Trip Report DL with a pre-show, post-show, and a rider swap

Long-time member, first-time trip-reporter. Unlike some of you, I'm not privileged to go to a Disney park multiple times per year. More like multiple years per time. My last trip before this one was to the World in January 2012. I didn't do a report on that one, for whatever reason. Probably too busy / lazy. WDW is my home park, if I have to pick a home park, though I'm starting to become more park-homeless. WDW was my first park, where I went many times in my childhood. I only experienced any other Disney park in adulthood. The WDW of my childhood is still my favorite, but I feel like it's declined somewhat (mostly in the EPCOT area), while other parks have improved. I'd have a hard time picking my favorite park nowadays. I hope my next trip will be to Tokyo.

Pre-show

So anyway, this trip. I live in Seattle, and had already planned a trip to a little seaside town in northern California, which will remain nameless to keep it undiscovered. Here is the view from our hotel room (not actually, but more or less equivalent).

Standard disclaimer that the picture does not do this place justice. It can't be shrunk down to the size of a laptop screen. There is lots more beautiful scenery in this area, but I didn't waste a lot of time taking photos. It's all in my heart.

Since I happened to find myself out of a job, I decided to extend the trip and continue on down the coast of California. Here is a picture of the ride vehicle with me being silly and pretending it is a toy (actually taken in Big Sur, later on).

Very soon we turned onto Highway 1 near Leggett. Sorry Thunder Mountain, this here's the wildest ride in the wilderness. So twisty, for so long, my arms got tired. And we were lucky to encounter hardly any traffic. This video will give you the feeling of it, although this is actually from further down the road, near Point Reyes, and this section is not nearly as hot as the Leggett section, but it's still decently fun.



My wife remained, sadly, employed, so she had to head back. After we had dinner with old friends, I put her on a plane in San Francisco, and picked up my new rider: my mom. We high-tailed it out of town and down to Big Sur, stopping for lunch at Nepenthe and a look at the falls at McWay Beach.

Unfortunately, the traffic in Big Sur was a different story, this being a Saturday, and, Big Sur. Most people were polite enough to pull over to let you pass, but then after a minute you'd be behind another slow vehicle. I got stuck in some of the really good twisties behind someone who would not pull over for quite some time despite all the signs that say, "Slower vehicles must use turnouts." The real sad thing was that another S2000 showed up behind me. The slow car did eventually pull off, followed by me after a couple more curves as it was clear the red S2000 behind me wanted to go even faster than I did. Man, he was fast. I like to keep a pretty big margin of safety. Anyway, no more than a minute later we were behind someone slow again.

It was about sunset when we got to San Simeon. We had a little look at the elephant seals, then checked into our hotel.

Next day we got up early and were hoping to get in a good half-day at Disneyland. Somehow, what Google called a 5 hour drive took us 9 hours. We did make some stops and hit a pretty nasty traffic jam at the Strawberry Festival in Oxnard, but I'm not really sure where the time went. We were getting hungry on the road, but we didn't want to deal with the traffic and crowds that were solid all the way through Malibu, so we decided just to wait until we got to Anaheim for lunch. We checked in to the Best Western and ate at Panera Bread on Harbor Blvd. You know how at Panera they always try to upsell you with a discounted dessert? I always say no, but this time, I was like yes, and yes my mom will have one too. Ate a few bites of brownie while waiting for the food.

Then, finally, it was time to hit the parks! I'll post again soon with some actual theme park content.

 

[morningstar]

Main attraction

It was about 4 o'clock by the time we got through the gates. We picked Disneyland for our first half-day. It seems odd to call a 4 o'clock start a half day, but the park was open until 11, so really it is. 7 hours left, and it'd been 7 hours since the park opened at 9. Crowds were nuts when we came in as the parade had just ended. We were a little bit worried that this is just how it is at Disneyland these days. We navigated the chaos decently well and picked up a fastpass for Star Tours.

Okay, wait, a little more backstory before we get to the rides. This is only my second trip to Disneyland. The first time I went, I was like, "I'm gonna ride the Matterhorn. It's the only mountain they don't have at Disney World." Well, it was closed for refurbishment my entire trip. I guess I should have checked before I planned my trip. This time, I checked. But I was not taking any chances. I went to the Matterhorn first thing. It was a good choice, because later in the trip, I did see it was broken down. I'm not sure for how long - it might have been only a few minutes - but I would have freaked out if I hadn't already ridden it.

