sounds like you've trained those kids well. Glad your first two days went so well.
3	MOLLYSMOM Wed 6/4/2008 10:58a	Fun, fun....more, please.
4	SoThisIsLove Wed 6/4/2008 11:28a	<<I told hubby about Soarin' operating before park opening (something I learned here, thanks to all you LPers with the great info!)>> I've must totally zoned and never noticed this info before! Where/how do you get in there? Great story so far! And, I'm with the kids. As much as I love the beach, if DL's on the radar screen, well fuhgeddabout it! xoxo
5	mater4 Wed 6/4/2008 5:56p	Great trip so far. I can't wait to hear more. :)
6	TinkerbellPatten Wed 6/4/2008 8:03p	STIL: Soarin' is located before the rope location so when the pre-opening of the park is going on, head into Condor Flats and get in line for Soarin'. They start letting people on the ride before actual park opening. Typically we ride this first and then when exiting the ride, acquire fastpasses for later on also.
7	SoThisIsLove Mon 6/9/2008 5:04p	Thank you, sweetheart! xoxo
8	TinkerbellPatten Mon 6/9/2008 8:28p	My pleasure :-)

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