***Official DLR October 2021 Check-in Thread***
- Thread starter kikismom
- Start date
ClaudiaKincaid
Standing Outside Club 33
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2019
We were first to the gates and absolute front of rope drop every single day.
It netted us the two (2) times we rode RSR in five (5) days (as opposed to the 3-4x/day we were able to manage with EMH/MaxPass), and Peter Pan and Dumbo on our DL days (once each).
Being as strategic as possible, resigning ourselves to looooonnnnngggg waits, being willing to haul it to far-away rides or jump on, say, Incredicoaster when waits were sub-30 (usually immediately following a ride closure and its reopening), navigating the stressful hassle of boarding groups for ROTR/WS (both the getting and the using of those GD things were the WORST), and forgoing all extras (e.g. we got churros twice in five days, usually a 2x/3x a day thing for us) ... still, as I said, got us half the mileage and one third of the rides of our usual trip. I'm sincerely glad you got that much out of your trip, but for us, there was nothing "manageable" about any of it.
vacay77
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2017
We were first to the gates and absolute front of rope drop every single day.
It netted us the two (2) times we rode RSR in five (5) days (as opposed to the 3-4x/day we were able to manage with EMH/MaxPass), and Peter Pan and Dumbo on our DL days (once each).
Being as strategic as possible, resigning ourselves to looooonnnnngggg waits, being willing to haul it to far-away rides or jump on, say, Incredicoaster when waits were sub-30 (usually immediately following a ride closure and its reopening), navigating the stressful hassle of boarding groups for ROTR/WS (both the getting and the using of those GD things were the WORST), and forgoing all extras (e.g. we got churros twice in five days, usually a 2x/3x a day thing for us) ... still, as I said, got us half the mileage and one third of the rides of our usual trip. I'm sincerely glad you got that much out of your trip, but for us, there was nothing "manageable" about any of it.
My family was there from Oct. 11 through October 14th and we had the same experience. We were there at rope drop every morning and tried to be strategic about it but still ended up waiting for RSR for over an hour. That was mostly because of the large parties cutting in line. We also got boarding passes for ROTR and the ride broke down both times we were in line. We ended up waiting over an hour before it starting running again and the second time, we just left the line and returned before closing so we could ride it. Pirates broke down while we were on it so that was even more of a delay. WEB slingers also broke down while we were waiting in line to ride it. That just seemed to be a recurring pattern for us. Most times, we didn't even know the rides broke down while we were waiting in line to ride them. We only found out because the line stopped moving and we'd look at the app and it said that the ride was temporarily closed. There was zero communication.
I just realized I will be in flight at the time of boarding pass attempts this Friday. I guess this means a complete day of flexibility for us!
So excited to finish last minute packing and DO THIS! 2 years in the making for this trip, lucky enough to bounce back for 6 days in December!!
So excited to finish last minute packing and DO THIS! 2 years in the making for this trip, lucky enough to bounce back for 6 days in December!!
heidica
Hooked on Disney!
- Joined
- May 29, 2000
Hello fellow October DISers! Now that I’ve had a few days to rest and recover, I thought I would share some thoughts on our recent trip to DL.
Our group: myself, DH, DD (27 yrs old), DS (12 yrs old). We flew Alaska Airlines from Seattle to John Wayne (SNA) airport. I surprised my family with first-class seats! I got a killer deal on the first-class tickets and I couldn’t pass it up. I’ve never flown first class, so it was a special treat. Probably not something I will be able to afford again. Also, at SeaTac, I tried a free trial of Clear and it was awesome! So nice. I just don’t travel enough to justify the yearly cost. If you fly quite a bit and you are in and out of airports that have Clear, I would recommend it. We took a Yellow Cab taxi from the airport to DLH. It was super easy because the taxi was already there. No waiting. It was a flat fee of $45 + tax. The cab had a credit card reader in the back and paying via credit card was easy. We also took a Yellow Cab from DLH back to the airport. The phone number is 714-444-4444. If you want something larger than a Prius, don’t go through the automated process, press the number to get dispatch so you can request a larger vehicle. It took about 30 minutes for the taxi to arrive at the hotel. This was around 3 pm on Sunday. It was 20 minutes to the airport. We had the same flat fee of $45 +tax for the trip back to the airport.
