Why I hate Frankfurt Airport

This is a departure from my Disneyland reviewing, but there are two good reasons for doing that. One is that I am having computer issues. Among other things, this means that I do not currently have access to my photos, and I have some good photos of A Bug's Land that will help make my points, so waiting a week, by which time I hope everything will be resolved, should be helpful.

The other reason is that my hatred of Frankfurt is really strongly in my brain right now.

Frankfurt is a major hub for the Lufthansa line, which is a big chunk of one's options for European travel. We have passed through there every time my mother and I have gone to visit her family in Italy, just coming back from the third time on Wednesday.

I knew they were bad from the other times, and had hoped to go through Amsterdam via KLM, but when I was searching, I believe it was an extra $300 per ticket, which I could not manage. Well, I guess you get what you pay for.

The first problem is that they are very large. That doesn't have to make for a bad airport, and I don't think it's their only problem. Our first issue with them was that they were under construction and they kept changing the gates without any notification. This is worse than it would be because their customer service is truly lacking in friendliness and helpfulness. It was frustrating, but not that awful for the 2006 trip.

In 2008, Mom's knees were really starting to bother her, and she could not move quickly. We had a bad time on the outbound trip getting through the enormous labyrinth that is Frankfurt. We made it, but we had an even shorter layover on the return, and I was worried. At Verona I asked if we could have help at the airport, and they said yes, but no one was there when we arrived at Frankfurt. I did try asking a few people as we made our way through the airport, but everyone said it was not something they could do.

We came so close to missing our flight. The only reason we didn't is because two kind passengers in front of us when we were in the (second) security line said they would run ahead after making it through security and hold the door. They did better than that, actually, because they found a cart on the way and sent it back for us. They really did close the door just as we entered.

(Those two men would have had to run anyway, and there were many other people in a similar situation. That happens with large, poorly organized messes.)

The important thing about this is that we did have someone help us in San Francisco (the connection), and that was great, but it was also a much more organized place. The customer service was better, and that's good, but organization is huge.

As I booked the 2013 trip, and saw that issues of time and money meant that we were going through Frankfurt again, I was worried. This time as I booked the ticket I put down that Mom needed a wheelchair, so that was just part of her ticket. We did not use it in Portland or San Francisco, though we could have. There was a girl waiting at Frankfurt, but she was asking questions about whether Mom could do stairs or not, because there were two options, and she was being very brusque and dismissive.

Mom decided not to wait for her. She just wanted to go to the bathroom and sit down, and the girl had told us to wait in this entry way with no bathrooms, chairs, or fountains. We had a 7 hour layover this time, so I thought, okay, I'll humor her.

Time was not an issue here. We did have to stop and rest twice on our way, and again, you are in a maze. I think we had to go up and downstairs about five times total. We were going to the Z gates, and that was always the sign we were following, but suddenly we were in the middle of shops, and then down to a bare and sterile place, and it's passport control, and then back up. I could not tell you what level we ended up being on, or why we needed to change levels so many times. It was never obvious that any of those things were going to be necessary until the last one, a long staircase to the ground where you boarded a shuttle that drove you out to the plane that you then walked up steps to board the plane. Regardless, we made our gate, we had waiting time, and they did change the gate, but only to the one next door.

Obviously, I was concerned about our way back, when we only had a two hour layover. This time we were going to use the wheelchair no matter what.

Once again, there was a woman waiting. She was friendlier, and what she asked was if Mom needed to actually be wheeled, or if she could ride a cart. The other girl had asked if Mom could do stairs, and we had asked how much, and she couldn't tell us. After all the up and down it made sense, but it was hard to answer at the time. Mom can do some steps, but long distances and lots of steps are an issue, because she has to go slowly and gets fatigued. Wheelchair versus cart as a question to figure out what was needed made a lot of sense, except it was not the full story, as we found out.

Saying the cart would be okay, we were told to wait for her colleague. Once again, we were waiting in a place with no bathrooms or water fountains, though there were seats, so that was a nice change. There was another older woman there with a daughter and son-in-law, I think, and an older couple.

We were there for over an hour. Mom did want a bathroom, and it was nerve-wracking watching the time pass. Other people were coming and going and I did ask for an update. She said that they were busy, but they knew our flight time and they would not let us miss it, and we would not need to go through security, only passport control. We continued to wait.

