First World Problem SOLVED thanks to Google Maps (Kinda)

[captain_slinky]

As an avid Disnenthusiast (yeah I just created a word to describe a Disney Enthusiast - jealous?), one of my favorite pastimes has always been to plan trips to Disneyland. I get all the brochures and planning videos, I get all the maps, I get all the local area information, I talk to travel agents (they still exist)... it's relaxing an fun for me :)

The biggest problem with this, for me, has always been trying to figure out just exactly *where* the various hotels of the Disneyland area are located because there are GAZILLIONS of hotels who claim that they are either "right across the street from Disneylan" or "just a block away from Disneyland" or "Within walking distance to Disneyland". It doesn't matter if you're looking at a brochure or talking to the front desk manager on the phone, you'll never know exactly *where* your hotel is or how difficult of a walk it is to get to the park till you actually get there.

EXAMPLE: One trip I found an EXCELLENT value on a hotel room that was "just a few minutes walk from Disneyland". The person I called claimed that they were practically right across the street from Disneyland. Yahoo maps was of little help because it just showed that yes this address *was* sort of close to Disneyland, so I booked the room. When we got there, we discovered that it was NOWHERE NEAR DISNEYLAND, and was about a half-hour DRIVE to get to the park! The person at the front desk pointed out to me that from the third floor you could technically see bits of Disneyland, and if you were willing to walk the side streets you could theoretically be at the park within an hour (but for the love of God, please don't go walking in this neighborhood).

ANOTHER EXAMPLE: This hotel manager swore up and down that he was "less than one half block away from Disneyland", and "You can see California Adventure from our office". We booked a room and found it all true - we were almost exactly 1/2 block away from the far South-East corner of DCA, which is the point within the parks that is the farthest away from any actual entrance to the parks. It was a 20-minute walk to get to Disneyland each morning.

Now, thanks to the Google Maps Street View, you can virtually check out the walk from your hotel and make sure it's acrtually the hotel you are booking! Because there are about 274 different hotels within a 10-mile radius of the park that use some combination o the words "Anaheim", "Main Gate", "Park View", "Anaheim Resort" "Park Place" and various alternate spellings of each of those terms to make it sound like they're SO CLOSE to Disneyland, even though the Anaheim Resort Maingate Park Place View Inn is probably closer to the airport than it is to Disneyland :(

A big problem with on-line maps (Google Maps included) is that most of the hotels in the Disneyland area are tagged incorrectly, either by technicality or by weird glitch. One hotel I was just looking at claimed that their address was one place, but when I zoomed down to street view I found that their address was the location of a Mailboxes Etc about a mile away from the park. No idea where the actual hotel is.

Comments

[aurora77]

Yeah, we had one that was supposedly close when I went last *coughfifteenyearsagothisfridaycough*, but we ended up catching a shuttle instead. Next time I go, I'll be the one booking it and I'll be doing the research. I learned SO MUCH about Disney World before I went. I would probably do the same for Disneyland. I knew the layout of everything, all the details of the shuttles and transportation lines, what restaurants had food we were more likely to want to eat, what rides ran out of Fastpasses early, what parades and shows I didn't want to miss, what the ebb and flow of the crowds was likely to be like for different areas, details on how the buy-at-the-shop-and-have-it-delivered-to-your-hotel thing worked... It made the actual trip SO SMOOTH. I also had a few hotel options that I liked, but I did research to find out which one had the shortest average shuttle times to the parks. From what I can tell, it bought us quite a bit of time. I knew the layout of the parks and where the various attractions were, so we didn't have to waste time figuring that out. We could instead just enjoy seeing everything and everybody around us instead of stopping to look at maps and figure out what was next. We found a lot of Hidden Mickeys. That was a favorite game to play, hunting for the Hidden Mickeys. I was excited to do all the planning and I'm happy to say it was totally worth it. The only thing I missed was learning about how to pick up cards for the Sorcerers game.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

Lol you are a total Disnenthusiast :)

[dagna76.livejournal.com]

Google Maps is fabulous. I use it daily, usually just to take my virtual walk from whatever hotel we're staying at next, to the gates. You can zoom in better now, and they have photos inside the park if you try to put the little guy down in there.