Hotel: Disneyland Hotel, Frontier Tower, Deluxe View. We were on the 3rd floor facing the pool. Trees were in the way of actually seeing the pool. This was our first time staying at DLH. We normally stay at a hotel on Harbor. For a 3 night stay, it was nice to extend the Disney bubble. For a longer stay, not sure I would be able to afford it. I really wish room service had been available, and I was annoyed that I had to call for replenishment of towels on the first day. On the 2nd day, they replaced our towels but didn’t make our beds which also annoyed me. If you can touch my dirty towels, why can’t you make my bed? I try to be understanding, but for some reason, that really bothered me. Probably the price we were paying for the room.
Days in park: Friday, Oct 15th (rope dropped and in DL all day), Saturday, Oct 16th (missed rope drop, in DCA in the morning, then park hopped to DL after lunch), Sunday, Oct 17th (missed rope drop, in DL all morning, left at 12:45 pm). It ended up being 2 ½ days in the parks. We did not do the Oogie Boogie Bash, but I wish we had (I explain more below).
Boarding Groups: We were successful all 3 times we tried. Got ROTR at 7 am on Friday, WS at 7 am on Saturday, and ROTR at 12 pm on Saturday. There were 3 of us trying on our iPhones (2 of us had iPhone 13 and the other was using an iPhone Xs), logged into our individual Disney accounts, and all linked together. For the 7 am attempts, we were in our hotel room with wi-fi off and all other apps closed. The Friday BG was successful on the iPhone Xs, the Saturday BG was successful on the iPhone 13. For the 12 pm attempt, we were in DCA having lunch at Pym’s Test Kitchen and wi-fi was off and it was the iPhone 13 that got that BG. All 3 cellphones are on Sprint (now T-Mobile). The iPhone 13 has 5G, but we ended up turning off 5G and just going with LTE and had much better speed loading the DL app. I don’t remember our exact boarding group numbers (I think 57, 66, and one hundred something). For the BGs we got at 7 am, we completed the ride before noon for both. Can confirm that you can arrive late for your boarding group, however, the wait in the queue was a lot longer in the afternoon. For our 2nd ride on ROTR, we got the BG at noon and arrived about 2 hours late. The line for getting on the ride was about an hour and way longer than we had been boarding group 66. If you can, I wouldn’t wait too long in the afternoon to go, because a lot of people are arriving late and that adds to people in the line.
Dining: Every day for breakfast, we just grabbed some items at the Coffee House at the DLH. On Friday we had lunch at Carnation Café, we had drinks at Oga’s Cantina with a reservation at 4:45 pm, dinner was takeout from Earl of Sandwich. On Saturday we had lunch at Pym’s Test Kitchen. My daughter had a drink at Pym’s Tasting Lab. For dinner, I had a Ronto Wrap and the rest of my family ate at Hungry Bear Restaurant. On Sunday, we had lunch at Trader Sam’s before leaving for the airport. I managed to secure the reservations for Carnation Café, Oga’s, and Trader Sam’s using paid alerts from Mouse Dining. For all 3, there were no reservations available 60 days out because they hadn’t released any availability. It does sound like things are getting better 60 days out, but when availability finally opened it seemed random. The 2 month subscription to Mouse Dining was worth it. I have now canceled the subscription since it will be a while before we go back. As for mobile ordering, I do think it might be getting better, but I don't have personal experience to compare it to. Prior to our trip, I was seeing people here on the DIS Boards saying that pick-up times were 2-hour waits or even 3-4 hour waits. We did not see that. The longest wait we saw was 45 minutes, and we just chose something else that was quicker. I had hoped to try a lot more seasonal treats, but either I wasn't hungry or I didn't want to deal with the wait. Oh well, probably better for my calorie intake anyway.
Overall impressions: I am very conflicted with how I feel about this trip. We had some amazing experiences, finally got to see Galaxy’s Edge and Avenger’s Campus, my DS was finally tall enough to ride Indiana Jones and he loved it, but we also didn’t get to do nearly as much as we normally have in the past. We did a lot of waiting for everything. Everyone is in line – in line for rides, in line for food, in line for shopping, in line for Photopass photographers. The lack of “crowd eaters” i.e. parades, Fantasmic, WoC, stage shows, is really noticeable. The only show happening right now is the Halloween Scream fireworks and projection show. We did not watch it from the parks. I have seen it packed at the hub and Main Street before but this was ridiculous! People we packed in soooo tight. When we were walking past everyone to get out of the park, I couldn’t get out fast enough it was so bad. I saw a few of the higher fireworks from our DLH room. Not the same, but I can say I saw fireworks. Also, rides were constantly breaking down, and then the lines for other rides nearby would go up. Lastly, for rides that were open, I’m pretty sure rides were NOT at full capacity, which further increased the lines.
