Lee and I spent October 10-12 at the Disneyland Resort. Some of this I have written about in previous blog entries (like the AllEars Meet), but here’s a few more highlights.

I also wrote about our stay at the new Villas at the Grand Californian, which was very nice. Love that one-bedroom villa!!! Lee has decreed that we shall always stay in one-bedroom villas. 🙂 (Which we usually do anyways.)

Back to the rest of the weekend, though. Saturday was very crowded in the parks, even DCA had a lot more people than it usually does. They were even making AP holders get handstamps all weekend for park re-entry – and I’ve never seen that before! We were so glad we were staying on-site and not having to deal with parking and the parking tram and all of that.

Saturday evening we wanted to see the new fireworks show, Halloween Screams, again. We met fellow AllEars® teammate Lisa Berton at The Plaza Inn for dinner. Holy cow…it was soooooo crowded!!! Line out the door and no tables to be had (though we finally found one). It was my fault…I wanted their fried chicken for dinner. And it was good!

Anyway…after dinner we found a friendly CM outside who was starting to direct traffic into Tomorrowland, and we asked her about a good viewing spot for Halloween Screams, so she told us where she likes to watch it from. And Lee videotaped the whole show – it’s a little better than the one he originally shot since he had a wide angle lens this time and he modified the exposure settings so the castle is a lot brighter. The show is over 10 minutes long, so there are two parts to the video.

As you can see, even though it was a great spot for seeing the fireworks and the projections on the castle, it was not such a good shot for seeing the “crystal ball”, which was partially blocked by one of the castle’s spires. Oh well.

Sunday morning Lee and I went into Disneyland for Magic Morning – which we were eligible for because we were staying at a Disneyland resort (and it’s the ONLY way for AP holders to get it!) There seemed to be fewer people in the park than on previous occasions when we’ve done it on a Saturday morning. We did 5 attractions in an hour – Ghost Galaxy, Buzz Lightyear, Star Tours, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan. And after the park opened we went to Haunted Mansion Holiday and Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Ride (more commonly known as “Indy”). Seven attractions in an hour and a half! That’s more than we often do in an entire day. 🙂

Fast forward to later in the day after breakfast, the AllEars meet, and lunch at Rancho del Zocalo. As we were walking out of the park with Deb and Cathy at about 2:00 we saw the Hook and Ladder Company performing in front of the fire station. This is one of the things I love best about Disneyland…all of the little things like this that you find happening around the park. They were joined by several characters – Cruella DeVil tried to steal the stuffed Dalmatian puppy toy they had sitting on the piano, and she was run off by Chip and Dale, who did a cute shadow dance.

And then Goofy came out and danced to “Come on, Get Happy” – who knew that someone with feet that big could dance so well? It was a lot of fun to watch.

That evening we came back to the park with Deb and Cathy and did the Fantasmic! dessert package. Cathy hadn’t seen the Disneyland version of Fantasmic! before, and I don’t think Deb had, either, and they both loved it. Cathy is a woman after my own heart and loved the pirate ship.

This time the dragon mostly behaved – she moved around a bit more than the first time we saw her, though she didn’t breathe fire. I love the way she leans down to look at Mickey like he’s some insignificant little thing that’s bothering her.

From there we had an excellent view of the Halloween Screams fireworks, but we couldn’t see the crystal ball at all, and could only get a glimpse of Zero. Since the fireworks are really designed to be viewed from Main Street, it’s not so obvious how many different places they are shot off from – they just appear to be at different depths. But when viewed from the side they appear side-by-side rather than front-to-back.

The next morning we were able to participate in the morning Power Walk around DCA. This is something they offer several mornings a week to guests at the Grand Californian, but we’d never been able to do it before because we were doing Magic Morning instead. But since this was Monday, there wasn’t a Magic Morning. We had signed up a couple of days earlier – there’s no charge, you just have to be a hotel guest. At the time they said we would do 2 miles in 30 minutes – which I don’t consider a power walk pace. 🙂

There were only Lee and I and one other female guest, plus the instructor. Because we were going into the park before it was open we all had to sign waivers. Once the security person let us in the DCA gate we did a little stretching, and then started walking. And since we were a small group who could all walk fast, we really did do a power walk, so I was happy. There was maintenance going on in the park so we had to avoid a few obstacles. We walked all the way around Paradise Pier, around “a bug’s land”, then all the way around the Hollywood Studios area, went past Soarin’, and ended up at the rapids again. Normally they stop there, but we still had time because we’d been walking so fast, so we went once more around past Grizzly Rapids, the Golden Vine Winery, and Soarin’. We still only did 1.8 miles, though – I had my GPS watch on. After we stretched for a while longer we walked out of the park. It was really a nice way to start the morning! In addition to the Power Walks, they also offer Pilates classes several days a week. Our instructor said they hope to expand the program and offer some additional stretching and aerobic programs next year.

It was Columbus Day and Disneyland was busy, though not quite as horrible as I’d expected. Deb, Lisa and I took Cathy to Toontown and showed her some of the fun stuff there is to do there.

We met Lee and we all had a really nice lunch, and then Lee and I said goodbye and headed back home.

It was a really fun weekend. It’s always really nice to be staying there and be able to head back to the room in the afternoon, and even better to go back to the room late at night instead of driving home!

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