The Happiest Place on Earth

We've made it! After a very very long flight and a prompt pick up by the car service we arrived at the Desert inn and Suites at 5am UK time and our Californian adventure had begun.

The hotel is only 5 minutes walk from the gates of the parks and although I miss the Disney theming of an onsite one it is clean and the beds are comfy.

An advantage of jet lag was that we were awake nice and early and got into Disneyland for 8am and it was lovely and quiet.

The park was built in 1955 and was the only one that Walt saw open before his death in 1966 so it's pretty special. I decided we should be proper Disney geeks on our first day and booked on the Walk in Walt’s footsteps tour ($109 each). Definitely worth the money, not least because it includes a trip up to Walt's apartment. This is where he and his family used to stay and it is gorgeous and being in there was magical.

Disneyland Park itself is lovely, the castle is minuscule but being 5 foot nothing I definitely think that good things come in small packages! To give you an idea of the size at 77ft it is a more than 100 smaller than WDW Magic Kingdom's castle!

As the second gate park, Disney California Adventure, is only 100 yards from the Disneyland Park it would have been rude not to pop across on our first day. This park opened in 2001 but it did not have much love until last year and the introduction of Cars Land. The big draw of this area is Radiator Springs Racers and I can happily report that it is absolutely amazing. Having queued for 50 mins I would have got straight back in the queue and waited all over again if I wasn't in need of dinner.

Speaking of dinner, it was time for a Jenni first! At this wonderous place called the Corn Dog Castle they do vegetarian corn dogs!! The queue was massive but it was worth it. Matt had a normal one and reported that it was very tasty too.

Our second day was Halloween so it was time to don costumes and go trick or treating. Disneyland has an extra ticket event for Halloween several nights a week from September and the cost is up to $79 each. We pretty much made this back in candy! Around the park there were treat trails where you walked round and collected chocolate in the bags they provided (too small- we had to go back to the room to empty them and start again!). The park was really atmospheric especially the rivers of America in frontier land which was covered in fog and lit up in spooky green hues. There were some amazing costumes, definitely put my cat outfit to shame! Two rides have a bit of a make over to celebrate the season with Haunted Mansion playing host to Jack Skellington as Halloween and Christmas collide (really fun) and Space Mountain is taken over by Ghost Galaxy (not very scary but a great twist on the classic).

The night ended with fireworks, which had Zero from a Night Before Christmas flying around the castle. I have to admit that I wasn't blown away by them but the music was great!

So we are now two days into our trip and we have four more park days, Hollywood and the zoo still to come. I may need new feet by the end of it but it's so worth it!

Next time - bye bye Disney

Jenni Weightman

The hotel conundrum

The second of a series of blogs by guest blogger Jenni Weightman.

I am a massive fan of staying onsite when going to Disney. In Paris I have stayed in the Cheyenne (cozy and usually a great price), Sequoia (gorgeous in winter with the fire in the bar and rustic decor), Newport (pretty but far too big) and the Disneyland hotel (just amazing). In Florida we went for Port Orleans Riverside and were given an Alligator Bayou room. I was initially a bit disappointed (I know I could have given a preference on booking but I couldn't decide at the time!). But in the end the room and its proximity to the main building and also a relatively quiet bus stop was perfect and the decor was very much like the Sequoia in Paris. One of the best things about staying at Port Orleans was the boat trip to Downtown Disney. Lovely and relaxing and on one trip the Captain even did a trivia quiz!

Anyway, when I first starting planning California I assumed that we would stay in one of the Disney Hotels and I immediately fell in love with pictures of the Grand Californian. That was until I saw the price! At a grand total of $3980 (£2580) it was definitely out unless we re-mortgaged the house (not a good idea) or win the lottery (why does this never happen?).

So it was time to find another option! I found a official website for the Orange County area (http://anaheimoc.org/plan-your-trip/maps-and-transportation) in which Disneyland is located and they have some great maps including one that contains a list of all the hotels in the area. This became my starting point and the hotel spreadsheet was born.

My initial list contained a staggering 79 hotels but I quickly filtered out those that were further than a 20 minute walk and more than $80 dollars per night. Many of the Hotels that are further out either have their own shuttle or are on the Anaheim Resort Transit Route. The buses at WDW really started to annoy me after a while though so I wanted to be close enough to be able walk to the parks. The cost restriction unfortunately meant that I had to say goodbye to staying on site as even the cheapest (Paradise Pier) was over budget. I then had the fun task of checking each of the remaining hotels on Tripadvisor and their own websites for whether they had a free breakfast (good), wi fi (good) and bed bugs (bad). 

