 Happy Wednesday all!! Hope you're all having a great week so far. We're still on that post Rise of the Resistance high, but we did a lot more at Disneyland last weekend and thought we should share it with you. This update includes some new experiences we got to try during our visit and a look at this years Lunar new Year at Disney California Adventure. Written by Gregg Condon We always love being at Disneyland during sunrise, something magical about it.   Obviously our main goal for the day was to experience Rise of the Resistance, which we did! Be sure to check out our tips for experiencing Rise of the Resistance that we posted the other day.  While waiting for our ride time, we got to experience some classic attractions, but not this one. It was pretty chilly.  We wrecked the halls with Jack one last time. Looking forward to OG Haunted Mansion being back soon.  Yo. Ho. We actually had an interesting experience on Pirates. As we were launching the CM's at the dock made the announcement that the ride was shutting down. We went through the ride, every boat behind us was empty. We didn't stop once, not even at the final lift. When we got back to the entrance of the ride, it was completely empty. We have zero idea what was going on, but the ride was back open when we passed by later in the day.  We also spent some time in Batuu as our ride time for ROTR got closer.    We tried our first Breakfast Ronto Wrap. It was yummy.  We also tried this thing, it was, ok.  I got to hang out with Chewie!! We didn't see R2D2 unfortunately.  My OMG face before we even got into the "ride" part of Rise of the Resistance.  My review of Rise of the Resistance (no spoilers) in case you missed it the other day After our experience on Rise of the Resistance, we needed to decompress at Lamplight.
And check out some Lunar New Year treats    Let's go try some food!! 
 Firecracker Three Cup Chicken Wings (my favorite thing we tried)  We had reservations to experience Oga's Cantina for the first time, so we headed back over to Disneyland and stopped at one of our all time favorite attractions. It's still great, even after all these years.  Back in Galaxy's Edge, Kylo Ren is looking for somebody.  I still can't get over how amazing it is to see the Millennium Falcon just sitting there. Time for the Cantina!!  Took some video of our experience  This is such a cool touch   The Jet Juice She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts, kid.  Fuzzy Tauntaun It was tingly for sure  T-16 Skyhopper Definitely unique, not sure we'd get it again. Not to be used for shooting Womprats.  As we had been up since the early morning hours (1:30am for me for some stupid reason), we decided to do one last attraction and head out. And we decided on It's a Small World.  Sunset over Matterhorn  We had to pick up a popcorn/fries bucket for a friend  And I had to do my best Flavor Flave impression  I will say, my one disappointment is the lack of Rise of the Resistance merchandise. I don't care for the regular shirt, at all (and it had a HUGE head hole). I did like the Passholder design with the logo, but honestly, I don't want the Passholder there. Need just a plain black shirt with the Rise of the Resistance logo on it. That's it. Hopefully those are coming soon.
We said goodnight to Walt and Mickey and headed home.  It was a great night, and we're already making plans on heading back soon. Now that we've used our Flex Pass 3 times I think we've got a pretty good handle on it, and we'll be doing a review of that particular pass soon. So stay tuned for that!! Related Videos
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 Good Morning Park Journey readers, we hope you had an enjoyable weekend and that those of you that happen to be off today are enjoying another day off. We had an amazing weekend, not only did we spend Saturday at Disneyland, we were among the chosen few to get on Rise of the Resistance via the boarding group process. And if that wasn't enough, the 49ers won on Sunday!! But I digress, we wanted to share some tips to help you make the most of your Rise of the Resistance experience, and hopefully improve your odds of experiencing this amazing attraction. Before we move on, this article contains NO spoilers. So feel free to read on. Written by Gregg Condon Tip One: You do NOT need to camp out Seriously, there is zero need to do this. We got to Toy Story lot at 5:30am for an 8:00am opening, and that was even too early. You only have to be in the park by 8:00am. That said ... Tip Two: Arrive at the turnstiles 1-hour prior to park opening This is just to make sure you don't get nervous about getting in. We want to make sure this process is as stress free as possible. You never know when there may be a system issue, you pick a bad line, you have a ticket issue, etc. Tip Three: Find an area before 8am with not a lot of people When we got into the park (about an hour and 15 minutes before the park opened) everybody headed straight to Starbucks. Forget that. We went to Jolly Holiday, found a short line and sat and relaxed. The hub was filled with people, but 5 minutes before park opened they released all of these people into the park. So we decided to just stay where we were and it worked out. Tip Four: Build your boarding group party before the park opens  We can't stress this enough. Download the Disneyland App. Make sure all of your groups tickets are linked on the app. On everybody's app. The more people you have trying to get a boarding group the better your chances are. Tip Five: DO NOT wait for the "Join Boarding Group" button to turn orange  We think this was the biggest mistake people made. Instead of waiting for the page to refresh, click "My Status" as shown below. Another page will open and allow you to join a group from there.
