Our Spring Break Disney-cation, Part 3

Last time our family visited Disney's California Adventure, the park felt much like a "work in progress" in many ways. Large sections of the park were closed for renovations, improvements, or expansions. There were certainly nice sections of the park and a lot of fun rides, but it still felt like it was a place in search of an identity.

The "Phineas and Ferb" moving party truck...just one example of California Adventure's randomness.

 This time, our experience at California Adventure was quite different. The park felt bigger, since so many attractions were new or expanded. The crowds were larger, the energy was higher...in all, it felt like more was happening at the park, and that more people were genuinely excited to be there.

Outside the Monsters Inc. ride...another example of how the Pixar movies are helping to gradually overthrow California Adventure's original motif

Nathan pointed out to me that thematically, California Adventure is moving closer and closer to "Disneyland Phase II," and not the more California-centric motif it had originally envisioned. Mickey Mouse's huge face overlooks the whole southern half of the park via the huge Ferris wheel, and Pixar's growing stable of characters is crowding into more and more parts of the park. Even with all this, there were still a lot of nooks and crannies of the park that had an identity all their own, making California Adventure an odd but compelling melange of stuff to do.

But none of this answers the most essential question for this blog: Did our family have a good time? I'd say yes, definitely! California Adventure may not be quite as well organized spatially (or thematically) as Disneyland. It required a lot of walking, and it wasn't terribly shady, which made the warm weather a little more frustrating. But other than that, there were still a lot of things that kept us all occupied, and the girls all had a great time exploring and riding all the new attractions.

Probably the best part of the day for me had nothing to do with the park itself; I was able to meet up with my good friend Melanie Cruz, whom I've known since middle school. She is a beautiful, smart, and talented gal who has traveled the world and tried a little of everything over the years. She's lived in France for a year, worked in Antarctica with research teams, and has been working as an actress and going to school in Los Angeles for the last several years. We were pretty close in high school, but as life has gone on we haven't gotten to see each other as much. In fact, the last time we were together, I was pregnant with Celeste! So it was a great chance to meet up with her and let all the girls get to know her (and love her) a little better.

Here are a few of the day's highlights:

Cars Land. The most major upgrade to California Adventure (and the biggest symbol of that park's increased "Disney-fication") is Cars Land, a full-scale recreation of the movie's town of Radiator Springs. There are several stores, restaurants, and rides throughout Cars Land; you could conceivably spend half a day just in this part of the park.

Look, it's a real-life, full-sized Mater! He was driving all over Cars Land, creeping me out just a little.

Confession: neither I nor my family are big fans of the Cars films; maybe it's because none of us are little boys, or maybe because they're only fair to middling entertainment. But I enjoyed Cars Land nonetheless. From a design perspective, everything looks incredible and it perfectly captures the "dying Route 66 desert town" feeling that the movies were going for. Everything is built to scale, so it felt as if we had been transported directly into the films!

Plus, being a resident of Arizona, I loved seeing all the faux desert skylines throughout Cars Land, as well as the desert vegetation. It made me a little homesick...weird, considering where I was!

Anyway, the cornerstone of Cars Land is the Radiator Springs Racers ride, which is both a "theme ride" (you drive through several recreated scenes from the first Cars movie) and a "thrill ride" (the car you're riding in takes off for a speedy, looping, dipping joyride through the Cadillac Range Mountains). It was a fun ride, but oh...that line. Easily the longest wait of any ride for our entire trip. We briefly thought about getting FastPasses, but the line to get the FastPasses was an hour long itself! Eek. We decided to wait in line with the other "civilians," and we were there for well over an hour. Thankfully, I had the nice "faux-Arizona" scenery to keep me company, and there were several detours into shaded enclosures, all of which were cleverly decorated. And when we got to the front of the line, what happens? Celeste had to go to the bathroom. Curse the tiny Barrett bladders! That made us wait an extra 10-12 minutes on top of the hour we'd already waited. Thankfully that was our first ride of the day, so all the lines after that didn't feel too bad!