I really like the Matterhorn. It's the oldest Disney coaster, but it's still a goody. I like it better than Expedition Everest, which is kind of like WDW's Matterhorn. Racing against the other bobsled is kind of cool, and the yeti actually works! I've never seen an even halfway working yeti at EE. And it may be faster and have the backwards, but I really find it disappointing. The ride feels really short, and doesn't have enough twists and turns. Matterhorn may not be very fast, but it is very twisty.

Mom was gonna just do one or two rides, since we'd been up since about 5 AM and had a lot of tiring riding in the car, but the Disney spirit got into her and she ended up staying until 8 or 9. I was definitely going to go until close. But Mom isn't a big fan of thrill rides, so since I was going to have some time alone we tried to focus on the tame rides instead of her waiting while I went on coasters. Nemo's submarines were nearby, so we went on that. I think I like the original submarine ride a little better, what with the under the polar ice caps, and Atlantis and all, but this is a pretty good ride. It's way better than the Nemo ride at Epcot. It's mostly screens, but the screens are nicely done, set into irregular sort of "caves" in physical rockwork with other props in the foreground.

We also took a ride on Autopia. I was kind of excited to see that the cars are now "Powered by Honda". Mine's a little faster, though. This ride is really pretty boring and slow, but it's a must-do for nostalgia reasons. I feel like they could maybe make this a little more appealing to bigger kids by designating one lane as a "fast lane", raising the governor on those cars, and maybe putting a little more spacing between cars. Then maybe show you your lap time and have a contest for fastest lap of the day, as there is actually a modest amount of skill in not bumping the rail.

Since there were still lots of kids around, we decided to wait for another time to do Fantasyland attractions, and skipped across to Frontierland. I went against my no-coaster plan and took a quick ride on Thunder Mountain, since the line was short. Then we hit Pirates, and since it was now dark, we went on a night cruise through the jungle.

That was it for my mom, and it was about time for my Star Tours fastpass. I like the new scene I got: the flight through the guts of the crashed Star Destroyer. I'm not sure about the new movie. It was certainly a fun movie, and obviously better than the prequels, but it still doesn't live up to the original trilogy. But that was definitely a great action sequence in the movie, and it was even more fun to ride along with it with motion effects. Sadly, that ended up being my only ride on Star Tours in the whole trip. It's one of my favorite rides at WDW ever since they added more Star Wars content and the variable experience. I had bragged that I would ride it five times, but for reasons that will be explained later, that didn't work out.

So then I filled up the rest of my night riding coasters. I rode Thunder Mountain two more times. For some reason I didn't ride Hyperspace Mountain. Maybe the line was too long, or I think maybe it even broke down. I rode the Matterhorn, and then ran back around to the queue to jump in just before 11.

After I got off and was headed to the exit, the tail end of the Paint the Night parade was coming by. I hadn't planned to watch it, but there it was, and it wasn't crowded. I don't think I missed much of it, actually. I ran into it up around Fantasyland, so even if it started on Main Street at 11, probably not much of it had passed where I stood yet. I thought it was pretty good. Objectively, better than the Electrical Light Parade, but ELP has some quaint nostalgic charm.

I headed back to the hotel, where my mom had bought me the caramel apple I had been craving earlier, and wasn't really craving any more, but I was hungry, so I ate like all of it. I was super sleepy, but I wrote a super-short trip-report e-mail to my wife riddled with typos. Here it is in its entirety:

I rode Matterhorn and Thunder Mountain three times each, twice each at night. Wussy Mom only r9de Matterhorn once. I saw Anna and Elsa in the parade. I have sticky face now from candy apple. It's late I'm sleepy. Can't think of anything else. I love you.

Next post I actually have some pictures and videos from Disney. I guess I was too busy trying to pack as much in as possible the first day, and anyway Disneyland is pretty much committed to memory for me, since it is so much like the Magic Kingdom.

 

[morningstar]

Day 2

We wanted to switch it up and do California Adventure; anyway Disneyland had Magic Morning the next day, so we planned to save our full Disneyland day for then. I was pretty excited. I'd been to California Adventure before, but this was my first time at the "new and improved" California adventure. I have to say, my first impression wasn't "new and improved". I liked the miniature Golden Gate Bridge they used to have, even though it was kind of cheesy in scale and proportions. It was still a cool thing to have the monorail go across. The new Buena Vista Street theming is much more well executed, but not really as iconic.

