Welcome to this week’s installment of Disneyland Photo Update for November 7th, 2016! We are covering Disneyland as it gets closer to being fully decked out for the Holiday Season. We will also be covering current refurbishments inside and outside of the park.
Hope you have your favorite pastry and eggnog latte, off we go!
| Welcome to Disneyland! |
More Security Screeners
In preparation of the onslaught of crowds for this holiday season, more security tents have been added to help move crowds more quickly through this phase. Unfortunately this looks very temporary as they are currently building security screeners at the parking garages.
Disneyland during the Holidays
Now to Disneyland, the park is looking quite lovely now with all of the decorations mostly in place. Only a few items remain to be put in place and the holidays will be officially started.
Holiday Merchandise
It’s another year, and of course MiceChat brings you an extensive photo report of all of the current merchandise for the Holiday Season, so we hope all of you are ready to start your shopping early!
Mickey & Minnie Holiday Plush, one of many variants you can get in the parks.
We ventured to the Pioneer Mercantile which has a current station for personalized ornaments. This year they have added more ornaments that you can have personalized, such as the Mickey ears, shoe and the standard ornaments are now available.
Prices range from $3 to $9 plus the cost of the ornament you purchase.
| Disney Channel Filming |
Dove Cameron and Booboo Stewart took over Disneyland over the weekend to film their appearance in Disney Parks Presents: A Descendants Magical Holiday Celebration!
Seems that these two Descendants stars were whisked away to the park almost immediately after wrapping production on Descendants 2. For the special, Booboo and Dove will reunite with Sofia Carson and Cameron Boyce for “Jolly to the Core”, a holiday version of the mega hit “Rotten to the Core” from the first film. You can see the photos below.
Sleeping Beauty Castle
The 60th roofs were finally replaced for the holidays and look great overall, the generic Christmas lights- sickle are still rearing their ugly year again for another year. What are your opinions of how it looks for the 2016 holiday season?
Critter Country
Back open from a brief refurbishment which closed the entire land, Critter Country has been decked out with most refurbishment walls as well. Let’s have a look.
Santa Moves into Pooh Corner
With all the rest of the park décor up, Santa has set up his meet and greet in Pooh Corner,. Don’t worry – Pooh doesn’t mind, and you can still visit him, Eeyore and Tigger.
New Orleans Square
Just as in prior years, the look of this quaint area is always great, a mix of Mardi Gras and the holidays just does it for me. You can also meet Jack and Sally at their new meet and greet right next to Port Royal.
| Refurbishment Round Up |
Changes to Fantasmic! seem to be moving along, they have added a scrim in front after the recent repainting of the landing. There also looks to be new barges being placed into the river, in the photo below you can see the Blackbeard barge appears completely new and redone.
Over at the Columbia ,it is still getting a complete rigging makeover, making way for the rumored Pirates of the Caribbean section being added into the show.
Disneyland Refurbishments
- Fantasmic!
- Disneyland Railroad
- Mark Twain Riverboat
- Sailing Ship Columbia
- Pirate’s Lair on Tom Sawyer Island
- Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes
- “it’s a small world”
- Jungle Cruise
Nice and new, this barge is ready to transport guests to Pirates Lair.
Above you can see current construction, glad to see the Explorer Canoe’s are still intact. Below the entire trestle bridge in Critter Country covered up for work.
Mickey & Friends Parking Structure
A new ongoing project at the Mickey and Friends Tram stop. A new Western Gateway is underway at the structure. This will be similar to what is being created at the new eastern parking structure. Security checkpoints will be moved out here.
To accommodate this the tram stop and tram route is being re-configured and part of the Pinocchio parking lot is being taken over/removed. Saturday they moved out the fences then removed the parking lot. They have also created a larger opening on the first floor of the parking structure, which we assume will be where the trams will pass through.
Main Street Electrical Parade Returns
We have photos of the current temporary tent that resides in the Ball Cast Member parking lot for work on the Main Street Electrical Parade floats. It looks like the tents will be used to store and refurbish the floats when they arrive in California from Walt Disney World, and while the Paint the Night parade units are still taking up room in the backstage float warehouse.
Once Paint the Night ends its short encore after the holidays, those floats will likely be shipped somewhere, and the Main Street Electrical Parade floats moved into the float warehouse for that parades special return.
Star Wars Land
Here are a couple of photos of the current progression of the construction. Overall still a lot of dirt being moved around as well as shoring being placed as they dig down for the ride structures, also the photos show more of the rock work along the Big Thunder Trail and Rivers of America is taking shaping. Foundation work and other prep work for at least one show building is well underway as the infrastructure work appears to be wrapping up.
“it’s a small world” – closed through November 9 to install the holiday overlay, one of the must see’s!
Mickey’s Toontown
Over in Toontown most of the painting has been completed, the Five & Dime is under scrims and looks almost complete. If you look a little closer; you can see that holiday decor is already in place behind the tarps.
Get Mouseaddict Here You can keep track of the wait times and even where in the park people are congregating by downloading the app (iPhone only at this time).
| Thank you ! | |
| All of us on the Disneyland Photo Update crew would like to thank you for joining us today. Each week we’ll feature different photographers and commentators (often more than one).Today’s MiceChat Disneyland Update was shot and assembled by CakvalaSC with additional photo contributions from Jimmy Nguyen & Brian Pinsky and edited by Shelly Valladolid. |
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That’s it for this week’s Update, what do you think of all the current changes to security? How are you liking the holidays so far? Hope you have your Holiday list ready!
Are you a photographer? Do you love the parks? Would you like to contribute to the Disneyland Update or other MiceChat columns? Contact Dusty Sage: [email protected]
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