Happy New Year everyone!
So...the park hours are starting to come out - our first of three dates have come out today - and in fact it's probably pretty easy to predict what the other two days will be at this point. More importantly, the refurb/closure schedule seems set. There's some good news and some bad news around this.
First - the good news:
World of Color and Paint the Night / Disneyland Forever WILL be up and running during our stay! These both seemed iffy at one point or another, but right now Monday (which we won't be entering the parks) and Tuesday nights are showing these shows as operational - and hopefully Wednesday and Thursday will be as well.
The bad news:
The closure list is worse than just all the Rivers of America stuff. Below I list all the attractions and how bad I consider it on a scale of 1 to 10.
Mark Twain Riverboat / Sailing Ship Columbia / Davy Crockett's Explorer Canoes / Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island (3 out of 10) - To me, the Rivers of America attractions are nice filler, but I don't have any real love of them outside the railroad itself
Disneyland Railroad (7 out of 10) - The DLRR is one of those attractions that just feels so "Walt" to me, and so I find it quite disappointing it won't be operational. Two related reasons, we were hoping to manage to sneak a ride on the Lily Belle (this wasn't 100% certain, but we now know how to request it) and also the dioramas are very cool. It's also a nice way to get from the back of the park to the front.
Jungle Cruise (9 out of 10) - This is probably the one that will be the most missed by our family. It's a favorite attraction, and the JC in DL is different enough from the WDW one that it's a lot of fun. It's also one of DDs favorites. There's little chance it will be open, as they are showing closure until April.
Splash Mountain (4 out of 10) - It's probably a higher ranking for me, but lower for the rest of the family. We've only done the DL version twice, but the time we went with DD we all got completely soaked and she was completely miserable and this is her big memory of Disneyland - so she would probably have refused to ride it anyway. DMom wouldn't ride it, and DW is happy NOT to ride it, so of the group, I am the only one that will miss it as it is a favorite of mine. However, in the cooler winter weather it's probably not a great loss - so I ranked it fairly low.)
Autopia (1 out of 10) - We rode this last trip - we all hated it. Enough said.
Fantasmic! (3 out of 10) - I would probably be ranking this higher if the other nighttime shows weren't running....DW and I have seen it here, and DD still doesn't like the show - though she probably hasn't seen it since she was 6. Honestly if it HAD been running we might not even have seen it.
Soarin' Over California (7 out of 10) - So apparently Soarin' is only open on weekends as they are testing the programming for the new movie - so it won't be open during the week while we are there. I normally wouldn't rank this quite so high - but this was sort of a "last chance to see" thing as the next time we see Soarin' it will be with the new movie. Plus one of the few major attractions my mom would go on...plus....
Aladdin Musical (7 out of 10) - Not really in refurb - closed for good in December, and unfortunately being replaced with a Frozen show. Like we need another one of those. Though we've seen it before, it's a nice piece of entertainment that will be missing.
Grizzly River Run (8 out of 10) - Pretty disappointed this isn't running for a number of reasons..(1) DD has never ridden it, (2) with us staying at the Grand, it's a nice opportunity to change clothes after getting wet, (3) the lack of rides at DCA in general.
So on that last point - DCA for all it's billion dollar makeover doesn't have a lot of top attractions. Sure you have plenty of rides in Bug's Land and Paradise Pier - but many of these are "C" level attractions at best - and Bug's Land I am wondering if DD will have finally outgrown these type of rides.
The top rides - the "E" and "D" tickets at DCA consist of the following:
Soarin (CLOSED)
Grizzly River Run (CLOSED)
Radiator Spring Racers (DM won't ride)
Tower of Terror (No one will ride but me)
California Screamin' (No one will ride but me)
Toy Story Midway Mania
So - this leaves DCA with one headliner (RSR) that most of us will ride, and a second-pseudo headliner (TSMM) that is a family favorite for sure but isn't any different from the one in DHS. So DCA has barely a day's worth of worthwhile attractions - which makes me feel less upset about us being unable to stay at the VGC for the whole trip.
Another interesting bit about DCA - Fastpasses won't be very necessary. Here's the list of open attractions with FP in DCA:
California Screamin’ / Paradise Pier (Single Rider/ Me Only)
Goofy's Sky School / Paradise Pier
Radiator Springs Racers / Cars Land (Single Rider)
Twilight Zone Tower of Terror / Hollywood Land (Me Only)
So at best Fastpasses in DCA are for RSR and for Goofy's Sky School.
It just the more I look at it, the more I feel we are making the right choice to add Sea World and limit Disney to three days.
Next update should be in a few more days when the full week's schedule is out - I'll hopefully be putting up a rough Itinerary of our three days.