Ramada Main Gate Hotel Pool

Our flight with Virgin was pretty cool. The plane had ability to order snacks (free or paid) via your entertainment pod which was also stocked with all sorts of video/music. You could also buy a flight’s worth of WiFi, so we were well occupied.

Why the frak is the rental agencies so far from LAX terminal? At the agency, something SNAFU’d with our reservation (paid in full for a bigger discount online) and the clerk could not clear whatever needed to be cleared. He went and got the key for the Jeep we ordered so that no one else could take it but since it was still in the system and not accounted for, someone next to us snagged it in the computer (I guess they overbooked that day by one Jeep!). After our clerk tried in vain to reset our account, we wound up having a meltdown moment at the car wrangler’s desk. Some fat dude had his luggage in our Jeep already and since the wrangler couldn’t find the key, let alone speak in cohesive English, tempers flared a bit by the time we arrived at the garage. The fat dude settled for an “upgrade” to a convertible Mustang and we got our booked-in-January Jeep we wanted. All was happy!

LOST VW Van

The Ramada Main Gate Hotel is not particularly a Ramada-esque kind of place. When you say Ramada I think of standard, brick shaped building out by the airport with better than average quality rooms. The Main Gate was a converted motor inn right outside Disney’s main entrance (duh). They’d fixed it up nicely with a fully reno-ed pool in the middle courtyard and nice landscaping, but at the end of the day, it was still looked like a 4 story motor inn with cars parked in the middle. It didn’t look very Disney. However, the room we got was pretty frikkin’ sweet: King bed  in the newly renovated section. A massive yet weirdly shaped room with the door hidden under the stairs to the rest of the hotel. Slightly noisy AC but we rarely had it running long. Nice enough front desk staff. Clean. Literally 10 min walk and you’re in line at either Disneyland or California Adventure. In all, I’d stay again without question.

Disney's Limo

We dump our luggage and make our way over to the Convention centre to pick up our D23 tickets. The rest of the day was spent wandering Downtown Disney, scoping out potential souvenirs. Then into the park to get Star Tours out of the way – we waited an almost solid hour and we’re luckily we did because during the day, the lineup was running 75 minutes and FastPasses ran out within the first hour after opening. We got to visit Tatooine Pod Races and Naboo (we got the Naboo ending most of the time). I seem to remember that WDW’s Star Tour showed three planets, while Disneyland only shows two? They might have changed that for ride capacity or I was drunk with excitement.

Back to the hotel. Out like a light in the King bed.

Original Tron Costume

The D23 convention was amazeballs. it opened at 9am and when we arrived at 8:20 or so, the lineup had already snaked for what looked like a mile. It was overcast and cool so it wasn’t that much of a horrid wait. We were both surprised at how calm and polite the line was (we’re all Disney fans!). I do have to say the quality of ultra-cool tee-shirts was much higher than your average convention. For some reason, Disney fans seem to find the best graphics.

SharkBoy as Godzilla

Inside the convention was incredible, with very little crap. We had one day so we didn’t wait in line for any presentations but we did manage to get to see the archive room, where we saw a ton of props from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Rocketeer (awesome!), the original Tron costumes (awesome!!), Lost (I was confused by this until I remembered the ABC connection) and artwork from Sleeping Beauty. I might have been tired but I totally started to sob when I saw the faux jewel encrusted storybook they used at the beginning of the movie. Right in front of me was one of the first childhood memory props I could ever recall. Buh.

We also go to meet Destini! He’s the latest in Disney Audio-animatronics and is totally autonomous with no predetermined guest experience loops or human assistance, just a huge library of question/response/statements to choose from depending on his sensory input: cameras track your face (are you smiling? are you sad? just how much can Destini joke around with you?), cameras see the crowd behind you (to judge how long to spend with you), and finally a camera to take a snap of your face to put on a sticker, for your fortune. When we stood in front of Destini, he seemed to get confused at which of us to talk to… his “face” was turned to SharkBoy but he took my picture. His conversation seemed to hint that there was only one of us (the prior couples visiting Destini all were singled out with jokes and casual remarks). We stumped a robot! Still, the whole concept was mind blowingly cool.

The Great Destini at the D23 Expo 2011 from WDWNTube on Vimeo.

We shopped some and chatted up some distributors and eventually went back to the hotel for a disco nap and then into the park. Purely by accident, while jockeying for space at the beginning of the fireworks, we met up with CoryBlank and his adorable husbands, Jeff and Tim. YAY! These guys were utterly charming, fun and full of energy (while ours was waning pretty fast). We rode Pirates and Haunted together and called it a night. It was great meeting them!

Oh and on the way out, we saw the wait times for Indiana Jones was 5 minutes and we did the mile long walk (why is the ride so bloody far from the entrance?!) and quickly rode that. I was fully zoned by that time, though and could only croak my squeals of glee.

Back to the room, out like a light.

More Pics here!