Finally, about fifteen minutes before our flight started boarding, Someone came, and we got in the elevator to go up. Yes, we were boarding the carts upstairs, where there were bathrooms and fountains, but they had kept us waiting down below.

Because there were seven of us, there were two carts and two drivers. They only take you up to passport control, and do not go through it, but they assured us there would be another cart on the other side. That was true. There was one cart, with one driver, who was very rude about only taking the woman in the other party. They ended up having to walk behind us.

Okay, technically I did not have a wheelchair pass either, nor did I need one. However, in a busy airport, where many people will not speak the primary language, or maybe their cell phones won't work, and there is the stress of travel, does anyone really think the able-bodied members of the party are going to feel comfortable separating from the more vulnerable ones? Really?

When we got to our gate they had already started boarding. The lines were long, so we went to the bathroom anyway, and I saw that the other two people had made it, which was good. However, we were quickly directed out of our boarding group to another line, which was basically acting as a security line. No, they had no scanners, but they asked the questions about if you had been given anything or your bag had been out of your possession.

That part may have been a United thing, not a Frankfurt thing, but on top of everything else, it was so annoying. We have not been outside of the security checkpoints. If we had, we would have gone through security again and gotten a real scan. And also, could you maybe indicate that going into that line and getting the stupid sticker was necessary, rather than sending tired, frustrated people back and forth?

And again, San Francisco was so much amazingly better. We did not do the wheelchair, but I know they handle that well. Passport control and customs are near the debarking area, and clearly marked, and there is just a natural flow through everything you need to do. And as I went to verify our gate, there was a man who asked if I needed any help. In fact, multiple airport employees asked if I needed help. I didn't, but it's nice to feel like if I did, they actually cared and would do something.

I realize that being big and busy makes coordination hard, and it has challenges, and Frankfurt could well be bigger than San Francisco. However, one of the largest airports in the world is also one of the best-rated (Singapore), and besides, that's your job, you do it. It may not be possible to prevent long waits, but having people wait in a hold when they could easily wait upstairs, where there are more comforts available, is just common sense. Keeping a party together, and getting the numbers right, is just common sense. Actually, it's more than common sense; it's common decency.

For professionals, there is no excuse.

California Adventure: Hollywood Land

For this one I am going to just quote from the letter I wrote to Aaron, because I think I covered it pretty well.

Into Hollywood Land. One of our favorite attractions here is MuppetVision 3D, which was unfortunately also closed for renovation. Obviously, it is a 3-D film of the Muppets, but it is also interactive, with some animatronics. So, there is a balcony with Statler and Waldorf in in, and an orchestra of penguins pops up, and Sweetums comes out for a while. It’s a lot of fun, and it got Julie addicted to the song “Dream a Little Dream of Me”, which is Miss Piggy’s big number.

We were ready for lunch now, which we had at Award Weiners. Their logo is kind of a cross between an Oscar and a hot dog. Their hot dogs are really good. Our next stop was Monsters Inc: Mike and Sully to the Rescue. It starts out with you getting in a car as if you were going for a tour of Monstropolis, and then the screen switches to an emergency broadcast about a child loose in Monstropolis, and you go through scenes from the movie as Mike and Sully try to get Boo back to her bedroom. It’s really cute. At the end, the slug-like woman who was an undercover agent, Roz, is there, and she talks to you and it is interactive. The first time we rode it, she asked “Did you have fun girls?” and we were so surprised we just laughed, and she turned her head and said “Whatever.”

There are a lot of things here that relate to making movies and to entertainment. So you can watch the Aladdin Musical, and a Playhouse Disney show. Aladdin is a regular show, but the Playhouse one is all about kids jumping, dancing and singing. There is another show based on the new Alice in Wonderland too, though we did not see it.

The behind the scenes things are interesting, but we have only done them once. With the Animation Academy, you go in and they give you a pencil and paper and someone leads you through drawing a Disney character. It was Mickey Mouse when we did it. With the Sorceror’s Workshop, you can practice dubbing your voices into cartoon scenes. For speaking we did a scene from Bambi, where Bambi meets Flower and Thumper, and then for singing we did “The Bear Necessities” from The Jungle Book.

