Today's Blog entry is brought to you by the Disney Blog's "Be Our Guest" Contest. In December I was selected as a winner of the Contest, along with my Sister in Law, Mom and Best Friend. Yup, All 4 of us won. That's what happens when you are loyal and obsessed with the Disney Blog. I get tweets all day long on my phone from Disneyland, and I regularly check the blog for new stuff.
I was actually really disappointed in how the Winners were treated at first. We were told to Pick a date between Jan 15-28th for our stay at the Disneyland Hotel. I had initially chosen 4 dates between the 18-21th, as we were instructed to choose 4 dates that would work for us. All of us were available, and we knew that there would be some shuffling of rooms to accomodate everyone, but we were generally ok with that weekend. What we were presented with was VASTLY different. We were told there were no rooms available at all that weekend except for Sunday the 22nd, and initially booked all 4 rooms on that date. As it turned out that didn't work for 3 of us, and it was the ONLY date remaining available that worked for my BFF because he started school on the 24th.
We ended up leaving his date alone, but changed ours to the following Friday, the 27th, as the only 2 options we were presented besides the 22nd were the 27 and 28th. Literally we were given 3 dates to choose from for this contest. While I am not one to generally complain about FREE stuff, I do believe that whomever designed this contest and used the dates listed, didn't both to check with Disney Travel before doing so. It was incredibly frustrating to deal with, but I do have to say that Cheryl Harding at Disney Travel Promotions was INCREDIBLY helpful, and a delight to work with despite the circumstances. She seemed frustrated by the whole contest, and her limited dates, but did a fantastic job of pulling it all together, and getting us booked with what would work for all of us.
This being said the rest of the experience was 'meh'. We arrived at the Hotel around 2pm on the 27th, and checked in fairly quickly. We were given rooms in the Frontier Tower. I have stayed in this tower before, and it's a lovely place, but the view we had was of the back parking lot, and not very Disney at all. For winning a Contest, these rooms were NOT worth the $305 a night that was listed in the Contest Rules. We had "city" view, and I didn't feel inclined to even open the curtains when I found this out. The rooms were outstanding, aside from having to figure out how to plug in the Mini-Fridge, and lamps in the room. Not sure if the previous guest unplugged everything, or it that's a new Disney thing. I was sharing the Room with one of my dear friends who's also a Disneyphile like me, and before he got there (he was driving up separate due to work), I managed to snap some lovely photos of the room!
It was shortly after this that we went out to a late lunch/early dinner at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney. Being early on a friday meant that our wait was less than 5 minutes for a table for 6. We had an interesting table, with delicious drinks, and tasty tasty food. My Mom is on the left and my Aunt on the right. This was taken afterwards. Aren't they too cute? You can definitely tell they are Sisters for sure!
After our early meal we wanted to have a little fun and so we went down to the Pool where we tested out the new Slides
So much fun to be had, but it was getting cold, and running up the stairs and standing in the freezing air was too much for us, so we went over to the big pool (Neverland Pool), and played in there for a few minutes. When my nephew decided it was too cold, we all jumped into the spa to warm up before getting ready to go out in Downtown Disney...
By this point it was getting dark, and very windy and cold. We went back to our rooms, and changed to go out shopping/exploring Downtown Disney. I hadn't had the opportunity to spend any time browsing, and we had all night before our big day in the parks on Saturday.
We eventually met up with my friend, who unfortunately sat in 3.5 hours of traffic to get 90 miles from San Diego. He found us in the Something Silver Store. We went into most of the stores in Downtown Disney, and shopped until almost 8:30pm.
This little guy was in the Quicksilver Store in Downtown Disney
He is truly the happiest puffer fish I've ever seen. He'd follow your hand, and NOTHING scared him, and btw, Yes, he WAS smiling for the camera! That was NOT photoshopped at all.. lol
We decided that my nephew was plum tuckered out, and my mom and aunt took him up to the room so us "kids" could go to Trader Sams for Drinks. The drinks were Fantastic, but service was absolutely terrible. We had a table, because the actual bar was packed, and so we had a waiter. I would of preferred going to the bar to get my drinks, but he insisted he would take care of us. And he did NOT. Not even a little bit. My friend was starving, and ordered food, which showed up cold (it was supposed to be hot), and after our initial drinks, he did NOT offer or ask us if we'd like something else. My friend was celebrating his promotion, and 1 drink did not seem like enough. When he tried to stop our waiter who kept rushing past us without stopping for nearly 15 minutes, he gave my friend a dirty look when he tried to order another drink and said "really?"... Really?! It'd been nearly 45 minutes of being there at this point, and we were thirsty. My brother and SIL had gone over to Terratoa Terrace to get food because they were hungry and didn't want to wait. They had it delivered to the Bar, and it arrived WELL before our drink order that had been put in 20 minutes prior. We were less than thrilled at this point to say the least. After finally getting our 2nd round of drinks, we asked for the check. 20 minutes later my friend found ANOTHER waiter and asked him to find OUR waiter with our check. 10 minutes after this he finally showed up and asked what we wanted. THE CHECK. We were getting seriously annoyed at this point. It was about 10:30pm, but we were all tired and ready for bed and the adventure that would be Saturday. It took him another 10 minutes at this point to get us the check, and had we not been honest decent people, we would of walked out LONG before this point. As it was we left $0 in tip. Service was terrible, and seriously, we were at DISNEYLAND. I expect MUCH better than that. I only had one drink, and if I didn't know better, I would NOT return to Trader Sam's based on this experience.