I was trying to squeeze this short trip into a long weekend so my son only missed 1 day of school. If I were to do it over again, I would have him miss school on Monday and not Friday. The reason? – so we could have done the Oogie Boogie Bash on Sunday night. The value for the Oogie Boogie Bash is really significant right now, especially if you want to focus on rides. If we had gone to the OBB, we could have done a lot more rides in DCA. If you have tickets for OBB, take advantage of the shorter lines.
I always knew this was true, but standing is way worse than walking. The amount of standing in lines killed my feet. I did leave with 1 blister and very sore arches. My husband also got a blister. We were wearing worn-in shoes. Thankfully I had some blister bandaids and moleskin and those really helped minimize the pain from the blister.
Someone else mentioned here on the DIS Boards that they spent a lot less time and money shopping during their recent trip. This was also true for me. I never even made it into the World of Disney store. I bought a few things but it was significantly less than what I normally would have bought. Also, we saw a ton of people wearing DIY t-shirts or shirts from Etsy. I made matching t-shirts for my family using my Cricut and iron-on vinyl. A lot of the ones we saw were really cute and creative, but it got me thinking that a major reason people are doing that is probably the price of Disney-made shirts. Way cheaper to buy a cute Disney shirt on Etsy than a shirt at Disneyland. Disney merchandise needs to have a shake-up because who’s going to buy a $50 DL shirt when you can get 3-5 shirts on Etsy for the same price?!
A really special experience we had was helping plan a surprise proposal. By sheer coincidence, my DD’s best friend and the friend’s boyfriend were at the parks at the same time as us. A few days before we left, the boyfriend reached out to my DD and told her that he was going to propose and was asking for ideas. So we started plotting a plan. What we ended up doing, was after our lunch at Carnation Café, my DD told her friend that we wanted to meet her. My DH and I hadn’t met this friend in person yet. Then I said I wanted to get pictures of the whole group in front of the castle (which is something we always do). There was quite a wait for the photophass photographer. When it was finally our turn, I told the photographer what was going to happen. The first photo was a “real” photo and then the plan on the 2nd photo was for everyone to get out of the way and then he would propose. It worked out perfectly. This couple had been talking about marriage, so him proposing wasn’t necessarily a surprise, she just didn’t know when or how he was going to do it. After the proposal, everyone around started clapping and the Photopass photographer took a bunch of photos of the couple. The photographer even took them over to the Wishing Well for some additional photos. It was a pixie dust moment. The photographer got some hilarious photos of me pulling my DS out of the way, and then the confused look on my DD friend’s face (to be clear it was NOT my DD who got engaged, it was her friend). Anyway, that was an awesome moment.
I can say, that we won’t be going back until there is more entertainment in the parks to disperse the crowds better. I realize that October is especially busy at DL because of Halloween, and I was preparing myself for that but not having Early Entry and Fastpass made it hard to strategize. I know there has been some speculation that Disney has been purposefully manipulating lines to be long, so when Genie+ and Lightning Lanes start, people, will be running to pay for it. I know I was ready to pay for it. I left Disneyland feeling like it was not a park for out-of-towners because we don’t have the ability to do a few rides one day, and then come back in a week for a few more rides and so on. If crowds are like that all the time, we would need a week to do all the things we wanted and it gets costly to pay for the hotel, park passes, and food for an entire week. We did have fun and it felt so good to be back! Hopefully, those of you October travelers who still haven’t left, will have better luck, and that some of my information is helpful to you. Safe travels everyone!
Our group: myself, DH, DD (27 yrs old), DS (12 yrs old). We flew Alaska Airlines from Seattle to John Wayne (SNA) airport. I surprised my family with first-class seats! I got a killer deal on the first-class tickets and I couldn’t pass it up. I’ve never flown first class, so it was a special treat. Probably not something I will be able to afford again. Also, at SeaTac, I tried a free trial of Clear and it was awesome! So nice. I just don’t travel enough to justify the yearly cost. If you fly quite a bit and you are in and out of airports that have Clear, I would recommend it. We took a Yellow Cab taxi from the airport to DLH. It was super easy because the taxi was already there. No waiting. It was a flat fee of $45 + tax. The cab had a credit card reader in the back and paying via credit card was easy. We also took a Yellow Cab from DLH back to the airport. The phone number is 714-444-4444. If you want something larger than a Prius, don’t go through the automated process, press the number to get dispatch so you can request a larger vehicle. It took about 30 minutes for the taxi to arrive at the hotel. This was around 3 pm on Sunday. It was 20 minutes to the airport. We had the same flat fee of $45 +tax for the trip back to the airport.
