Happy Place Hodgepodge - May and June 2014

As much as I've hesitated to say it, I suppose the truth must come out. Right now I, Days in the Park, Chad if you prefer, am basically without an Annual Pass. Well, that's not entirely true. I have a Pass, it's just blacked out right now until the middle of August so, for all intents and purposes, I'm a Pass-less Annual Pass-holding blogger. Say that five times really fast!

That being the case, pictures and trips out to Disneyland have been few and far between over the last couple of months, which has left me scrounging a mite for things to write about and digging for pictures to put up for you loyal readers!

I was going through things last week and stumbled across a few that I had trapped in the bowels of my phone which I realized I had never posted! Hooray for old age and forgetfulness!! And with that, another "Happy Place Hodgepodge" is born! These were taken over the course of several visits during the end of May and middle of June when I made my last trip to The Parks before my blackouts began.

I also managed to spend some time in Downtown Disney earlier this week and took another load of pictures to share with everyone, and those will make up another hodgepodge for later in the week, so if you're enjoying these posts, keep checking back and I promise another one really soon.

I hope that you enjoy them as much as I enjoy taking them. The Park is so full of wonder and things to see and experience that sometimes you just never feel like you can do enough. But maybe, if I keep trying and putting these up, I'll manage to fill the same hole in someone else that looking through them again fills in me while I can't go myself.

Enjoy!

One of my absolute FAVORITE things to do every trip is just to ride the Disneyland Railroad. Grand Circle tour of Walt's Magic Kingdom, anyone?

The Mighty Ducks WERE a Disney-owned team at one point; what else would I be rocking on Main Street?!

Even trains need a little water sometimes - Disneyland Railroad, New Orleans Square Station

Pioneer Chili Cheeseburger - Hungry Bear Restaurant, Critter Country

"Honey, I'm home!" - The Haunted Mansion, New Orleans Square

Look everyone, it's Amy! Four years of friendship and still going strong! #DisneylandFriendsAreTheBestFriends

I get a chance to spend time with some amazing people at Disneyland, and my friend Brittany is one of them! If you see her (and she'll probably be at the Mad T Party), tell her I said hi!

Because what else are you going to chant at 3am in the morning when you're high on Mickey Mouse Chicken and Waffles?!

See?

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Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy 2010 - Disney Flashback Friday

There's little use in denying the fact that Halloween Time at Disneyland is one of our favorite times of the year!  Disneyland really upped the ante a couple of years ago, however, with the annual transformation of our beloved Space Mountain into Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy.  Anyone familiar with Disneyland (or Walt Disney World for that matter) probably knows all about the premise of Space Mountain.  Shoot around the stars (virtually, at least) on a roller coaster in the dark.  Always been one of our favorites!  But add in a "Space Ghost" named "Bob" who chases you all over the place and pops up at the most inopportune of times, some creepy music and lighting, and you've got Ghost Galaxy!  We've heard of adults getting creeped out on the ride (shame on you!) and seen children come off with tears in their eyes.  But as for us, we say bring it!

Last week we braved the massive crowds to be able to say we rode it this year on opening day (as opposed to just opening weekend like we have the past two years), and it made us look back at last year's pictures for some good laughs.  We thought we'd share them with you today.  If you haven't already ridden Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy you need to.  And if you live out of state, fly here immediately and ride it.

Enjoy!

MJ gets ready for his VERY FIRST ride on Ghost Galaxy

First time riding last year... and we get stuck halfway up the first hill and have to disembark - Chad tweets and Mark panics!

(#1) MJ's ride picture on his very first trip around Ghost Galaxy - his hair KILLS us!
(#2) Touring the Galaxy with our friends from FindingMickey.com on the 'Happiest Haunts Tour'

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Many thanks as always to Sarah at "Magical Days with the Mouse" for hosting this wonderful, weekly event!

"Almost" Wordless Wednesday: Naps In Space!

As we do on a regular basis on Wednesday, we're blog hopping with Focused on the Magic and The InfoMouse today.  Be sure and check it out for even more great Disney blogs and pictures!

Our "napping" themes over the past couple of weeks have proven to be some of the most popular pieces we've ever written.  We've enjoyed doing them, and obviously people have enjoyed reading them, so we're going to keep it going.  Looking back now, we've taken a lot of napping photos, so there's lot to draw from, but what's more popular than a good ride photo?  And this could well be the one that started it all!

