North Meets South at DLR for a Leisurely Trip

I wasn’t going to write a trip report because I was there at the same time as the Fab 4, who do a fantastic job with trip reports. But I thought I would capture some highlights in hindsight and also talk about a misadventure, requiring a trip to ER.

Somewhere in the SF Bay Area has always been my home. DD calls San Diego home. We met up at DLR for some mother-daughter bonding time. :heart_eyes: :hugs:

First thing first. DH waited until I got home to tell me he ran my mug through the dishwasher!:rage::rage::rage:


DD didn’t want to race from attraction to attraction. (Who’s the old person here? :thinking: She’s definitely not a Liner!). But we enjoyed one another’s company, the snacks, and just being at DLR. It was her job to plan our trip. All I got from her was a list of food and snacks she wanted to eat!

It’s going to take a couple of days to finish this.

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September 20

I flew down with my boys. I promised them a new outfit on our trip.

DD drove up to Anaheim after work. It has been many, many years since we have been at DLR for the Halloween season.

We stayed at the Suncoast, about 0.6 miles from the resort entrance on Harbor. That’s about as far as I’m willing to walk. It was the best price I could get within 0.6 miles. $169/night for a king. By the time I added taxes and parking, it was well over $200/night. I tried to change to a double bed unsuccessfully after DD said she would come. There was a solar conference at the Convention Center and the hotel was fully booked. But when I checked in, they gave me a room with 2 queen beds for the same price! No complaints from me! It was a giant room!





And it wouldn’t be a family trip without some plushy friends to represent both kids. The anteaters represented DS, whose college mascot is the anteater.

We had a $30 food credit each day at the hotel. Rather than walk all the way to DTD for dinner, we ate at the hotel. We had salad and pizza. I had to throw in an extra $10. Food was decent and we had half a pizza left!

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September 21
The first seating for the character breakfast at Plaza Inn is at 8 am. They do not check in until 8 am. We could have slept :sleeping: an extra 20 minutes!

After checking in, we got our picture taken with the host, Minnie Mouse. The photo is included with the cost of your breakfast and gets pushed to your app.

Then, we went to pay for breakfast. There is no place to add a tip. It dawned on me after eating that we haven’t tipped. DD doesn’t carry cash and I only had $5. So, that’s what we tipped.

This was all the food we ate:

About those Mickey waffles?

Don’t take away my Liner card! There is a huge following here but we have always felt they would be better if they were crispy on the outside. They were soggy. We did enjoy the banana syrup that goes with it.

There were plenty of characters but they only came around once in the 60+ minutes we were there. Chip came around while I was getting food and he didn’t come around again.

The character interactions were so much fun! I wished they had PhotoPass photographers!






My favorite mother-daughter picture from the trip.

We couldn’t pass up a 35 minute wait for RISE!

Met up with Dad who was looking for Pinocchio.

Flew on Dumbo with my boys.

Journey through the world.

Noticed Woody.

Had a macaroon that looked better than it tasted!

Met up with the Fab 4!
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Too full from breakfast but room for pumpkin spiced beignets! It actually tasted like pumpkin spice.

Wandered the stores on Main Street and soaked in the decorations.


We wanted pictures with the pumpkin but the line was long in the hot sun!🫠 How about a reflection of it?

Saw this



It was time to hop. It was hot.

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I’m so glad you decided to do a report. I’m enjoying it so far!!

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I’m so glad you are doing a trip report!

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What a fun start! Can’t wait to hear the rest.

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Your pictures are wonderful and it looks like you two had so much fun.

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It was so nice to see you again. Your daughter is delightful! Glad you had some good bonding time with her.

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Yay! I’m so happy you did decide to do a highlights trip report. It looks awesome so far. Your DD’s style of touring is exactly my DD’s touring (eating & shopping are her jam- rides she puts up with if the waits are tolerable or if it’s new and/or her favorite).