But who cares. I don't hang around the "Entrance Land" much. We made a beeline for Radiator Springs racers at rope drop. Unfortunately, we had not succeeded in starting very early, and had gone through the turnstiles only a little before opening, and were at the back of the pack. We still had to wait I don't know maybe thirty to forty-five minutes in the queue.

I certainly can't say anything bad about Radiator Springs Racers, but it didn't quite live up to my extremely high expectations / hopes. I wish the engine noises were a little more noticeable / consistent / realistic. I'm sure I heard some synthesized engine noises at times, but during the racing portion I didn't notice any; maybe they were drowned out by the wind. I thought the race was pretty exciting, and had plenty of nice curves and straights and stuff. The problem I have with it is that you can clearly tell at times that your car is not going as fast as it could. I'm sure this is on purpose, to create drama as one car then the other takes the lead, but to me rigging it that way ends up taking the excitement out of it. I know an early lead is irrelevant, as the ride control program may simply arbitrarily decide to take it away.

But it's defintely Lightyear Radials beyond Test Track, which I think is a similar ride technology, but with lame theming. The scenic ride through the Ornament Valley and the story section with tractor tipping and the encounters with the combine and the sheriff are certainly more enjoyable than being a crash test dummy. And I thought the bit just before the race where you get new tires / a paint job was really cute and a nice little special effect.

Next I went on Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, even though Mater is probably my least favorite major Disney / Pixar character, and my mom wouldn't ride it because she was afraid it would give her motion sickness. It looked too much like the teacups, which she know's she can't handle, and she was probably right. The motion felt somewhat similar, although not as extreme, because I really haul on the teacup spinner, whereas on Mater you can't do much to make your motion more intense. Maybe a little weight shifting.

Then we got in line for Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters. I'm sad that I missed Luigi's Flying Tires, since it sounded like a really unique attraction. But we really liked the Rollickin' Roadsters. We ended up riding this many times.



We ate lunch at Flo's V8 Cafe. We both got the same thing: a turkey sandwich and vanilla shakes. Some guy in line behind us asked us if we got our shakes there and if they were good. We said yes, but could use malt. I like the "road gravel", though. I wondered if maybe he was an undercover guest survey guy of some sort.

While my mom waited to pick up the food, I scouted for a good place to sit. We sat in the Motorama Girls room in the back, with the big window looking out over RSR and the sputnik-looking chandelier. Sorry, no picture. I thought the decoration was really well-done here. If you didn't know, you'd think you were really at a roadside stop along Route 66. The architecture was spot-on. Lasseter really did his research. I think this shows in the Pixar movies and areas of the parks done since he's been involved. Characters in the Pixar movies seem like real people, whether they're fish or cars or monsters or superheroes, because he's taken inspiration for them from real-life people, and his park environments similarly take inspiration from real-life places.

We had picked up a fastpass to go on RSR again later, so we headed over to Hollywoodland to hang out until it was time. Grabbed a FP for ToT, and were on our way to Mike and Sully when we saw Captain America and Spider-man meetin' and greetin'. Now, I'm not a huge superhero fan. I watch the movies, but I don't read the comic books, but I do like the new Captain America character from the movies. But my real reason for waiting about half an hour in the hot sun was ,,, practice. See, I've never done a meet and greet before. I mean, I'm sure I did it when I was a kid, and I kind of remember hating it. I was pretty shy, and didn't know what to say or do. Anyway, I'm a pretty big Frozen fan, so I definitely wanted to meet Anna and Elsa, but I wanted to do some other M&G first to make sure I wouldn't chicken out and would actually talk to them.

It turned out Captain America was a better M&G than Anna and Elsa.



Here's a transcript, since it's a little hard to hear the dialogue:

Me, before video starts: "Thank you for your service." (My icebreaker, since Captain America served in the U.S. Army.)

Captain America: "Well thank you very much. How are you doing today?"

Me: "Good, good."

Captain America points at my necklace.

Me: "Know what that is?"

Captain America: "I feel like if I ask you the story's just never gonna end."

Captain America: "Looks very complicated."

Me: "It just keeps going and going."

Captain America: "It just keeps on going."

Some guy off-camera: "It's neverending."

Me: "How old are you anyway?"

Captain America: "Oh, I'm 98."

Me: "98? Nice."

Captain America: "You know what? Still feel spry, still feel good."

Me: "Any plans for the big 100?"

Captain America: "I don't really know, I'll probably be visiting my friends here. You know, one of my favorite things to do, actually, when I have some downtime, is go over by Paradise Pier. Have you been over there?"