Hotel: Disneyland Hotel, Frontier Tower, Deluxe View. We were on the 3rd floor facing the pool. Trees were in the way of actually seeing the pool. This was our first time staying at DLH. We normally stay at a hotel on Harbor. For a 3 night stay, it was nice to extend the Disney bubble. For a longer stay, not sure I would be able to afford it. I really wish room service had been available, and I was annoyed that I had to call for replenishment of towels on the first day. On the 2nd day, they replaced our towels but didn’t make our beds which also annoyed me. If you can touch my dirty towels, why can’t you make my bed? I try to be understanding, but for some reason, that really bothered me. Probably the price we were paying for the room.
Days in park: Friday, Oct 15th (rope dropped and in DL all day), Saturday, Oct 16th (missed rope drop, in DCA in the morning, then park hopped to DL after lunch), Sunday, Oct 17th (missed rope drop, in DL all morning, left at 12:45 pm). It ended up being 2 ½ days in the parks. We did not do the Oogie Boogie Bash, but I wish we had (I explain more below).
Boarding Groups: We were successful all 3 times we tried. Got ROTR at 7 am on Friday, WS at 7 am on Saturday, and ROTR at 12 pm on Saturday. There were 3 of us trying on our iPhones (2 of us had iPhone 13 and the other was using an iPhone Xs), logged into our individual Disney accounts, and all linked together. For the 7 am attempts, we were in our hotel room with wi-fi off and all other apps closed. The Friday BG was successful on the iPhone Xs, the Saturday BG was successful on the iPhone 13. For the 12 pm attempt, we were in DCA having lunch at Pym’s Test Kitchen and wi-fi was off and it was the iPhone 13 that got that BG. All 3 cellphones are on Sprint (now T-Mobile). The iPhone 13 has 5G, but we ended up turning off 5G and just going with LTE and had much better speed loading the DL app. I don’t remember our exact boarding group numbers (I think 57, 66, and one hundred something). For the BGs we got at 7 am, we completed the ride before noon for both. Can confirm that you can arrive late for your boarding group, however, the wait in the queue was a lot longer in the afternoon. For our 2nd ride on ROTR, we got the BG at noon and arrived about 2 hours late. The line for getting on the ride was about an hour and way longer than we had been boarding group 66. If you can, I wouldn’t wait too long in the afternoon to go, because a lot of people are arriving late and that adds to people in the line.
Dining: Every day for breakfast, we just grabbed some items at the Coffee House at the DLH. On Friday we had lunch at Carnation Café, we had drinks at Oga’s Cantina with a reservation at 4:45 pm, dinner was takeout from Earl of Sandwich. On Saturday we had lunch at Pym’s Test Kitchen. My daughter had a drink at Pym’s Tasting Lab. For dinner, I had a Ronto Wrap and the rest of my family ate at Hungry Bear Restaurant. On Sunday, we had lunch at Trader Sam’s before leaving for the airport. I managed to secure the reservations for Carnation Café, Oga’s, and Trader Sam’s using paid alerts from Mouse Dining. For all 3, there were no reservations available 60 days out because they hadn’t released any availability. It does sound like things are getting better 60 days out, but when availability finally opened it seemed random. The 2 month subscription to Mouse Dining was worth it. I have now canceled the subscription since it will be a while before we go back. As for mobile ordering, I do think it might be getting better, but I don't have personal experience to compare it to. Prior to our trip, I was seeing people here on the DIS Boards saying that pick-up times were 2-hour waits or even 3-4 hour waits. We did not see that. The longest wait we saw was 45 minutes, and we just chose something else that was quicker. I had hoped to try a lot more seasonal treats, but either I wasn't hungry or I didn't want to deal with the wait. Oh well, probably better for my calorie intake anyway.
Overall impressions: I am very conflicted with how I feel about this trip. We had some amazing experiences, finally got to see Galaxy’s Edge and Avenger’s Campus, my DS was finally tall enough to ride Indiana Jones and he loved it, but we also didn’t get to do nearly as much as we normally have in the past. We did a lot of waiting for everything. Everyone is in line – in line for rides, in line for food, in line for shopping, in line for Photopass photographers. The lack of “crowd eaters” i.e. parades, Fantasmic, WoC, stage shows, is really noticeable. The only show happening right now is the Halloween Scream fireworks and projection show. We did not watch it from the parks. I have seen it packed at the hub and Main Street before but this was ridiculous! People we packed in soooo tight. When we were walking past everyone to get out of the park, I couldn’t get out fast enough it was so bad. I saw a few of the higher fireworks from our DLH room. Not the same, but I can say I saw fireworks. Also, rides were constantly breaking down, and then the lines for other rides nearby would go up. Lastly, for rides that were open, I’m pretty sure rides were NOT at full capacity, which further increased the lines.
