Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

I always said that if I ever lived in Southern California, I’d get a Disneyland yearly passport. I’d heard that they gave Southland residents a special deal. Well, it took us a while, but we finally looked into it.

  • Disneyland Passports

    I always said that if I ever lived in Southern California, I’d get a Disneyland yearly passport. I’d heard that they gave Southland residents a special deal. Well, it took us a while, but we finally looked into it. Such a bargain! If you live in the right zip code, you can get what they call the Southern California Select (means cheapest possible) Annual Passport for $129. That’s $258 for ... Read more »

  • California Adventure

    We haven’t really spent much time in California Adventure yet, but I’m going to say a few things about it here anyway. There’s not anything actually wrong with California Adventure. It’s lovely, done with the fanatical attention to detail that is the Disney trademark. The monorail overpass looks like the Golden Gate Bridge, and there is a beautiful mosaic at the entrance plaza. Inside, it’s ... Read more »

  • Holiday Season in the Magic Kingdom

    I don’t know when they started doing this, but these days beginning somewhere in, I think, early October, the entrance plaza and Town Square and, to an extent, Main Street and the Central Hub are extensively redecorated for the holidays of Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. At first it’s pumpkins. Lord, lord, you never saw so many pumpkins outside of an actual pumpkin patch, both real ... Read more »

  • Visit #6

    Savings to date: $83,400!!!! … no, wait … eight dollars and thirty … that can’t be right … Savings to date: $834!!! That ain’t chump change. Of course, you could point out that we could have saved $182 by never going at all … and I’d call you a silly spoilsport. Don’t you like to have fun? We had two things on our agenda, this being Friday, when the parks stay open later even during this off ... Read more »

  • California Adventure Revisited

    (Visit #7: Savings to date: $1,016.00!!!) First, a news flash: There is an attraction called Golden Dreams, located in the Bay Area part of the Golden State area of California Adventure. It’s right behind the replica of the Palace of Fine Arts rotunda, in a building with a nice California history mosaic on the side. Inside, Whoopi Goldberg is “Califia, the Queen of California,” and she ... Read more »

  • A Walk-on Day at the Parks

    (Visit #8: Savings to date: $1,198.00!!!) A perfect day at the parks is probably impossible, because it will involve some trade-offs. A perfect day would be 72 degrees, windless, cloudless. But if the weather is that perfect, the crowds increase. Bad weather keeps the crowds down, but the reason is it’s not as much fun in the rain or cold. And though Walt and succeeding architects of ... Read more »

  • Pixarland

    Stop the presses! Hold the phone! You’ve got mail! Disney’s California Adventure is getting a new parade … and we were invited to see the preview! Our copies of Backstage Pass, the Disneyland annual passholder newsletter, arrived a few weeks ago with the exciting information that the Pixar Play Parade will be debuting on Friday, the 14th of March (today, as I write this). But on Thursday at ... Read more »

  • Summer Break

    This will be our last visit to the Magic Kingdom for a while. Our budget-priced 170-day Southern California passes are not good for the last part of June, all of July, and the first part of August. We won’t be able to go back until August 18 … and probably won’t then, if this visit is any indicator. In a word: HOT! I guess I’m a wimp. It wasn’t actually that hot, mid to upper 80s. I used to ... Read more »

  • Last Disneyland

    We decided to make one more visit to Disneyland before our passes expired. It will probably be our last one until some of the changes are made at California Adventure. I made a list of the things we hadn’t seen or ridden on since we bought our passes. I’m not counting restaurants. Things I can’t ride on because of my knees, or being too big: Matterhorn Space Mountain Big Thunder Railroad Tuck ... Read more »

  • Walt Disney Treasures

    In 2001 the Disney company released four sets of DVDs in metal boxes, called Walt Disney Treasures, and has been bringing them out yearly ever since, in what they refer to as “waves.” There are now seven waves. Each wave has three or four sets, and all of the sets contain 2 discs. Whew! That’s a lot of DVDs! Fifty (count ‘em, 50!) disks. They have appeared yearly in time for Christmas ... Read more »