Me: "Not yet."

Captain America: "No? Have you?"

Captain America: "It's one of my favorite places to go. I like going on the Ferris wheel. It reminds me of back in my day when <unintelligible>."

Me: "That's the most American part of the park."

Captain America: "Very American, besides what we've got right here. It's quite beautiful. Now let's see. Are you a hero?"

Me: "I'm not really a hero, no"

Captain America: "Why not?"

Me: "... but I do like to go fast."

Captain America: "You do? Well do you wanna go into a speedy motion and I go into-"

Me: "Yeah."

Me: "So it's like ..."

Captain America: "Well you pose like a speedy ... Do your power. Yeah!"

Some guy: "I like it!"

Then my mom came up with us and we chatted some more with Captain America. He was really great and felt unscripted, although in hindsight you could see how he was finding ways to work some rehearsed material into the conversation naturally. For example, I'm sure bringing up Paradise Pier is one of his standard talking points, but he probably doesn't usually use it as an answer to the question of what he's going to do for his 100th birthday.

Then we met Spider-man, because the same line got you into both. I'm not as big of a fan of Spider-man, though when he asked me who my favorite superhero was I said I had to say him. I kind of wanted to say Captain America since I'd just had such a good interaction, but I didn't want to hurt Spider-man's feelings.

So then we finally made it to Mike and Sully, which I thought was a pretty good dark ride, and the projection effects are used to really great effect with Randall. I particularly like the scene where Boo is hitting Randall over the head and he's changing into various silly colors and patterns. This would probably be one of my favorite dark rides, if I was more of a fan of Monsters Inc. It's probably only my fourth or fifth favorite Pixar movie.

And now it was time for the big M&G with royalty. The wait was of course long, but it was in a nice air-conditioned lobby. I liked all the clips of Disney animated movies playing all over the walls. It helped pass the time pretty quickly. At some point, a Frozen clip came on, and my mom was like, "So now which one's Anna, and which one's Elsa?" She's the only person on the planet who hasn't seen the movie. Good thing we got that straightened out before we went in.

The "icebreaker" I had planned was to bow and address each of them in the proper style, which I, like a nerd, had noted from the movie: "Your Majesty" and "My Lady". Anna was kind of taken aback by that. Elsa was talking to my mom and asked where we were from, and she said she was from North Carolina and I was from Washington. I chimed in and said where I live is a lot like Arendelle. Anna asked if it was cold, and I said no, I meant because we have fjords. Elsa said really Arendelle is only cold in winter, except for "that one time". I thought that was pretty cute.

So, all in all, decent interaction, and I thought they were pretty good likenesses for Anna and Elsa. (Actually, one of the handlers looked quite a bit like Elsa too. I wanted to ask if she was the third sister, but didn't get a chance.) The downside is that it felt pretty rushed. I guess they have to do that, but it kind of sucks. My mom had an interesting idea. Since they're behind a barrier, they could have like three Annas and Elsas in parallel and shunt the line. That way they could triple the throughput without breaking the illusion.

After that we had our hugs with Olaf.

I hit Tower of Terror (without my mom), and had a nice little interaction with the stranger who sat next to me. I started up with a little joke about how you never see anybody get off the elevator, and we kept cracking jokes back and forth for the whole ride.

Then we had our FP time for RSR, and after that we did Rollickin' Roadsters again. We wanted to get Mambo Italiano, but then CM managing the line didn't know what song would play for each run, and so couldn't let us hold back until the song we wanted. We ended up getting Cousins from Carsoli I think.

I used an FP for California Screamin' that I had grabbed right before we returned to Cars Land. Right as I was about to board, we got the text that my cousins who live in LA were 20 minutes away: we had arranged to meet them at Trader Sam's. Since I was really right at the gate, I went on the ride, then we took the long walk out the main gate and through Downtown Disney, forgetting we could shortcut through the Grand Californian.

Unfortunately, there were no tables in Trader Sam's or in its outside seating area. After some confusion, we found out we could sit in the Tangaroa Terrace outside section, go into Tangaroa Terrace for our food, and Trader Sam's for our drinks. While in Trader Sam's, we saw some order an Uh-'Oa, which was pretty fun. We wanted to order one, but they said you could only order it inside. We explained they'd said we could order drinks inside and take them out, but they said specifically for the Uh-'Oa you can't, because fire. Okay, that seems reasonable. So we ordered four other drinks, of which I think mine had the coolest presentation. I got the Krakatoa Punch, which comes with a red glowing plastic ice cube, which when submerged makes your drink look like hot lava.

