Disneyland Report—Part 1: Observations

For my Spring Break, a few of my friends and I threw a quick trip to the Disneyland Resort together for 4 days, 3 nights. This trip to Disneyland Resort was the first trip for all three of us, and we all had a blast. Over the next couple of days (or weeks), I will be trying to post a few reports dealing with our trip to the West Coast, from a first-timers point-of-view. Mind you, we might be a bit skewed in opinions because we are (all three of us) Cast Members for the Walt Disney World Resort: working in Attractions in Magic Kingdom, Guest Relations at the Magic Kingdom, and Resort Activities at Fort Wilderness/Wilderness Lodge.

My first report, for today, will be a quick report, of observations that I noticed throughout our trip regarding the Disneyland Resort, both in its Cast Members and its Guests; mainly focusing on similarities and differences between Walt Disney World and Disneyland.

Upon entering the resort area, I realized one thing right away: everything in this resort is so close together, there are no buses, no trams (unless taking from parking garage), and there is only a Monorail that is considered an “attraction” that takes guest from Downtown Disney to Disneyland, though it was closed for refurbishment when I was there. Everything in this resort is within walking distances of each other, this, in my opinion, is a great thing, as there won’t be a transportation problem, and you can easily move from place to place without waiting. I personally loved the ability to walk from our hotel—Disneyland Hotel—to the various parks and shopping district.

Onto the parks! Throughout the park I noticed many things, including:

• The proximity of everything to each other, though the parks are kind of small, the parks are packed with attractions and entertainment to be had. I personally enjoyed that everything was very close to each other, and you didn’t have to walk really far to the next attraction
• The characters roam around the park with no attendants. Opposed to Walt Disney World, where every character within the park has at least two attendants (so it seems), the characters of Disneyland Resort roam around the park, like my encounter with Mad Hatter and Alice which just roamed around Fantasyland for what seemed like a while. They didn’t have an attendant around, that I saw, and when I took my picture with them, they queued up their own line, which was impressive in my book. It seemed that the “face characters” didn’t have attendants, while the “fur characters” (AKA fully costumed) had maybe one attendant, that wore that land’s attraction costume, which makes me wonder, were their attendants part of operations or entertainment (If anyone has an answer to this, I’d greatly appreciate an answer).

   

• When watching the parade, I was most intrigued by their Parade Audience Control cast members (mainly because I work in Main Street Operations in Walt Disney World). One thing I noticed, and was kind of told about was that when in the front row for the parades, you need to be sitting down. I like this idea, as working in Walt Disney World it would definitely enhance guests experience, and more guests could be able to see the parade with less obstructions, though I don’t think that it’d work in the Walt Disney World because of the different ‘groups’ that go to the two resorts.

• Another sitting in entertainment item includes sitting for Fantasmic!, which was my biggest frustration. While in a sense sitting is nice, for everyone, I was in the second row, and really couldn’t see that much because I had taller people sitting in front of me, so I could imagine what it was like for the guests sitting farther in the back.
• By far, my favorite observation in this park were the WARNING SIGNS that seemed to be posted throughout the park for a variety of ways. From the smoking sections in the parks, to the cash registers in all of the shops, featuring information about items causing cancer. My friends and I were intrigued by the variety of warning signs, clearly it was for a California law (if anyone has an idea/reasoning of why they have the signs posted in the locations, please, feel free to educate my Floridian mind!).

That it is for today, hope you enjoyed this odd take on my trip. Be on the look out in the next couple of days (maybe weeks) for a legitimate trip report including more pictures, information, and reviews.