Disneyland vs Disney World: Christmas Showdown!

Merry Christmas from 3 Dis Kids! I wish you all a wonderful holiday season, filled with wonderful experiences with family and friends!

A couple weeks ago we got to visit Disneyland in California for the first time! As you can imagine I have a lot to share, but today I want to stick (or candy cane) to to subject at hand, Christmas, or more specifically how Disneyland compares to Disney World at Christmastime.

Round 1: Merriment 
It is hard to imagine a more merry place than a Disney Park during the holidays. Christmas music playing, characters dressed for Christmas cheer, Christmas trees that reach to the sky, and resorts decorated to the nines! If you can't get into the spirit at Disney, you should see your doctor about a serious yule tide deficiency.

Both resorts overflow with Christmas cheer.

Round 1 is a push

Round 2: Decorations in Disneyland Park vs. Magic Kingdom
Just like in round 1, both resorts do a wonderful job of decorating for Christmas. Walking down Main Street in the Magic Kingdom, or Disneyland Park there will never be a time when you forget what time of year it is. Wreaths hung on the light posts with care, display windows, the before mentioned music, and the smells exuding from the bakeries... When the sun goes down, the lights on the castles glow like ice palaces! Let's just say you won't confuse it with Earth Day!

After leaving Main Street is where the parks begin to separate themselves from each other....

For years I had heard how much better Disneyland decorates for Christmas, and before seeing it with my own eyes, I wondered how it was possible, but it is true. All of Disneyland is maxed out for Christmas! The level of attention that is paid to decorations is amazing! Even the miniature castles and villages of the Storybook Land Canal are decorated with tiny wreaths, Christmas trees, and poinsettias. The only place where I was surprised to see no decorations was on the Jungle Cruise.

Unfortunately once to get off of Main Street at the Magic Kingdom, there are very few signs of it being Christmastime.

Round 2 goes to Disneyland

Round 3: Resort Decorations
Once again if you are staying at or visiting any of the Disney Resort hotels at Christmas, you know it. Giant trees themed to match the theme of the resort, special music, chocolate carousels and gigantic gingerbread houses are just a few of the things you mights see when you stroll through the various lobbies.

Disney World has more resort hotels on property, but Disneyland does a great job of keeping up with their three on site resorts. Quantity does not necessarily trump quality, as they all match up very closely. This category was just too close to call...

Round 3 is a push

Round 4: Holiday Extras & Special Events
If you are visiting either Disneyland or Disney World there are special offerings just for the Christmas season. Tours of the decorations are offered, special treats are cooked up, and special performances are well performed...

From early November to a few days before Christmas you can purchase tickets to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party (MVMCP) at the Magic Kingdom in Disney World. The party is offered a few times a week, and from 7:00-Midnight you get to be a part of a special hard ticket party, and enjoy the park with a much smaller crowd. There are special fireworks, stage shows, hot chocolate and cookies, and the Once Upon a Christmastime parade runs twice. It is a very festive evening, but you usually have to pay between $50-70 dollars to experience it. For people who aren't visiting right around Christmas Day, this is your only opportunity to see Holiday Wishes or the Christmas parade, but if you are there after the 21st, you get it as a part of your regular park admission.

The other parks at Disney World also get in the spirit. Every night Hollywood Studios lights up the Osborne Family Spectacle of Dancing Lights, with lights dancing to popular Christmas songs. Animal Kingdom has a special Christmas parade called the Jingle Jungle Parade. Epcot offers Christmas storytelling at many of the country pavilions, and also the Candlelight Processional, where a celebrity host reads the story of Christmas, while an enormous choir sings songs from the season. This is hugely popular, so line up early to catch it!  

Disneyland does not offer a hard ticket event like MVMCP, but instead gives it to you with your regular park admission. In addition they have a Jingle Jangle Jubilee that takes up the Big Thunder Ranch in Frontierland. Here you get to see Hillbillies sing Christmas carols, color holiday pages, and decorate Christmas cookies ($6 per kit). Characters dressed in their Christmas best stroll around for pictures, and you can get your picture taken with Santa too! Depending on the day, the parade, A Christmas Fantasy, runs once or twice, and the nightly fireworks are the Believe... In Holiday Magic fireworks.

