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[Riebi]

Hello everybody,

I just wanna make a short trip report of my DLP 20e anniversaire trip.
The Parks looked good, sure not as new at every corner but I was impressed by the refurbs of the last year. I just hope they bring this to the next step. There´s also a lot to do after the 20e to get the park of the first years back. Isn´t it hard to see how a lush refurb politic for just hm 3 or 4 years around 2002 reached to such an immense need of renovations? Hope they´ve learned their lessons.
The resort looked just OK. The lake Disney area looks very tired. You can just see too Dumbos at the hotel New York side and the concrete hardly need a big refurbishment. It´s good they started to renovate the hotels.  But there is also something around a hotel. Disney Village looks confusing.  They have now simply not one cohesive style in the whole village. Everything looks different and this balloons...
The new security checks are great. You have not this feeling that toooo many people try to get through a bottleneck (via Lake Disney Entrance). That you can use now the main gates to Disneyland Park is a wonderful feeling.

We ate in the following restaurants:

Day 1:
Fuente del Oro:  lame. The service is just lame. They have just convenience food, so where´s the problem? Even the salads are ready in their taco bowl. The food quality isn´t very high, also for fast food. The salad bowl was bit soppy without any crunch. If you look at their Californian counterpart you know how the taco salad should be. I also bought this little 20e anniversaire chocolate thing. Just expensive.

Gibson Girl Ice Cream Parlor: Wonderful service, they really improved it. The last years we always had problems with long waiting times and CM that didn´t seems to know how to work. Now they had to CMs at every cashpoint.  One for the money and one for the ice cream.  Gibson Girl was full of guests and there was no problem to get your cup. Fast and friendly.  

Rainforest Café: Good as ever. But I asked myself why they don´t do much more at the outside. It looks even more sad with the big earl next door. The village needs hardly a new concept and a complete overlook/renovation.

Day 2:
Backl...Blockbuster Café: I miss the decoration of the old Backlot Express. Now it is getting real what I said some years before: High School Musical looks old and outdated. The pirates set is also a bit tired.
But I like the restaurant. It´s nice to have this "old plaza garden" feeling and the desserts are always good.

Ice Cream at the Hollywood Bvd.: Friendly and fast service. And that with much people in front of the window.

Silverspurs Steakhouse:  We had everything we needed. A nice table with a great view over the whole restaurant. A nice waiter which gave his best to serve us. A nice meal in front of us. We ate the Cowboys Menu, Kit Carson Plate and more and everything was good. We don´t liked the idea of the "Dreams-Menu" after our bad experience at California (World of Color dining at ariels grotto).

Day 3:
Hakuna Matata: We had here a really good salad. The location has much better food then years before. The outside seating is a bit sad. The seating around the little river is nearly completely blocked by this drum meet and greet. So most time of the day it´s a bit odd to sit there.

Cable Car Bake Shop: Good cakes but they need a bit of a "Disney-touch".

Akrabah Café:  We enter at 8 PM, the CM at the entrance told us that we would have enough time to enjoy our meal (They stop to let guests in at 8:30 pm because of Dreams!).
The buffet was wonderful, also it seems that many things where empty (seems they had many hungry guests before us).  We had a problem to find clean dishes. That seems to be a big problem in every Disney buffet restaurant. We had also big problems to find a clean cup during the hotel breakfast. Don´t know why. Couldn´t they simply have a short look after cleaning?

The rooms of the old bazar are wonderful. It´s so nice to see them again. But that´s also the sad point of it. We remembered all quiet well at the days where street vendors created wonderful pieces in front of our eyes at the place where we had our dinner. Now the "bazar" seems a bit lost. Like a dead piece of DLP with some tables on it. I hope we will see there the bazar once again.

Day 4:
Colonel Hathi: Because it was our last day in the park we went to Colonel hathi. It´s our traditional final day lunch. The outsite looks great at the moment. The inside not. Nearly all birds are now gone. The tables are all unclean. And as I would love to see the bazar being again the bazar, I would love to see the Explorers Club again the Explorers Club.

Speaking of good old times: The merchandising.

Seems they have now again higher quality merch. That´s nice. Most of it for the 20e anniversaire product line. My mother felt in love with a bag. I felt in love with some porcelain. Everybody of us felt in love with something. That hasn´t happened for years now. So it seems they try to rise the quality again.

On the other hand the shops lost now every individuality. You get everything everywhere (I get a big laugh seeing the "World of Disney" Exclusive products. You can buy most of them in a shop at the train station...). It was more a decision of using hotel delivery service or simply find the way to "WoD" to shop there the products. Mostly we decided to take it from "WoD".

That the shops lost its difference now completely is a sad thing for me. I loved that the hat shop sold hats and the candy palace sold candy...the bazar is just one piece of lost product quality and lost shopping experiences. You could buy there so many different things which you just get there.  The other shop in adventure land hasn´t there special gifts anymore. No African stones or rubber snakes. But pumpkin king jack, sally and such things that fitting not for a second to the shop theme.

