AntSol Travel

November 10 is the start of the holidays at the Disneyland Resort and the chaos that comes with it. One of my hotel coworkers who used to work at Disneyland back in the 1980s said that Thanksgiving would usually be dead. However, it is always busy now with attraction holiday overlays, decorations in most lands, holiday food & beverage items, the Festival of Holidays at California Adventure, and more to make guests come back in droves every year. While we are there, there are plenty of updates at Downtown Disney, the Villas at Disneyland Hotel, and the Pixar Place Hotel. Let’s check things out, and try not to be overwhelmed with the crowds. Don’t you people have work & school!

Here is the main video I made while at the parks. It was mostly shot in portrait orientation, to make it landscape orientation for YouTube, I put the video on top of footage I took of Rivers of America during sunset.

Downtown Disney

I started by going to Downtown Disney at the former Paradise Pier Hotel, soon to fully open as the Pixar Place Hotel on January 31st. Most exterior work is done but they are still working on the guest rooms. Great Maple, a SoCal-based sit-down brunch restaurant, will operate all food & beverage outlets, and open the main dining room later in November. The Great Maple is known for their maple bacon doughnuts, two of the doughnuts can fill me up, and take the other one home since you get a plate of three.

At the Disneyland Hotel, construction is complete on the Disney Vacation Club Villas at Disneyland Hotel Tower and is ready for reservations. However, the color scheme makes it look out of place, with the three hotel towers painted blue, while the villa tower is painted silver & darker orangish beige if that is an actual description. Disney Vacation Club owners of the timeshare program have reservation priority over regular guests for room bookings.

Plenty of things are happening at Downtown Disney with the first phase of the westside expansion of the former AMC Theater. There is a new stage for bands, an artificial turf grass area, and dining tables that just opened in November. The next phase of the restaurants will open in 2024 for Din Tai Fung: Chinese dim sum, Earl of Sandwich, Seoul Sister: Korean Rice Dishes (I could not find their website), Sip & Sounder: a Los Angeles-based coffeehouse & coffee roaster, and G.G.’s Chicken Shop.

Earl of Sandwich will have a temporary location by the Star Wars Outpost as the current location at the former La Brea location will be demolished soon to place in Portos, an L.A.-based Cuban pastry & sandwich restaurant chain. Lastly, the former Catal & UVA Bar is still under renovation to become El Paseo & Centerico, a high-end Mexican restaurant & bar by Chef Carlos Gaytan, respectively, stated to be open in 2024. One place that got kicked out due to that was Sprinkles Cupcakes, now relocated to the Irvine Spectrum Center.

One of my main objectives for this trip was to get the gingerbread Mickey cookies for my sister at the Grand Californian Hotel. To get there from Downtown Disney, you have to exit the secured bag check zone, and then get the bag checked again coming back in. Inside, it was certainly grand with Christmas decorations in the lobby with a huge Christmas tree in the center of the lobby, garland, and even a gingerbread house version of the Grand Californian. For the cookies, the lobby has a table where Cast Members sell treats & beverages, the Mickey-shaped gingerbread cookies were $10. They seemed a bit smaller this year but looked & tasted good nonetheless. Then I had to wait in a long but quick security line to get back to Downtown.

At the esplanade, the plaza between Disneyland & California Adventure, there were signs that California Adventure was set to close at 5 pm since there was “Celebration You”, a Cast Member service time celebration. When I got there it was 5 pm already, so guests at DCA were forced out and could either go home or go to Disneyland. I had to do the latter since I had a reservation for California Adventure that day, not knowing that DCA closed at 5 pm, I might as well document the chaos at Disneyland.

Disneyland

In cases of guest party nights like Grad Nites & Oogie Boogie Bash, and Cast Member events like “Celebration You” & the cast member previews, is what I like to call the “party crush” since all the guests want to make the most of their day at the parks & pack in the other park. This increases crowd size, increases the chances that you will get crushed in a crowd along the way, and increases wait times for attractions & restaurants wait times. My suggestion to you is to always double-check the park hours before booking, lesson learned.