Once we got back outside, they had actually moved the rope and our table had become part of Trader Sam's. Whatever. They need to just call this one restaurant / bar and eliminate the complication. The nice thing was it meant we could order an Uh-'Oa after we all finished our first drink, since we weren't drunk enough. It wasn't as impressive outside, since it was still very light out. But still fun. They get it flaming, and then you throw pinches of cinnamon across the flame, which makes little sparks.

I bailed early because I wanted to enjoy some drunk riding. On the way back I stopped to enjoy this guy playing the theme music from Last of the Mohicans on his hammer dulcimer in Downtown Disney.



This time I remembered to enter through the Grand Californian, but not before I stopped to enjoy the lobby and listen to the piano player a bit.

Then when I entered the park, I saw Grizzly River Rapids was still running, so I jumped on. Another rider on my raft also noticed my Orrin necklace from The Neverending Story and asked what it was. The movie was before her time, but one of her friends had seen it. Even after I'd said where it came from, she asked what it meant, and I said it meant infinity, which I guess it does. It's sort of a modified ouroboros, which I think signifies infinity, except the Orrin is two snakes eating each other's tails, and they're twisted together.

I got wet but I'm from Seattle. My clothes are quick-dry.

I used an FP I had picked up right before I left to ride California Screamin' again. This time I tried it with my eyes closed. This ride is a pretty good thrill. It's about the highest level of thrill I like in a roller coaster. I'm not afraid of faster, crazier coasters, I just don't enjoy them. Sometimes you get banged around too much and it's uncomfortable, sometimes not but it's just disorienting. I can't really enjoy the thrills because my brain can't make sense of them. But California Screamin' is just at the threshold. The theming is lacking, although I did notice that there are sand dunes under the structure, so at least they're making some effort to establish the setting as a seaside park.

And I was trying to cram in as much as I could and wanted to make sure I got a nighttime ride on RSR, so I headed over there and waited standby for about hour. Had some nice chats with some guys in line who were there for grad night. While I was in line, my mom called to say she had re-entered the park. I told her we should meet at World of Color. But by the time I got out of RSR, it was almost 9. It might have been fine, but they had blocked off Cars Land for the grad night, so to get to World of Color I had to go through A Bug's Land and Hollywoodland and circle back through Buena Vista Street. By the time I got to World of Color it was almost over, not that my mom had gotten a very good viewing spot anyway. We met up as the crowds dispersed, and stopped for some treats on the way out.

My mom liked California Adventure so much that she wanted to come back the next day, even though that meant we wouldn't have any full days in Disneyland. She also wanted to see Cars Land at night and get a better view of World of Color, which would have to be the next day, since we were leaving before dark the day after. (We didn't have park hoppers.) I didn't think it was the best idea, but I thought she should have her way. I'll probably come back to Disneyland sometime, but she might not, since she lives on the east coast.

 

[morningstar]

Day 3

I haven't reviewed our breakfast yet. Free breakfast at Captain Kidd's was included with our hotel stay. I will say this is a step above the typical motel "continental breakfast" of packaged pastries, dry cereal, and maybe a waffle maker if you're lucky, but a step below say Denny's. Basically it was similar to McDonald's, but in buffet form. The sausage and eggs seemed to be made of real stuff, but in some regular shapes that couldn't be entirely natural. My guess is they come frozen. But whatever, it got the job done and convenience was more important than anything for getting us to the park by rope drop.

As I said, we were at California Adventure again, and this time we speed-walked to Soarin' at rope drop. I don't understand why this attraction is so popular. I mean I kind of understand at Epcot, where there's not much competition, but California Adventure has a number of other E-tickets. I think it's a pleasant enough ride, but I don't understand the craze. Over and over again during the ride I had the feeling "I've seen that ... just recently." I understand that even though we're in California, not everyone will have had a chance to visit everything in California, so it might be new to them, and even though I had seen a lot of it, it was enjoyable to see it again and from an aerial perspective. In any case, it is a highly popular ride, so if you want to ride it once and avoid the lines, best to do it first thing in the morning.

After riding Soarin' we picked up fastpasses for World of Color. We should have done this the day before, but we hadn't learned all the tricks of fastpasses yet. It turns out getting a World of Color fastpass doesn't disadvantage you in any way. It's "on a different system", so you can immediately get any other fastpass you want.

