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Disneyland Resort, California: General Discussion

Disney have finally dropped the single release of Start a Wave, the main song from World of Color ONE.

From: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/start-a-wave-feat-cody-fry-from-world-of-color-one/1678210234?i=1678210236



From: https://open.spotify.com/track/5gWhUfRR74HAbd88X1hP4f


Personally I think it might be one of my favourites they’ve done for a show thus far. I love the lyrics and they fit with the theme of the 100th perfectly.

Here’s the full show for anyone who’s interested and hasn’t seen it yet:


From: https://youtu.be/eLDTvnlyssI
 
So err… Slight issue with this evening’s performance of Flamtasmic…


From: https://twitter.com/PeterSciretta/status/1650023672143572992/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1650023672143572992&currentTweetUser=PeterSciretta


Disney will be getting a reputation for combustible dragons at this rate 😂

No doubt the show will be either suspended for a while or be running in a long term B mode, sans dragon. I’d guess given how consumed the piece became it’ll be a pretty major rebuild needed/full replacement.
 
I’d assume that there came a point where the kerosene/fuel started leaking and dropping down from the head onto the rest of the structure which helped it become engulfed. Even if the material itself was somewhat flame retardant, a flammable liquid on top of it might still burn to the point that the surface begins to take too.

The larger burst towards the end looks to me like some sort of fuel or hydraulic line then ruptured and added a load more fuel to the fire.
 
Clearly not something they ever expected to happen either, seeing as they just had one person with a fire extinguisher and one person with a hose pipe in initial attempts to put it out!

Fantasmic at Disneyland is such an incredible show. Hopefully it doesn't take too long for them to get a new dragon built and repair any other damage. But this is Disney, so we could be looking at years!
 
Splash Mountain is now closed, leaving only one version of the ride remaining, the one at Tokyo Disneyland.

As a former Disneyland local, Splash Mountain was up there with Indy and the Matterhorn as my favorite rides of all time. I got one last ride on it at the end of 2019, which I'm very grateful for now, but I'm not totally upset to see it go. The main reason is that all the animatronics were repurposed from America Sings, which opened in 1974, making them almost 50 years old and really showing their age on a ride that's very heavy on animatronics to begin with. I'm a little sad that I'll never get to ride the Splash I grew up with, but I am looking forward to the new version especially if they don't cut corners and really bring it up to the standards of a solid modern dark ride.

The silver lining is that Tokyo Disneyland's version is easily the best of them, so the ride will be around in what I consider to be its best version for some years to come. The catch is: you have to go to Japan, and, for the complete experience, speak a bit of Japanese.
 
Llama said:
Splash Mountain is now closed, leaving only one version of the ride remaining, the one at Tokyo Disneyland.

As a former Disneyland local, Splash Mountain was up there with Indy and the Matterhorn as my favorite rides of all time. I got one last ride on it at the end of 2019, which I'm very grateful for now, but I'm not totally upset to see it go. The main reason is that all the animatronics were repurposed from America Sings, which opened in 1974, making them almost 50 years old and really showing their age on a ride that's very heavy on animatronics to begin with. I'm a little sad that I'll never get to ride the Splash I grew up with, but I am looking forward to the new version especially if they don't cut corners and really bring it up to the standards of a solid modern dark ride.

The silver lining is that Tokyo Disneyland's version is easily the best of them, so the ride will be around in what I consider to be its best version for some years to come. The catch is: you have to go to Japan, and, for the complete experience, speak a bit of Japanese.
Click to expand...
We rode it in October and it was probably the one version of a ride at both US destinations in which I felt Disney's World's is superior.

Still had a good time on it but felt dated.
 
I visited Disneyland, the home park of my childhood, at the beginning of May. My previous visit was a few weeks before the pandemic, which turned out to be fitting as I would consider the subsequent yearlong shutdown to be the end of a Disneyland era. I don't have time for a full trip report but wanted to share my thoughts while they're still relatively fresh.

Disneyland is still the best themed park in the world, and it's not even close. Maybe DisneySea competes, but I think Disneyland wins for being the original. Like every person on this board I've grown to love Europa Park, a place I hope to visit annually until I die, but in terms of proper, high quality theming, the two parks are in completely different categories. I had a semi-religious experience riding the Mark Twain at sunset, and while EP has some beautiful views, there's nothing even close that compares to a similar view at Disneyland. It's like the word "sightlines" was never translated into German. Online there are a lot of complaints about Disney going downhill, but to be honest I didn't notice many of them. Things like a lack of real live entertainment were obvious, but the parks and the rides looked as good as I've seen them. The prices were obviously a joke, much more than in the past, but I saved my lunch money for a while and it was kind of a special occasion.

I thought the recent complaints of "you have to be on your phone the whole time" would be overblown, but no, you really do have to be on your phone the whole time. Between being the designated "Lightning Lane" wrangler and mobile food orderer for my party I felt like I really was buried in my phone the whole time. Not as big of a deal for me as this was my crew's first visit and probably my 40th so I was happy to carry that weight, but I can imagine it could be a big drag on a vacation to have to be so tied up in your phone just to do normal things throughout the day.

In a similar vein, the 60-day reservation window for restaurants is absolutely brutal. I'm lucky enough to live in Europe where reservations dropped at 3pm instead of 6am, and was able to get a slot at all the restaurants I wanted, but for most people you have to be awake right at 6AM on the dot and from that point you have about a 15 second window if you want a table at Trader Sam's. I'm not sure what a better system would be, but this one doesn't strike me as a particularly good way to solve an issue of limited capacity.

