The morning after President Barack Obama interrupted "The Simpsons" to inform the country about the death of Osama bin Laden, my husband and I drove down to Disneyland. Now this was not a spur-of-the-moment, Munchkin-style "the wicked old witch at last is dead" kind of celebration. That would just be wrong. Instead, we'd had this excursion planned for a couple of months, and not just for the sake of ...

Two venues at Disney parks will close temporarily starting at the end of April, while most attractions remain open during the busy spring-break period. Disneyland Resort usually schedules major projects in the early part of the year when traffic is slower, but the parks keep most rides open during crowded spring breaks. The busiest period will run through April 15 when most schools' vacations end. ...

Nine Disney park venues, including attractions and restaurants, will be closed for at least part of this month for routine maintenance projects. The closures include six attractions in Disneyland and Disney California Adventure. Three park restaurants also are undergoing renovations during part of the month. A section of Main Street, U.S.A. is reopening Wednesday, although an expanded Carnation ...

Looking back at the articles I have written comparing the two Disneylands closest to my heart (California and Paris) I realize that the only Land in the Paris version of Disneyland Park which I haven't covered in any detail yet is Frontierland. [The only elements of this Land I have looked at, to date, are Tom Sawyer Island and the Railroad]. With regards to Anaheim, I also haven't covered Critter ...

Oh, boy! The Disneyland Resort Diamond Celebration begins today! Disneyland Park opened in Anaheim, Calif., on July 17, 1955, and ever since, it has entertained millions of guests from all over the world. That's no small feat! "It's amazing to contemplate all that Disneyland has come to mean to so many people around the world," Tom Staggs, COO of the Walt Disney Company, recently told the ...

If it was in the West, it's here. The Mark Twain Riverboat docks at the aptly named Mark Twain Landing in Frontierland. The first train ride, apart from the Disneyland Railroad, was the Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland, opening in 1960; the Mine Train closed in 1977, and Big Thunder Mountain opened two years later. The two rides could not be more different. The Mine Train was a slow, relaxing ride ...

They took away the wench-chasing pirates. Now, they've stopped shooting the hippos. Disneyland officials, who say they're only keeping up with today's sensibilities, have quietly disarmed the skippers of the Jungle Cruise, raising eyebrows among fans of one of the park's oldest, most cherished attractions. No more do the wisecracking skippers reach for their Smith and Wessons and fire a few ...

Here's the deal with Disneyland. The two women ahead of me in line were Elizabeth and Lexi, twins fromWinnetka, Ill. Elizabeth is a communications and political science major at the University of Southern California. Lexi is a philosophy major atYale. They knew the words to ''We Can Fly,'' a song from Walt Disney's ''PeterPan.'' It's the song the chorus sings when Wendy, John and Michael,powered by ...

We weren't even in the park yet when the perjury began. Giddy with the excitement that only a day at the Magic Kingdom can conjure, my friend told Disneyland's parking attendant that she had given him a $50 bill rather than a $20 - just to watch him squirm. I apologized to the unfortunately dressed, overweight gentleman and told my friend that she simply couldn't pull that crap here. If you ...

A recent four-night stay at Disneyland proves that this rich, glorious theme park, celebrating its 50th anniversary from now until 2007, is best enjoyed as a planned excursion, not as a whim. Begin with Birnbaum's, an indispensable annual paperback that's available for around twelve dollars. The goal-oriented guide should be read by every visitor to insure unit cohesion. It answers detailed ...

The date had not been going at all well. Normally, Katie loved Disneyland. But, with Josh, her date, complaining the whole time, she felt herself going bonkers. While he was great when they were about ten yards away from getting on the rides, the rest was just a spout of anti-Disney prattle. More often than not, she found herself spacing out, typically remembering the times she had gone there while ...

Disneyland overlords, all about branding and stealth marketing, apparently have an in-house name for the likes of me: "nonfamily guests." I've been called worse. It's nothing derisive - derision and mockery, after all, is verboten at "The Happiest Place on Earth" - but I cannot help but feel the term connotes something vaguely sad and pathetic, a sense of displacement, as if you're that ...

When the D23 Expo unveiled a series of theme-park announcements in late August, one of them was unsurprisingly focused on the upcoming Epcot attraction centered on Marvel 's Guardians of the Galaxy. This new roller-coaster, subtitled “Cosmic Rewind”, is meant to be a 360-degree immersive ride; among its many elements, as noted in the press release, Cosmic Rewind will feature the first reverse-launch in a ...

Virtually every Disneyland ride and attraction will change in some way to accommodate the new normal of COVID-19 health and safety protocols when the Anaheim theme parks reopen following an extended coronavirus closure. Visitors returning to Disneyland will find social distancing measures stretching from attraction queues to the rides themselves with extensive sanitization measures throughout ...

Disneyland reveals which rides will be closed when the park reopens on April 30th. Here's the full list of what will not be open at Disneyland and Disney California Adventure: Buzz Lightyear 's Astro Blasters Chip 'N Dale Treehouse Davy Crockett 's Explorer Canoes Disneyland Monorail Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln Donald 's ...