Fourth of July trip report

As we've done for the past multiple years, we spent the Fourth of July at Disneyland. We got to the resort shortly before noon, and we were surprised to find that it wasn't terribly crowded. That held up as we got on a tram and made our way to the front entrance, where there was barely a line at bag check and to get into the turnstiles.

We decided to head to French Market to try out their new menu. Here's the review I posted of our lunch there.

After lunch, we wandered around New Orleans Square and Main Street for a bit and then made our way out of the park. Normally, as annual passholders, we don't need handstamps to get back in the park, but for very busy days, Disneyland has a system by which they would allow people into the park if they were getting close to capacity, so we got a handstamp, which is something we do maybe 2 or 3 times a year now. I smiled when I checked to see who the handstamp character was - it was Ariel, the favorite character of a good friend.

We stopped in a couple Downtown Disney stores on our way to the AMC theatres to see "Get Smart", which we hadn't had a chance to see yet. A review of that movie should be posted in the next couple of days.

After the movie, we headed back into Disneyland and got to Town Square around 4:40. I had thought about attending flag retreat, which we do sometimes on regular days anyway, but they can sometimes be especially nice on holidays, and when we saw the sign earlier saying that a Marines band would be playing at flag retreat, I definitely knew I wanted to go, and we had timed our movie so that we'd be back in plenty of time for the 5:30 flag retreat. As expected, it was very well attended, but the downside was that I ended up not being able to see because of the later people who came and ended up standing in front of me. We had a number of other friends join us as well, so I was content to just be able to listen to the band and the announcements and the Dapper Dans singing while getting periodic peaks at all of them. It was really cool to see the Marines band marching down Main Street. During the course of the ceremony, they would do individual salutes to the branches of the Armed Forces - Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard - and they would invite anyone in attendance to step out when their branch was called, and there were many rounds of applause in appreciation of their service. As one might expect, there were many in attendance that day, so it was nice to see them all gathered around the flag pole. All in all, a very nice flag retreat.

After the ceremony, two friends decided to go to French Market for dinner, and the rest of us opted for Pizza Port instead. At 6:30, it again wasn't nearly as crowded as normally expected for a Fourth of July, though by the time we left, the line was out the door to get in.

We then headed to in front of Small World to stake out seats for fireworks. It was fairly windy, and CMs did come by to tell us that they might have to come back to ask us to move - when it's particularly windy, they don't allow you to sit that close and move you further back so that random fallout from the fireworks doesn't drop on your head. Luckily, they never came back to move us, but not so luckily, the winds were still bad enough that Disney played the announcement saying the fireworks might be modified. Disney was supposed to be debuting a special new fireworks show specifically for the Fourth of July so we were eager to see it. We ended up waiting about 2 hours for them, but we had a good time talking to our friends, so the time actually passed rather quickly.

At 9:25, the lights abruptly went off and the show started. The fireworks were really cool, but unfortunately, the show had to be stopped mid-way through because of continuing and increasing winds. Many in our group speculated that the problem might not actually have been the regular fireworks launched from behind Toontown but rather were with the fireworks launched off Sleeping Beauty Castle, which with the wind (we could see the effects of the high winds overhead - the smoke left by the exploding fireworks were racing across the sky) might have shifted the resulting ash and fallout onto visitors nearby, since the Castle sits in the middle of the park. We were disappointed that we weren't able to see the full show, but if weather conditions make it impossible, there's really nothing to be done.

We bid farewell to most of our friends and we went with one friend to catch the second Fantasmic. We ended up with a decent standing spot, and we enjoyed the show as usual. I've seen the show a few times now since they've changed the pyro at the end, and it's taken some getting used to, but I do still like it. One thing I do like is that with the changed pyro, you can actually see Sorcerer Mickey much better. Previously, the proliferation of smoke from the fired shells tended to obliterate Mickey by the end of the sequence.

After the show, we went over for a bathroom break by Hungry Bear, and when we made our way back, we noticed that they had apparently added a third Fantasmic for the evening. When we had been waiting for the show, we had heard the announcement that due to overwhelming demand, the current show of Fantasmic was now full. We thought that was a rather odd thing to say, especially since normally, the announcement is that due to overwhelming demand, they've added another show. We eventually figured out that we always heard the "added Fantasmic" announcement elsewhere in the park, which I guess would make sense, so people didn't keep heading over to the Rivers of America.

We sat at Coke Corner and chatted for a bit before heading out of the park, stopping so our friend could renew his annual pass, and then we decided to forego the busy trams and just walk back to the structure.

It was a long day at the resort, but even with some glitches, it was definitely a fun one.