Our Spring Break Disney-cation, Part 4

Our last day at Disneyland was mostly fun, but somewhat exhausting as well. We also learned a thing or two that day that will probably shape how we plan our Disneyland trips in the future.

The previous night, we'd told the kids we could only go to one of the two parks on our final day (due to our buying the "one-park-per-day" passes to save some money on the trip). As Nathan and I expected, the kids ultimately chose to spend the third day in Disneyland, although Aurora pushed for California Adventure for a little while  We hadn't forced Aurora to go on as many scary rides in California Adventure as we did at Disneyland, so ironically she was more wary of the more "kid-friendly" park!

In the end, we had a pretty fun second day at Disneyland, but I think we would have preferred more flexibility. Although we patted ourselves on the back for saving money with our ticket purchases, we felt there were many things left undone (or re-done) at California Adventure. In the future, we might consider using the "one park per day" passes for the first two days of our trip, and splurging on the Park Hopper passes for the final day. By then, all of us will have found "favorites" in each park, and can split up and explore those "favorites" for a little while in smaller groups. But that's an issue for the future; for now, while our kids are still fairly young, sticking to one park each day worked fine.

Well, "fine" is relative. For poor Aurora, one last torture:

Namely, making her ride on Big Thunder Mountain again. We all wanted to do it, and no one wanted to wait around at the gate with Aurora. We promised her we would never make her do any "scary" rides again that day. Here she is before the ride...

And here she is afterwards.

Poor kid. However, we kept our promise and let her be more choosy of our other experiences. I hope that satisfied her somewhat.

Other highlights:

We all tried out some new rides. Lorelai had her first experience at Space Mountain (Celeste rode it with Daddy on the first Disneyland day, and she loved it!). It's not my favorite ride (too dark and herky-jerky!), but I took both older girls this time. Lorelai's verdict: just "okay." I sense it will not be an eagerly sought-after ride in the future.

I got to experience Autopia for the first time that day. Basically, it's a go-kart driving course in Tomorrowland. The kids were able to to a lot of the driving themselves! Aurora tried her hardest, but couldn't quite reach the pedals and the steering wheel at the same time. Since I was riding with her, I had to do either one or the other, so our progress through the driving course was pretty slow. But the girls all felt very grown-up after "driving around" anyway.

After driving practice, we decided to hop on the Disneyland Railroad, the large train that circumnavigates the whole park. I had ridden the train on our last trip with Aurora, while we were waiting for everybody else to finish a ride. But since Aurora was only a baby at the time, she didn't remember any of the ride. And I remembered the ride being peaceful and nondescript, with one huge exception. Towards the front of the park, I remembered the train driving past two huge dioramas ...one was a recreation of the Grand Canyon, and the other was a prehistoric wilderness complete with animatronic dinosaurs. For a long time after our first trip, I wondered if my brain hadn't "made up" that part of the experience. It was just such a random, strange thing to encounter on what was basically a commuter train ride!

Luckily, for this trip to the park, the whole family decided to ride the train with me, in order to verify my story and prove to me that I wasn't crazy or hallucinating.

from rollingwiththemagicblog.com

And what do you know? Those dioramas really exist. Between Tomorrowland and the Main Street U.S.A station, the train goes into a dark tunnel and the narrator on the train's loudspeakers suddenly put on an extra-dramatic tone. He announced that we would be taking a journey "along the rim of the spectacular Grand Canyon." WHA? And before you can say "Mickey Mouse," there was the diorama, with scenic backgrounds, steep rocky cliffs, and taxidermied animals galore, all staring eerily at us, while Grofe's "Grand Canyon Suite" was blaring in our ears. It was pretty abrupt and startling.

from remainseatedplease.com

But then things got even weirder. Apparently, this humble railroad doesn't just travel through space in an eyeblink, but it can travel through time as well. The narration says something like, "The Grand Canyon didn't always look like this. Now we'll travel back in time to the Primeval World!!" And then, BAM! Dinosaurs...dinosaurs everywhere! Fighting each other, eating each other, dying and turning into oil, fleeing from exploding hot springs/volcanoes/etc. It's actually kind of awesome (if a little behind the times, paleontologically speaking). But it's so surreal. Just a few moments later, the train exits this dark, noisy, dinosaur-filled tunnel...and you're dropped back off at the main entrance of Disneyland, as if nothing had happened. Sooo strange. But a fun thing to share with your kids, who will probably giggle all the while...like mine did!

Another new ride we discovered this year was the Storybook Canal. It's a slow, small boat ride in Fantasyland; Nathan and I had always avoided it since we figured it was for "little kids." But by late afternoon of our third day at the parks, we were so tired that a slow, small boat ride sounded pretty good.

It was actually pretty cute! It features several of the "storybook villages" featured in various Disney animated films, but built in miniature. Alice's house (from Alice in Wonderland), Pinocchio's Alpine village, Aladdin's city of Agrabah, Prince Eric's seaside castle from The Little Mermaid...all those settings and many more are charmingly recreated next to the water. Surrounding them are an bunch of tiny trees & other miniature vegetation, which the tour guide informed us were actually cultivated to grow that way. It was a very peaceful, relaxing trip. And as it turned out, it was the last ride we went on at Disneyland; it was a good "come-down" from the adrenaline rush we'd been experiencing for the last three days.

