Part VII: Coast-to-Coast Disney Trip Report

We trekked on to Toontown, where we encountered our first line of the day, at Roger Rabbit’s Cartoon Spin. It was only a 10 minute wait, but with the way we (mostly me) had been tearing through attractions up until this point, it was a bit of a momentum killer. We both really wanted to be as efficient as possible this day, as we had relaxed and taken things slowly on the previous days.

Cartoon Spin was worth it, and is the type of Fantasyland-style dark ride I hope to see more of in the future. It’s interactive but not ‘in-your-face’ about it, and it has solid set design and production value. It’s unfortunate that it’s hidden way back in Toontown, as I have to admit that we have experienced it far too seldomly.

As we headed back out of Toontown, we noticed that the Teacups had no wait. I wanted to try out my shot idea from the previous day with Sarah, who is decidedly more photogenic than me, and she was a good sport, so we gave it a whirl. The few minutes for the photo (top, below) were well worth it, as the Orange County Register published it, and Popular Photography magazine inquired about publishing it.

Even though it was early, I had been up since early morning, and Sarah is never one to pass up pizza, so we headed over to Pizza Port. Pizza Port is okay, but it’s one place I will readily concede is not that great of Disney Quick Service. I have no clue why we didn’t go to the Village Haus with its new menu, but for whatever reason, we forgot.

The pizza was okay, but it wasn’t really anything special. Next time we’re in Disneyland and get a hankering for pizza, luckily the new DCA Paradise Pier Pizza & Pasta restaurant will be an option. From what we’ve heard, it’s quite a great option!

We didn’t know what to hit next, so we decided to head over to Adventureland to hit some of the classic attractions that typically have short waits to find that Adventureland had become even more of an untraversable mess thanks to the POTC4 premier construction. Not wanting to go all the way back through Frontierland just to get to POTC, we opted for a quick climb-through of Tarzan’s Treehouse.

The Treehouse was okay. I’m not much of a Tarzan person, so if anything, it made me appreciate the Swiss Family Treehouse at WDW even more. The WDW version may not be my favorite attraction, but I like it better than Tarzan’s Treehouse, for whatever reason. Probably irrational nostalgia, actually.

Crowds were getting bad in Disneyland (probably mostly due to the terrible traffic flow of Adventureland, Frontierland, and New Orleans Square), so we decided to head over to DCA next.

Our first stop was the Tower of Terror, which was great as always. Not really much more to say about it. As you can tell, I’m picking up the pace of this trip report. I’ve already discussed most of the attractions and my opinions thereof, and we still have one day of DLR to report, then a full WDW trip. It would be nice to have this thing finished before October! (Luckily, I have most of the WDW portion of the report written, as I wanted to get that done while D23’s Destination D was still fresh in my mind.)

Next stop, the Toy Story zeotrope! I wasn’t allowed to stay and gawk at it in awe for quite as long as I was the previous time, but I still watched a couple of “performances.” Art of Disney, it’s time for you to start selling these bad boys. I fear the cost would far exceed my $50 budget for such a device, but the more of these there are in the world, the better of a place the world is. Seriously, key to world peace: zeotropes.

While I was gazing at this, Sarah was watching some montages in the main lobby area. These were pretty cool, but nothing overwhelming. We didn’t stick around for long in here, as the next showing of Turtle Talk with Crush was about to start, and we wouldn’t want to miss that.

Anyone who has read my Walt Disney World trip reports knows that we’re huge fans of Monsters, Inc Laugh Floor. We think it’s seriously underrated, and catches way too much flak because it uses a Pixar entity and living character technology. While I don’t like it as much as I liked Timekeeper, I still think it’s a great attraction.

This was one of the better showings of Turtle Talk we’ve seen, with some pretty cool references to Disneyland (specifically, the Nemo subs) and DCA. People can rag on these shows all they want, but we enjoy the humor and the fact that the experience is always (at least somewhat) different. While they will never surpass classics like Haunted Mansion, it’s nice to have some variety, and they are exactly that. I wouldn’t mind Disney creating a few more attractions like this, as long as it does so with a story-first, technology-second mentality. Don’t just force some story to work because you’ve got cool technology to utilize, WDI.

We wandered through Golden State before spotting a short line for Duffy the Bear. Duffy the Bear seems to be a divisive issue amongst the fan community, but I really don’t have much of an opinion on him. Yes, he’s heavily marketed, but so is High School Musical and Cars. He seems relatively popular, and it just seems like way too much of an effort to get worked up about him. A lot of people really like him, so that’s reason-enough to justify his existence, in my mind. It’s not like he’s really hurting anything.

Next up it was time for more ice cream! I’ve lost count how many times I consumed ice cream during this trip, but I’m going to hazard a guess that it was more than I eat on all other non-Disney days of the year combined.

With ice cream in hand, our pace slowed considerably. We strolled Paradise Pier yet again, taking in the delightful ambiance. I cannot wait to return and experience Paradise Pier in all of its “Phase 1 Completed” glory, with Ariel’s Adventure and the new dining areas completed (and Goofy’s Sky School, I guess). After we finished the stroll, we headed through the Golden State, to see if Grizzly River Run had a short wait time. Given that it was a warm day in the high 80s, my expectations were not high. Sure enough, it was a 60 minute wait. We stopped in the adjacent gift shop, anyway, and I snapped some photos.

From this point, we decided to use some FastPasses we picked up earlier for Soarin. This was probably the fifth time we had picked up FastPasses for Soarin during our two Disneyland trips, but it was the first time we ever used them! Sarah is not a huge fan of the attraction as it riles up her motion sickness, and the wait, even with FastPasses (for WDW’s version, at least) is still somewhat long.

I love Soarin, and this version did not disappoint. The queue was really cool, and the little details to convey the story of the “history” of the building (and Condor Flats in general, I suspect) were interesting. The attraction itself seemed better maintained than the Walt Disney World version (big surprise, right?!), and I didn’t constantly see specs and hairs on the film print taking me out of the experience. And that soundtrack…oh that soundtrack is something else!