Lori Wagner
A WDW Veteran in King Walt's Court
August 2003

8/9 Saturday
Cast of Characters: Lori, The Larsons, the Letzes

After eating another quick breakfast provided by the hotel, I headed to the parks for another park opening. My goal this morning was to ride the Matterhorn before the lines became unmanageable.

I did make a quick detour when I spotted Goofy near The Walt Disney Story. I had to get one picture with Goofy, Figment and me. When I went to the Matterhorn, I discovered that like Splash Mountain and Winnie the Pooh yesterday, the ride was down.

Instead, I decided that I needed to see Alice in Wonderland, another Disneyland exclusive. Talk about hallucinogenic! This was wilder than the Heffalumps and Woozles from Winnie the Pooh. I think Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane should provide the soundtrack: "One pill makes you larger…..and one pill makes you smaaaaaaallll…"

It still was a lot of fun, and I looked for the Caterpillar's shoes on the mushroom when I was riding on the upper level outside. Someone told me about them, so it was fun to find them.

After my ride, the Matterhorn was taking passengers, so I waited for it. I'm glad I did, because I didn't see a Fast Pass for it, and I knew the lines wouldn't be this short later in the day. The lines were horrendous the other times I'd walked past it. I saw them adding additional bobsleds to the track, which was neat. When I saw the costumes the cast members had to wear, I couldn't help thinking they would shout, Riiiiiicccoooolllaaa!" and offer me a cough drop.

This was my first time riding on the right queue track. During my 1996 trip, I was able to ride only the left queue track. If a particular queue is important to you, it's important to remember that to get the left queue, you have to enter the queue on the opposite (right) side of the mountain, and go to the left side to enter the right queue track.

From what I remember of my first ride in 1996, comparing it to my second ride, I find that both seemed equally fun. I did like that the track on the left side ducked under the right side track, and both sides have the splashdown ending. I encountered the Yeti glaring at me a few time, and I enjoyed it. The ride is still a lot of fun.

I had to meet Donna and her family, plus Cheryl and her family, outside the gate around 9am. I had time for one more attraction before I met them, so I took Figment on a tour through the Scary Dolls That Sing. Last time I saw the HUGE building that houses "it's a small world", the building had been painted in pastels. Now, I saw that it was white and gold, and it was really beautiful. I was told that those were the original colors during the New York World's Fair in 1964.

I enjoyed viewing the massive building from the different angles the boat took me, around the corner where topiaries stood. I took some cool photos of a moose and a deer topiary. The ride is different here than at WDW. Figment enjoyed the French can-can dancers, while I enjoyed the mermaids singing underwater. I found the Disneyland version more elaborate, with the mermaid scene, and a saucy winking Cleopatra in the Egypt scene charmed the heck out of me. I also found out that if you see this during the holidays, the mermaids sing "Jingle Shells".

Now it was time to zoom out of the exit to find Donna, Cheryl, and their families. I couldn't find them at first, but finally Donna and I spotted each other. Donna's four year old, Lindsay, was still drawn to me, as she had been the previous year, when I meet Donna's family at a TheMouseForLess meet at Epcot. We cemented our friendship over the next few hours.

We went back to Disneyland, and I have to issue a Food Alert. While the cast members working the security checkpoints at WDW are lenient about bringing food into the parks, the Disneyland cast members are NOT. We witnessed the family in front of us at the turnstiles being turned away with their soft-sided coolers. I'm sure they were told that they had to store the coolers in the lockers by the picnic area.

So let me issue a word to the wise: If you're a frequent WDW traveler that always brings a soft-sided cooler into the WDW parks, think twice before attempting this at the Disneyland resort. You WILL be denied. I don't think the security people would care if you had a Ziploc full of Cheerios for your toddler, but they definitely turn away the serious meal planners.

The only thing that our little group did in Disneyland was the Disneyland Railroad. I had never ridden it before, and I was in for some surprises. The interesting thing I noticed was that some of the trains have cars that face sideways, similar to the train to Rafiki's Planet Watch at Animal Kingdom.

I found it charming, and it was a nice cool ride on a day that was already hot at 9am. When we arrived at the diorama sections, I had Universe of Energy déjà vu. There were dinosaurs, featuring the obligatory herbivore chowing down on some seaweed-type vegetation. And don't forget the fighting between the T-Rex and the Stegosaurus.

