July 2012 - Going to Disneyland on a Saturday in July is Sane, Right? About This Page:

[chia]

What do you do if you find yourself in the Los Angeles area for work? Plan a trip to Disneyland, of course! Then, you write a trip report for it a few months later!

The Traveller: Me, also known as Rachel! Documentation writer extraordinaire, mother to an adorable 15 month old, and Disney Park enthusiast.

Sir Not Appearing in this Trip Report: My husband, Mark, overworked General Surgery Resident.

The Digs: Sheraton Universal and the Candy Cane Inn

The Date: Saturday, July 28th, 2012

How It Came About: My division often holds an annual conference for our customers. This year, it happened to be in the Universal Studios area.

In previous years, I hadn’t really been interested in extending my stay in the area where the conference was held, but there’s so much to do in the Los Angeles area that the temptation was too much! For a bit, I thought about staying on at the Conference hotel and spending a day at Universal, but how could I do that when I was hearing the call of Disneyland?!

The only problem was that that Studio City and Anaheim aren’t exactly on the same side of the metro area, and since there were two airports in closeish proximity to the Studio City area, we weren’t being granted rental cars. Also, it was looking like the best way to get from the Universal Studios area to the Disneyland area was to drive. What to do?

Fortunately, I had a brainstorm. After some quick research, I discovered that the cost of flying into Orange County plus a rental car was about the same as the cost of flying into Burbank and taking a shuttle to/from the hotel. After a quick email to my boss, the rental car was granted! Hurray!

Since I was now going to be flying in/out of an airport close to Disney, departing the day after I was visiting the park, it didn’t make sense to spend Saturday night so far away from everything. I was hoping to find a close Hilton (or associated brand)Hotel (gotta get those HHonors points!), but all of the Disneyland area hotels were either farther than I wanted to walk or more than I wanted to spend. After a bit of searching (and asking here on the boards), I decided to go with the Candy Cane Inn.

So I was set! Or so I thought... Employee spouses are welcome to travel with to the conferences, but the nature of the Resident year, which starts in July, was keeping my husband from taking vacation. However, at the beginning of July, Mark realized his schedule for the month wasn’t that bad, and since his parents were going to be down to help with the Little One, he might actually be able to come out for the important part. What’s the important part? The Disneyland visit, of course! Unfortunately, the cost of a last minute plane trip made it a bit unrealistic. Poo.

Coming up - My secret to driving in Los Angeles...

[chezp]

Great start. Can't wait to hear the secret to driving in LA....

[lauriep]

Sounds like it'll be a fun bonus to your work trip. Too bad your DH can't tag along.

[chia]

July 25th-27th
Days Negative 3-1

I greatly enjoyed my time in the Universal Area. There wasn’t any time to make it over to the park, but the Universal Sheraton, while slightly shabby for the price, is very close to the Universal City Walk.

The week before my trip, I received an email offer from the hotel to upgrade to a Lanai Room for a reduced price, but since I didn’t want to pay above what I’d be expensing to my company for the hotel, I didn’t take it. Naturally, guess where my room ended up being! Guess they were oversold on the regular rooms. I was disappointed, though. I was hoping for a view of the city, but while I had a balcony in the upgraded room, I had a view of trees.

While the regular rooms are in the tower part of the hotel, the lanai rooms are off of the entry floor (and the two floors below), and are actually closer to the conference rooms, so that worked well. The hallway for the lanai rooms were really where the shabbiness showed: I could easily see where room numbers had been “repaired” with a Sharpie. Also, my room had a towel rack that wasn’t completely attached to the wall.

I will say that the hotel greeted me with a complimentary glass of wine when I stood in line to check in, so I did feel charitable towards them. I decided to pretend that some crazy rock stars had stayed in my room not so long ago, and, being rock stars, had a crazy night that ended with trashing the room and hallway.

The City Walk, while touristy, was fairly decent. My coworkers and I went over there for dinner every night that we were there, and while it was within an easy walking distance, there also is a shuttle that runs between the various hotels and the walk.

The various parking areas for Universal Studios and the City Walk area are named after movies - this one cracked me up.



I like to imagine that that’s where you get valet parked by a Velociraptor. A T-Rex would just be silly. Trying to steer with those little stubby arms? They’d totally ding your car!

You'd think there'd be easier way to find Valets than by extracting samples and growing them in a lab, though.

[chia]

July 28th - Day 1, Part 1

Since I wasn’t sure when my next chance to get to Disneyland would be, I wanted to get everything I could out of this trip. My alarm went off at 5:30 am, and I quickly packed up my room, got my day bag ready, and was ready to check out.

I waited in the lobby for the coffee shop to open at 6:00 am, since I had $10 worth of vouchers from opting out of maid service. The $10 covered a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, a granola bar, and what I hope was a good tip for the barista. A few minutes after 6, I was on the road!

Know how to make driving through L.A. not stressful? Do it at 6 am on a weekend! There weren’t a lot of other people on the road (can’t imagine why...), so I was able actually sneak peeks to see what I was passing on the way. I almost thought about braving LAX, just for the fun of it! Ok, no, not really.

I pulled into the Candy Cane Inn at about 6:45 am. Since the parking lot looked pretty full, I had a feeling that checking in this early would be a long shot. However, I was able to find a place and headed in to see what was what.

Unfortunately, I was right, and they had been full the night before. Since I had a reservation for that night, I was able to get a parking pass for my car (and leave it parked where it was) and just head on over to the park!



While there certainly are hotels that are closer to the Disneyland entrance, it was still a short walk, and by 7am I had my ticket. Hmm. 7am. Good thing the park didn’t open until 8! On the plus side, I wasn’t going to have to worry about missing the opening!

As a side note, I can’t believe how close the two parks are! At Disney World, you don’t really need a car, as long as you don’t mind the busses. At Disneyland, you don’t really need a car, as long as you can walk a few blocks! It’s CRAZY!

The previously mentioned items of sustenance (water and coffee) were reminding me that biology was working as it should, and I had to make a quick pit stop in the Happiest Restroom on Earth, fortunately just outside the gates! Once finished, I rejoined the line to enter the park, sending my husband a quick pouty face picture to kill the time.



While I had my fully charged iphone, I was wishing I had a human companion. Should I have tried to see if we could have gotten him out there after all?

At around 7:30 or 7:40, the gates to the park opened, and the waiting mass of people were allowed inside to wait for rope drop.


It’s kind of interesting the way that the view you get when looking down Main Street U.S.A. towards the castle is so similar for both the U.S. Disney Parks, but so different at the same time. In Disneyland, your eye is drawn to the buildings of Main Street. If you were to stand in a similar spot at the Magic Kingdom, your eye is drawn to the castle.

I got a photopass photographer to snap my picture in front of the surprisingly small castle.



Next: How many rides can I fit in a single hour?

[chezp]

Yay - you're at Disneyland! I hope the driving at 6:00am holds true for weekdays as well, as that's what we've decided to do for one of our days in December....

[Lumieregirl]

My planning is starting to look like I'll be at DL in summer on a Sat, so I'm quite interested in your TR. So far sounds great