We tried out some of the other rides in Cars Land later on. Lorelai, Aurora, and Daddy tried out Mater's Junkyard Jamboree, which was a spinning ride. Instead of teacups, though, the riders sit in ungainly, rotating tractors. The girls enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I never got to try the ride myself, because at the same time, Celeste and I were riding on the Twilight Zone's Tower of Terror, for Celeste's first try at the creepy "falling elevator" ride. I had determined to be brave for my little "adrenaline junkie" middle child, but I spent too much time screaming my head off to be much of an example. I don't do too well with free-fall rides of any kind. I needn't have worried, though...Celeste loved it!

Later in the evening, Lorelai, Melanie and I snuck back into Cars Land one more time, to try out their final ride: Luigi's Flying Tires. It was basically bumper cars with mini-hovercrafts for each group of riders; the inflatable hovercraft "tires" sailed around on a thin carpet of air, and you steered by leaning one way or the other. It took a little while to figure it out, but it was pretty fun!

 

We revisited some favorites from last time, but missed out on others. This time, I was able to convince Nathan to go to Soarin' Over California, a neat flight simulator ride in which the riders are strapped to a harness and are then suspended, feet dangling, in front of a concave IMAX-style screen, which projects various famous California landmarks. I apparently didn't sell Nathan too well on this ride last time, because he really liked it and wished we could do it again.

We were also able to revisit Grizzly River Run (a whitewater rafting adventure in which you get very wet!). While on the ride, we met up with some fellow residents of Sahuarita, Arizona! Small world (no pun intended). I think half of Arizona was in Disneyland that week on Spring Break.

We also made it onto many of the "carnival-style" rides we loved last time around: the Silly Symphony Swings (Lorelai's favorite ride from our last trip; this time, she got to ride by herself!), the Jumping Jellyfish; and the totally fun Toy Story Midway Madness, in which the rider shoots at targets in a variety of virtual carnival games.

Unfortunately, some of our favorite attractions at California Adventure weren't available this time around. The Redwood Creek Challenge Trail (an awesome discovery park, with climbing walls, rope bridges, and zip-lines that were perfectly kid-sized) was closed for renovations. There would be no resting for us adults while the kids got their wiggles out this time around! Even more sad, California Screamin' (the only full-sized roller coaster in the California Disney parks) was closed the entire day we were there. This really bummed Nathan and I out, since we had looked forward to a more "adult-sized" ride (I'm not even a huge roller-coaster fan, and I really enjoyed California Screamin'). All things considered, though, it was probably for the best that it was closed. Celeste badly wanted to ride the roller coaster, but was about an inch below their minimum height requirement. Having the coaster be closed eliminated any possibility of her trying to "fudge" her way onto the ride (and any possibility of being denied, thus provoking bitter tears that would probably have ruined her afternoon). On our next Disneyland trip, our girls will all be that much taller, and this shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks, Wikipedia

We got to see a "whole new world." For whatever reason, Ariel is one of Aurora's favorite princesses. Imagine her delight, then, when she got to ride on Ariel's Undersea Adventures, a theme ride that walked its visitors through the basic plot of The Little Mermaid. She was in Disney princess heaven throughout, waving and shouting "hello!" to all the characters. The line was short, and the ride was cute. It was a wonderful palate-cleanser for Aurora, who we had been subjected to too many of the "big kid" rides for her liking (more on that in another blog post). In retrospect, I regret not going on this ride more than once; it would have made our little girl's trip!

Did I mention there's a Ghirardelli chocolate shop inside the park now? Well, there is...and it was glorious. I don't remember this shop being in the park last time, but if it was, we sadly missed it. We were very tempted by the chocolate ice cream sundaes offered, but we settled on buying a huge (4 lb. or so) bag of chocolate to greedily munch on for weeks to come. They also had the option of completely customizing a bag of chocolate. It was a dangerous place to visit, but a tasty one...we all got free samples!

We got to party with Mel. It was so much fun to catch up with Melanie and talk to her about life in general. We found her just before lunch-time, and she stayed with us through the rest of the day and into the evening. It was really handy at times to have an extra adult set of hands; it helped a lot when all of us but Aurora (for example) wanted to go on a particular ride. Not a problem...Melanie (or myself or Nathan) could stay behind, while the rest of us took off and rode a ride together.

She was such a good sport, she followed us back to the hotel, to partake in our glorious Crock-Pot dinner! Glad she doesn't have a picky palate...