It´s so sad that you can now buy everything in every shop. I don´t buy more. I just buy it now at the world of Disney store. Because it´s next to the hotels.

The thing that makes us nearly crying was the state of the boardwalk candy palace. The sell now mainly porcelain...and haribo (very very expensive haribo by the way) and Ferrero kinder products. Where is all the candy?? We loved to buy here candy sticks, special marshmellows with chocolate ready to eat (not from the counter). We loved to buy special DLP sweets, special chocolates that you can get just here and not everywhere in the world. All that is gone now. They really have just some sweets. The rest of their shopping space is full with cups, plates and other uncandy stuff. I tried to bite in a cup but they weren´t out of candy. Just porcelain. Bring the old boardwalk candy palace back! Please! Or better: Let us again experience the difference of shops.

For the rest: It seems DLP is on a better way then years before. And yes, dreams is the best dlp-show ever. We had a very lazy and nice trip. Also if the cast members seems to be a bit sad this time. Does anyone knows why?

[ed-uk]

The cast members didn't seem sad on our last trip in July, so I don't know what made them sad for you. I'm shocked that you couldn't find clean dishes in the buffett restaurants  we thought the service was  much improved, anyway our best meal was in the Silverspur Steakhouse, too. Thank you for the trip report and I'm glad you noticed some improvements, including merchandise for the 20th.

[isani]

It´s so sad that you can now buy everything in every shop. I don´t buy more. I just buy it now at the world of Disney store. Because it´s next to the hotels.

I'm a little split on this. On one hand, there are still some lovely speciality shops and frivolities around the park. Harrington's with their live glass demonstrations, for example. On the other hand, there is certainly a tendency to stick utterly generic character merchandise in places it doesn't belong. A couple of years ago I was upset at having the front of Star Traders filled with High School Musical t-shirts. Now it's a little better, but there's still an Agent P rack that really needs to go.

Fun Fact: Back in 1967, Disneyland had a single store called The Character Shop that specialized in t-shirts and plush toys. Now pretty much every retail spot is a character shop.

[ed-uk]

It is exaggerating to say you can buy everything in every shop.

[nathalie]

I too have noticed this about the shops.

Back in 2004 - 2006, I did think certain stores where more special.
And I've been having this feeling since 2010 that now, in almost every shop, the same merch is being sold.

Basicly you can just go into the Emporium, and not visit some of the many others.

Off course, the baby shop, clothing shop, kitchen/houseware isn't part of that, but most shops are kind of mainly the same now.

(but that's just the way how I see it)

[Riebi]

Hm for the shops it was simply a bit sad for guests like us. We loved it to visit the diffrent shops with diffrent stuff. I loved it to go to the hat shop in the early years just to buy a hat. Without searching in diffrent places at the emporium (some are there, some behind, some in the corner far away).

Maybe you now not get everything in every shop but you haven´t to visit the diffrent shops. You just can go to the Emporium at the end of the day or to World of Disney. Means also for me, that I buy less things cause the limited spaces of WoD and Emporium are what you can get at DLP.

Even the hotel shops sell just Park products and not products that fits in their themes. Have I said, that I owned once a great NPBC Pullover? Where are all these little shopping details?
Sure there shoult be a basic merchandise collection. But they lost a bit the little special themed things.

But how I said, the quality in the basic line seems to be a bit better then the years before. And that´s a nice thing.  :thumbs:

The cast members didn't seem sad on our last trip in July, so I don't know what made them sad for you. I'm shocked that you couldn't find clean dishes in the buffett restaurants  we thought the service was  much improved, anyway our best meal was in the Silverspur Steakhouse, too. Thank you for the trip report and I'm glad you noticed some improvements, including merchandise for the 20th.

For the buffet I can say that breakfast was the hardest. At the Akrabah cafe I had my plate after the 3. try. At breakfast I had - without any exaggeration - 13 cups in my hand. All dirty. Some with bigger dirt looking like sand or something. Some with lipstick. Some with old coffee inside...I placed them all in a row over the coffee maker, that the waiters can do they away. That happend not during the breakfast but the next day they were gone...ore back to the clean cups. Because on this day I had again 5 cups in my hands. And haven´t told you something about the bowls and plates there  :mrgreen:
For me it´s not a hard thing, because I simply change the cup. But other people of my group where really disgusted by the dirt.

The CMs weren´t unfriendly or so. They just seem to be not very happy. We smiled, they don´t. We said "hello", they looked on the floor while saying "hello". Don´t know why, they just seems not to be happy at the moment. (Main thing for me: They weren´t unfriendly, that´s important cause many people say, the DLP CMs are unfriendly and that´s simply not true.)