I wanted to make sure I got breakfast this morning because the first day was not so fun skipping that, so I went with Mom, Stephen and Meagan to the Earl of Sandwich in DD. I got a nice little egg and ham and cheese breakfast sammie with some OJ. Man, those breakfast sandwiches keep me full quite nicely. Dad and G had gotten up early to do some roller coaster hound doggin' and the Arizonans came at their own pace. We knew there was a special entrance to CA from the Grand California Hotel that only Disneyland Resort hotel people could use, but we didn't know where to access it or how to get there from our hotel. So we went in through the front entrance.
California Adventures is built to be an homage to all things California. The "Main Street" if you will looks like old-time Hollywood with lots of 1920s film industry style. I felt like the buildings and style had been built up a bit since my last visit and the Christmas decorations just made it look even more fleshed out and festive. There was a giant Christmas tree in the main square/plaza area and lots of red bows and evergreen. After getting in to the park we met up with Bub, Michael and Jacqueline who were just finishing their breakfast. Then we decided our first ride should be "Soarin' over California."
Soarin' over California is one of the top three rides at CA. You sit in these gliders that are in front of a movie screen and they move while the film played flies you over all these different places in California. You really feel like you are flying. They also blow wind on you and make the air scented, when you fly over an orange grove it smells like oranges, when you fly through the mountains it smells like pine. It's so relaxing as well. I've read that they are making a Soarin' around the World for Epocot in Disney World, I hope they use it in CA as well!
Once everyone was done with Soarin' we headed to California Screamin', one of the best roller coasters I've been on. On the way there we walked past Grizzly Rapids which is a water raft ride, Stephen wanted to ride it but no one would go with him because it was too cold for that. Screamin' is a fantastic coaster. You get music played in your ear the whole ride and it does a loop-de-loop that takes you upside-down. One of the best parts is that unlike a regular coaster that pulls you to the top of the first hill slowly, this one starts at the bottom and blasts you off! No time for breathing. We call it roller coaster hound-doggin' because our family has a penchant for roller coasters, and one time my dad called us roller coaster hound dogs because we couldn't get enough. Mom even went on it one time! She did get mad at dad though. When she was getting ready to head to her near certain death, before the coaster blasted off, she looked over to see Grandpa (who had stayed behind to babysit Jacqueline) standing on the pier slurping on an ice cream cone! How inconsiderate! It's really funny to hear her tell it. Another reason I like Screamin' is that it doesn't bang your head around like a lot of older coasters do. You get the thrills without having your noggin banged around. Also, more ride pictures!
After that we went on the (new to me) Toy Story ride-Toy Story Midway Mania. You sit in a car, wear 3-D glasses and you ride around to different screens and play different arcade-type games. There is a "cannon" on the front of your car that you use to shoot different things in different games, you get points in each game and your total is shown when you leave the ride. It was pretty similar to the Buzz Lightyear ride in Tomorrowland. I thought the ride was really creative, though I'm pretty bad at those types of games where you need aim. It also had lots of characters from all three Toy Story movies. Also, in the store on the way out I saw a mickey dressed up as Woody the cowboy, G wanted a Zurg. Tee hee!
Then we split up again, some people were hungry, some wanted to go on the silly symphony swings. There may have been another ride on Screamin'.
Somewhere in here we went to the Little Mermaid ride. It is similar to Haunted Mansion in that you sit in carriages while you ride around and look at different scenes. Only the carriages are clam shells. It was pretty good, I liked how they made you feel like you were going "Under the Sea" with the lighting and projections. The anamatronics have certainly come a long way as well. The songs keep you dancing and the "Under the Sea" room was pretty fun. Jacqueline loved it, lots of lights to look at.
Lunch this day was at Wine Country Trattoria, a fancy Italian place that is supposed to evoke Wine Country. Again, we did the meal with fastpass option, this time for the World of Color show. It was warm enough to eat outside and Stephen really enjoyed the ambiance of a vineyard. For starters they gave us foccacia bread and oil and vinegar to dip it in. Reminded me of Monica! I had a sleeping Jacqueline on me (I got her to fall asleep! Auntie Moo win!) so Bub fed me bread. Haha. For lunch I chose the braised beef ravioli, It was delicious! I was nervous about not having marinara sauce and cheese, but this was fancy ravioli and it was tasty. It was probably my favorite meal of the trip. When Jacqueline woke up she had some bread, ate some of her dad's crab and really enjoyed it, and entertained us by eating the table again!
I'm a little hazy on the rest of the afternoon-we looked at how they make the sourdough bread, sniffed the scent coming out of the Ghiradeli's ice cream shoppe, and made our way to the Monster's Inc ride. It was cute, you ride around in cars and look at different scenes from the movie. Then we parked it on a bench to wait for the bell ringers and the tree lighting. The bell ringers were fun, they sang songs and played their bells on Buena Vista street, they were dressed in era-appropriate holiday wear. We enjoyed it. And then the bench we were occupying needed to be moved for the tree lighting party but we got to sit back down once they moved it. It ended up being prime seating for watching the little tree lighting song and dance thing. I thought it was cute that Mickey and Minnie were both wearing 1920's outfits as they were in CA. Also we got some cute pictures in front of the Walt and Mickey statue in CA called "Storytellers."