In addition there are special holiday overlays of It's A Small World, and Haunted Mansion. During the holidays these attractions are transformed into almost completely different experiences. It's A Small World turns into a Christmas carol filled cruise around the world. They outside of the attraction is covered in Christmas lights and there is a special little show that goes on around every 15 minutes. The Haunted Mansion is given a Nightmare Before Christmas makeover, and Jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King takes over. Both attractions are amazing, and should not be missed if you are there during the holidays!

Disneyland also has a Candlelight Processional, shown at Town Square. It is also very popular, and there is limited area to watch to pick out a place early!

California Adventure doesn't offer much more than special decorations, and a special opening Prep and Landing section in World of Color. But even with that...

Round 4 goes to Disneyland

Round 5: Christmas Parade
Normally I am more of a fireworks/nighttime spectacular type of person, but Christmas is when I really love a parade, and nobody does a Christmas parade better than Disney. Comparing Disney World's Once Upon a Christmastime parade to Disneyland's A Christmas Fantasy is like comparing red apples to green apples, it's just a personal preference. Both have great floats, classic and new characters, and most importantly, they both have my favorite, the Tin Soldier Marching Band. But for me there can be only one winner for best Christmas Parade...

Round 5.... Disney World  

So after 5 rounds who wins the Christmas Showdown?

Disneyland! 

Disneyland pretty much ran away with this one, but Disney World held it's own. Each resort offers a lot for Christmas, but Disneyland just does it better all around. Disney World has a lot more to offer for Christmas, but Disneyland just envelops the entire resort in Christmas! Honestly, I can't think of two more magical places to spend the holidays! 

***Sorry for the lack of Christmas pictures from Disney World... They are stuck on a laptop that I can't access....***  

Counting Down the Days...

We have all been there. There are countless threads on every Disney fan site dedicated to them. People from all over the world participate. Several websites are dedicated to creating graphical interfaces so you can share them with others.  Some people have several of them going on simultaneously. There are even apps for your phone for them.They are Disney countdowns, and we have a couple going on right now.

59 Days until our next trip to Disneyland Paris. 
76 Days until we are back in Disney World. 

These are not just your typical Disney countdowns however. The first one also co-insides with the date we leave the country of Romania, and the second one marks the day when we begin a two month stay in Florida. Just minutes from Disney World!

Our trip to Disneyland Paris is a kind of farewell (for now) to the resort. It will be our third trip to DLP this year, and there have been some ups and downs, but we have enjoyed our trips. Plus, we need to make sure we get plenty of good use of our Dream annual passes!

Just a couple weeks later we will have the awesome chance to get to live next door to the mouse! We have rented a vacation home in nearby Reunion, and will be reaping the benefits of living so close to the most magical place on earth! We'll be trying new restaurants, experiencing new adventures, and just having a lot of fun as a family! Be assured that I will be sharing as many of these new adventures with you as I can, but there might be too many!

So do you have a countdown to your next Disney adventure? Share it in the comments section if you do!   

 

Walt Disney World Mom's Panel... The Adventure Continues

About two weeks ago the recruitment period for the 2013 Walt Disney World Mom's Panel began, and just like last year, I decided to throw my mouse-ears into the ring. 

Also like last year the Mom's Panel was looking for specific areas of expertise (Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Vacation Club, Adventures by Disney, RunDisney, and Disney Cruise Line), and once again I selected Disney Cruise Line. Unlike last year, there was no official start date announced for submission of applications ahead of time. Laura Spencer blogged about it  coming soon in July, but on the Mom's Panel website we were told to check there everyday in September. 

Well the Disney fan community, and Mom's Panel hopefuls especially are really good at sniffing out these kind of things, so eventually it got out that they would open for applications on September 10th, and close on September 14th, or whenever they received 14,000 applications. That was 6,000 less than in years past, so many Mom's rushed to get their applications in as quickly as possible. I took a couple of days to send my final submission, and even though they have not closed it out early in recent years, I was slightly concerned about the applications cap. 

The application process was a bit different this year. In stead of waiting for round 2 to test your knowledge in your specialty area, there was a second page of questions in round 1. The first page was general Disney knowledge, plus an essay (100 words) on helping to plan other people's Disney vacations. The second page had a few pretty tricky questions focused on your specialty area, plus another 100 word essay about planning vacations in that area.    

