Disfans

This is a great idea, a friend of mine just sent me. A temporary tattoo for your child, with your cell phone number pre-printed on it. If your child becomes lost at Disneyland, he or she has your cell phone number on their arm, so when the child is found you can be contacted immediately. Safety Tat
Personally, I think this is a fantastic idea even for an older child. I thought my school aged children knew my cell phone number, because we had practiced it over and over, and I thought they had it memorized. I found out differently, to my surprise.

My then 12 year old daughter went on a field trip with her girl scout troop to the movies. Their leader made a decision to go to a different theater, with a different movie time. The leader couldn’t find my cell number in her phone, and my daughter couldn’t tell her what the number was. My daughter was safely under the supervision of an adult this time, but what if she had gotten separated from her group? She wouldn’t have been able to call me even if she could have found a phone, because she didn’t remember the number I thought she had memorized. This temporary tattoo would have helped.

My daughter is now old enough to carry a small cell phone in her purse when she goes out, with my number programmed in. My son, however, is an active 9 year old and while I still recite my cell phone number for him to memorize, I’m getting the temporary tattoos for outings.

I love that they have included some for special needs kids, who may not be able to speak, have autism or food allergies. As the mother of a special needs child I appreciate this aspect of this product immensely. This kind of information is essential in an emergency, difficult to obtain from a child in an emergency situation, and even more critical if you are separated from your child when the emergency occurs.

If you have already tried this product, please leave a comment and tell me what you think. I’ll be giving it a try the next time I’m bound for Disney, and I’ll let you know my thoughts as well.

I’m not sure how I feel about this: LA Times story Customizable Mouse Ears Coming to Disneyland

On one hand, its kind of cute… I can see that little girls would have a blast picking out little sequins and princess things to stick on the ears, or that little boys would like putting pirate stuff on their ears, and getting your name on the back is still the same. On the other hand, why are we messing with a classic?

Mouseketeers made the Mickey Ear hat popular, from the old Mickey Mouse Club Show. Black for boys, and black with a Minnie Mouse polka dot bow for girls. Yellow script letters on the back with your name on it. Cute pink ears with sequins are not Mouseketeer Ears.

What do you think?Click Here to take survey

You Tube has a ton of videos of Hong Kong Disneyland’s soft open of It’s a Small World last week. There is some speculation that this is what the refurbished It’s a Small World at Disneyland California will look like when it is finished.

Here’s a video of the OLD version, for comparison.

I didn’t even know there was a Hong Kong Disneyland, but apparently, Mickey and Minnie got some new duds to celebrate Chinese New Year. Designed by Vivienne Tam, no less.

The whole park is decorated for Chinese New Year with firecrackers, Chinese-language scrolls bearing messages of good luck and orange tangerines. Mainland China is the biggest market for the Hong Kong Disneyland park, and HKD is trying to stay connected with the local culture to attract more customers.

Hong Kong Disneyland is apparently one of the worst performing Disney Theme parks, falling very short of the mark as far as visitor turnout.

Orlando Sentinel

Mike and our little brother made a holiday visit to Disneyland and CA and these are some of the photos they took. I thought y’all would enjoy seeing some of the holiday decorations. Which reminds me of what I should be doing this weekend, putting my stuff back in the attic until December 2008. I wonder how many Rubbermaid containers they have in the Disneyland attic?

Mike forwarded me a link to the OC Register with photos of the new Mark VII monorail train which has arrived backstage at Disneyland. Its pretty cool looking, red and futuristic. Apparently this is the first new monorail car in 2 decades, the last new one having been installed in 1987. The coolest thing I read about the car is the new look, blue glass and red stripes on the exterior that change color in sunlight. The new cars are also electric powered and feature bench seats that face the windows, as opposed to the current seating arrangements that have passengers facing either the front or back of the train.

Check out the OC Register article here:

Are you ready? Here is my number one, best ever tip for having a great time at Disneyland with the kiddies. I’m going to put it in bold, so you don’t miss it.

Do NOT go to the park on a Saturday.

That’s it, the number one best tip ever for having a good time at Disneyland. There are a number of reasons I don’t recommend setting foot on Disney property on Saturday, and all of them are this: Everyone in the world is at the park on Saturday.

Remember that people who live in California have no choice but to visit on the weekend, because they have jobs during the week. Also, most travelers have to stay over a Saturday because of the rates airlines and hotels charge if you don’t. You may have encountered this phenomenon yourself.

If you can avoid trying to enter “the Happiest Place on Earth” on Saturday, you will be much better off. Lines are longer, everything is more crowded, and just trying to walk around is hazardous. Add your hot, tired, possibly hungry, and crying and/or whining child, and pretty much no one is having fun anymore.

Here are a number of alternative suggestions for Saturday in Southern California. You will notice that not one of them is a theme park.