Many people actually tried to re-start the app because the Join Boarding Group button didn't refresh. And by then, it's too late.  Once one person in your group gets a spot, you all have a spot and the app will lock everybody else out. Tip Six: You have 2 a two hour window to ride once your group is called  There's no need to hang out in front of the ride, or worry that you're going to miss it. You have a 2-hour ride window, so go enjoy the parks. If you have a group from 1-30 chances are your group will be called within the first 4 hours of park opening (as long as the ride does not break down). So I'd stay inside Disneyland. Groups past that, feel free to do whatever. Tip Seven: Reserve about 60-90 minutes for the entire ride experience Just because you have a boarding group doesn't mean you are going to get to ride in 5 minutes. We had group 27 on Saturday and we got in to ride about 11:15 (after the ride shut down for about an hour at around 10:15, when our group was originally called). We were done about 12:10. The queue wait time was probably 30-40 minutes and the entire experience from beginning to end is about 20-25 minutes. But we have heard of the queue being close to an hour prior to boarding. Tip Eight: Have SO much fun Seriously ya'll, this is an experience like no other. Our group of 5 were completely blown away, from beginning to end. There are jaw-dropping moments everywhere. So what did I think of the ride? You can see my non-spoiler review below. We hope these tips help you to make the most out of your experience. We've now experienced one day and seen 3 days of the process, so we are pretty sure these tips will be beneficial. If you've experienced Rise of the Resistance and have any additional tips, feel free to share them below!! We'll have a general park update posted later today including Lunar New Year fun. Related Videos
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 Yesterday we headed out to Disneyland Resort to get use #2 out of our all new Disneyland Flex Annual Pass. Our main goal was to head to DCA to try out some of the holiday food before we had to pick up our son at the airport, so it was awesome that we were able to snag a DCA only reservation about a week prior. As for the Flex Pass itself, we want to use it a couple of more times before we do a review of it, so stay tuned for that sometime in February. Written by Gregg Condon We arrived to the parking structure about 11:30am, which was about 90 minutes before they shut it down. So score on that one. I will say, the security and tram loading procedures at the park are MUCH better than they used to be. As we mentioned on our social media, there is a LOT of merging going on in the parking structure once you pay for parking. And Californian's absolutely SUCK at that.  It was a beautiful day at DCA  Our first stop after getting Soarin' fastpasses for later in the day was the Alfresco lounge which is now an AP lounge. The wait was about 1 hr 15 min. Which is odd, because for 19 years you could just walk right up here whenever it was open. But put "AP Exclusivity" on it, and well, you get an hour wait.  The bonus of that "exclusivity" however is that the former "kind of AP Lounge", the Lamplighter, was about a 5 minute wait!!  It was a warm day (for me) so a nice refreshing drink was in order.   See, happy!!  Lobster Nachos FTW!  Since we hadn't been AP's since 2012 and our visit in December was kind of a whirlwind, we spent a lot of the day visiting attractions we hadn't done yet. Like this one!!  We thought it was really cute.   Nice to see Flik's Flyers still around. Still wish they'd kept this Bugs as it's my favorite Pixar movie.  Alright, let's get to the food. Stuffing Mac and Cheese and some Cookie something or other Beer thing. Both were awesome.  Macaron FTW!  It was busy, we knew it would be.  While waiting in line for the pork belly, got some pics and video of Avengers Campus. They've really improved the way they block construction for the bloggers. Thanks Disney. =)   Mmm, Pork Belly. I love salty food. LOVE it. But this was almost too salty for me. Almost.  The path from Cars Land to Hollywood is closed.  We walked all the way around to sit in the Animation lobby and relax a bit. Still want this set up in my living room.   We love Superstar Limo, err, Monsters Inc. Please, Disney, make Harryhausen's an actual eatery.  Roz demands it.  Heading back to try more food, this thing kept stalking us. So we stopped to watch.    Paradise Pier as seen from the Little Mermaid Queue.  EUREKA!!!  We absolutely love this area of the park. (click any of the pics to see a larger version) After using our Soarin' fastpasses we headed back over to try some more food and drink. This is the Blood Orange Ale from SLOBrew. It was amazing. If you're ever in San Luis Obispo, be sure to go to their actual brewery. It's amazing.  This was from our visit there last year.  We then took on Radiator Springs Racers single rider line. We love it so!!   The last bit of Christmas.   After having a yummy dinner at Flo's we decided to walk through Downtown Disney on the way back to the car. We really like the new walkway and bridge. Like even more that it's a nice gentle slope. =)  That's gonna wrap it up for this quick update, we'll be back at the park on the 18th for Rise of the Resistance!! Can't wait. Related Videos
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