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@Jeff_AZ - We thought this was the most realistic fake grass we have ever seen. While the blades were all the same height, there were different shades of green on the lawn. We thought it looked pretty good.

It was so hot, we ordered some smoothies as soon as we entered CA Adventure but many people had the same idea! We had to wait. So we picked up one of these since there was no line to buy one.


It was rather sweet. I diluted mines with water.

There were long lines everywhere! And we didn’t buy Genie+. We waited 15 minutes for Silly Symphony and did Incredicoaster twice. Then we window shopped, making notes on things we wanted to buy before finding these friends:

Gawked at the fabulous decor in Carsland:








Our tummies were growling around 6 but we stopped ourselves from snacking! :tired_face:We had a Lamplight reservation at 6:30. Unfortunately, they were running late and didn’t seat us for 20 minutes. Dinner was well worth the wait! :yum:

We absolutely love their donuts! You can’t beat freshly fried. Just don’t tell my parents we ate fried food fresh out of the fryer! They believe it’s bad for your health!

After dinner, we noticed that people were lined up for World of Color. We didn’t realize that we had to join a virtual queue at noon! :flushed: :weary: It was all DD’s fault! It was her job to plan! :angry: :rage: May this be a lesson to her! We didn’t join a virtual queue. We didn’t have a dining package. We didn’t have a dessert party. Our options were along the Little Mermaid building or on the bridge to Pixar Pier. Crowds everywhere!

We were supposed to go on rides during the first showing of WOC but ended up trying to scout out a place to watch WOC. Along the Little Mermaid building was too far away and we are too short to be able see. We decided standing on the bridge to Pixar Pier, as close to the Little Mermaid end as possible, would give us the best possible view. We hung out near there during the first showing. When the crowds cleared, we moved in to the railing for the second showing. It was a surprisingly decent view. We don’t have any pictures but the projections were pretty clear!





After we got the railing spot, DD sent me to ask the CMs if there was space inside the ‘amphitheater’. They said to come back towards showtime. If we did that, we would lose our place along the railing. And there was no guarantee we would be able to see that well because we are short. But there were significantly less people during the second showing.

We called it a night.


DD said it was the perfect pace of a day for her. So, I couldn’t be angry about the WOC virtual queue. :hugs: :hugs: :hugs:

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I find it hard to write live trip reports during vacation. At Disney, I’m on my phone a lot as is. Thank you for reading!

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Thanks for following along! Maybe between the two of us, we could do a live report in November! :crazy_face:

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It was a very fun start!

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DD take better pictures than I can. DD is an adult. So no melt downs. Then again, she has always been mellow and hardly ever had a melt down growing up.

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It was very nice to see you again, too! Any plans on returning to DLR? I’m planning to be there again the first week of November. DD is my favorite daughter! :wink:

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I going to be in San Diego the week of November 13-19, so probably no DLR trip for me. Are you going to renew your pass? I’m sure we’ll meet again there!

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Glad I’m not the only one that has a kid like this. Actually, both of my kids are like this! Only DH puts up with my Liner tendencies! Still, he looked at our WDW plans for February and inserted a couple of rest days!

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I’m sitting on the fence. But DD being in San Diego is a big draw for us to spend quality time at DLR!

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My high school junior is very interested in school in SD-I’ve been focused on how expensive it is but should’ve been paying attention to how much I could go to DL if she’s down there!

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:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :grimacing: You would think I did that!

DD went to UC San Diego. DS went to UC Irvine. You would think I would have had plenty of opportunities to go to DLR during the 6 years they were in SoCal for college. I went three times!

I couldn’t leave DS at home during DD’s first 2 years in college. He needed a chauffeur and a chef.

Then DS left for Irvine but I had some health issues to take care of and I changed jobs. That was year 3. In year 4, we went to WDW for 15 days. Then the pandemic closed DLR for most of year 5 and DS was home. Towards the end of year 5, I went once. And in year 6, I went twice.

Take the opportunities you have to travel as you can. Nobody knows what happens tomorrow!

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