However, our family's favorite "new find" at Disneyland was Tom Sawyer Island (or "Pirate's Lair," as it has since been re-titled). The last two times we've visited the park, Nathan and I frequently looked at the island from across the river, but never felt any urge to visit it. But we were feeling adventurous this time, so we boarded the small wooden ferry and floated across to the island's shore. And we were so glad we did, because we ended up exploring the island for about an hour!

 

There are at least a half dozen miniature caves scattered throughout the island, as well as several short nature trails, a pontoon bridge, several interactive "pirate artifacts," a few "abandoned" buildings, and a cool pirate flag and pile of treasure at one end of the island!

It was great to have an opportunity to wander aimlessly for a while, explore new locations, sit in the shade away from the big crowds, and feel lost in a remote place for a short time (albeit a fabricated one...nothing feels totally authentic at Disneyland). This more than made up for our disappointment at the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail being closed in California Adventure the previous day. It's nice to know that each park has its own nature exploration zone that we can escape to when the crowds get too oppressive! I think we will definitely want to return next time.

Aurora got to hug a Disney villain. We chose not to wait in any lines to meet any Disney characters on this trip; none of the "classic" Disney princesses, nor any of the new ones (we saw Merida once, but she had a long line waiting to see her so we passed). We certainly weren't waiting in line to see Princesses Anna & Elsa from the huge hit Frozen; that line was two or three hours long! Ugh...not even an animatronic Olaf would make that bearable for us. We walked right by Pixie Hollow; no Tinkerbell visit for us! We even skipped out on the lines for Thor & Captain America, as I mentioned earlier.

None of us were too bothered by not meeting any characters; we all decided we'd rather be doing other things. But Nathan and Aurora got an unexpected opportunity when Peter Pan and Captain Hook walked right past them in Fantasyland. It wasn't clear where exactly they were headed, or even where they'd been before Aurora spotted them...perhaps they were putting on a show somewhere else in the park. Whatever the case, Aurora was terribly excited. She loves the TV show Jake and the Never Land Pirates, which features Captain Hook as the grumpy, bumbling enemy of the main characters. She broke away from Nathan, ran over to Captain Hook, and gave him a huge hug. The Captain, maybe a little surprised (after all, how many kids want to hug Captain Hook?), returned the hug, then gave her a little "peck" on the top of her head, before moving on. Aurora beamed about it for hours. Unfortunately, it happened so fast Nathan wasn't able to get a picture, but it will be an awesome memory to remind Aurora of in the years to come.

We closed our visit with a tasty treat and some souvenir shopping. We'd heard lots of rumors about the Dole Whip floats for sale at the Tiki Juice Bar in Adventureland. It sounded simple enough; it's basically frozen pineapple-flavored soft-serve ice cream, floating in pineapple juice. The lines for these floats sometimes stretch out as long as the lines for some rides! But it was late afternoon, our time at Disneyland was winding to a close, so we decided to bite the bullet and splurge on a frozen treat for each of us.

And oh, my, were they delicious! I don't have any special love for pineapple (sometimes it's a bit too sweet for my liking), but this tasted perfectly cool and refreshing after a long hot day of walking around in the sun. We all really enjoyed it (in fact, Nathan recently found a copycat recipe and managed to duplicate it at home, so now we can indulge more often!).

After our treat, all that remained was our souvenir shopping. I'd encouraged Lorelai to bring along a little spending money for herself, and I had saved up some myself just before leaving for California. We went into a shop on Main Street, U.S.A., and let the girls go wild (within a reasonable financial limit, of course). Occasionally, we had suggestions for them that guided them to toys we thought they'd love (especially so, in Aurora's case; she had a hard time staying focused with all the awesome stuff laying around).

Here's what they all ended up with:

Lorelai got Perry the Platypus, one of the stars of the TV show Phineas and Ferb (we searched high and low for an "Agent P" doll, but there were none to be had there. Alas.). Perry was still pretty cool though...plus, he "chirps" when you squeeze his foot! Aurora ended up with a stuffed friend, too...Izzy, the little girl pirate from Jake and the Never Land Pirates. She had at first latched onto a Monsters, Inc. stuffed animal and was loath to part with it, but then I saw Izzy sitting on a shelf, and I knew Aurora had to have it. Once I placed it in her hands, she never let go of it for the rest of the day! (Well, maybe for a couple of minutes at the register). Celeste at first felt obligated to get another stuffed toy, but being the jewelry maven she is, we directed her to the music boxes and she fell in love with the Tinkerbell box. Now she has a lovely, musical box, and a place to store all her bling!

After buying all their toys (and pressing a few commemorative pennies near the park entrance), we headed back to our hotel for what turned out to be the final time. I had intended to go back to the park in the evening, after our dinner, but I lay down on my bed to rest "for a few minutes," and woke up close to an hour later! Here's what the kids were doing at that point...

Clearly, they were perfectly content to relax in the hotel room, and had no interest in wearing themselves out for one more night. With that, we started packing our bags and preparing for our (uneventful) ride home the next day.

By now, we were all as tired as Olaf here.

Even though our last evening (and our last day at the park) wasn't as action-packed as the two days that preceded it, we still had a wonderful time and regretted nothing. It was so fun to bond with the family and share this exciting experience. I don't know when we'll go back to Disneyland (probably in a few more years), but I know we will go back someday. It makes us all happy; despite the crowds, it is still a magical place, and there's nothing quite like it.