December 2001 Slideshow


	December 2001 Slideshow

December 2001 Slideshow

Oooooo there's a 247 Photo Slideshow!

WHO:

Aran Guy
Kelleye Bennett-Vinci
Melissa Jackson-Healy
Pat Healy

WHEN: December 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th, 2001

11/2001 An new Disneyland Trip! Man I still have a hard time believing that it's been over 4 years since we last went... after going 4 times in 1997. Well part of the blame goes towards having enough money to make 2 trips to Europe, including Disneyland Paris, and 1 trip to WDW just last May. A large part of the blame goes to the Disney Corporation itself tho. After our last trip, while Tomorrowland was still being made over, I was looking forward to all the new stuff they were gonna put in. The Rocket Rods,... uh Honey..hmm guess that was it. Then I heard from some friends that the Rods were kinda lame, Innoventions was boring (I figured on that), and that the music on Space Mountain wasn't working. Lost all interest in going. Then whenever I began thinking of going, I would think about all the other new things they've put in...Hmmmm the Tree-house redo...well they closed a bunch of stuff anyway! No more Subs, no more Rocket Rods (boohoo), no more Bear Show or Keel Boats. But there's a whole new park next door! Well the reviews of that haven't been very good either... My little brother and sister went over the summer and thought it was boring. I'll reserve judgement. One bummer about it is that they destroyed our shortcut to the park from the el-cheapo motels on Katella. Well that's why we haven't gone in 4 years. Why are we going now?

It's been over 4 years!!! The other deciding factor was to see the Nightmare Before Christmas Haunted Mansion Overlay which HAS been getting rave reviews (having a hard time keeping several friends from spoiling it for us!). This'll be the first time down since we got the Elph so no picture scanning needed! I'll have the pics up a couple days after we get home. I also want to see DCA for myself.

Kel Aran and I are going down to San Diego to see her Dad first then we're meeting up with the Jackson-Healys on Sunday. This'll be the first time since October of 1996 that we'll be driving. A combination of not wanting to deal with the Airport hassle, wanting to have our car in San Diego, and Kel getting Dot-commed last month contributed to this decision. So now this Pre-Trip report has gone on longer than many of my earlier slideshow's entire report... can you say run-at-the-mouth? See ya in 2 weeks!

Update 12-1-01: We're in Ramona now for 2 days before Disneyland and I'm posting some info at midnight after drinking too much at my father-in-law's. We drove down from Concord and made it here to Ramona (502 miles) in 7.5 hours. Going to Mount Palomar and the Wild Animal park tomorrow then on the D-Land on Sunday. Built Stonehenge in the backyard... Thistles are evil...
More to follow!

Update 12-3-01: Here's More. We skipped the Wild Animal Park as we got a late start. Mount Palomar was tres cool. We went instead to a little museum near a battle site then to one in downtown Ramona. Then Big-Meat for dinner. We said our good-byes Sunday morning around 10:00 and made it to our hotel by 12:30 (made a stop at Circuit City so Aran could buy more memory for his camera).

Update 12-8-01 We're back and had a blast! No the pics aren't up yet but should be by the end of the week. Gotta scale'em and slap on a copywrite as well as create the thumbnails. Then I've got to write up clever little descriptions for each one. Unlike the WDW trip section, I'll not be doing a full trip report... I didn't keep a journal, nor did I feel I needed to on this sorta mellow trip. Did I mention I took 309 pictures! Just at the Disneyland Resort, and not counting the dozen or so I took in San Diego (to be located in the Travel Adventure Section. If you want a pretty full description of the trip you'll have to go through the slideshow. I plan on discarding about a dozen pics which just didn't come out well, and there were about 25 that were actually taken for making 2 Quicktime VRs so the total should be around 260-275. I'll know more later this week.

To hold you over until then, here are some Highlights,Lowlights,Opinions and Ponderables about our Dec. 2001 Disneyland trip.