We got some good exercise on the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail. It's a good thing we did this early, when it was cool, because I got a little sweaty anyway. The most exciting part was the rock wall. I made it almost all the way across. I wanted to do the sort of tire-swing zipline thing, but you have to be a kid or under a certain height. I thought maybe they'd make an exception as no one else was waiting, but they wouldn't. Must be some kind of safety thing.

Next we went on Voyage of the Little Mermaid, which was my last remaining must-do, as this ride was new since I'd been there before. I thought it was pretty good, though it could have been better. My main complaint was how the Ariel animatronics move. Ariel in the movie always has very fluid movements, whereas the animatronics' movements were jerky. I'm sure it would be very difficult to make smooth-moving animatronics, so I'm not saying anyone did a bad job, but just saying in hindsight maybe it makes The Little Mermaid not too well-suited to an animatronic ride. One thing I thought they should have done that would have been really easy is to make the boat spin in the Kiss the Girl scene, like it does in the movie.

I liked it enough to go on it a couple more times, though. It always had a pretty short wait.

Then we went around Paradise Pier doing a bunch of the little missable rides, like the Zephyr and Goofy's Sky School. We tried to ride the Ferris wheel, but it broke down when we were almost to the front of the line, and they asked everyone to exit the line.

By now we'd done just about everything, and I was kind of regretting doing California Adventure for another full day. We could have finished up the few things above in a half day. We still hadn't seen Turtle Talk with Crush, although I've seen it at WDW. We headed that way, and on the way stopped for another ride on Luigi's Rollickin' Roadsters, which seemed to be my mom's favorite ride, except for this one:

This time we got Mambo Italiano! Hooray! We really got into it this time, moving our arms and butts in time with the music while the car shook its booty too.

Then mom got a hot dog at Award Wieners, since it was about half an hour until the next showing of Turtle Talk. Since the host let us know it was okay, we sat on the carpet, and I got to ask a question. I asked if Crush liked to eat jellyfish. He said green turtles only eat jellyfish when they're little, and when they're adults they eat only sea grass. That was interesting and I didn't know that. He asked what I like to eat and I said jelly beans. Then he showed us a football helmet and asked me to explain what it was for. I said it was a human shell.

It was nice that they've already worked in some characters from Finding Dory. Disney parks are really on top of updating content in a timely matter lately, like with the Force Awakens content at Star Tours.

We headed back over to Paradise Pier to get a corn dog and a beer for me. I got the spicy one. It was pretty good. I don't know if it's the best corn dog ever. I'm not sure a corn dog is a thing that can be the best ever, but I don't know a better one. The breading was really good quality. Like a hush puppy. Then we finally got on the Ferris wheel. My mom agreed to go on the swinging one rather than us having to go twice. We also did Toy Story Mania, which is not a must do for me, but my mom liked it quite a bit. In the line there was yet another girl who was a ringer for Elsa. She had the platinum blonde hair in one braid over the shoulder.

I did some shopping in the area for myself and for a sorry-you're-not-here gift for my wife. This one's for me.

It's a good time for a shopping rant. Remember when they used to have merchandise related to the theme of the land? I liked that. When you were in a land with a theme you love, you were excited to go in the store and see what they would have for you. Now you just randomly walk into stores, and most of the time you're not interested. I found the Stitch hat in Paradise Pier, a Stitch T-shirt for my wife in Grizzly Peak, and some Anna and Elsa Christmas ornaments in Paradise Pier. Well, at least I found some fun stuff for myself and for my wife. And sometimes the theme makes sense. We explicitly wandered back to the vicinity of Mike and Sully to the Rescue, because my wife really likes Monsters Inc., and I was hoping they had some related merchandise over there. I found a cool Mike Wazowski hat similar to the Stitch one (in that it looks like he's eating your head).

So lastly we headed over the Cars Land to see it at night and ride RSR on our fastpass, which we'd luckily got for just the right time, in the narrow window after dark and before closing. Then we headed over the World of Color. It was already crowded even in the fastpass section. Luckily, after we arrived, some friends of the people in front of us bumped into them, and they wanted to chat. They were polite enough not to try to jump in front of us, but rather the people in front of us moved back with them. So we had a front row spot for our section.

I didn't really care for this show. It's not that I mind getting wet, and it's fun to sing along with Elsa that "The cold never bothered me anyway," and mean it, but I just didn't really see the appeal. It's mostly the projections that I watched, and I'd rather watch a movie on a screen than the gimmick of water. The picture wasn't always clear. Maybe there's a viewing location that's not so up close that's better, so you can see the fountains as a whole instead it being too much for your field of view.

