Disneyland Construction Update: January 2016

I’ve been fairly outspoken in my love for California, which I consider to be the greatest nation in the world. Yesterday, it was 75 degrees out with no humidity in Anaheim. We could have driven 30 minutes and been surfing, 1 hour and been skiing, or 2 hours and been hiking in the desert, all in fairly ideal conditions. (Yeah, yeah: “but there’s awful traffic!” I’ll take it for all of this.) Suffice to say, it’s the perfect time of year to visit California.

It’s also the perfect time of year to visit Disneyland, and that holds true even through the extensive refurbishments–and there are a lot of them. I forgot just how pleasant Disneyland can be during the off-season. It was wonderful. Walkways with plenty of breathing room, headliner attractions with 20 minute waits, and just a really quiet, laid back vibe in general.

If you’ve never been to Disneyland before, I can’t recommend coming in the next couple of months with so many headliners down. It’ll be better in a few months when everything not affected by Star Wars Land construction is (presumably) operating as normal. The trade-off with that is higher crowds, and potentially more construction walls. That’s probably an acceptable trade-off if you’ve never been. If you have been, it’s worth missing a few things to enjoy the dearth of weekday crowds.

I know most people reading this aren’t just going to up and book a quick getaway for next week, so it’s worth noting that this should be the situation–on weekdays and aside from holidays, at least–until Easter week.

Now let’s take a look at what’s going on at Disney California Adventure…

I headed to Fiddler, Fiffer, and Practical, where I spotted these Starbucks Via. These have long been a recommendation on our Unique Items to Pack for Disney list. Nice to know that you don’t have to pack them at all–you can just buy them in the park.

While I was taking photos of random things, Sarah grabbed a hand dipped ice cream bar from Clarabelle’s. She swears by these things.

A new issue of The Buena Vista Bugle is out. I’m surprised and impressed that they keep doing this paper. It’s a nice touch, but I totally expected it to only last 2-3 issues. Great to see it going strong.

Guy and I got our soft serve on in Paradise Pier. While almost everything about DCA 2.0 has been an improvement, the one thing I’d love to see return to this location is the flavored swirls they used to have at Catch-A-Flave. At the last couple of D23 Expos, there has been a booth serving these flavors, and it always has a huge line (despite high prices). I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t do similarly huge business in the park–and would be a relatively unique offering.

Disney, if you bring that back, I will do my civic duty and purchase soft serve there each time I visit the park. That’s a guarantee!

The new seating area is now open at Cove Bar, alleviating the long waits it had been drawing for the last couple of years. I think Cove Bar’s rise in popularity really demonstrates the power of the internet–I remember when you could walk up to Cove Bar anytime and never wait. That all changed when photos of vibrant drinks and glorious lobster nachos went viral on places like Pinterest and Instagram. I really don’t know how else to explain it, but irrespective of why it happened, Cove Bar deserves every bit of popularity it has gained.

Even though Soarin’ is closed weekdays, the other waits around DCA weren’t bad at all. We did the Silly Symphony Swings a couple of times with no wait.

Over in Hollywood Land, the Hyperion Theater prepares for the new Frozen production.

The Zootopia preview is now playing, and it definitely got us hyped for the film. My only criticism is that this preview shows way too much of the film. A twist that I’d assume happens in the final third of the film is revealed, which wasn’t cool. On the plus side, the in-theater effects are solid.

Over in Cars Land, Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters still has yet to open.

While Disney never set a public date for the opening of this attraction, Cast Member previews were scheduled for two weeks ago, and were cancelled.

Because the original park was such an anomaly that could only have been built in a very narrow window of time in the late 90s, I’m really intrigued by the History of Disney California Adventure 1.0, and no area of the park (besides Sunshine Plaza) is as fascinating to me as Paradise Pier. (Heck, that orange hat I’m wearing in the photo above is a Paradise Pier hat!)

I realize DCA 2.0 is a huge improvement upon its predecessor, I just find the original incarnation of the park incredibly fascinating. It’s my goal to someday own a framed Superstar Limo attraction poster, and I’m not even being remotely sarcastic with that. If you have one you’re willing to sell, please contact me.

It had been a while since we’ve gone to Cove Bar due to the aforementioned waits, so when we saw it with virtually no wait that evening, we knew we must indulge in some Lobster Nachos. Our only concern was that soft serve and lobster nachos in the same day might cause us to explode from unadulterated joy.

We were seated at a table directly overlooking Paradise Bay, and it was pure bliss. I love gazing out at Paradise Pier (random ICYMI: here’s a beautiful panorama of the original Paradise Pier), and the only thing that could beat this would be if World of Color had been showing.

The best way to flush out communists is to ask your friends and family if they want to share an order of lobster nachos at Cove Bar. If they say “yes” report them to the House un-American Activities Committee for further questioning.

I think that’s just as good of a note as any to end this update. Big thanks to my wife, Sarah, and Guy “Freighthopper” Selga, who both tolerated me stopping repeatedly to take photos of random stuff as we strolled through the parks yesterday.

Now that I’m (almost) done writing it, I realize it was a lot more work than I expected (who knew taking photos of, and writing about, construction walls would be so time consuming?!) and the end result is sort of all over the place, and just as much random commentary as it is an actual update.

As mentioned at the beginning, I plan on doing more updates like this so long as there’s interest in them (both from you and me), but I’d like some feedback in terms of what you’d like to see. Just construction walls and refurbishments? Random other stuff from the parks? New merchandise? This is all untrodden ground for me, so I’m not really sure what makes a “good” update that people will actually want to read. If you don’t offer feedback, don’t complain when the next one follows this same approach of merging illustrative photos along with random thoughts and lame attempts at humor. I have to amuse myself somehow. 😉

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Your Thoughts

What do you think about the construction at Disneyland and current state of refurbishments? Have plans to visit anyway, or will you be holding off until the construction is done? Any feedback on the format of these updates? Any other thoughts? Questions? Please share below in the comments!