1. Sleep in, if you like that kind of thing.. have a late breakfast, and hang out at the hotel pool. Relaxing.

2. Go to the beach. Orange County is well known for its sunny beaches, and Saturday is a great day for a beach trip, if you get there early in the day. Newport, Huntington, and Laguna are a short drive away from Anaheim.

3. Visit friends and family in Southern California. My parents live locally, so we often spend our Saturday with them, hanging out at the pool and/or having a BBQ.

4. Go shopping. There are many, many malls and shopping centers in the Orange County vicinity.

5.Discovery Science Center. My kids love to go to this children’s museum, and we usually will make a stop here. If you have a membership card to your local Science Museum, check the back of your membership card, you may be able to use your membership here.

6. If you are brave enough, take a drive up to Hollywood and walk around. They really do have Movie Stars names on the sidewalk, and the kids enjoy looking at them. Put your feet in the footprints at Grauman’s Chinese. Warning: It is a long drive to Hollywood from Orange County, and there will be traffic, it will probably be pretty crowded when you get there, and there are some strange characters in Hollywood. You have been warned.

7. Go to Catalina Island. You’ll need to take a boat out to Catalina, where no cars are allowed. You can rent a golf cart and tour the island, go fishing, or just hang out. Avalon is very picturesque and peaceful, its a great place to spend a Saturday.

8.If you’re visiting during Whale Watching season, go Whale Watching at Dana Point. Check it out!“Each winter, thousands of California Gray Whales leave the cold Artic Seas and follow the coastline to the warm, calm waters of Southern California and Baja. This 5,000-mile migration brings much of the pod past Dana Point, where pods of Giant Grays can be easily seen and photographed.”

These are just a few suggestions, Orange County is a diverse community, full of fun activities and things to see and do in the immediate area. Pick up the Orange County Register and check out all the fun things to do, but don’t go to Disneyland on Saturday.

Alright, I got the kids back to school, and many other pressing matters have been taken care of. So I may now report on our trip to Disneyland.

We were very excited about the trip, this last minute vacation was just what we needed to escape the Texas heat and relax before the flurry of activity that awaited us when we returned. I tried to put school supplies, book lists, and shopping for school clothes out of my mind.

I had chosen an early morning flight on Frontier Airlines, with a stop in Denver, rather than the more expensive, non-stop late morning flight on American Airlines. I reasoned that the 2 kids I was taking on this trip, are seasoned fliers, and are able to carry their own backpacks and march through an airport with only a little guidance and supervision from me. My husband had volunteered to drive us to the airport, even though the early flight time had us all up at 4:30am.

The kids were excited, and ready to go, springing out of bed, and grabbing their stuff. Ha! Just kidding. They grumbled and fussed a bit, but they were excited about Disneyland and once awake, were easy enough to pursuade to the car.

We got to the airport with plenty of time to spare, and my kids were really easy going about checking our bags, and going through security. They know how to peel off their shoes and put their stuff into a gray security tray, and march through the metal detectors, and gather all their stuff again, in what I must say is a record of speed and coordination for them. I have never seen my kids get ready to go with this level of speed, when the starting point is home, and the end target is school.

Our experience with Frontier Airlines was great. The kids loved that they got to have FREE headphones, and they got to watch TV… on the plane. The novelty of watching whatever they wanted on DirectTV programing on the plane, or the map, or the weather channel entertained them all the way to Denver. We hardly noticed the same old cattle car atmosphere, because we could watch our own individual TVs.

For a short flight, such as this was, into Denver, we did not get a meal, and since we left very, very early indeed, we had not procured any provisions at the airport. The kids didn’t understand why the TSA banned liquids in the carry on luggage and why that meant we had no food or beverages with us. Frontier did provide a beverage and a granola bar. Our stopover in Denver was a very brief, 10 minutes, during which we had to virtually sprint across the airport to the next terminal, passing by a very fragrant, and appetizing food court. I didn’t want to take the time to stand in a McDonalds line when I didn’t know where our gate was, so I dragged the kids past all the wonderful food smells to stand in line at our gate.

Once at the gate, it was pretty apparent that we weren’t going to be boarding in the next 30 seconds or even the next 5 minutes, so we darted into a newstand to acquire some small consumables. On board Frontier once again, the children were content to munch on their snacks and watch TV. May the deity of your choice bless the person who came up with this idea, because the whining of a bored child is a curse on an entire airplane. My kids not only didn’t whine for the entire 2 flight trip to Southern California, and they are champion whiners, my friends… I was also able to block the incessant whining of smaller children who were too young to enjoy Direct TV programming (or perhaps their parent was too cheap to pay the $5, who knows?) For $15, I was able to entertain myself and 2 children for 2 hours, and they got free cheap headphones. I used my iPod headphones with zero trouble, but we liked the Frontier cheap headphones for the kids, because they are so cheap, you can bend them to fit a small person’s head if necessary.