We didn't stay at Disneyland, because Cheryl's family wanted to see Disneyland the following day. Instead, we headed to DCA after its 10am opening. I missed riding the California Screamin' coaster and the Sun Wheel, so those were my priorities for the day. And as we went to Paradise Pier, we saw that the coaster was down. That's the fourth ride that I noticed was "down" around park openings. What gives?

The Sun Wheel, though, was operational. All of us chose the swinging gondolas, and the ride seemed too short. I felt that all we did was mostly load and unload, without much of an unhindered ride. The actual time we spent moving before unloading was maybe halfway around the wheel before stopping to unload. I did have two good "slide and swings" before unloading. The first big swing was a shocker, because you don't swing much if you happen to slide during the loading process. When the wheel did actually move, the cars were swinging very much! I felt that I was going to hit the next car! It was a lot of fun!

While Donna took Lindsay on the carrousel, Cheryl and her kids rode California Screamin' with me. I had a debate with myself whether I should keep my sunglasses on or take them off. I decided to take a chance and leave them on when I noticed people arriving back at the loading station still wearing theirs. The sunny day also helped me decide, and I'm glad I did. Wheeee! The ride and the soundtrack were lots of fun, but I looked horrible in the ride photo. Even though there is only one loop in the ride, I think coaster fans should still find this fun.

Cheryl had a moment of panic after her family collected Fast Passes for Grizzly River Run. She lost a ticket, but Donna's eagle eye spotted it on the ground nearby. Whew. We decided that we wanted to have lunch at White Water Snacks at the Grand Californian. We enjoyed our meal with the luxury of air conditioning. Ahhh. Donna's husband Howard works at Downtown Disney, so he left after finishing lunch. I had a lot of fun with the two families, so it was sad that I left them so early.

We all went our separate ways, as I wanted to shop around Downtown Disney before heading back to change clothes for my dinner at Napa Rose back at the Grand Californian. I did start to droop a bit in the heat, so I went back a little early to my hotel to clean up before dinner.

I put on a nice dress, a simple sleeveless one that was cool in the heat. It was too early for my reservation, so I waited in the bar near the lobby, talking on the phone to Catherine while having a chocolate martini and some crunchy snacky things provided by the bar.

I went to the restaurant to check in for my reservation, and they seated me in the lounge to wait until they called me. I heard a yelp nearby, and I turned my head to witness a surprise engagement, which was nice. We all applauded the happy couple, and it was soon time to be seated at the counter table at the open kitchen.

I loved eating at the kitchen area! I sat so close to the staff that I was able to eavesdrop on the chefs dispatching the food. I had respect for the efficiency of the serving, and I noticed that the servers would do something interesting before serving.

I call it the Ceremonial Napkin Swiping. Each plate had a wide rim, and the servers took a rolled napkin to swipe the outer rim, probably to make sure there were no renegade sauces there. If the napkin did pick up some rogue sauce, the servers would unroll and re-roll the napkins to a clean spot, and put it down for the next server to use.

I treated myself again to a special four-course meal on the menu, called The Vintner's Table. The price fixed meal was $65, and if you added the wines, it was $100.

I splurged again, and I went with the whole shebang. The first three courses featured fish, and my favorite was the first course, a piece of Pacific "ivory" salmon, crusted with Dungeness crab, served with a sauce with corn, leeks and bacon. The different flavors made my mouth happy! I have food photos, too!

Of course, I ended my meal with a substitution for dessert. Instead of the cherry custard tart, I went with the chocolate pate. Yum! The wines were good, and it was interesting that I had the same Arneis white wine served at my Vineyard Room meal for one of the courses. The difference this night was that my server explained the wine with much less detail than Patti had the previous night. He was a good server, though.

I was floating a little bit from the wine, and I decided to go a movie to clear my head a bit. I went to see "Freaky Friday" and enjoyed it. I noticed that Downtown Disney became very crowded, like a huge block party. There were "street" musicians that hawked their CDs, bands and individual musicians. My favorite was a blues guitarist.

However, while the music was nice, I still think Downtown Disney needs clubs. At that moment, I wished they had an Adventurer's Club. I wasn't in the mood to wander aimlessly, so I headed back to the shuttle area to go back to my hotel.

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