Then I think we moved down the road to find a spot that had a bench to watch the Pixar Play parade. It was a cute and fun parade featuring the characters from Pixar. Jacqueline loved this parade too, and ALL the people/characters in the parade would wave at her and play with her. It was adorable. The weird purple fuzzy guy from Monsters University came up in front of me and Bub and then he jumped at us which scared us, cheeky thing! I loved seeing the Incredibles, Cars, Finding Nemo, Toy Story and even A Bug's Life, although, even though she's technically Pixar, Merida did not make it into the parade.
After the parade I finally go to Cars Land! They made the entire town of Radiator Springs from the Cars movie. They did a really good job. It was like you were in the movie. It was dark the first time I went so I didn't get as good of a look at things, but we did get to ride Racing Radiator Springs! It was my favorite ride this time around, (probably because it's new) and it was such a fun layout for a ride. You ride in a car (duh) that looks like one from the movie. Then you take a nice leisurely ride around the scenery and even look at a waterfall. Music plays in the background and it is so relaxing, a nice cruise. It was even better to ride at night with the pretend rock features all lit up. The ambiance was so great at night and you can see a little bit over CA. Then you go inside and you see a bit of the story of the movie "Cars." Mater takes you around and you even get to do some "Tractor tipping"! Haha! Then you drive through town and see some other characters and then you either get your tires changed at Luigi's, or you get a paint job. I rode this ride four times and three of the times I got the paint job, which was fun but mostly they just blow air on you. I liked the tire change better because they move you up and down and it's really like they are changing your tires! Then you meet up with another car and have a race! There is a stretch of the ride that is like a racetrack and there are turns and hills. It's so exciting! We liked to egg our car on and yell "go! go! Faster, they're catching up!" stuff like that. They would make each car pull ahead of the other and you keep racing until you see who gets to the finish line first. It's really fun and exciting. Also, they take your picture. The front seat is more fun than the back seat as well because it's more like you are driving the car. Disney has a home run with this ride, and I like how it combines the "ride" with the story/character elements as well as having a satisfying length to it.
Travel Guide Tip: since this is the newest ride at CA it is wise to go on this ride early in the day before the lines get long, or only with a fastpass. It's popular, it's new, so there is always a huge line. I saw wait times as long as 120 minutes. Also, I recommend riding this one at night. It's really cool all lit up.
After Radiator Springs we convinced mom to ride the Tower of Terror with us. Which was a huge score. I think we had fast passes for this one too. I like Tower of Terror, but it was later in the day and I was coming down with a cold, so it wasn't as fun for me. If you haven't ridden it, the premise is that you are at the Hollywood Tower Hotel and that it is haunted. You get in the elevator and it goes up and then drops unexpectedly. You go up and down a few times and sometimes the doors open and you get a great view over CA. We got Meagan to ride too even though she wasn't sure. As always, after the ride was over there were a lot of people laughing at themselves and their reactions. Then I heard someone laughing/almost crying and I thought "someone is losing it", and then I found out it was my mom! She was dying and almost going loony. Mom is never like this so we were dying watching her laugh so hard. I was going to pee my pants. We got her out of there but she laughed for quite a while and then when she calmed down again she started going batty trying to explain why she was laughing so hard. I guess she came out of her seat for a second during the ride and the thought came to her, "if the ride can make a fat old lady like me come out of her seat what is it doing to Meagan (my sister in law)?" and that thought had her in stitches. It was the funniest moment of the trip by far.
Then it was time to head to grab our spots for "World of Color-Winter Dreams." The fastpass thing worked a ton better for this show than it did for Fantasmic. We actually had good spots and I could see most everything. Part of that is because WOC is a bigger show and you are physically closer to it. Winter Dreams is the Christmas version of World of Color and I had no idea what to expect as the World of Color show is new since 12 years ago. It. Was. Amazing. Essentially it is a fountain show where they project images onto the water and have lights. But wait! It's Disney, so it is so much cooler than that. The images were a lot crisper than I thought they would be seeing as how they were projected on water. There were colored lights and then they also had some images projected on the circle in the middle of the California Screamn' coaster.They had a holiday themed show hosted by Olaf from Frozen. I think they used every Disney image related to Christmas, snow, holiday etc. They had Rex from Toy Story do a dance to Nutcracker music, Elsa sang her entire "Let it Go" anthem, and they even had sing alongs to Jingle Bells and "Feliz Navidad." I don't know how they got the rights to it, but they had the song "Believe" from the Polar Express during the show. It was a female singer and it was so familiar to me, it took me awhile to figure out that it was Heather Headly!! Heather is the original Aida from Broadway and I just loved her version. The whole show was so magical and Christmasy, I may have gotten a little teary eyes. And I belted out the entire "Let it Go" song with Bub right next to me. :) Sorry neighbors. After the show we walked out of the park and got to see a few fireworks that were going off in Disneyland for the fireworks show as we walked back to our hotel. Another successful day!!
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