My travel tips for this leg of the journey:

• Have your child carry their own backpack, appropriate to the size of your child. They can carry a stuffed animal, small blanket, and travel pillow, and small toys for the plane. Snacks are also a good idea, but with increased security, no beverages.
• Tell your child what to expect at the security checkpoint.  Have them wearing easy to remove shoes, that they can pull on and off themselves.  If they can put their own bag and shoes into that bin themselves and slide it to the conveyor belt, its that much easier for you. Remember you will have to take your camera, phone, computer, and other electronic equipment out of your bag, while taking off your shoes and finding bins for all those items.  If your child can manage his/her own items its so much easier to handle. Even more so on the other side, if they can put on their own shoes and grab their own bag while you are wrangling everything else, its so helpful.
• Bring cheap headphones or grab some freebies from the airline.  If you fly Frontier, you get free headphones for watching TV.  On other airlines, the headphones are still entertaining for the children to listen to music on the plane.  Cheaper headphones are easier to bend and make fit on a smaller child’s head.

So what is a Disneyland bound traveler to do when their budget is small.. and travel packages are waaaay too expensive? That’s the question I asked myself after I finished breathing into a paper bag. I freaked out a little, pondered… fiddled and tweaked the packages online, and moped and fretted. After I was done, I shook myself, got a grip and went back to work.

I consulted my trusty copy of “The Unofficial Guide to Disneyland 2006″ ..

I took some of their advice, and checked with AAA, Costco, and Expedia. I changed my flight, and I changed my hotel, and I saved a lot of money.
Normally, when traveling with the entire family, we will choose, for the sake of convenience, a non-stop flight. With 3 kids and a wheelchair, and various paraphenalia required for our Special Needs child, its so much easier to travel if we don’t have to deplane, and find another plane, etc. You can imagine the hassle we avoid by paying the higher price for a non-stop flight.

This time, it will just be me and 2 able bodied children, ages 12 and 8. They aren’t toddlers anymore, and can manage quite well with minimal assistance from me, so a stop in Denver won’t kill us. These kids have traveled quite a bit, so they know they will have to tote their own backpacks, and they’ve experienced the joys of Airport security and air travel before.

So instead of flying on the pricier American Airlines, non-stop round trip, we’ll be going on Frontier Airlines, and making a stop in Denver. The plane also leaves bright and early, Thursday morning, at 6:50am. My husband is not so happy to drive us to the airport at 4AM, but he did volunteer.

In addition, I skipped the pricier hotels, and went for a 2 star hotel, that I haven’t stayed at before, The Comfort Inn, Maingate, in Anaheim. They offered a Kids Suite, with 2 bathrooms, and include Continental Breakfast. My kids love to partake of a hotel breakfast, so we’ll check it out.

With an economy car from Hertz, the total package cost $1409.63. Thats right… I’m under my budget, by $90.37. Yes, its a 2 star hotel, we’re making a pitstop in Denver, and I haven’t bought my Disney tickets yet… but I’m happy.

I really, really, really wanted to stay at Paradise Pier. I love staying at Disney hotels. HOWEVER. The only room available, was a standard room, for which I would be paying a premium price. If this was a trip just for me, I’d be fine and happy. Picture me in a room with two arguing kids, hot and sweaty from Disneyland, and nowhere to go. All there is in the room, is a bathroom and 2 beds. That’s no fun. I’m not one of those people who goes to bed early on vacation. I like to sit up and watch tv or read and relax, and with 2 kids with me, I often have one of them go to sleep first, and send the other in after that first child is sleeping. In a one room, two bed situation.. its lights out for everyone at the same time. None of us would have been happy with that, and I sure don’t want to pay extra money for it.

Right now, I’m happy with the room I chose. Its a Kid Suite, with a bunk bed, and two bathrooms, microwave and refrigerator. I have not stayed at this hotel before, but I don’t mind trying a new place, so I can tell y’all about it. I’ll write about some of my other favorite places in another post.

So here are my money saving tips for this post.

1. If you don’t mind changing planes, do it. Non-stop flights are more expensive, you pay for the luxury of flying straight through to your destination. Also, early morning flights are less often chosen by travelers, and airlines will give a better price for them.

You should keep in mind, however, who you are traveling with. Young children and toddlers, and special needs children and adults will not do as well on a 1 or 2 stop flight. Don’t torture yourself and your fellow passengers, opt for a nonstop flight, you will be glad you did. I’ll also try to schedule flights for young children, when they are more likely to nap. If you have a way to upgrade to First Class, by all means go for it. The extra space is so worth it when you are traveling with children.