I was trying to squeeze this short trip into a long weekend so my son only missed 1 day of school. If I were to do it over again, I would have him miss school on Monday and not Friday. The reason? – so we could have done the Oogie Boogie Bash on Sunday night. The value for the Oogie Boogie Bash is really significant right now, especially if you want to focus on rides. If we had gone to the OBB, we could have done a lot more rides in DCA. If you have tickets for OBB, take advantage of the shorter lines.
I always knew this was true, but standing is way worse than walking. The amount of standing in lines killed my feet. I did leave with 1 blister and very sore arches. My husband also got a blister. We were wearing worn-in shoes. Thankfully I had some blister bandaids and moleskin and those really helped minimize the pain from the blister.
Someone else mentioned here on the DIS Boards that they spent a lot less time and money shopping during their recent trip. This was also true for me. I never even made it into the World of Disney store. I bought a few things but it was significantly less than what I normally would have bought. Also, we saw a ton of people wearing DIY t-shirts or shirts from Etsy. I made matching t-shirts for my family using my Cricut and iron-on vinyl. A lot of the ones we saw were really cute and creative, but it got me thinking that a major reason people are doing that is probably the price of Disney-made shirts. Way cheaper to buy a cute Disney shirt on Etsy than a shirt at Disneyland. Disney merchandise needs to have a shake-up because who’s going to buy a $50 DL shirt when you can get 3-5 shirts on Etsy for the same price?!
A really special experience we had was helping plan a surprise proposal. By sheer coincidence, my DD’s best friend and the friend’s boyfriend were at the parks at the same time as us. A few days before we left, the boyfriend reached out to my DD and told her that he was going to propose and was asking for ideas. So we started plotting a plan. What we ended up doing, was after our lunch at Carnation Café, my DD told her friend that we wanted to meet her. My DH and I hadn’t met this friend in person yet. Then I said I wanted to get pictures of the whole group in front of the castle (which is something we always do). There was quite a wait for the photophass photographer. When it was finally our turn, I told the photographer what was going to happen. The first photo was a “real” photo and then the plan on the 2nd photo was for everyone to get out of the way and then he would propose. It worked out perfectly. This couple had been talking about marriage, so him proposing wasn’t necessarily a surprise, she just didn’t know when or how he was going to do it. After the proposal, everyone around started clapping and the Photopass photographer took a bunch of photos of the couple. The photographer even took them over to the Wishing Well for some additional photos. It was a pixie dust moment. The photographer got some hilarious photos of me pulling my DS out of the way, and then the confused look on my DD friend’s face (to be clear it was NOT my DD who got engaged, it was her friend). Anyway, that was an awesome moment.
I can say, that we won’t be going back until there is more entertainment in the parks to disperse the crowds better. I realize that October is especially busy at DL because of Halloween, and I was preparing myself for that but not having Early Entry and Fastpass made it hard to strategize. I know there has been some speculation that Disney has been purposefully manipulating lines to be long, so when Genie+ and Lightning Lanes start, people, will be running to pay for it. I know I was ready to pay for it. I left Disneyland feeling like it was not a park for out-of-towners because we don’t have the ability to do a few rides one day, and then come back in a week for a few more rides and so on. If crowds are like that all the time, we would need a week to do all the things we wanted and it gets costly to pay for the hotel, park passes, and food for an entire week. We did have fun and it felt so good to be back! Hopefully, those of you October travelers who still haven’t left, will have better luck, and that some of my information is helpful to you. Safe travels everyone!
gpjacobs
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2019
Home now and just posted my trip report (link below). Hope it's helpful for those traveling soon. Be safe and enjoy, everyone!
https://www.disboards.com/threads/s...y-car-service-10-dining-reviews-more.3857015/
https://www.disboards.com/threads/s...y-car-service-10-dining-reviews-more.3857015/
heidica
Hooked on Disney!
- Joined
- May 29, 2000
You and I posted our trip reports at the same time and had similar impressions of how crowded the parks were. After how bad my feet hurt, the idea of a foot massage sounds wonderful!! You were smart to do that. We were blown away with Galaxy Edge too and loved ROTR. It was the only ride we did twice.
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