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11/04/22 - Disneyland Resort - Transition from Halloween to Christmas
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11/04/22 - Disneyland Resort - Transition from Halloween to Christmas

Hello Everyone!

Friday was a relaxing visit to the Disneyland Resort for me. I roamed the parks checking out the annual transformation and other happenings. The crowds in the park were heavier than I would have expected for the week between Halloween and Christmas. Wait times were on the moderate side and a fair number of guests were roaming around. Temperatures were on the cooler side in the 60s for almost the entire visit.

Thoughts and Observations:

  • I decided to give the Disneyland App Car Locator function another try today.  When I clicked into the feature today it figured out I was in the Pixar Pals parking structure automatically, asking me to confirm that is the lot I was in. But I still had to choose the floor, aisle, and section manually. So it really saved nothing in terms of clicks since instead of selecting the garage I had to say yes I was there. That seems slightly better than last week but not much.

  • There still seems to be some quirks with the Car Locator functions. About an hour after arriving I was on Buena Vista Street and the app did a push notice asking if I wanted to save my car location. That seems like a very long delay from when I left my car. Last visit I commented how I thought it should know you are leaving and ask if you need to be reminded of your cars location.  Well today it did that. Every time I left a park to park hop I got a push notification asking if I was leaving.   I found it humorous that when I went to leave for the night it did not though.

  • Started my afternoon at the Disneyland Hotel, the DVC tower looks to have reached its final height and the final pieces of steel are going in. A cast member saw me taking pictures and shared that they recently had a cast event where they were able to sign the final beam. They did not know if it had been raised already or not though.

  • The seasonal change from Halloween to Christmas is underway around the parks. This year they have just over a week on the calendar with the Holiday season starting November 11th. There are Christmas decorations up throughout both parks in various stages and the Festival of Holidays marketplaces are in place inside Disney California Adventure for Festival of Holidays. Buena Vista Street is just about decorated including the Christmas tree. Interesting to note in the evening the tree was lit and two random pieces of garland but nothing else. I did not spot any other Christmas lights on this evening. Over at Disneyland Main Street is in an odd state with some buildings fully decorated, some in progress and many not started yet. They seem somewhat random too, not like the teams started on one end or side but instead were spread out/hopped around. Nothing drastically different or altered jumped out to me today from previous years.

  • I decided to eat at Flo's. I opened the Disneyland App like usual, and the option to customize my burger no longer existed.  I cleared the cache and same thing and for good measure removed and reinstalled the app.  No luck.  I tried a couple other locations like Smokejumpers or Galactic Grill and same thing. I thought this was odd and am curious if it is a bug in the app or a new "feature". If it is the new way of doing things that seems to me even less people will want to use mobile order. As of Sunday the app is still acting the same way and I had someone try it on a second device too.   

  • I decided to walk by Flo's and check out the line. There were only a handful of groups inside so I got in line and ordered at a register.    In the end I was eating before the original return time I saw in the app.  Also with the cooler weather they have returned to handing out cups of ice if you asked. I noticed the water cups still had no ice in them (or it all melted in the half dozen on the counter where I picked up my food).

  • I had not visited the Haunted Mansion Holiday yet this year due to some bad timing, hot weather, and long lines.   So today when I saw a 40 minute wait posted and the Lightning Lane return line was not backed up I got in line.  I was moving ok through Magnolia park then when I neared the gate the pace slowed down.  The return was backed up and was going off toward the exit now and the sign had moved up to a 50 min wait.   From there to the merge point was extremely slow going.  It looked like 5 or 6 groups to one as the mix of Lightning Lane to Standby while I was watching.   It took almost an hour to reach the stretch room from when I first got in line.  Then almost another half hour to to exit the attraction.  The ride seemed to be having some issues. The corridor from the stretch room to load area was jammed and did not move for several minutes.  Then once onboard the attraction kept stopping to, and for longer periods of time than the usual load/unload of someone needing assistance. I noticed about 10 minutes after I exited the attraction was showing as down.

  • Had what I call a very Disneyland moment while walking through Fantasyland.   Rapunzel and Flynn came up and walked along side of me through the land. When we neared the Tea Cups she spotted Donald Duck in the small world mall and pointed that out to me and the others around. They went to the right and I went to the left toward the theater. I call this a Disneyland moment because it seems you encounter more characters roaming the parks and not in stationary meet and greet locations than other Disney parks.

  • Tale of the Lion King was back on the schedule and being performed Friday so I stopped by for the 5:00pm performance.   The theater had a healthy crowd and it was great to see the theatre in use again. I had not seen a show in quite a number of weeks.

Here are some recent posts to the Geek's Blog:

Disney Related Press Releases

Be sure to check out the picture update that goes with this Geekspeak column, it can be found in our Disneyland Resort Pictorial Update section

Trip logs and mileage reports are in the Park Miles section.

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