We took this one a few years ago when we were on a trip with our church's youth group on Space Mountain in Tomorrowland.  Chad is the second row and Mark in the back.  It was our last ride after a very long day, so I guess we figured it was as good a place as any to doze off.

Enjoy!

The Friday Fast Pass: The Fastpass!

It's been a while since we did one of our Friday Fast Pass segments! We figured what better way to get back into the groove of offering up some Days In The Park tips than to focus on the very thing we took our segment's namesake from: the Park Fastpass.

What people did before the invention of the Fastpass system is beyond us! Well, we know they stood in line a lot more, but we're sure you get what we're trying to say. And when it comes to line bypassing, nobody does it better than Disney! You need only look to other theme parks and the example they set (charging you above and beyond your park admission for the privilege) to see just what a great thing The Parks have going for them here, and you'd do best to take advantage of it as often as you can.

If you're uninitiated into the world that is Fastpass still, it's really simple to explain. As mentioned before, it's basically a "line bypassing" system The Parks have implemented meant to save people time and cut down on long lines. You get it automatically with your Park admission ticket, so you don't have to do anything except go to the attraction you want and, if it has a Fastpass option available, get a Fastpass ticket to come back at a later time and ride (or see in the case of  World of Color) it without having to wait in the long lines to do it. The attractions that have Fastpass options have little ticket dispensing booths near the entrance and all you have to do is insert your Park ticket (or Annual Pass if you're a passholder) and it will spit out a ticket for you to bring back at a later time to enjoy your attraction. Easy enough, right?

Each of the two Parks has their own set of attractions that are "Fastpass enabled". They are:

Disneyland Park:

• Space Mountain
• Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin
• Autopia
• Indiana Jones Adventure
• Splash Mountain
• Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

Disney's California Adventure:

• Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
• Soarin' Over California
• Grizzly River Run
• California Screamin'
• World of Color

We also have reason to believe that they will be adding a Fastpass option to the new Star Tours: The Adventure Continues and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure in the future (having taken those from Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and we're still unsure about the ones that were at Mulholland Madness previously), but we guess that only time will tell.

So, do we actually use the Fastpass system ourselves? You bet we do! Over the years it's become an integral part of our Park excursions, and it's even more important for people who don't make it to The Parks as often to use this fantastic system.

With that in mind, we present our top 5 tips for using the Fastpass system in The Parks for maximum enjoyment!

1. Begin early! It just stands to reason logically that the earlier you get into The Park, and the earlier you begin racking up Fastpasses, the more you can get throughout the day (barring an attraction running out which does happen, especially with some of the more popular attractions like Space Mountain). You're allowed to get one Fastpass every hour (from when you got your last one - your Fastpass ticket will tell you on the front when you're eligible to get another) so do it! And although we tend to fly by the seat of our pants most days, when we do go to The Park with a mind to ride something, we occasionally do know which attractions we want to get Fastpasses for, and we make sure to move down the list and get our next as quickly as we possibly can so we get everything in before the end of the day. Starting early will help you do that.
2. Double the pleasure! Using the Fastpass system to your advantage you can almost get two rides for the price of one. Many times we'll get a Fastpass, sacrifice ourselves to the lines, and by the time we're done with the first ride, our Fastpasses are up and we can get right back on for a second go-around. It's a really great way to do rides like Space Mountain, Splash Mountain or the Tower of Terror if you've a mind to. And sometimes we've even been able to triple our pleasure! If you have members of your party who aren't riders, if they're willing, you can even borrow their tickets or passes to get extra Fastpasses and do it again! We don't do this one often but we have been known to from time to time.
3. Know what to use your Fastpasses for! In our experience, some of the attractions that have Fastpass options aren't necessarily the best ones to be using it on. The lines are usually pretty negligible and are fast moving so we don't like to use them there. Our suggestions would be Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland Park, and Tower of Terror, Soarin' Over California and Grizzly River Run at Disney's California Adventure. These are the ones that typically have the longest lines during the busiest seasons which can run anywhere from 1 1/2 to 2 hours. 
4. You can go past your time on your Fastpass ticket to ride. Each Fastpass ticket has a return time on it ("Return Anytime Between 9:30 and 10:30AM for example). For the longest time we thought it was a rule that must strictly be adhered to, but that's not the case. You can go ride anytime after that. We'll never forget when our friends found out that we didn't know this. Their laughter and mockery are still ringing in our ears. We still try to get back to the attraction as quickly as we can, but it's nice to know that if we miss our time for some reason (such as standing in another line) that we can still use our Fastpasses anytime we want.
5. And lastly, pay the kindness forward! We can't count the number of times we've been moving about The Parks, and a family or something has come up to us and offered us their unused Fastpasses. We make it a point (the passes in the picture at the top of this article notwithstanding) that if we have Fastpasses on us that are unused to do our best to give it to another group or family that might be able to use them. If you're not going to use them, do your best to pass them on and make someone else's day just a little more magical. Isn't that what it's all about?