After closing we sat on the ground in the space between the parks and watched the Disneyland fireworks, and carefully laid out our battle plan for the next day. We had a lot to do and had to leave pretty early to get my mom to her plane.

 

[morningstar]

4th and final (half) day

So we'd only spent a half day at Disneyland so far, and the rest at California Adventure. We calculated that we better start heading out of the parks at 11:30 to safely catch my mom's flight out of Burbank. That left us very little time for this list of "must-dos" that we hadn't done yet this trip:

Dumbo
Enchanted Tiki Room
Haunted Mansion
Hyperspace Mountain
Indiana Jones Adventure
Mad Tea Party
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride
Peter Pan's Flight
Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin
Storybook Land Canal Boats

Some of these were more must-do than others, and obviously we weren't going to be able to hit them all. We had a detailed rope-drop plan, with me grabbing a fastpass for Hyperspace Mountain while mom got in line for Peter Pan. I grabbed the fastpass and then also considered going on as standby, since the posted wait time was five minutes, but I don't think that was accurate, since between the time I passed the wait time sign on the way to fastpass distribution and the time I got back to the head of the line, about 1000 people had queued up, but they hadn't updated the wait time.

I ran over to Peter Pan. Unfortunately, Mom had not stuck to the plan, and had ridden Mr. Toad instead of lining up for Peter Pan. She thought the wait time was already too long. I don't like Mr. Toad, so missing that wasn't a problem, but not lining up for Peter Pan first thing was a rookie mistake. I said we should wait, even though it was like 45 minutes, because Peter Pan really is a must-do. I'm glad we did. I'm not sure I'd ever done the Disneyland Peter Pan before. I like it better than Disney World's version. The first scene where you're flying through space with stars all around you is really unique.

My fastpass window for Hyperspace Mountain had started, but first we thought we might as well grab a fastpass for Roger Rabbit. Of course, Toontown wasn't open until 10, and It's a Small World had zero wait, so we walked on. My mom says I loved this ride (WDW version) as kid, and I can remember avoiding it as an older kid and as an adult, but I kind of liked it this time. Maybe now I'm more sensitive to the "message". And I've taken more of an interest in world cultures.

Roger Rabbit also had no line so we just walked on instead of getting a fastpass. This was an okay ride. About halfway through I decided that instead of spinning wildly it was more fun to sort of try to keep the car on course. It's still wacky, because that's not really possible to do.

Then we high-tailed it to Hyperspace Mountain. Since my mom didn't want to ride, I suggested she stop along the way and watch the Jedi training Trials of the Temple since it was starting soon. Hyperspace Mountain was pretty good. I'd say it's a decent "plus". Usually the videos and effects went by too fast to really make sense of them, but that gave it a decent frantic vibe.

I got back in time to help use the force to raise the temple. We watched a little more, but were in a hurry to do more stuff.

Dumbo was my last must-must-must do. A little backstory is needed. My wife had brought a stuffed elephant mama and baby along on the trip. We thought it would be fun for me to take the baby along for the second leg of the trip and give it a ride on Dumbo.



Stay tuned for more adventures of baby elephant in the post-show.

A cool thing happened as we were leaving the vicinity of Dumbo. Captain Hook was going by, and a feather came out of his cap. As it floated around in the air, I caught it before it hit the ground. I thought that was pretty cool. I kept it, but I can't find it anymore.

It was close to 11:30 now, but my mom's flight had been delayed, so we thought it was okay to do one more must-must-do. The Tiki Room is one of my favorites. On the way, we did the castle walkthrough. This is a nice little walkthrough with some cute little visual effects through windows. I especially liked the Maleficent shadow that appears on the wall. I was genuinely scared for a split second.

There was a wait for the next showing of Tiki Room, but it was a good opportunity to try a Dole Whip. I'd never had one. Before sites like this, I didn't know it was such a big deal. It is pretty amazing. We got the soft-serve kind and the float mixed with pineapple juice. I claimed the float, which was good, but actually I think the soft-serve is the best part, and I'd pass on the pineapple juice next time. We also got to enjoy the pre-show in the courtyard, which I think I'd never seen before. Disney World doesn't have this, right? I'm pretty sure I did the Tiki Room on my previous trip to Disneyland, but maybe the timing was such that I walked right in and bypassed the pre-show.

