I recently had the chance to visit Disneyland and California Adventure for the first time. Being an Orlando resident and Walt Disney World annual passholder, I am very familiar with all of the Disney World parks.
Before going I’d heard some of the things people had said about the two …
• Disneyland is much smaller. (On a whole yes, but each park is about the same size as any Disney park.)
• Their Sleeping Beauty Castle is much smaller than Cinderella’s Castle. (True, but it’s still spectacular looking.)
• Disneyland is surrounded by hotels, many of them trashy looking. (Yes it’s surrounded by hotels, but they aren’t trashy looking and the grounds themselves are very pretty.)
• They have the same rides as as Disney World. (Some are the same, but they have many that Disney World doesn’t.)
• Disneyland is run-down and old. (Not at all. It looks as good as any Disney World park.)
For those interested, I’ll take you through our first day and some of the observation my wife, my 8-year-old son and I had.
In a nutshell, Disneyland is like the Magic Kingdom - just rearranged. California Adventure is like a mix up of the other Disney World parks blended with a little bit of Universal and Cypress Gardens.
We decided to visit Downtown Disney first. We walked from our Hilton hotel. It was a long walk. On the map it looks like all of the surrounding hotels are an easy walk to the parks - they’re not. You can do it, but after walking in the parks all day, you probably won’t want to walk home. Next time we’ll try to stay at a Disney Park.
Disneyland, California Adventure and Downtown Disney are all connected - just like City Walk and the two Universal parks in Orlando.
Downtown Disney was really nice. It was smaller than the one in Orlando, but still quite a good size. They have a few more name-brand stores than Orlando does. I thought it was cool that some of the Grand Californian hotel rooms look down onto the stores and walkway.
After you go through bag check from Downtown Disney, Disneyland’s entrance is just to your left and California Adventure is just to your right. We went to Disneyland first.
As we walked through the gates and onto main street, everything felt really familiar. We felt as if we were in the Magic Kingdom. Then we started noticing some of the differences. We started joking around, “Hey where’s the barber shop? When did they put this store here? Where’s Casey’s hot dog place?” We also noticed the buildings on main street don’t seem as tall as the ones in the Magic Kingdom.
As we explored the park, it was a weird feeling. Some things were where you expected them to be and some weren’t. I hadn’t had to use a Disney park map this much in years. We couldn’t just guess where things were.
Here are some of the main differences we noticed.
• As we walked through the castle it only took a couple of steps before we were out the back.
• Many of the rides, especially in Fantasyland, had dummy ride vehicles outside the buildings so you could get your picture taken in them.
• Many of the rides started outside and then you rode into the building.
• Many of the rides that we also have at Disney World are different in California. Some not much and some a lot. Some were better at Disneyland (Pirates, Space Mountain and Haunted Mansion).
* From what we could tell, the Monorail just takes you from Disneyland to Downtown Disney. The Monorail itself was much smaller. From the outside it doesn’t look smaller, but I could barely stand up inside. But you’re not supposed to stand, they have rows of seats. Neatest of all, you can put down the windows.
There’s no announcement to “Please stand clear of the doors.”
When it started moving, we started freaking out a bit: It was leaning with each turn. We thought something was wrong at first and thought we were going to fall off the track.
• I thought Innoventions was more fun there than at Epcot, but maybe it’s just because we’ve done everything at Epcot a million times.
• You can use the same Photopass card in Florida and California.
I took a bunch of photos and videos while at Disneyland. Most of the videos I took are ride-throughs of the rides we don’t have in Orlando.
You can see my Videos here: http://www.youtube.com/mattroseboom
You can see my Photos here: http://mattboom.smugmug.com
Any questions?
