Today was the first AllEars meet at Disneyland! We had quite a few people who came by our little oasis at the Carnation Plaza Gardens. It was fun meeting those of you that I had the chance to meet, and I’m sorry I didn’t have a chance to talk to everyone.

Deb posted a picture to twitter: http://twitpic.com/l69u1

The big surprise for me was re-connecting with Mike, who was my computer lab partner back in college – I hadn’t seen him since I graduated back in 1982. So yes, you can all say: “it’s a small world after all!” 🙂

Lee and several others were having an interesting discussion about how other Disneyland attractions could be “Halloween-ized” – making the dark rides in Fantasyland even scarier was one suggestion, or putting holographic ghostly miners in Big Thunder Mountain. And I believe the idea of a zombie it’s a small world was very popular…

After the meet a group of us went to lunch at Rancho del Zocalo, where we had a good lunch and a nice chat.

Thanks to everyone who came by!

One thing I forgot to put in my blog yesterday about the one bedroom villas at the Grand Caifornian…see this? Looks like a nice cabinet under the TV, right?

Ahhh…but you see it transforms into a Magical Murphy bed! (But it’s not a magical MAGICAL bed, since it only transforms one way and not six…all of you old-time RADP readers will understand that one.) So the one bedroom villas can sleep five people instead of four (though that 5th person had better be pretty short!).

So back to Disney’s Halloween Time…I never got back to talking about some of the other aspects of Halloween Time after our visit two weeks ago.

Because of the Celebration Roundup and BBQ back at Big Thunder Ranch, there are some changes in the Halloween decorations there this year. The area is Big Thunder Ranch Halloween Roundup rather than Woody’s Halloween Round-Up this year, though they still do some Halloween-themed show items on the stage at the BBQ. But that’s not accessible to all park guests like it has been in the past – only those dining there.

The crafts area is still there, but it’s much smaller, and there’s no cookie decorating this year.

Scaredy-crow Shack is still decorated with all of the pumpkin-headed scarecrows – it’s quite festive.

The animals in the petting corral even get some Halloween-themed attire – when we were there a couple weeks ago we watched one of the animal handlers putting bandanas around the necks of the animals – including the turkey! Who was not happy about that, and attempted to peck at her. I was surprised the goats didn’t nibble at them, but apparently they are well-fed enough to not need additional fiber in their diets. 🙂

But my favorite part of Big Thunder Ranch at Halloween is the pumpkin carvers. They do some really amazing things – I could do a whole photo gallery just on the different pumpkins. But I won’t bore you with all of them, so here’s a few of my favorites:

There’s also some special Halloween treats and desserts. There was supposed to be a Zero’s Ghostly Ghoulash served at The French Market, but that hasn’t shown up yet for some reason. But there are desserts at several restaurants – Lee and I tried the red-velvet madeleines that are served up in a coffin. That is available at Rancho del Zocalo and The French Market. It was really good.

There’s also this Jack Skellington cheesecake:

They also have various kinds of seasonal caramel apples, pumpkin fudge, crispie treats and cookies, and a decorated pumpkin spice muffin.

Another new thing this year is something called a “demitasse”. This is a small dessert that’s served in a ceramic Mickey pumpkin – it’s pretty cute. Inside is a small apple-raisin muffin topped with a sweet caramel mousse. It’s served at Rancho del Zocalo, Plaza Inn, Cafe Orleans, Blue Bayou, and Baker’s Field Bakery, and perhaps other locations. The price is $6.99.

The Disneyland Band even has special Halloween uniforms! In addition to the orange plume on their hats, the braid on their uniforms is actually a spider web pattern! I haven’t heard them play any spooky music, though.

By the way…the parks are VERY crowded this weekend – they added a third Fantasmic! show Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, and by 10:30 a.m. or so they were already parking people in the overflow lots today (Sunday). Fastpasses for Ghost Galaxy were gone for the day by 11:00 this morning.

I’ll have more on Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy next time. And I still have to say that Halloween Screams ROCKS!!!!

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