I gotta tell ya, 100 words is really not that much to show your passion for Disney! Both of my essays had to be almost cut in half after my first draft. There is so much that you want to share, but just not enough word space! 

Last year I progressed onto round 2, where they tested my knowledge of Disney Cruise Line, and I had to make a one minute video about my favorite Disney memory, but I didn't make it to the interview stage. It will be interesting to see what round 2 consists of this year, since they already made everyone answer questions and write essays about their specialty areas in the first round. I'm sure there will be another video submission, but what else does the Mom's Panel have up its pink sleeves? 

The wait begins... 

Cars Land to Replace Avatar at Disney World???

In the last couple of weeks the only rumors that I have been actively following have been ones surrounding the new iPhone, and if Apple will introduce a new smaller iPad. But one rumor that perked my ears up was the one saying that Cars Land could be making it's way east on Route 66 to Disney's Hollywood Studios. Things really seemed to be lining up for this, what with Kathy Mangum coming to Florida on assignment and all, but I didn't really buy into the whole Avatar Land dying a slow death... But it appears that where there is smoke there could be fire.

I really try not to get into the whole rumor spreading thing. With Disney there is so much to talk about that is happening, I have never felt the need to fill lines with the hundreds of credible, or insane rumors that pop up like pre-teen girls at a One Direction concert. I'm not connected to any sources at Disney to get comments, and I'm not a reporter who is expected to find leads on these types of stories. I'm a tennis coach who lives in Bucharest, Romania! I'm about as disconnected as you can be, so I rely on the hard work of people on the inside to get me my information! 

One of the people that brings this stuff to light is Kevin Yee. He has written a very good article about how Avatar Land could be shelved in favor of an east coast Cars Land. 

When the Avatar announcement was made, I like many people were taken by surprise. I also had mixed feelings about it, and I wrote about it in a post last September. The concept sounded really cool, and I thought that the Imagineers would do a great job with it, but I just thought it was a bit of a stretch. That combined with the stories of James Cameron being a bit of a pain to work with, kind of scared me that there would at best be delays. As rumors started to spread that Avatar might be downsized from an entire land to a couple of attractions, or even shelved completely, I thought it was just because of the fact that no new news was coming from the project. I shrugged them off thinking they were just a result of an impatient public, or from people that never liked the idea (there were plenty out there) who were looking for any reason to paint it in a bad light.

So how do I feel about this? Overall I am excited. Cars Land in Disney's California Adventure looks spectacular, especially the Radiator Springs Racers attraction. But a part of me thinks it should be exclusive to California Adventure. I for one love that all of the worldwide Disney parks have things you can only see there. It gives me the excuse to go see them all! But once again I trust the Imagineers to make a Disney World Cars Land different enough that people will want to see both. I also know that the designers always "plus" things as they re-imagine them. They learn from the previous attractions, lands, and parks, and tweek them to make them better. I have seen this with my own eyes from visiting the Magic Kingdom in Florida (opened October 1971), and the Disneyland Park in Paris (opened April 1992). There are a lot of improvements there, some little, some small, but if you pay attention you will see them.

So will Jake and Neytiri be moving out to make room for Lightning McQueen and Mater? We'll just have to wait and see! 

Resort Review: The Contemporary

I've done it again! Here is another Epinions review on a Disney Deluxe resort! If you would like to see it in it's original form CLICK HERE.

There are a few key memories that I have from my first "real" trip to Walt Disney World. Chief among them is riding through the Contemporary Resort on the Monorail. I remember thinking that there is not a cooler hotel in the world. First of all, it is right next to the Magic Kingdom. Secondly, the freaking Monorail drives right through it! The last thought I had was, "Wow! What kind of rich do you have to be to stay here?" Those thoughts continued to run through my head as we drove back to the Econo Lodge (or something like it) we were staying at in nearby  Kissimmee. 