We chose our hotel wisely (by luck). The Best Western Park Place is directly across the street from the pedestrian walkway into the resort. 5-7 minutes from our room to the main entrances.
The Nightmare Overlay on the Haunted Mansion is brilliant and I'll be decorating for the holidays in likewise fashion.
The Xmas overlay on Small World could have used the Skellington touch but truth be told, it does manage to make that annoying ride only seem to take 15 minutes rather than 30.... got Jingle Bells stuck in my head tho...
The improvements made to the areas around Harbor Blvd. and between the two parks make a phenomenal difference. It's an absolute joy to walk around such a nice clean area after years of trudging through sleeze and garbage.
Downtown Disney is really nice in a shopping mall sorta way and it definitely beats the old parking lot.
The big question: How did we like DCA?
- Short answer: Liked it a lot!
- Long answer: Never underestimate the power of low expectations. As mentioned way above, we'd not heard very good things about Disney's California Adventure. This probably helped us enjoy the park more despite a few deficiencies but what it comes down to was we had a really good time exploring a shiny new place with relatively no crowd. The most publicised problems with DCA are it's flawed main theme of 'California' in California, it's lack of child friendly and/or whole-family-friendly attractions, and the high proportion of 'off-the-shelf' carny rides. While the theme may be slightly flawed, I think they did the parts quite nicely. Condor Flats is really cool with lots of neat little touches (love the welding tank in the smoking area), and the Grizzly Peak area is wonderful. Loved the look of Paradise Pier from across the lagoon, and the Hollywood section evoked nice memories of Disney/MGM :)
  As for the child-friendly/family-friendliness.. frankly I don't give a hoot. If it prevents the park from filling up with strollers I say GOOD JOB! :-) I've always had a hard time sharing Disneyland with all the kids running around. The off-the-shelf issue was a little irksome but not overly so. We skipped most of the carny rides but I liked taking pics of them. I've always like the way carnivals look from afar especially at night and am always disappointed when I get into them. Not so this time. Quite pleasant strolling around and CLEAN! :-)
  On the attraction front, we liked Soarin' (the hanglider sim) and Screamin' (the big coaster) the best (I think Disney saved Big Bucks by dropping the 'G's ), with Blast, at the Hyperion, and the Art of Animation a very close second. Muppets and Bugs were fun but 4 of us just saw them in WDW so not new to us. (They did a great job on both queues BTW!).
The Believe Fireworks show was nice but overhyped. First night we saw it from the Hub and the bass was over-driven on an inadequate speaker. Snow was cool. (nyuk nyuk). Second night we saw them while walking from Condor Flats to the entrance area of DCA and they looked great! Third night we watched from New Orleans Square which was fantastic as the sound was piped through the Fantasmic sound system. The last night we walked briskly from the DCA lagoon after LuminAria and watched the entire show framed behind the Golden Gate Bridge. That was the BEST. Not only were we virtually all by ourselves, but the DCA music track worked in much the same way you would watch a music video while listening to your own CD. Too cool!
LuminAria was hella better than we expected. It's no Fantasmic, and they should lose the overly-long Stepford Children in the snow section. The pyro was nice, the smoke wasn't too bad (smells like victory!) and the final effect with the lights on the Sun Wheel and Screamin' is awesome (actually better with lotsa smoke). We watched it twice, the second time from the little amphitheatre area.
Sitting around for an hour waiting for LuminAria to start is much nicer than the wait for Fantasmic. Prettier view and, if yer on the cement seats, more comfortable than the ground.
Not enough smoking sections in Disneyland! I don't mind having to use smoking sections and it wasn't inconvenient at WDW or DCA but D-Land needs 1 or 2 more. Unlike MK in Florida, there is no place to smoke on Main Street or Tomorrowland! We saw quite a few violators because of this I'm sure.
Speaking of smoking: It seems most of the fansites devoted to the parks are run by fanatic anti-smokers and while I'm not one of those on the opposite swing of the pendulum like some people (Hi Aran!), I do think some sort of guide to where you can smoke is needed... so it'll be part of MY site :) Look for Smokin' Place to be added in the near future, with pics, directions and review of all the places you can smoke at the Disneyland Resort.

Whew.. so much for no trip report...One last note about this page: Unlike all the other slideshow indexes I have for my Dland trips, this one will NOT include thumbnails and links to all the pics. Putting 250+ on one page would cause it to take 2 hours to load on a T1 connection. Instead It will display 1 in 10 as thumbnails and just the one-line description and link to the others. As always, all the thumbnails will appear in their respective lands. (which could cause me to redistribute and branch off some lands like I did Fantasyland...

