California Adventure

Thursday

Remember my issues with the alarm clock? Well they sort of haunted me.

I set the alarm for 5:30am. Our plan was to do Disneyland during the magic morning to be able for the girls to do the new FINDING NEMO ride. The new ride has no fast pass, and a 2 hour wait is common. The only way to do the ride is to do it first thing, on a day when we get into the park an hour before opening.

Getting up was very difficult. I realized I was doing very little resting. Victoria was even slower to get up. We decided to eat breakfast in the park. We headed out the door at 6:45am. When we got outside we saw Larry sitting on the bench. It was great to see him. He said he was meeting Janet for breakfast at 6:30am. I told him he was late. He disagreed and pointed out it’s only 6am. ACK! No wonder we were so tired! We got less than 6 hours of sleep and I screwed up the time on the alarm! We went back to the room and waited until 6:45 to leave.

We met up with Lynn and Sandy in line at 7am. The entire park headed over to Finding Nemo. Finding Nemo is the 20,000 Leagues ride reincarnated. I did not want to do submarine-like clausterphobic ride. Sandy did the ride with the girls while me and Lynn waited. We had breakfast at Tommorowland Terrace which was a great deal. We saw Larry, Irv, Janet, Tanya and Tom.

Our plan was to be at California Adventure for opening at 10am for the new Toy Story ride. We walked by the Soarin Over California ride at 9:40am and got into a massive line for Toy Story. The line wrapped around the park. The ride is pretty nice. It’s a 3D Buzz Lightyear with all the stakes even. They do a countdown and line everyone up to face the video screen. It was a good ride.

Victoria said she did not want to do California Screamin’. She had talked about this ride chronically, and watched a dozen You Tube videos. I pressured her to do the ride because I knew she’d regret not doing it. Victoria, with the promise of 10 bucks, got into line and did the ride with the girls. She loved it. We had gotten them fast passes so they were able to go twice more. She was glad she did it.

Unfortunately it was a hot day and that part of the park was all in the sun. After doing the ferris wheel and some other carnival rides, we decided to take a break. Sandy and her daughter decided to do their own thing so we headed over to Mimi’s for lunch and to the HOJO for a pool break. We bumped into Erica, Benita and Belinda on our way back to the hotel. Carol Sherman was heading back to the HoJo and we chatted for a bit. I thought the girls would enjoy the splash park/pad but they went in the pool instead. We went back to California Adventure at 6pm. We had unused Soarin’ over California fast passes and did that ride first. Resisting the girls requests to repeat rides, we headed to the other side of the park. We did the Monsters Inc. ride. It’s a ride thru of the storyline, pretty unimaginative. We did Muppets 3D. I just love that one.

We watched the Main Street Electrical Parade at park closing. I haven’t seen that parade in years and I saw it in Disneyworld sometime in the 90s. I love the music. After the parade, we headed back to the hotel. There is a channel on the television which shows old Disneyland clips including Walt Disney and early celebrations. It was pretty neat watching Disneyland’s 10th birthday celebration. All of the character costumes were pretty crude. In bed by 10:30pm.