The Log Dog Blog: Disneyland January 2019

In all of the times I've been to Disneyland, I've never had the good fortune to visit at Christmas. Since we already had plans to go to WDW in December, we decided to go to Disneyland right after New Year's Day because the holiday decorations stay up through the first week of January. We flew to LAX very early on Wednesday, January 2 after only arriving home from Boston less than 12 hours earlier, and Ginny was none too pleased to watch us unpack and repack!

We were spoiled again with an empty middle seat between us and landed a little after 10:00 am. We did check a bag and rent a car, so it took some time to get all of that squared away, but our first stop was right near the airport at Randy's Donuts. We'd driven past it on many occasions, but we had never stopped, so we thought we'd give it a try and the donuts were fantastic! We stopped at Fatburger for lunch because they serve the Impossible Burger (seriously, can other chains get it together and do this, too?) and then at one of our favorite ice cream places, Afters, before driving to Anaheim. We tried a different "Good Neighbor" hotel this time – Best Western Plus Park Place Inn, which is right across the street from the entrance to the Disneyland Resort. While it wasn't the fanciest hotel we've ever stayed in, the location cannot be beat. Our room in particular was spectacularly located – there is a photo below taken from the doorway of our room – that is seriously how close we were!

I was standing in the doorway
of our hotel room when I took this -
that is the entrance to the Disneyland Resort!

I already think Disneyland has an intangible magic to it that cannot be matched, so seeing everything decorated for Christmas just took that to the next level! Everything was so beautiful! We spent Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at the parks and had so much fun! Our favorite restaurant has quickly become Lamplight Lounge and we ate there three times in those four days – not only for the food, but absolutely for the ambiance! The highlight of the entire trip, though, was Small World Holiday. I really wish Blogger would allow long videos to be posted because it is AMAZING. If you are on Instagram, you can see two videos I posted – one shows when the lights are first turned on at dusk and the other is when there are incredible projections set to music displayed several times throughout the evening. And that's just the outside! Inside the attraction, the transformation is beyond impressive. I cried every time we rode it (and I lost count of how many times we rode it over the four days!). This and Haunted Mansion Holiday are really what set Disneyland apart. The imagineering is simply phenomenal. And the music? It switched back and forth between "It's a Small World" and "Jingle Bells!" And then "Deck the Halls" was in the final scene! And the in scene under the sea, Ariel sings "Jingle Shells!" I mean, come on! So cute! (My IG name is momof8dogs.)

The only negative thing I can say about Disneyland is nothing new…I am not particularly impressed with the cast members. Compared with WDW (and I really do try to not compare the two resorts), the cast members are aloof and disinterested. This has been our experience on all three of our trip there in the past five months, as well as many others over the years. It just seems like they don't enjoy their jobs and they are annoyed to be working. I am always happy to pay a cast member a compliment – I tweet my compliments and I report them in person at City Hall. There are always so many opportunities for me to do so at WDW, but at Disneyland, it is a stretch. I went to City Hall this time to compliment two cast members – a server at a restaurant and a cast member at the front gate – and the woman at City Hall kept probing me for details on what they'd done to go above and beyond, and I honestly had no answer for her. They were competent and polite. That's it. But they stood out to us because the other cast members could not have been described as such. After we left City Hall, C and I were talking about how someone just doing the bare minimum really impressed us and how that was kind of a sad statement about our experience. The cast members in the park just shuffle guests onto attractions (for example, one attraction we rode had NO line, yet the cast member refused to let us have our own vehicle and instead put the couple behind us in the same vehicle – and I am certain they would have preferred their own vehicle as well!); the cast members at the gate did not greet us in any way when we were entering or leaving (with the exception of the cast member we complimented at City Hall).

Another encounter I didn't care for was at Starbucks in Disneyland. When the cast member asked for a name for the cup, I said "Zero" and he gave me quite an attitude about it. He claimed they couldn't write any character names on the cups because they were trademarked property of Disney. What? Ummm, last time I checked, Disney did not own the word Zero. Such complete and utter nonsense!!! So I said "Joy" and he wrote it. Newsflash, Joy is also a character. Whatevs!

These might not seem like big deals to some people, but we really do expect outstanding service when we are at a Disney Park. We didn't really encounter anyone who was rude, but most are standoffish and don't engage with guests the way they do at WDW. Maybe it's due to the fact that there are so many locals who hang out at the park as opposed to WDW being a vacation destination for families? I don't know. However, not even lackluster cast members can dull my love for Disneyland!

Disneyland

Disney California Adventure

Lamplight Lounge

Small World Holiday

On Friday morning, we took a drive to Huntington Beach. We are so fortunate to have been able to visit many wonderful places, but Huntington Beach is one of my very favorite places ever. It is so beautiful and I could stare out at the ocean forever. Such a great morning spent at the beach before returning to Disneyland!

We checked out of the hotel on Sunday morning and drove four hours to Las Vegas to visit my dad for one night. It is a gorgeous drive and as always, it was awesome to spend time with my dad! We left the next morning, making stops at Bad Owl Coffee and Seven Magic Mountains so C could experience them, and then we drove back to Los Angeles. We went to the Griffith Observatory, which is unfortunately closed on Mondays, but were still able to take some photos, and we stopped at the Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round, which is where Walt Disney first imagined Disneyland. Very magical!

After dinner in Santa Monica, we stayed at the Hilton near LAX on Monday night because our flight home was first thing on Tuesday morning. Unfortunately, our streak of empty middle seats between us came to an end and we had a very annoying person sit between us who moved around the entire flight and had far too many personal items with her (so much so that her things were under my feet and under C's feet – very aggravating). This is one thing I like about the so-called "discount" airlines like Spirit and Frontier…they are vigilant about what constitutes a personal item and what constitutes a carry-on. Some people might not like it, but their policies level the playing field for everyone. When you allow someone like our seatmate to bring tons of stuff onto the plane, it's not fair to all of the other passengers who followed the rules. I was also not impressed with the flight attendants on our flight – they reserved the entire last row for themselves, even though the seats were empty for most of the flight (exception being when one flight attendant was eating his lunch). They would not allow people in middle seats to move back there (including our seatmate) nor would they let someone with a broken TV screen in their headrest move back there where the screens were working. Terrible customer service as far as I'm concerned. Thankfully, I slept for most of the flight, but C was forced to deal with the lousy service and annoying seatmate. I guess not every flight is going to be fun, but I could not wait to get off the plane.