I've also read a lot of complaints about "Genie Plus" and while it's a very confusing and occasionally frustrating system, I think it's actually better than the free Fastpass or $10 Maxpass from before. People love to write that Fastpass was free and equal for everyone, which in a sense is true, but it definitely favored the locals who knew how to use the system better (I'm sure everyone here has seen the Defunctland video by now). The current method of charging everyone $30 per day seems to favor out-of-town visitors, which seems like the best way to do it, given the limited capacity at the park. For us coming from a continent away, $30 a day is nothing compared to the entire rest of going to Disney, so we gladly paid it and were able to do everything at the parks twice. The locals with Annual Passes Magic Keys aren't going to pay $30 as readily when they can just come back in a couple weeks. I don't love how quickly "pay to play" became a thing at Disney, or theme parks in general, but since that genie (ha ha!) can't really be put back in the bottle, at least they seem to be building a system that works for people who are really on a special trip, the people for whom it might be years or even decades before they can come back.

As far as rides, the only new one was Mickey and Minnie's Runaway Railway, which is an instant classic Disney dark ride for me. The queue, the preshow, and the ride are all brilliant. I skipped the new Spider-Man ride because nothing about it appeals to me. The person I went with had been to EP a few times and this was their first time at Disneyland, so the comparisons were pretty funny. They found Piraten in Batavia way more exciting than Pirates of the Caribbean, which at first I thought was heresy but after some reflection, it makes some sense...

And finally, it pains me that I can't remember his name, but we had perhaps the best Jungle Cruise skipper I've had in my entire life, which means dozens and dozens of trips around the jungle. I took a picture but missed his nametag. I want to say Ryan (?) but can't recall, but wow, I was dying laughing the entire trip.

Overall it was a great trip, and there's nothing more (forgive me) magical than showing Disneyland to someone for their first time, but yikes is it expensive, and not entirely chill. For my annual trips I'll take 8-hour days and €6 beers at EP, thank you.
 
As well as all the WDW announcements - they have announced new rides for California adventure-

The previously announced e ticket avengers ride- more details given Inc it’s name Avenegers: infinity defence. Will use same ride system as Tokyo’s new Peter Pan ride (ie like universals Spider-man ride system).

A second avengers ride starks flight lab- a robo arm attraction although from art appears you board the seats on what looks like some kind of moving belt and then the robo arm attaches to the seats for the experience, then lower back down and detaches.. I assume a way to increase capacity.

Avatarland- will takeover parts of Hollywood land (likely the monsters inc ride) and land not currently used for the park- that’s rumoured to involve moving the bus loop (that monsters ink ride building backs onto) onto new land they now have and the park expanding onto some of that land. Will feature an e-ticket boat ride that is expected to use Shanghai’s pirates ride system. Will be more based around the way of water and future films rather than animal kingdoms land.

Finally a major coco ride was announced- Disney said would be inspired by the classic pirates and haunted mansion rides with lots of animatronics- from the concept art looks like a boat ride.

Great to see that Disney not just cloning rides with most of the announcements for all their parks yesterday being unique rides/attractions for each park/resort.
 
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Some heartbreaking news for those of us who like transport rides:
NEW: Avengers Campus construction at DCA, set to begin in early 2025, will require the removal of the backstage Red Car Trolley barn and will result in Disney discontinuing operation of the attraction in early 2025, Disneyland officials said. A specific date will be shared later.
Click to expand...
from Scott Gustin on Twitter.

It's very funny and simultaneously sad to me that they messed up DCA 1.0 so badly they had to spend one billion US dollars to make DCA 2.0, which was not only a great park ride-wise but also incredible from a thematic point of view, only to then spend the subsequent years entirely undoing all of the thematic synergy in favor of corny Marvel attractions
 
I suspected this would be the case given the maintenance area is in the AC expansion space.

A shame really, as it's a nice little highlight to the entrance of the park and I found it quite charming.
 
Disneyland Resort is now 0 for 2 when it comes to low capacity trolley rides added as part of an expansion. It's absolutely a shame, along the lines of the Rivers of America removal in Florida in terms of losing something calm and aesthetic in favor of a ride that moves Fast Genie passes or whatever they'll be called by the time the replacement opens. I'm sure they've done thousands of guest surveys along the lines of "which attractions were you most excited to experience today?" and maybe three people mentioned the Red Car Trolley, but that kind of clinical assessment completely misses what these rides add to a park. One of my favorite moments of my most recent trip was walking in to DCA right as the trolley was about to leave the station near the entrance, hopping on and taking the last two available seats, and riding all the way to the end of the line.
 
A bit of funny news out of the Disneyland Resort... Disney updates their website announcing that Haunted Mansion Holiday will return on November 14th. Fans are thrilled: they'll finally able to ride the original Haunted Mansion on Halloween, for the first time since George W. Bush was president. Ahh, oopsie daisy, that was a mistake, the actual opening date is August 22nd. This is perfect timing as I suspect Disney wants their snow-covered combination Halloween/Christmas attraction to be open to guests in time for what is on average Anaheim's hottest day of the year, August 23rd.

I do think the overlay is one of the most genius marketing ideas Disney's ever had--a tie-in with an extremely popular movie that somehow manages to cover two out of three major holidays in the last fourth of the American calendar--but like everyone else I think it's worn out its welcome. If your annual trip to Disneyland is for the holiday season then you'll never be able to ride the original Haunted Mansion. I also can't imagine this overlay is really moving the needle quite that much at this point, nearly 25 years after it was first introduced, although it's probably just because Jack Skellington moves far more merchandise than Madame Leota.
 
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