Heads up for those looking to buy the Paint the Night package at Wine Country Trattoria: It’s real bad. The meal itself was great. Trattoria has a solid menu and you’re given a decent selection of entrees (by the way I went with the Osso Bucco (lamb), which was delicious). You also get either soup or salad, and a couple of different choice for dessert. Now on to the bad part. The waiter informs you to be at the viewing section no earlier than 8:15 PM (for a 8:45 PM performance), it even says this on the FASTPASS ticket they give you. So I say to my friends that we should walk by around 7 PM just to see where the viewing section is and how big it is. Turns out they were already letting people in to the viewing section. The viewing area started to quickly fill up and felt almost completely full by the time 8:15 rolled around. So now we are in this thing, packed like sardines, and ended up waiting 90 minutes to get a decent spot. The whole point is to guarantee a spot, which it did, but I would have came at the recommended 8:15 time, I would have been behind 3 rows of people. Overall it was not worth $50.
Oh wow! That is really disappointing. Do you think it was that crowded throughout the entire parade route? I know it is crazy right now because it just reopened, but wondering if you think it will die down by July?
This is something new to me; I’ve never heard of a dinner package (at either DLR or WDW) that has dinner in one park and the event in a different park. I’m assuming that this is available only to people with park hoppers?
Paint the Night is at DCA now, rather than DL.
A bunch of us DLR Liners are going to the Sonoma Terrace Paint the Night reception thing next Thursday night 4/26. Have you heard any reviews of this new event? Sorry the WCT package was a bust.
Really hard to tell with the parade only being back for a short amount of time. It’s popular, but the parade route is huge, about a half a mile longer than it was at Disneyland. So as time goes on I think it will be easier to see.
Just got back - we had no trouble finding an up close spot for the first Paint The Night about 45 minutes before the parade. That was the second night it was happening (Saturday). The route IS super long – the further we walked toward the end/beginning of the route (near the Golden Zephyr) the more room there was. Nowhere on that end were there more than two people deep. Also for that first parade, the route actually starts at that end so we were close to the beginning.
It’s a beautiful parade and lots of fun. I was skeptical about the move to DCA but it’s so much easier to view there.