Sunday’s Coffee Talk With Tiff

Coffee. Photo by Jonathan Thursfield.

It’s Sunday.

Thanksgiving is in 4 days…

I have news to report today; okay I have news and wild speculation to report today.

This weekend happening in Florida, is the D23 experience where fans with golden money or whatever memberships get to hear news from Disney Resort CEO’s and employees on what’s happening next for all things Disney.

To be fair, not much breaking news was reported yesterday at Day 1 of the D23.

News I’m most excited about

Disneyland is now getting “magic bands,” which is basically a smart watch that doesn’t tell time; it’s one of those useful collectible items that range from $20 to $120.

The above “magic band” is $34.99 and is for Florida Annual Passholders; as Disneyland is just now getting the things; I’ll probably buy too many of, we don’t have any for Disneyland ones yet.

I’m not sure I’m exactly excited about this news, but Rise the Star Wars ride that I love to hate and hate to love will be ditching the virtual queue at Disneyland starting tomorrow…

Why?

Well, this the part has me less excited.

Genie, Genie+ Lightning Lane, and Individual Lightning Lane are coming to Disneyland. This new fast pass system that allows users to pay to ride certain rides has already arrived at Disney World.

So I’m gonna try and explain this new complicated fast pass system…

Genie =’s free service via phone that allows a park goer to ask the “genie” to plan their Disney day…

Genie+ =’s $15.00 ($20.00 at Disneyland) that allows the park goer payer to pick a return time to ride certain rides while avoiding the queue…

The trick with the pay to ride system, is the park goer can only have one return time at a time, you can’t plan your whole day at park open…

Individual Lightning Lane =’s rides that aren’t included with Genie+ where the park goer pays one price to ride 2 specific rides one time during their trip to the parks…

These rides, yes, this includes Rise, vary in price, Space Mountain for example at Disney World costs a person $9.00 each to ride the ride to avoid the 50 minute wait in line…

But Rise typically costs $15.00 to avoid the typically hour to ninety-minute wait.

Here’s the thing, it costs more in Disneyland because we have 2 parks versus the 4 they have in Florida. So, almost everything costs more on average.

The other thing that’s of issue, all of this fast pass crap is done via a smart phone app system, that to be fair, is click friendly, but as an example it’s 10:20 a.m. Florida time, and the Individual Lightning Lane for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train is not available. Which means for probably 12/15 bucks, park goers bought all the time slots open for that ride within 2 hours of park open. Reminder: the park goer can only hold one fast pass at a time. I can’t find evidence that this means you can only hold the pay over what you already paid. But I’ve heard that’s exactly what it means.

I have reached out to Just Ask Danny a former Disney cast member and all around “expert” on Disney Resort information. He basically reads terms of service and the fine print and attempts to explain those to regular people. If he was a lawyer he’d be the one that says “read the footnotes, always”…

The next issue, if any still cares, is that Disney World is huge compared to Disneyland in space and queue lines. This system in Disneyland is going to crowd walking paths, bad, already choke points will be worse.

So, to make a long story longer…

Rise goes to standby in order to prepare staff for the incoming virtual queues that “we” pay for…

It’s possible, that I force my husband to spend the extra 20 a person to test out Disneyland’s Genie+, for testing purposes, I will not be testing out the pay extra on top of the extra to ride Rise or Cars at DCA…

I do have some impulse control…

Now to the speculation news…

Yesterday afternoon I heard a rumor…

That Small World would be closed for a long long long long time…

I of course Googled this breaking to me news as omg, what–wait, we were told by Thanksgiving it would return!!!

I read several Google hits, all of those reporting that Small World is down until 2022 or might not ever return as we know it are basing their reports on tweets issued by Disney parks expert and historian David Koenig…

Stay tuned I suppose to see if he’s right or if he’s wrong…

Can we all offer a little prayer to the theme park gods, that he’s wrong…

One more news item…

Yesterday, I shared a Disneyland map that included Mickey’s Toontown; in March of 2022 that kid friendly area will be closed for re-theme. It will be closed until 2023, they hope early 2023, but well, it’s construction…

Most people are pleased, it wasn’t truly expected to go under that big a change, close for sure, cause Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railroad is being built in that area, but a complete make-over was a surprise to most people.

And now we’ve reached the point of parade pictures, cause honestly I don’t have much else to share…

Non-parade photos:

I don’t know about most people, but I dig me some history photos…

Haunted props…

The original park model…

The Walt Disney bench; it’s said this bench is where he got his ideas for Disneyland…

Parade photos…

I have to pause here and give a shout-out to the lady in the corner with her foot up off the ground, she lost her “ice skate”, on that foot and managed to keep going. No, falls, no spills, she just skated on her one foot. Lucky for her, the afternoon parade ends on Main Street, versus starting there like the night time parade…

Three bonus pictures…

The Haunted Mansion…

Ride-count:
Big Thunder.
Haunted Mansion.
Pirates.
Mark Twain.
Tea Cups.
Disneyland Railroad.
Millennium Falcon.

Next trip scheduled for November 29th, 2021…

That will most likely be our last trip until 2022…

This is an Open Thread.

About the opinions in this article…

Any opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this website or of the other authors/contributors who write for it.

About Tiff 2520 Articles
Member of the Free Press who is politically homeless and a political junkie.