Actually, what is especially funny in that section is you can go into another section where there are these books set up, and you can take a short quiz to see which Disney character you are. We each took them a few times. I got Cinderella once, I think, and then Lady from Lady and the Tramp. Julie got similar results. Maria got the Wicked Witch and the Evil Queen. Clearly, it recognized something.

There is also Turtle Talk with Crush. That is the adult turtle from Finding Nemo, and he is on a screen and will talk with the audience. It is pretty interactive, like Roz in the Monsters Inc ride. I don’t know if they have a certain amount of stuff pre-recorded and one person controlling it, or if there is some automated voice recognition, but for the kids it must be like they are really talking to the turtle, so that’s kind of cool.

Now clearly all of this sounds pretty child-friendly and educational, but as you keep penetrating further into the land you reach the Hollywood Tower Hotel, which has burn marks on the outside, and vines crawling over it, and creepy doormen saying they have been expecting you. This is the Tower of Terror ride.

It is built around a Twilight Zone episode where five people disappeared from an elevator when it was struck by lightning, and then you follow their path. You wind through an old hotel lobby, that is dusty and abandoned, because after the mysterious disappearance no one wanted to go into the haunted hotel. Then you go through the pipe rooms, and into a service elevator (that happens to have seats and seat-belts). You see a short video, and the ghostly figures of the original people who disappeared, and then you are in front of a mirror, so you see you and your fellow passengers reflected, and then there is light, and the mirror is still there, but reflecting empty seats. Then you fall.

The idea is to give the idea of a plunging elevator. You drop and get sent back up three times. They have worked it out so that it is a different number of “floors” each time, in different combinations, so the ride is never exactly the same. You do always get to the top floor at least once though, where you can see over the park.

It is really cool. I remember last time on the one bounce, I was seriously floating over my seat for a moment. There was just enough lag that I was defying gravity.

Califronia Adventure: Buena Vista Street

 

I feel like there is a definite flow to the Magic Kingdom, and California Adventure is more disjointed. However, there are parts that flow together, and if Buena Vista Street is the embodiment of what Walt Disney found when he came to California, then Hollywood Land is kind of what he did when he got there, so those will be our first two lands.

As you enter California Adventure, you are in Buena Vista Street, and the first thing I saw was Oswald's. It looks like a tire shop, but is a souvenir shop. There are several shops, and most of them connect to each other. One of the shops across is where you can pick up photos taken by park photographers. The customer service there was great.

There is only one ride in Buena Vista Street: The Red Car Trolley. It is exactly what it sounds like. You can ride from Buena Vista Street through Hollywood Land, with a total of four stops. It terminates near the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, and one of the stops is a central point from which you can head to any land.

I would take it more for the experience than as an actual mode of transportation, but the cast members on board did act as tour guides, pointing out interesting things and answering questions.

Now, when I said there were gift shops that look like other things, that is an important part of the architecture of all of Disneyland, and that comes into play here too, especially in the centerpiece of Buena Vista Street, the Carthay Circle Theater.

No, it is not a theater, but it is designed after the theater where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered in 1926, starting an amazing and still growing legacy of animated films.

I admit to thinking it would be kind of cool if it actually was a theater, and you could go there and watch Snow White, however, that's impractical for a couple of reasons. One is that there are such strict rules for showing films that I'm sure it would be a nightmare, but also, it's an amusement park; people want to be moving around and doing things. That creates some issues with a few of the attractions in Hollywood Land, but we will get to that later.

What it is instead is a restaurant and lounge. We did not try them, but I do think the atmosphere would be pretty cool. Even without going in there, the visual impact of the structure and the nod to the history is important.

There are two other restaurants there. We did not try Fiddler, Fifer, & Practical Cafe. There will be a lot of restaurants we cannot comment on. There are so many, and we have our favorites that we want to get back to, where we are not always trying new ones. There are options for a wide variety of different tastes, and you can probably find something that will work for you. That being said, we did try Clarabelle's Hand-Scooped Ice Cream.

We had to, really. First of all, we saw them talking about it the last time we had been at the Blue Sky Cellar. We appreciate the appropriate nod to Clarabelle Cow, and the designer was really excited talking about it, and we had to try.