The Tiki Room was great as always. I needed to reinfect myself with those earworms, as I had almost forgotten about "Let's All Sing Like the Birdies Sing" completely.

I had gotten my fix, and it was time to go. If you're keeping score, you'll notice there were some major things we missed: Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones, and the Mad Tea Party. I wasn't too upset, since I've ridden these before. My mom hadn't ridden Indiana Jones, but she didn't really know what she was missing, so she wasn't upset. But we had also missed a number of not must-dos that I had never ridden, such as a lot of the Fantasyland dark rides like Snow White and Alice in Wonderland. I had also kind of wanted to meet some princesses, but there definitely wasn't time for that.

On the way out, I turned around to take one last look at the castle.

The picture doesn't do it justice. The castle roof was really sparkling in the sunlight. This is when I started to appreciate Sleeping Beauty's Castle. Its scale is really dinky compared to Cinderella's, and I always thought the pink was kind of garish compared to Cinderella's tasteful blue, but it has its own charm.

 

[morningstar]

Post-show

After dropping my mom off at the airport, I decided I had time to take the scenic route back, so I headed up I-5 but cut over from near Bakersfield through Paso Robles to San Simeon. Unfortunately, it was getting close to sunset by the time I got on the coast highway, and it was hard to see with alternating between light and shadow as I wound around the hillsides. With my sunglasses on, I couldn't see where I was going in the shadows, and with them off, I was blinded in the sun. I settled on keeping them off and squinting, and it worked okay.

Unfortunately I had skipped gas in Cambria because it was overpriced, thinking I could make it, and I was running low heading through the town of Big Sur at night. There is a little gas station there, but there was nobody on duty and the pumps didn't have credit card slots. I just had to try to keep it in high gear and hope I made it. Luckily I did, with the gas light on for the last few miles through Carmel Highlands and Point Lobos State Park before hitting the first gas in Carmel Valley. I continued on to a motel in Salinas for the night.

I guess all the early mornings and late nights were adding up, because I slept in and lazed around until they had to kick me out at checkout time at noon. I was feeling kind of down. Maybe I was lonely. I'm not use to being alone anymore, but at least I had this guy.

Then I drove the short way to meet some more friends in Los Gatos. I took the scenic route along 1 and 17 instead of through San Jose. My friend was nice enough to let me stay at his house that night.

After that, I had nowhere I had to be at any particular time, so I decided to break my trip back up with a stop at Crater Lake. I stopped overnight in Klamath Falls, then got a decently early start and headed on up.

Unfortunately tragedy struck. I was carrying baby elephant kind of halfway hanging out of my pocket, and he must have fallen out. I was pretty sure I had him about fifty feet from the rim visitor's center, and then when I checked when I was inside he was gone. I should have been able to find him on the ground, but he was nowhere to be seen. I can only conclude that someone picked him up, or he walked away on his own. He's really grown up on this trip, and maybe he decided it was time to strike out on his own. I tried several lost and founds, but nobody had seen him.

I tried to get over his disappearance and enjoy Crater Lake as much as possible. There was some pretty spectacular snow scenery.

Ultimately, there's not much you can do at Crater Lake in the early summer, since a lot of stuff is still snowbound, so I didn't spend that much time there, mostly just driving the rim road and stopping at a few of the overlooks. Then I headed back home by way of Bend, thinking it would be more scenic that way. Or at least I go that way less often, so it's more interesting to me. I stopped for lunch in a Black Bear Diner, and this scene brought back bittersweet memories of mama and baby elephant.

I got back home late that night, and luckily had all the time in the world to recover from an exhausting but fun-filled trip. Luckily now I've got a job offer, and I'm starting in a couple weeks. I actually had my first phone interview for the job while I was on the road on this trip.

 

[Kiwiduck]

Great trip I would love to do much the same drive but I'm far too scared to drive in America. Good luck with the new job!!

 

[morningstar]

Great trip I would love to do much the same drive but I'm far too scared to drive in America.

Because you drive on the left? Get over your fear. Driving is the only way to see the best of America. I suppose you could take a bus tour.

I wouldn't start on the coast highway, though. It's scary even for some Americans. Steep cliffs dropping into the ocean, tight curves, and highway speed limits. Maybe start in the southwest and get the hang of it. Lots of places there are so deserted you could drive on the left for quite a ways and not notice anything was wrong.

 

[FlaggNL]

Great report, thanks for sharing! Was great to read!