Voice of Travel

Let me preface this by saying that I live on the East Coast. Because of this, I had never been to Disneyland before last week, but have been to Walt Disney World many times over the years. So any comments I have to make will obviously be biased on the fact that I am much more used to WDW.

I will say that it was VERY cool to finally see the place that Walt built himself. While I know he had a lot to do with building Walt Disney World as well, he was actually at Disneyland while it was open, and therefore I think of this as more of “his” park. So that was really great to finally see it.

First off…I was not impressed with the castle at all! I took some pictures of course, but it just wasn’t anything exciting after seeing the one in Orlando so many times! I was disappointed. I knew that the castles were different (the one in Disneyland is Sleeping Beauty’s castle, while in the Magic Kingdom it’s Cinderella’s Castle), but I still expected it to be just as beautiful. So that took some getting used to.

I have to admit it was very cool to go on some of the rides that are not in the Magic Kingdom. For example, Indiana Jones Adventure was a lot of fun. We knew the type of ride it was because we had been on Dinosaur in the Animal Kingdom in WDW, but we really enjoyed the theming of Indiana Jones.

We were also happy to go on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, which had been at WDW, but was taken down for Winnie the Pooh quite a while ago now. There is also no Alice in Wonderland or Pinocchio’s Daring Journey in WDW, so even though they were geared to much younger riders, they were still fun to do. We both enjoyed the Storybook Land Canal Boats as well, which was cute.

It was interesting to go on Finding Nemo: The Submarine Voyage. Not because it was a particularly fun ride, but because it used a lot of the original 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride, which I had enjoyed in WDW as a child. I really enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean. Even though it is also in WDW, this one was definitely longer with a few extra scenes. That was really fun to experience. So much so that we had to go on it twice. It was also fun to experience the “Original” Enchanted Tiki Room, since the one in WDW has been changed, and while I remembered parts from when I was younger, it was fun to see it again.

One thing I do have to give to Disneyland is their fireworks! I had heard before visiting that the fireworks were better out in California, but wasn’t sure if that would be the case. When the fireworks started off with the same music, I was getting ready to be dissapointed that they were both the same…but boy was I wrong! A few minutes into it, the direction changed, and it was a very different show. I really enjoyed them.

I do have one thing to say to Disneyland. Please, please get a few more nice restaurants. One night while we were in Disneyland, we wanted to have a nice sit down dinner. We looked at the ones in Disneyland, and weren’t really excited. So we figured we’d hop on down to Downtown Disney, since it’s just short walk away!

BIG MISTAKE. It seems everyone else had the exact same idea! There were long, long lines outside of EVERY single restaurant. We finally got to a point where we were starving, and had to eat – so we ended up at Napolini – an Italian deli that’s really meant for take-out, so there are only about 4-5 tables inside. We got Sicilian slices of pizza, but they weren’t very good, and we were stuck eating them on a bench with the pizza on our laps. We learned our lesson though, and the next night took the quick walk back onto the street of our hotel where there were many restaurants, end we ended up having a very good meal.

Overall we had a lot of fun in Disneyland. It was a lot of fun to do some different things for a change, and it was great that it was within walking distance to our hotel, as well as California Adventure and Downtown Disney.