Podcast Recommendation: Disney Dish

The Unofficial Guide's Disney Dish with Jim Hill is a podcast that's been around for about a year and a half.  It obviously features Jim Hill, but also Len Testa of the Unofficial Guide and TouringPlans.com. 

In this series of podcasts they explore the history of the parks. All the history.  From the original idea of Walt to the current attempts to upgrade areas of the parks to the ideas that imaginears are exploring for the future of the parks.  Muppets, Cars Land, Marvel, Star Wars and films being created?  Yes, they're all mentioned at some point. 

Although the podcast starts out in Disney World, they do have a whole series on Disneyland too.  Maybe one day they'll make it to one of the parks outside the US too.

If you're into the history of the parks, even as a casual fan, you'll love this podcast.   

Touring Plan Follow Up - Disneyland

In Disneyland I used my touring plans to tour the parks and I have to say it worked out pretty well.  I did have a couple waits that were longer then I expected, but I got well more then the average person gets done in a day too.

Here's how day in at Disneyland went (as well as my memory serves me):
Fast Pass for Space Mountain
Matterhorn Bobsled
Peter Pans Flight
Buzz Light Year
Space Mountain
Big Thunder
Jungle Cruise
Indiana Jones
Haunted Mansion
Pirates of the Caribbean
Ice Cream lunch at Golden Horseshoe while watching the show (had an early dinner)
Columbia Sailing Ship
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage
Monorail
Captain EO
Autopia
Late Lunch/Early Dinner at Blue Bayou
Sleeping Beauty Walk Through
Snow White's Scary Adventure
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride
Small World
Mickey's Toontown Fair, including a picture with Mickey
The Railroad
Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln
Wait for Wishes and Fantasmic
That's 22 - 25 attractions (depending on how you count) and I also did some shopping!

Day 2 - there were extra morning hours at Disneyland and I was up so I went there first, then went to DCA for the day.

Space Mountain
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage
Alice in Wonderland
Pinochio's Daring Adventure
Breakfast in Disneyland

At DCA:
Soarin
Fast passes for Soarin and World of Color
Toy Story Midway Mania
California Screamin
Mickey's Fun Wheel
Aladdin show
Tower of Terror
Soarin
Lunch at the bar at Ariels Grotto
Walt Disney Imagineering at Blue Sky
Tough to be a Bug
Bakery Tour
Tortilla Factory tour
Left the park for shopping at Downtown Disney
Monsters Inc Ride
Waited for World of Color
Tower of Terror

The problem at DCA is that by mid day all of the headliners had long lines and I had already ridden them anyway.  I wasted a lot of time trying to ride Monsters Inc, it was closed most of the day so I went by it a couple times to see if it was open. 

Also worth mentioning is that in those 2 days I noticed a lot of rides having issues.  In addition to Monsters Inc being closed, Indiana Jones was closed the day before when I went to ride that.  Toy Story kept stopping while I was riding it, I also had a long stop when I was on Buzz Lightyear, and also Haunted Mansion stopped briefly.  Rumor around DCA was that Soarin also had issues that day.  I can honestly say that in a week at Disney World I never noticed that many attractions down. 

I got a lot done on both days.  Incase you're wondering about a couple attractions - Muppet Vision 3D and Spalsh Mountain were closed and Grizzley River Run involves water, it wasn't that warm and I was wearing jeans and sneakers - I wasn't risking getting wet.  While I was able to move around the parks pretty quickly since I was by myself I also didn't know the parks so couldn't move quite as quickly as I would have liked, but the touring plans really helped to get me started with the big attractions in the morning.  I also used the Lines application from Touring plans, which helped to keep me from trying to ride an attraction that had a long wait.  I also got myself some badges for reporting posted wait times.

Lines, the Iphone App

The Unofficial Guide and Touring Plans have created an app for the Iphone (and other platforms) called Lines.  I used the app when I went to Disney World last May when it was still fairly new.  I found that it was occasionally off (though not badly), I found that the addition of the self reporting option filled in the occasional incorrect data it was providing.  I hear that since then there have been improvements.  They also just released lines data for Disneyland too.

So for my trip to Disneyland I will be using the Lines app again, along with the touring plans for Disneyland that Touring Plans has created.

Can't wait for the trip to start!