Disneyland Report

Disneyland does it right. I frequently talk about Nordstrom's as the king of customer service, but after spending three days at Disneyland and California Adventure, I'm reminded that Disney has been pampering its guests for over 50 years. From the street sweepers, to the security personnel and the ticket takers, everyone is in a perpetual good mood seemingly all focused on making my visit perfect. We went on almost every ride, explored every nook and cranny of the park and enjoyed our second and third time on the same rides as much as the first.

From my customer notebook...

Guests in wheel chairs jump right to the front of the lines. In past trips wheel chairs were relatively scarce, but on this trip they were everywhere. And in some cases the wheel chair is accompanied by 35 of their closest relatives...to the front of the line. So why all the wheelchairs? It seems like Disney is now the Mecca for the obese who have given up waddling for those line cutting wheel chairs.
Disney does a great job of managing lines. They seem to have two goals for every line--to entertain and to keep that line moving. In most cases they make the queue very narrow to keep it moving, but of course that seems to encourage even the modestly obese to opt out of the lines and into those line cutting wheelchairs.
I can't complain too much about lines. I remember waiting in some long lines when I was a kid. Most lines were less than 10 minutes and our longest line was 20 minutes. Amazingly it was for the Story Book boat ride which we all could have done without.
Hollywood Tower of Terror was amazing not for its free fall thrill element, but for it's ability to build a story line around a two second drop. The story starts in lobby of the hotel, continues in the library and again by the hotel's service entrance. Disney turns a line into entertainment.
We loved the Buzz Lightyear Laser ride which combines laser tag with a traditional ride. Greg loved the competitive nature of getting a score at the ride's end. We rode it three times.
Add the word "pirate" to Tom Sawyer's Island and all of a sudden its popularity seems to quadruple instantly.
I remember as a kid being told I couldn't enter Disneyland because of the holes in my jeans and the bandana holding the hair out of my eyes. I was surprised to see today's average "guest" displaying any number of offensive tattoos and painful looking piercings.
We were given the option of french fries or red grapes with our hamburger. We chose grapes and they were delicious. I don't think you were allowed to order grapes if you were in a wheel chair!
The best snack of all time is the frozen banana Disneyland does the frozen banana best.
The best ride of all time is Indiana Jones. Please don't even try to argue with me.
However many photos you take in Disneyland that number doubles when you enter Toon Town.
We got sick of hearing "stay seated and keep your hands inside." It was typically followed by the same caution in Spanish. This pattern changed, however, when we saw the Alladin stage show. Now hands weren't the issue, but we were warned against taking flash photographs. After hearing an English warning, Disney went right to the Japanese warning and never got around to Spanish (I guess we know who likes those flashes).
How come every street sweeper I saw looked like he was from an upper middle class white neighborhood? Based on my read of skin color, my bet is that Disney doesn't have much of an undocumented worker issue.
In the Animation center there was a program that interviewed us and asked a series of questions to capture our Disney Character personality. Three of us did it to learn that Greg most resembles Jiminy Cricket, Kevin is twin of Buzz Light Year and Scott can double for Captain Hook.

See the photos