Okay, I’m from the Gulf Coast soooo we don’t really do cold weather - I always say I hate cold weather because I don’t understand how to layer…
It’s supposed to be COLD AND RAINY next week when we’re at DCA. Any tips? Just poncho and/or umbrella and suck it up?
I’m still SO excited, but the last time I was at Disneyland DCA didn’t even exist so it’s been a LONG time and I’m open to any tips/tricks/hacks that may seem obvious to frequent/recent visitors to make it more enjoyable.
I’m optimistic that the weather will keep crowds low! But also Radiator Springs Racers seems mostly/totally outside and that’s definitely on our list! Help?
The nice thing about rain in California as opposed to Florida is that it doesn’t go up. Meaning as long as you are covered from above you generally won’t get soaked. I would bring a sweater for warmth and a rain jacket or poncho for protection from rain. Umbrella might work but I’ve never liked using umbrellas in crowded areas and it’s hard to work out going in and out of buildings and rides.
I’ve never worn a poncho outside of Florida to be honest. I’m not sure if they work in CA.
We’ve had a couple of trips (all of them within Dec-Feb timeframe) where rain has come into play. Most of the time it’s a light passing storm and having a sweatshirt or jacket with a hood and rain resistant footwear is good enough.
We have used ponchos on some rare occasions. For us (most of my family runs warm) it makes it really hot especially over a sweatshirt but then the poncho alone isn’t enough to not get cold, so it has to be really pouring for us to pull them out (and we are much more likely to bail to the hotel with a treat from the confectionery when this happens). The cheapie ponchos on Amazon are nice because they work but then if they rip from lenghty use, you just pull out a new one from the pack of a bazillion that came with it. We’ve gone the route of Disney ponchos and they are much thicker (hotter) and rip almost just as easily as the Amazon ones with repeated use and you can get 9-10 Amazon ponchos off of Amazon for the price of one Disney one.
Having an absorbent cloth of some kind is nice too, just to wipe things down. We discovered this by mistake when we needed to wipe our glasses and none of our clothes were dry enough for this, but we had a cooling towel burried deep in our diaper bag that was dry and so now I always make sure we have our cooling towels on a rainy day (as well as hot days to actually use as intended) because they can be helpful for wiping small things like glasses.
Another tip is that if your sneakers get waterlogged, you can stick crunched up newspaper in them overnight and that will help dry them out. We have used that trick before that we learned from a Liner on chat and it works quite well.
And as for rides, definitely plan to be flexible, especially with Racers because it definitely has a hard time running in the rain. Definitely plan to check in on it multiple times over the day.
ETA: DCA gets really really hard to find indoor seating for eating when rainy so beware of that phenomenon. Some areas that are worth checking out are the tables by the exit of Mickey’s Philharmagic in the Hollywood Backlot or the semi-covered tables all along the Paradise Garden area (from Goofy’s Sky School stretching down to across from the Silly Symphony Swings). Anything else indoors will be swamped and no one will be leaving their seat to get up and go outside, especially at the Starbucks (Fidler Fifer and Practical Cafe & the next door Skyjumpers).