You can imagine how excited I was when I got to stay at the Contemporary 24 years later! Staying at the Contemporary had been a goal of mine since I was 10 years old. The goal became almost an obsession when I "rediscovered" Disney in 2007. Could a hotel that I had been building up in my mind for 24 years possibly live up to the hype? Yes and no... The Contemporary Resort was built as one of three opening day resorts (along with the Polynesian and Fort Wilderness Campground) at Walt Disney World in 1971. It's A frame design is unmistakable, and it is nothing short of a Disney icon. Another cool fact is that the resort was built similar to how cruise ships are constructed, all the rooms are compartments that were installed into the main building. There is also a Garden Wing that is separate from the main building, and the Bay Lake Tower on the same grounds, houses Disney Vacation Club villas. 

We got a great Annual Passholder rate and stayed for three nights. When we booked the room I was afraid that we would be sent out to one of the Garden Wing rooms, but our room was in the main building, on the 5th floor, with a view of the pool and  Bay Lake. The room had two queen beds and a pull out sofa (that tried to eat my then 2 year old son). There was a flat screen TV mounted on the wall, and the decor was very modern. The bathroom's were equipped with big flat square sinks, and doors that slid inside the walls when they were opened. It was a really cool room, in a really cool hotel! 

No other resort at Disney World can make the claim that it is walking distance to the Magic Kingdom. It is so close that my daughter and I were able to walk from Space Mountain Tomorrowland, back to our room in just over 15 minutes! If you want to take your time, you can hop on the Monorail, and get off at the next stop. Coming back is a little more time consuming because you have to make stops at the Grand Floridian and Polynesian. If you are travelling with small children who nap in the afternoon, there is no better resort on property. 

Even if you aren't staying at the Contemporary, there are three restaurants and a food court that you can visit for a bite to eat. 

At the top of the resort is the California Grill. This is one of Disney's Signature restaurants, and although I haven't had the opportunity to dine there, it gets great reviews! This is fine dining with a great view! If you're lucky you might be able to snag a reservation for dinner during the Magic Kingdom fireworks. 

Chef Mickey's is one of the toughest reservations in Disney World. Here you can enjoy a breakfast or dinner buffet, with the Fab 5 of Disney, Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Pluto and Goofy. We have had breakfast here a few times, and it has never disappointed in terms of food or character interaction. It;s a bit pricey, and incredibly loud, but when you see your kids meeting their favorite characters, you forget about everything else! Another cool thing about this restaurant is that it is located just below the track of the Monorail, in the Grand Canyon Concourse of the hotel. 

The third restaurant in the Contemporary is The Wave... Of American Flavors. The good news is that it is pretty easy to get a reservation here, that is also the bad news. The menu here has a big focus on healthy, sustainable food. I'm all for that, but the quality just doesn't cut it. Kevin Klose, the restaurant reviewer for for the Dis Unplugged Podcast described the restaurant as "beige", and I can't think of a better way to describe The Wave. The food is just ok. The decor is just ok. Even the service was just ok. We probably would not have eaten here had we not been staying at the resort. I have heard that the breakfast is quite good here however, and the wine list is very extensive! 

The Contempo Cafe is the quick service option at the resort. By food court standards I found the food to be pretty good. Nice sandwiches, and a good selection. You place your order here at a self serve kiosk, and then take the printed receipt to the kitchen counter. The food is prepared fresh and comes out hot. I had no complaints about the meals we ate here. This is also where you can purchase and put to use your Disney refillable mug.

In addition to the restaurants and food court, there is a coffee bar at the resort. Contemporary Grounds serves up your favorite latte, tea, frozen coffee, and pastires. My wife says that this is the best coffee on Disney property (not a high bar to clear), but with Starbucks coming to the parks soon, we'll see where it stands! 

The pool complex is behind the main building, and was a bit of a disappointment. Considering that this is one of the most expensive resorts to stay at on property, the pool just doesn't compare with other deluxe resorts. There is a water play area for the little ones, and a lack luster slide but that is about it. Our kids actually preferred to just play in the sand by the lake. The pool at Bay Lake Tower next door is much better, but you can only access it if you are staying in the villas. In addition to the pool there is a marina where you can rent boats for tooling around in the lake, or if you are feeling adventurous, book para-sailing. 

Surprisingly enough, the Contemporary Resort did live up to the 24 years of anticipation. I would love to be able to hop in a Delorean and go back to 1986 and tell 10 year old me, "one day you will stay here!" Or maybe I'd still keep it a surprise...