So there you have it: our Days In The Park tips for this week all about the Park Fastpass system. We know that a lot of people already know about this stuff, but you never know when it might come in handy, or when one of our tips might be something even users might not have thought of before.

Do you have any tips of your own concerning Fastpasses? Let us know and we'll do a follow-up article soon and include them. 

Now get out there and ride it up!

The Tuesday Toss-Up: Children At Play

Here at Days In The Park, we firmly believe in the old adage that there's a child inside each and every one of us trying to get out.  Our problem isn't letting the kid out, it's getting him (or her) back inside!

We spent some time over the weekend just playing at and enjoying Disney California Adventure (some place we haven't spent a lot of time in as of late) before heading over to Disneyland Park to close out our night.  This is some of the randomness that transpired in picture form.

Enjoy!

"Oh dear God, what is that flashing light?!" *insert screams here*

Ah, good times aboard our favorite maintenance service elevator.  Sarah from Magical Days With The Mouse (2nd row, middle right) looks rather bored with the paranormal shenanigans, Jen Tucker from Overheard at Disneyland (2nd row, far right) is holding on as we prepare to drop (what? holding on?!), and Days In The Park (back row, right) looks absolutely petrified.  When can we ride again?!

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We spent some time hanging around Flynn's Arcade and the End Of Line Club in the Hollywood Backlot around the time that ElecTRONica got started.  It's been a while since we've been back here, and it was good to hear the techno music hasn't gotten any quieter in our absence.  Maybe next time we'll enjoy a tasty beverage with one of those little flashy ice-cube thingies they include.

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Oh so pink

One of Chad's favorite segments of the entire show.  Just don't tell anyone.

"The seaweed is always greenah..."

California Screamin' looked absolutely awesome

"Light Cycles In The Mist"

It had been quite some time since we had actually seen World Of Color.  Not sure about Amy, but Mark had only seen the show once before (right after it opened) and Chad hadn't seen it since September.  On a whim (and a quick tweet or two) our site, Magical Days With The Mouse, and FindingMickey.com got our FastPasses Sunday afternoon for the 9:15 show.  It was every bit as gorgeous and amazing as we remembered it.  The new TRON bits didn't hurt one bit, either.  These are just a few of the dozens of shots we all snapped off between us, and some of our site's personal favorites from the evening.

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On tonight's episode of "Nights In The Park", "When Twinkling Lights Fail!"

And lastly, an entirely new attraction in the Park that we had never seen before.  You just never know what these wonderful Imagineers are going to come up with.  Slipped it in right under our noses, they did!  It did remind us an awful lot of Space Mountain, though.

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DitP (sort of) Visits Walt Disney World

One of us recently had the opportunity to go to Walt Disney World; well, sort of.  Chad's wife Stephanie went to Orlando for a conference that was held for two days at Disney's Contemporary Resort.  While she never actually made it into The World, we nonetheless put her to work taking pictures.  And let's be honest, as far as we're concerned, she was there.  Anytime you drive under the great gaudy sign spanning Interstate 4 there (which she did both days and parked on Disney property), we're going to count it.

Seeing the pictures just gets Chad amped up more and more for his trip in 2012.  We can't wait to see Days In The Park tackle The World, for real this time.

Enjoy!

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DITP Persepctive: Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy

"In Space, no-one can hear you scream, except the person sitting next to you."

Ghost Galaxy is back and ready to kick your tail.

For the past two years, Disneyland's Space Mountain has been cursed with a ghostly problem, and both years Days In The Park has headed out to face it!