What I said in the Snacking at Disneyland post stands. It is not significantly different getting ice cream there or at Gibson Girl on Main Street. The ice cream tastes about the same either way, and it's good, but to a large extend you are choosing atmosphere. This atmosphere was great.

I can't remember exactly what I was thinking. I believe I was feeling like there was a combination of Art Deco with some Mission Style influence, which would be right for that time and place. I only remember thinking that it was perfect. It looked exactly like it should.

Buena Vista Street is primarily an entrance into California Adventure. It's a gateway. As such, it functions well. It tells you that what is coming is going to honor traditions, and find beauty and coolness, and with an eye for detail. You have a good view ahead. Welcome.

California Adventure

California Adventure has been all about change. 

The first time we went to Disneyland as adults was spring vacation in 1996, and at the time they were talking about building a West Coast version of Epcot, with more science and international, and they ended up running into problems with that. Instead, they ended up deciding to celebrate California.

The first time we went to California Adventure we thought it was really cool, but it didn’t get a lot of attention. At the time there was the Hollywood Backstage Lot, focusing on film-making; the Pacific Wharf, which looked very much like the San Francisco wharf; Grizzly Peak, which is kind of the hiking-outdoorsy part; Paradise Pier, which was like a boardwalk with old style carnival rides and game; and Condor Flats, which was devoted to the history of flight. (Those names may not be exactly right.) There was also A Bug’s Land.

Those are all important aspects of California history and culture, and there were cool things about all of them, but I believe part of the problem is that is was not Disney enough. For example, there was a movie about the history of California, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg. It was interesting, but not something people would do over and over again. That building is now the Little Mermaid ride. The first round of changes was to go through the Pier and make it more Disney, and they kept a lot, and they let some things go. I will get into that more as I go over the different lands.

Sadly, California Adventure has just never been as popular as the Magic Kingdom. There has been a lot worth doing there, from the very beginning, but attendance has been low, and it has kind of been the butt of jokes.

One of the more recent changes has been an update to the entrance, with Buena Vista Street.

In the Magic Kingdom, you enter into Main Street, and that is sort of like the Main Street of Any Town USA, with an arcade and a fire department and city hall, for anyone who grew up in middle America.

Buena Vista Street kind of gives that type of entrance to California Adventure, but instead of Walt Disney’s childhood, it is like what California was like when he went there as a young man, in the 1920’s. So there is a trolley that goes up and down the street, and there is a replica of the Carthay Circle theater where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs premiered.

There is kind of a park-like circle in Disneyland right before the castle, with a statue of Walt and Mickey, and there is a corresponding one in Buena Vista street, but it is with an old-fashioned Mickey, more like he looked in the old black and white movies. 

Actually, the first shop in Buena Vista Street is Oswald’s. It’s designed like an old-fashioned gas station, and they sell magnets and shot glasses and things like that, I think. Oswald was a rabbit Walt Disney created when he was working for Universal, but then he lost the rights when he went independent. I had not known this, but Disney reacquired the rights in 2006, so he can be featured now, and it kind of fits. I like this nod to the past.

California Adventure is also where you get to see the future. I know, you would think that would be Tomorrowland, but I am referring to the Blue Sky Cellar.

Technically, the Blue Sky Cellar is part of the Pacific Wharf, but it looks like Wine Country, and it is not directly connected to the wharf, which has a distinct look and feel. Really, it was a restaurant and winery tour, and no one ever took the winery tour, including us, but that worked with the wharf, because they had a tortilla factory tour and a sourdough bakery tour.

Anyway, the restaurant is still there, plus a place where you can preview coming attractions.

We first noticed this last time, and went in. They had some sketches up of the new Cars Land that was being built. Generally they have some sketches, some models, and a video. The video that time was about Buena Vista Street, and it was interesting hearing the imagineers talk about what they were doing. 

I had mentioned the Cellar before, with the one guy talking about some day sharing the Fantasy Faire with his daughter, but every time we have been there it has been interesting and inspiring. You learn what is coming up, and listening to the people who are making it happen talk about it always makes it more exciting, because you hear their excitement.

So, I hope you will give California Adventure a chance. Maybe it is still finding itself, but there is plenty for you to find now. It is certainly the best place to find Pixar characters.

I think Cars Land will help. They have some great attractions, and once you are over there anyway, you might as well start checking out more of the rides. We'll be covering those for the next few weeks.