The problem with using Tripadvisor is however many good reviews there are for a place there are always the few negative ones that really scare me but I tried to ignore any that were just being petty or expecting 5* service in a 2* place and eventually ended up with a shortlist of 9. At this point I became really geeky and gave each hotel a score out of 3 for Location, Reviews and Price and then sorted them so that the high scorers came to the top. I had my joint winners; The Desert Inn and Suites and Quality Inn and Suites Anaheim at the park. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I spent hours going back and forth between the two! But eventually the location of Desert Inn tipped the scales in its favour. As it is on Harbour Boulevard, pretty much opposite the gates, we can fall out of bed and be at the turnstiles in 5 minutes. I'm not going to lie though, I haven't stopped reading reviews or holding my breath every time I see the hotel being mentioned on one of the many Disney forums but for what we need (basically a room with a bed near to the parks) it seems a great bargain at only £420 for the 8 nights. It also has a indoor pool and a viewing deck where you can see the fireworks from. So as long as we don’t end up with noisy neighbours everything should be good.

To get my Grand Californian fix though I fully intend to visit to admire the gorgeous lobby and dream about one day staying there!

Next month- blog part 3 Getting to the Magic!

Show 36 Show Notes

Fortnightly Disney fun with Kim and Michelle where they talk about the highlights of Orlando, from Disney and beyond: all from a feminine perspective.

Read below to find out what Minxie goodness we have in store for you!

Russell D Flores Interview

Seen, Unseen Disneyland – What You See at Disneyland, but Never Really See, is written by author Russell D. Flores and is a photographic journey through Disneyland. With Russell’s images capturing the details you can begin to unravel the minute details and layers that Walt and his Imagineers put into the park. Together with friend of the show Jayne Phipps, we talk to Russell about his book, Disneyland and the surrounding area.

Dumbo – The Film Discussion

Yet another Minnie Minx chat about an animated Disney classic. Find out facts about the film during production, Walt’s feelings towards the finished product and how now you can relive the Dumbo story in the various worldwide Disney parks.

All this plus two Ciarán facts and a massive announcement from the Minxie duo that will change the Minnie Minxes forever!

Final quick reminder, if you wish to buy Russell’s amazing book, go to our blog and use our affiliate links. Those few pennies really do help us with the costs of producing the show. So see you for podcast 37 out on 24th June 2013

Minnie Kisses

Kim and Michelle xx

Email contact@theminnieminxes.co.uk

Twitter @theminnieminxes

Blog http://theminnieminxes.blogspot.co.uk

Facebook www.facebook.com/theminnieminxesdisneypodcast

Jenni's Going To Disneyland!

A Disney free year? Never! 2013 was supposed to be a Disney free year and in fact it was one of my New Years resolutions! Matt and I had been to Disneyland Paris four times and Disneyworld once last year so it seemed a good idea to have twelve months off and go on a beach holiday instead. The problem is I don’t like lying around on beaches or by the pool or being hot so I wasn’t overly enthusiastic. But I did try; I collected brochures, did lots of googling and went on all the discount holiday sites. But nothing felt right. Which was why I couldn't resist running some figures for a trip to Anahiem. Who was I kidding thinking I could have a Disney free year? So following a quick text to Matt with my workings out the decision was made, we were going to Disneyland California!!

We set a budget of £3500 to include flights, eight nights in a hotel, five days in the park, a day in Hollywood and a day at the beach. I'm not great at sticking to budgets so I'm hoping to win the lottery very soon!

The first thing to decide was when to go. We had visited Disneyworld during the Christmas season and loved the decorations and Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party but I wanted to experience something a bit different. Halloween season seemed to be a good choice as the parks would be decorated and we would be able to spend an evening filling a bag with sweets at the Halloween party! That gave us a date range of 13th September to 31st October but how would I decide on the final dates? This turned out to be much easier than expected as after checking the refurb list on www.touringplans.com I found that Big Thunder Mountain was down until 30th October!! I love BTM and there was no way I was flying for 12 hours to not be able to ride it. So it was decided; we would fly out on the 29th October, go to the Halloween Party on the 31st October and return home on 6th November.

With the dates sorted it was time to make a major dint in the budget and book flights. I was hoping to find a bargain but decided after checking reviews of several cut-price flight sites that I didn't trust them! It's not worth saving £200 if the flights don't exist so I focused on Virgin Atlantic and British Airways. Both came out as £600 return price each but as Virgin had slightly cheaper extra leg-room seats and better flight times it was another easy decision.

So with the flights booked there's no turning back, I now have eight glorious months of planning ahead of me so I hope the lovely readers of the Minnie Minxes Blog will enjoy reading all about it.

Next month - blog part 2 The Hotel Conundrum