The Disney park experience is complicated these days, to say the least. Bob Chapek’s plans to monetize every drop of blood that could be squeezed from the turnip is still reverberating through the experience, and that’s even before taking into account the complexity of running parks in totalitarian states like China or Florida. But having done both parks within 12 months for the third time in my life, I finally feel like I have some thoughts on why I like what I do.
Walt Disney World, quite frankly, is just too big and too spread out. You basically have to stay on property, and it’s difficult to things in more than one park per day (barring perhaps a quick hop from Hollywood Studios to EPCOT or vice versa). Lightning Lane and Genie+ are mediated through a terrible application interface that drops you into a browser as often as not, and trying to coordinate activities for a large group is very nearly impossible, to the point that I don’t think you could visit WDW with a group larger than six and hope to do things together routinely. If we hadn’t had our own team coordinator booking things on a nightly basis, I don’t know how we would have pulled it off.
The Disneyland Resort – comprising Original Disneyland and Disney California Adventure – is a lot easier to work with. While there are on-site properties, and nice ones, you can stay in the Sheraton at Harbor and Katella and be just as close to the main gates, and bopping back and forth between both parks is pretty straightforward – even running all the way to Trader Sam’s for a drink or two is not an insurmountable addition to the day. It just feels like the locals’ park, a sensation made stronger during the early days of 2022 when it reopened solely for California residents. Honestly, at this point, I don’t think I ever need to go back to WDW for anything other than Guardians of the Galaxy and maybe a few drinks through World Showcase.
But for best results, you need to hold it to a group no larger than six, just because if you don’t have previously booked reservations, it’s going to be tough to find sit down food (one of the problems with WDW is that you basically have to schedule everything you’re going to do weeks in advance) and more than six makes impossible to find walk-in seating. It also feels like best results can be achieved with a three day park-hopper, taking one day to tag all the must-do in DCA and one for ODL with a third day for mop-up. And you’ll need mop-up, because the number of mechanical ride failures is creeping up. Rise of the Resistance, possibly the best Disney attraction of all time, is routinely down now, but we also ran into issues with Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Pirates of the Caribbean, and of course the closure of everything from Critter Country to Haunted Mansion for construction purposes.
Which brings me to the past thought: we wouldn’t have made this trip if we weren’t going with friends. We have done the Disneyland experience almost once a year on average going back to 2009, even adjusting for the pandemic outages, and honestly if it’s just us, there’s no incentive to go other than to ride Soarin’ repeatedly if it’s the California version, pick up new content in Star Tours, and (for me) attempt to spend a whole immersive day in Galaxy’s Edge, which honestly is not compatible with doing anything else in the parks.
But I was reminded that we were there in June in 2014 and 2019 (at least those visits presaged Vanderbilt baseball championships) by the thick gray skies in the morning. Which are just the best, whether entering Black Spire Outpost from the Resistance end or lounging on the patio at Trader Sam’s. This is the time to be there, honestly, and it was a delight. Again. (Made even better by taking the train down and back. Bring on the high speed rail ASAP.)
Happiest place on Earth? Hard to say. Highly satisfying, though.