Saturday we woke and got ready to go to the parks, but when you are coordinating 6 people and a baby, it tends to go SUPER SLOW. I don't mind slow, but my family is mind-numbingly slow. We didn't leave the hotel until 11am - already wasted 3 hours of Disneyland time - and then we walked through downtown disney to the parks as the Monorail Service was going to be a 45 minute wait. California Adventure it seemed was first up. My friend and I stopped and grabbed WOC fastpasses because we both love it so much. Then we went on the Little Mermaid. Love this ride a lot. Will be interesting to see the changes they plan to make to Ariel in the big scene in the middle of the ride. I really thought they should of bubbled us in that scene to make it seem like we were under water though. It feels too open.. Not water-like. After this we went to get lunch at Pacific Wharf. I wasn't feeling real well, and everything seemed expensive and not appealing, so I skipped lunch in favor of a Sprite to settle my tummy. After this we rode the Swings, Carousel, and Screamin.
Then we headed over to Disneyland. We love Disneyland. And we had Fast Passes, and Instant Fast Passes from staying in the hotel. We rode Space Mountain, and Star Tours with Fast Passes, and then rode Small World, and Pirates, and Haunted Mansion (we waited for 10 minutes, ride broke down, and we decided to go back later).
For being a Saturday, the park was packed, but the waits were not bad. 15 minutes for Pirates was perfectly fine, even with a toddler. The Parade was set for 4pm that day, so we found a nice spot, and I took a ton of awesome character photos.
We went over to the Haunted Mansion again, and I snapped a few awesome photos of the pet graveyard:
By 7pm my mom, aunt, brother and sister in law were tired and ready for home. So they left my friend and I and went home.
After a few more minutes in Disneyland we headed back over to California Adventure. We had 9pm Fast Passes for WOC. We used our instant fast passes on Autopia, but as soon as we were 10 people from the front, the ride broke down. We were issued fast passes for ANY other ride except Star Tours, so we felt like this was a good time to back to DCA.
DCA was hoppin. ElecTRONica was going on, and my favorite Disney DJ, DJ Michael Paul was spinning.
We grabbed FP's for Soarin, and enjoyed a nice peaceful break. Then we went over to Tower of Terror to use our other fast passes. When we got there though, the FAST PASS line was so deep and not moving that we ended up giving our remaining passes to 2 people in the regular line. Besides, we were hungry, and we had FP's for WOC at 9. We got a delicious meal at Boudin Bakery, and then finished our Day with World of Color.
The Be Our Guest Contest was a nice idea, but the execution was terrible. There was nothing special or memorable for the 40 people who won the contest except the memories we made ourselves. Next Time we would rather NOT stay in the Hotel, and instead get gift cards for things around the resort. It just didn't seem like a good Value, even being Free. I told a survey person these very things too. You cannot expect them to take us seriously if they don't know.
***Suggestions for the Disneyland Hotel. There was no Shower Curtain in my Mom's room, and it took an HOUR for them to send someone up with one. Then they told her it would be 2-3 hours to "install" it... which amounted to clipping on the Shower Curtain to the Rod. A process that took my MOM all of 30 seconds when she told the Maintenance Guy to Just Leave it. This accounted for the majority of our delay in getting to the park in the Morning. Also, It would be nice to have some sort of Continental Breakfast for FREE to those staying in the Hotel. I'm sorry, but $240-350 a NIGHT and you get no coffee, tea, pastry's, cereal, nothing. We had a 'single serving' coffee maker in our room, but no coffee or tea or cups to make it with. It seems a bit price gougey to leave a menu with $5 for a small carton of milk, $4 for a small cup of coffee, $15 for 2 pastries. I realize that it's Disney, but There ARE ways to not make people feel like you are stealing their money. In all we dropped $250 in FOOD ALONE for 2 days, and thats after we brought drinks, and snacks with us. We did get Pineapple from Adventureland that was INCREDIBLE. I'd spend money on that again regardless. All in all though, We could honestly not afford to do that again, and I will be returning to bringing my own food with me to the parks from now on. How a Family of Four manages to afford that for a WEEK is beyond me.
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