Update 12-16-01 The pics are up as well as 2 VRs! Because there were so many pics I rewrote part of my page generator so that only 1 in 7 thumbnails show up on this page. If you wanna see all the thumbnails you'll have to go to the land pages.
The slideshow is in chronological order.

Text Last Modified Tue Dec 6 16:18:56 2005

Click on one of these 247 Fabulous Pics for more details and a bigger picture.

New Walkway

New Entrance Area 1

DCA Entrance X-Mas Style

Sunshine Plaza by Day

Soarin' Over California

Condor Flats 1

Shops in Condor Flats

Shops in Condor Flats 2

Grizzly River Run

Grizzly River Run 2

Uh Oh.

Whoa!

Sun Wheel and Maliboomer

Sunglass Shack and Mulholland Madness

King Triton's Carrousel

Screamin' Launch Track

Cannery Row

Cannery Row 2

Hollywood Backlot Entrance

Hyperion Theater

Disneyland Resort Quicktime VR

Opera House

City Hall

A Motley Group

Xmas 2001 on Main Street

Main Street Cinema

Shops on Main Street

Shops on Main Street

Xmas Tree on Main Street

Park About To Open

NOS Long-View

Columbia In Fowlers Harbor

Haunted Mansion with Nightmare Overlay

Haunted Mansion Entrance

Nightmare Mansion

Nightmare Mansion

Nightmare Hearse

Nightmare Pet Cemetery

Xmas In New Orleans Square 1

NOS Xmas Decor 2

NOS Xmas Decor 3

NOS Xmas Decor 4

NOS Xmas Decor 5

NOS Xmas Decor 6

Walkin' Thru Adventureland

Jungle Cruise Queue

Aladdin's Oasis

Adventureland Bazaar

Main Street Omnibus

Autopia

Alice Decor

Matterhorn from Alice

Aran and the Whale

My Chum Aran

On Toad

Kel and Pat on Snow White

Peter Pan's Flight Building

Melissa and Pat on Pinocchio

Rainbow Ridge

Rainbow Ridge 2

Big Thunder Splashdown

NOS Xmas Decor 7

Gazing Orbs

DCA From the Train

Toon Town 2001

Electrical Parade 1

Electrical Parade 2

Electrical Parade 3

Strange Crowds

Attracts all Kinds

Downtown Disney 1

Downtown Disney 2

The World of Disney Store

Smoking Area

Downtown Disney 4

Downtown Disney 5

Downtown Disney 6

Downtown Disney 7

Build-A-Bear

Y Arriba Y Ariba

Downtown Disney 10

House of Blues

Monorail Station

Downtown Disney 12

DCA Shop

Choo Choo Shop

Condor Flats Area

Sunburst

Shops in DCA

Soarin' Queue

Smoking Area

Smoking Area

Soap Opera Bistro

Gone Hollywood

More Hollywood

Award Wieners

Some More Hollywood

Draw Dumbo

Down the Side Street

MuppetVision 3D

Animation Exhibit

Hollywood Shops

Rhymes with Ducks or Flows

MuppetVision Queue 1

MuppetVision Queue 2

MuppetVision Queue 3

Rizzo's Prop Shop

MuppetVision Exit

Smoking Area in DCA's Hollywood

Smoking Area

Bathroom Land

Palace of Fine Arts

A Full 370 Degree Quicktime VR

Rides at Paradise Pier in DCA

Paradise Pier

Smoking Area

Smoking Area

DCA Lagoon

Screamin' Close-Up

Paradise Pier Boardwalk 1

More Paradise Pier

Paradise Pier Boardwalk 2

Paradise Pier Boardwalk 3

Maliboomer

Back of Sun Wheel

Paradise Pier Boardwalk 4

Orange Stinger

Kid's Climby Area

Mulholland Madness

Monster Corn Dogs

Orange Stinger 2

Sunset Shot 1

Sunset Shot 2

Castle By Night 12-2001

Tomorrowland After Dark

On The Monorail 1

On The Monorail 2

Downtown Disney 13

Tomorrowland After Dark

Space Mountain After Dark

Back Of Castle By Night

New Orleans Square By Night

Big Thunder Mountain at Night