Have a wonderful trip! I hope you love our little west coast parks…they really are something unique. Happy Anniversary!
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I was just watching the live Batterhorn Webcam 
looks like a beautiful evening
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Tires are the traditional 29yr anniversary gift I guess.
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As opposed to a … spiffy new paint job?!
Did you win?
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I heart Cars Land SO much! Especially this time of year.
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Short update: we have had a very great, very full day. We are exhausted - it is 1am eastern by now and I was up at 3 am. So we are hitting the hay. I will try to update in full with more photos in the morning but here are a couple to whet your appetite
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DLR looks even better in your pictures. You must be exhausted. Sweet, deep rest. 
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Happy Anniversary and I hope you enjoy westcoast Disney!
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Great photos!!!
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Congratulations! Have all the fun!
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Good morning from Grand Californian Hotel!
As promised, here is a recap from yesterday. I’ll give the narrative, which I’m doing from my laptop, and then come back to insert photos.
Travel
I was up at 3:30am to finish the last bits and get ready to roll, and we left home on time at 0500. Initially our ETA to Logan Airport (BOS) was 0603 (how appropriate!) but it slipped and slipped and slipped until it was at one point as late as 0657! How do people do this every day? We hit a good pocket and it readjusted and we were parked at 0630. We dropped our bags, used the restroom, cleared security (no idea why but we were cleared through TSAPre and we don’t have that 
), and grabbed some Dunks for breakfast, and arrived at our gate at 0735.
We boarded on time at 0815 and had an on-time push-back at 0900. We had a smooth uneventful flight of 5h55m and arrived right on time into LAX at 12:15.
I had added on car service to my DLR vacation package, as it was essentially the same price as the service others here recommended. This was an error. Karmel Car Service has not impressed me and I wouldn’t recommend them. They never texted me with pick-up instructions so I had to call… 3 times. We waited curbside for over 30 minutes before the guy showed up (with another call to make sure we didn’t somehow miss each other). We were told 3 times to be looking for a Chevy Suburban and a guy named Frank. Well Frank showed up in a dirty GMC Yukon with some kind of ?groceries in the back and he had no idea where he was taking us. We had to tell him 3 times before we got in the vehicle and then he asked again en route 
He was a very “wobbly” driver, taking up every available inch of space in all the lanes he was in, and some he wasn’t.
Still, we arrived safely at Grand Californian at 2:05pm
(Yes, almost 2hrs from landing - Magical Express does better) and were all checked in by 2:15pm. Our room wasn’t ready yet, so we shuffled some things around from my backpack into our luggage and checked our things with Bell Services.
We were STARVING by then so our first order of business was food!
Black Tap Craft Burgers was ah-mazing! I had the Greg Norman, with buttermilk-dill dressing and tangy, salty blue cheese. It was juice-running-down-my-hands good and perfectly cooked. DH had the crispy chicken sandwich with Korean BBQ dressing that was just the perfect amount of spicy. The fries served with each sandwich were really good - not quite Sci-Fi Dine In good, but very, very close. We also shared a vanilla shake which was spoon-standing-up thick, creamy, and so, so good!
We finished up there just around 3 and headed to DL. The turnstiles here are actually turnstiles and people still jumble up all together while other lines remain short or empty. Liner skills initiated!! They scanned our digital tickets, gave us a paper one (why??), and we slipped in the entrance. We grabbed a quick pic out in front and made our way under the train station. We were finally here!
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As we walked into Town Square, everything immediately felt familiar and yet really different all at once. It is definitely a more compact space, but surrounding the roundabout area are many familiar-ish shops and other facades. People were all lined up for the parade so the area was BUSTLING! We easily made our way down Main Street, commenting on how similar it is to our Main Street and looking and looking and looking for the castle.
She is TINY! Like, I knew she’d be small, but this is not a pic-from-Town-Square castle. You gotta get up on it. Still, it’s very pretty and quite adorable.
As the central icon of the original park, it was our first stop! We enjoyed the walkthrough quite a lot! The dioramas (?is that what you’d call them?) were really well done to tell Sleeping Beauty’s story and a couple of the effects were just so darn cool (spinning wheel, the shadow). It was a great kick-off to this first DL visit.
Next we made our way to Snow White’s Scary Ride. The line was intimidating and while it was not short, we waited only about 20 minutes. Short but very cute ride that evoked a lot of memories of 7D back “home”.
Mr. Toad was our next stop. As one of the rides we don’t have, and iconic to many fans, it was a must do. The posted time was 25 minutes, but I don’t think we waited more than 10. I have no idea what that ride was about (is there a book or movie or something?) but it was still wicked cute. Mr. Toad himself charmed me instantly!
We made our way next to Matterhorn (question: why is Monstro SO FAR AWAY from Pinocchio???!). Posted time there was 25 minutes, CM at the entrance said 35, and we did not wait more than 15. This was a REALLY fun ride! I can see why they call it Batterhorn, but dang it was a great ride! We were on the left-hand sleds; I know there is a difference between them and maybe we’ll check out the other side to see what that is.