Last year, not knowing what to expect and flying blind, we decided to check out the evil we had heard had taken over our beloved Space Mountain.  Little did we know just what terrors awaited us.  Long lines!  Attraction breakdowns!  Horrible body odor!  And before we even got on the ride!  But we get ahead of ourselves.  As soon as we hit the entrance to Tomorrowland,  we could hear the sound of what can only be described as a creature slashing at the outer wall of the mountain.  Either that, or there was an explosion taking place inside the building.  Did that stop us?  Surely you jest!  Neither did the two hour wait,  or the little girl who pulled into the space dock weeping uncontrollably.  We went forth on our mission and what we saw blew our minds.  If you thought Space Mountain was intense, try riding it with a giant space ghost chasing you.  We couldn't wait until next year.

Fast-forward one year,  and we were headed back to the park in a state of high anticipation.  Little did we know that this year Bob (or so we've heard the ghost is called) had an extra special surprise in store for us.  We had just left the station, just going up the first hill,  when all of a sudden we became stuck; trapped at the hands of Bob.  There we waited.  Seconds became minutes;  minutes became hours; hours turned into days.  Okay, maybe it wasn't that long, but it sure left us terrified and approaching stark raving madness.  Truthfully, we probably only waited twenty (long!) minutes before some cast members came to help.  They gave us some fast passes for later,  and sent us on our way.  We returned later that evening to show Bob that no matter what,  we would always have something for him.

This year was especially cool because we were able to take Michael into The Galaxy with us.  Up until a relatively short amount of time ago, Michael wasn't willing to take on the "big boy" rides.  Now, he's a daredevil who couldn't wait to get his chance to take on this iteration of one of his favorite rides.  We think he had a great time.  What do you think? 

Pre-ride:  Ready to take it on!

Oh, the horror!

Michael was kind enough to offer an interview to Days In The Park.

1. What were you most looking forward to on the ride?  Seeing the ghost
2. Were you nervous before getting on?  No, it didn't look scary
3. How does Ghost Galaxy compare to Space Mountain?  It's better than Space Mountain because there's a ghost in it.  Oh, and a surprise ending!
4. What three words best describe this ride?  Awesome; creepy; fantastic.
5. What would make this ride even better?  <blank stare>

So there you have it.  Straight from the mouth of babes.  Either he was bored to death, or just busy because Bakugan was coming on.

Ride Information and Tips

Average Wait Time:  1 hour

Approximate Ride Length:  3 minutes

Height Requirement:  40"

We like to make Ghost Galaxy the first ride of the day.  Obviously, lines will be shorter at that point.  As an added bonus, pick up a FastPass right when you get there.  That way, you can go ahead and stand in line for the first ride, and then come back later in the day for another round.

And be patient!  This ride breaks down more than a Yugo.  It comes with the territory.  Don't get frustrated; just know that when you do get on the ride, it will be well worth the wait.   
  
For those unfamiliar, Space Mountain is a roller coaster type attraction housed in Tomorrowland in Disneyland Park.  Built in 1977, closed and refurbished in 2003, and reopened in 2005 (for Disneyland's 50th anniversary), Space Mountain is unique in that the attraction is completely housed inside a building (mountain, if you will).  The coaster takes place completely in the dark, with billions (okay, a lot!) of twinkly lights flashing around you meant to simulate a flight into space.  For the past two years, during HalloweenTime, Space Mountain has received a special "horror" overlay to the ride; hence Ghost Galaxy.  Ghost Galaxy is Space Mountain redux, complete with a space ghost named Bob who chases you throughout the ride.  Bob also becomes extraordinarily cranky at night, randomly changing the colors on the outside of the mountain until, in a fit of rage, he slashes the side of the mountain with his space ghost claws.  Quite a sight to see and hear, even from a distance.

Ghost Galaxy runs from the beginning of HalloweenTime until the end, so there is a limited time to ride.  Get out there and get your ride on!
  

The Epic Wonder Of Halloween (and the epic fail of an attraction)

*deep inhale*
Ah, I could smell it the moment we walked out of the Mickey and Friends Parking Structure.  Halloween, and the holiday season, at the Park is back.

Our first foray into Disneyland went pretty well.  Although we were only riding the crowd waves for a few hours, everything basically went according to plan on our reconnaissance trip.  

Other than a malfunction on Space Mountain Ghost Galaxy which left me with nothing to do but tweet and Mark with nothing to do but panic and claim "roller coaster phobia"...

... we had quite the time.  

So, here's the first batch of photos.  More to come as we get them edited and go back to take more.  

Enjoy!  ºoº

riding the tram

casting some long shadows in this one

Even the Main St. Train Station gets into the act

Main St., USA

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