2. There are sooo many hotels to choose from. Shop around and find one with a price and comfort level you are happy with. Don’t settle for a Standard Double room at Disney, when you can find a much nicer room for less money, less than a block from the park. One of the main differences between Disneyland and Disney World, is that there are many more hotels that are “offsite” to choose from, and competition is a good thing. There are many different price ranges, and different rooms and accommodations to suit any need. It just takes a little legwork to find the best deal.

3. When you have tons of time to plan, check with Costco and see what travel plans they offer.

4. Automobile Club (AAA) can get you discounted hotel room rates, and upgrades and discounts on rental cars.

Now, I have to pack.. our flight leaves in the morning.

I want to add as a footnote to my last post, that I’m not leaving out one of my 3 kids on this trip. She’ll be perfectly happy to spend that vacation time at home with her Daddy. My little girl has cerebral palsy and is also developmentally delayed. While she would love going to “Its a Small World” with us, the summer heat would be too much for her, so my husband and I made the executive decision to have her stay home with him. They are both perfectly fine with this.

When we made the decision that I could make the trip, I got right into planning. I had a budget for air, hotel and car rental in mind as I got started, realizing I was booking sort of late in the season, and also sort of close to the 2 weeks notice the airlines like. I was somewhat limited in that I needed to plan around the start of the upcoming school year. I have a 12 year old starting 7th grade, a 10 year old starting 5th grade, and an 8 year old starting 3rd grade, and here in Texas… we start school in August. My eldest goes to private school, and starts on August 22. She is home schooled on Tues/Thurs, and goes to school on Mon/Wed/Fri. Orientation for me, is on Aug 15, and since we home school part of the time, orientation is important for me to attend, and I can’t send my husband instead. The 2 younger ones start August 27, at public school. Their orientations aren’t until the 21st. So that gives me a window of Aug 16-20. Whew. I need a nap after all that.

So, now that I have my dates figured out… I start planning. I’ve heard that Disney has some good deals if you order through their website, so I start there. I’ve stayed at the Grand Californian once, and I loved it. I remember it being extremely pricey though, so I’m doubtful that I’ll be staying there on my meager budget this time. I’m game to stay at either the Disneyland Hotel or Paradise Pier, since I’ve never stayed at either one, and there are advantages to staying on Disney property. I thought it would be fun to compare the prices I got from the Disneyland website with the prices I got from Expedia or Travelocity.

I fired up the trusty laptop, on August 4, and here’s what I found out. Inexplicably, Expedia was down, so I got no information from them for this comparison. I wanted to try and stay at the Disneyland Resort, but I am on a limited budget so I was going to consider Disney Good Neighbor Properties as well. After digging around a bit, I thought for this comparison I would choose 2 hotels, one at the Resort, and one Good Neighbor.

Here’s how it broke down. For the first comparison I went with the Paradise Pier Hotel, round trip tickets on American Airlines, non-stop, and an economy rental car. I’ve done a little chart for easy comparison, but I noticed a few differences when booking the details. On Disneyland’s site, you can only choose a rental car from Alamo, the official car rental for the Disneyland Resort, and there is no option to choose not to purchase park tickets. I also noticed that through the Disneyland site, the only hotel at the resort with rooms available during my stay were at Paradise Pier. Travelocity showed some rooms at Disneyland Hotel, as well.

A Standard View, Standard Room at Paradise Pier is your basic 2 Double Bed, 1 bathroom, no frills room, with a view of… something other than California Adventure. Probably something akin to the backside of water. I don’t give the breakdown of how much each item cost.. because it wasn’t given on the Disneyland site. Travelocity did give their breakdown, and there is a lot more flexibility and choice on the Travelocity site. For instance, I could choose any car company I liked, and if I wanted to try and find less expensive park tickets, I didn’t have to buy them from Travelocity.

I took one look at the bottom line for Standard Rooms at Paradise Pier, and after a short, unscheduled nap, from which my husband revived me with smelling salts, I started over with Good Neighbor hotels in mind. Y’all, I looked high and low, and carefully considered many Good Neighbors. The Disneyland area is chock full of hotels in the immediate area and there are many, many good choices in many different price ranges. For the purposes of our little exercise here, I decided to pick a Good Neighbor Hotel that I found on both Disneyland’s website and on Travelocity and kept as many of the details the same as possible.

I had another unscheduled nap, and when I was finally revived, I started to freak out just a little. Let me see if I can draw a picture for you here.

Do you see that tiny, little number in the green box on the left? That’s my budget for air, hotel, and car. Now, I know that the packages I quote all include park tickets, and I have a separate budget for tickets and food, but y’all.. those numbers to the right of my budget are unspeakably high. 3 out of 4 of them are over my total budget for the trip, and we haven’t eaten anything for that price. I’m going to have to go for Plan B.