When I scanned in to go into Disneyland, it was packed to the brim with guests. Also, it was a Monday on the week before Thanksgiving, why were there so many guests who took time off of work, and my guess, skipped school for the kids since there were so many school-aged kids there? Due to that, queues for all attractions were horrendously long. Stand-by wait times for Haunted Mansion was 60 minutes & growing due to the party crush at 5 pm.

Otherwise, Disney Parks heard you like queues, as well, so there was a paid virtual queue, and then you waited in another queue to redeem for the virtual queue, and then you waited in a queue to meet up with stand-by. No thanks, I’ll watch my ride through video of Haunted Mansion Holiday from last year.

Adventureland Treehouse queue was long, so it was a good thing I went to the Magic Key Holder preview and posted on YouTube as well. Check out my walkthrough below!

Due to the party crush, I just wanted to get out. It was 5 pm, the sun was starting to set. I knew when I got back to the apartment, I did not want to make dinner. So I texted my sister, who is my apartment roommate, that I knew she liked the Pizza Flops from Cafe Daisy in Toontown for dinner. She agreed & I trudged through the sea of guests from New Orleans Square to Toontown. 

At the north end of Fantasyland is It’s a Small World, which opened with its holiday overlay on November 10th, with the children of the world singing “Jingle Bells” & “Deck the Halls” in their native language. The exterior lighting with Christmas lights is lit each evening, which just finished on my way to Toontown, trudging through the crowds. You can check out my ride through from last year below!

Walking through the park feels like I am driving through the congested highways of downtown Los Angeles, where a section of Interstate 10 was caught on fire & closed on Saturday. According to the Associated Press, the air rights were leased to a storage company that mostly stored junk and caused a fire. This at least helped encourage Angelenos to take LA Metro & Metrolink.

Then I finally got to Toontown where the Christmas lights & decorations were up on most exteriors. Mickey & Minnie’s house has lights & even yard decorations, along with Goofy & Donald’s houses as well. After that, I got to Daisy’s Cafe. I waited in line for fifteen minutes in line, ordered, and received my two pizza flops and a set of five doughnuts. Pizza flops are personal-sized pizzas folded in half for easier mobility, using a different type of pizza dough to make it easier to cook & fold in half. Then I received my order in a convenient to-go bag as guests would picnic on the artificial turf like the picnic that Mickey & Minnie wanted to do in “Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway”, but plans changed due to Goofy’s train. Next, I headed out of Disneyland at 5:45 pm.

Going through Disneyland with a high number of guests, you need to always be aware of your surroundings as you might almost run over a child or an electric mobility scooter would smush your heel if the crowd suddenly stopped. If you want to get a picture in a highly photographed area like Sleeping Beauty’s castle, guests will cross the path if guests are taking a photo and not photobomb you, which I tried not to do before getting to take a picture of the castle. Then down Main Street, the guests in front of me were going at a slower pace as they were taking in the holiday decorations, so I might as well film it, “It’s so pretty… & crowded”. Then the pace picked as we got to the Christmas tree and exited Disneyland.

I made a mad dash out of Disneyland & to the ART bus bay as it just pulled in and could leave any minute according to their AWay We Go app bus route tracker. I walked to Disneyland but was not in the mood to walk back to work, where I parked my car as I walked to Disneyland. The ART bus route passed by work, so it worked to take it back to work. ART just added the tap-to-pay NFC system on the bus fare box for the $4 per way adult fare, so you can pay with your credit card or Apple & Google Pay on your smartphone if added. For all other adult day passes, discounted passes for children 3 to 9 years, seniors, and Americans with Disabilities ID.

Shortly after I paid my fare, the ART bus operator drove me and two other guests to the hotels. After a few stops, got off the bus near work, I thanked the bus operator, headed back to the car, and drove home. At the apartment, my sister & I ate our pizza flops, which was good, but really greasy, so much so, that the to-go bag had grease stains on the bottom. At least the pizza was good and I did not worry about cooking dinner that night.

California Adventure will come after Thanksgiving.