I’ll pause here to say – it is very unsettling to not know where the hell you’re going 
We are such NOOBS here! I had to stop to look at the map repeatedly and I don’t like that part. We began orienting ourselves at this point by saying, “…in the direction that XX would be at MK”. LOL. Sorry westies!
We were headed to Indiana Jones next, but arrived to find it was down. We opted to take a ride on the Nile (or is it the Amazon, or both, or neither? you decide!) instead as the wait time was about what we had planned for IJ and so worked into our timeline well. JC is the worst queue (so far) out here too, folks. Great ride, entertaining jokes… terrible terrible tricky side rooms and switchbacks queue.
At this point we decided to hop to DCA. We had an additional hour planned at DL but we were beginning to feel the effects of travel and still being on east coast time, where it was for us 9pm. And we waned to enjoy our first moments at that park too, so we decided it was a good idea to hop now.
It took us… FOREVER to get there!! Waited for a bus that never came, talked to a CM, decided to try a boa… Oops, sorry. I’m so used to this being the place for a transportation rant that autopilot kicked in.
So we walked across the esplanade and entered DCA about 1 minute later! How awesome is that?!
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One of my favorite parts of Disneyland is how easy it is to get around especially from the GCH
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He is a character in The Wind in the Willows
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DCA: First experiences
The main entry way and the music and all feels very familiar to HS to me. Shops lining the street, that old fashioned Hollywood feel. Loved it! Oh and I haven’t mentioned (how have I not mentioned?!) that the Christmas decorations are EVERYWHERE here! And so wonderful!! It’s still a little early in the season for me, but how can you not love Christmas in a Disney park??
We took some time (AGAIN!) to orient ourselves and take it all in, and then we headed to Avengers Campus. Because after finishing End Game just hours earlier, that was the obvious choice. That land entrance is pretty darn cool, and all the little Easter eggs everywhere (and plenty more I’ve yet to notice I’m sure!) are wicked cool. We meandered our way through, heading toward GOTG, and passed Captain America out greeting folks. There are characters out everywhere on this coast, but especially in Avengers Campus where in our short visit we saw several.
GOTG was a posted 40 minute wait, and we waited about 25. The building is wicked cool, The Collector’s stuff is super awesome to take in, and the ride? EPIC! We got Freeride and boy was it ever! WAY too much fun, and hands down a whole bunch moreso than ToT (and I love ToT). We’ll be doing this one again this trip, maybe a few times!
After that we were feeling hungry, but not starving. So we made our way to Cars Land to hit up some Cozy Cone.
Holy cow you guys, Cars Land is amazing!! I think it might be my top land now for how immersive it is and how richly themed with not an inch of space not taken up by telling the story of Radiator Springs.
Mobile order at Cozy Cone was quick and efficient. We both opted for the bacon mac & cheese which was soooooooooo good!
I’ll insert here a little commentary about CMs thus far: they have run the gamut. We have had some wonderfully friendly CMs, like Maria who checked us in at GCH or the CM in the Emporium who noted our anniversary buttons and took more than a moment to congratulate us and wish us a good trip. Thennnnnnnnnnnn we’ve had other experiences, like the girl at Cozy Cone who, when I asked if she might have a drink tray looked at me like the car rental lady in planes trains and automobiles and said, “no tray” in a way that really sounded like when the car rental lady said “you’re fucked” . And there are “carnival barkers” all around yelling at people to “stay to the right” and “walk arouuuuunnnndddd the photographers” and other annoying, such things. All this to say: So far CM experiences on both coasts are variable because people are variable.
After Cozy Cone we hit up Radiator Springs Racers and waited the full posted time of 40 minutes. THAT is a fun ride! Love the theming throughout and although yes it’s similar to Test Track, this ride blows that one out of the water. Oh, and we won so there’s that. (Don’t mention to anyone that we didn’t race anyone and won by default).
We were getting really tired by now - it was 8pm, 11pm for us - so we decided to skip the other few things we had and close it down with a trip on WebSlingers. That queue was pretty awful, nearly as bad as JC. It lurches because it fills the room and then stops full on, and that got tiresome to these weary travelers. I began to wonder if it was even going to be worth it. We waited a full hour for this one (posted 70 minutes) and I can say without question that it was!! This is like TSM on steroids, and way more fun and a much bigger, more intense workout. Lots of fun to be had here and I hope we get to do it again, but we won’t wait that long for it because I’m not sure very many experiences are worth an hour in line. But it was AWESOME!!
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Grand Californian Hotel & Spa: Downtown Disney View Room
We headed back to the hotel after Web Slingers, stopping to grab a soda on the way. It’s super great having that entrance/exit right there in DCA and I look forward to using it fully. Our room, being DTD view, was on the complete opposite end from that entrance, but we made our way there and were very happy with this room.
The entryway is huge with a lot of space for luggage and stuff. The room itself is quite spacious, on the order of the larger hotel rooms I’ve been in at WDW (think: GDT or Poly hotel side). It’s clean and fresh and well appointed. I think we’ll be quite happy here for our stay 
We called Bell Services and they brought our things up quite promptly, and we flopped into bed.
What a great first day out here in Cali! Can’t wait to see what today brings!
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So glad you had a great day yesterday and can’t wait for more today! If you are over in Carsland on at sunset Do not miss Shaboom!
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