As you might imagine, the girls were smitten with "Aunt Melanie." They held hands with her whenever possible, shared their innermost hopes and dreams, and always wanted her beside them on all the rides. Melanie really wants kids of her own someday; I hope letting her "borrow" mine for an afternoon gave her a nice "kid fix" to tide her over.

Since the little girls were too tired that night, they stayed behind at the hotel as Lorelai, Melanie and myself headed back into the park one more time to catch the World Of Color show. We got seats closer to the waterfront than last time, which means we occasionally got wet from the jets of water that sprayed high into the air in front of us. I was still impressed by the combination of lights, sound, and music; projecting movie images onto a wall of water is naturally a tricky business and it wasn't always completely successful, but it's still a very ambitious show. Some scenes from the movie Brave had been inserted in between our visits; other than that, it was the same show I remembered (maybe a little bit shorter?) A very dramatic way to end the day.

Lorelai was dead on her feet by the time we bade Melanie farewell and climbed back onto the bus. It was hard to say goodbye to my old friend, but it was wonderful that her presence had enriched our Disney Parks experience. Only one more day to go!

Our Spring Break Disney-cation, Part 2

After a sound night's sleep, all of us rose refreshed and ready to party at Disneyland! Besides getting a hotel further away from the theme park, there were other differences in this Disneyland trip from our last visit. For one thing, we had to pay for tickets for all family members this time...ugh! Since this made for a slightly (aka "a lot") more expensive trip than last time, we decided to save money by passing on the Park Hopper passes. The Park Hopper pass allows Disneyland guests to freely move between the Disneyland and California Adventure parks for the duration of the trip. Instead, we bought the slightly cheaper "one park per day" passes, which would require us to choose only one park (of the two) to visit each day.

Aurora WAS excited, I promise!

And our last big change...we left our big tandem stroller at home! With an eight-year-old and a six-year-old and a four-year-old, we decided a smaller umbrella stroller would be sufficient to give our younger girls periodic rests. We felt almost "naked," pushing around just a single tiny stroller. We also brought in a fairly large bag filled with treats & other essentials, but other than that, we felt very unencumbered, compared to our last trip to the "Happiest Place On Earth."

The girls were way too excited to be riding in public transportation. I don't know why they love buses so much, but they do. It's a good thing the bus wasn't too crowded on our way in, because they were crawling over every available inch of the place. That excitement, of course, paled in comparison to entering Disneyland!

After our trip, Nathan managed to compile a pretty accurate spreadsheet of everything we did on each day of the trip. I won't bore you with all the nitty-gritty, but here are some of the highlights of our first day in Disneyland:

That Peter Pan ride in Fantasyland was our first stop. I am actually the only member of our family who rode the Peter Pan ride at our last Disneyland trip. Every other time we've been near it, we've taken one look at the long line (and the line for this ride is always long, no matter what time of day it is!), and quickly given up hope. But now that our girls are big fans of Jake and the Never Land Pirates, not to mention the original Peter Pan movie, I knew that skipping this ride was no longer an option. So we decided to get it out of the way first thing! We got in line at 8:30 in the morning or so, and we still waited 45 minutes. UGH!

But I guess it was worth it, because the kids loved it. I do have to say, it's a really beautiful ride, which simulates Peter Pan's flight over the nighttime London streets, as well as Never Land. It's the most interesting of all the Fantasyland rides (admittedly, this is kind of a low bar). I eventually took Celeste and Aurora on the ride a second time on our third day at the park, but we went as a family this time, and seeing Aurora's awestruck face as we took flight was a good reminder of why we came to Disneyland in the first place.

We managed to scare Aurora pretty early on. Our poor youngest daughter was not a big fan of the next few rides we visited...namely, the Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain. The rest of the family was in seventh heaven because neither of these rides had a line when we got there! Yay! And this was Nathan's first ride on Splash Mountain (since he doesn't always like water rides), and he loved it too! Yay! Unfortunately, the one-two punch of Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain proved too intense for our four-year-old, who was crying after exiting each ride.

However, our Splash Mountain "reaction shot" photo was priceless, and with any luck will go on our wall someday...as long as I remember to Photoshop that single rider dude out of the top of our "family picture"...

It was really interesting for me to see the girls' reactions to all the rides. Lorelai, for instance, loved the Haunted Mansion...it may have been her favorite ride of the whole trip. She enjoys ghosts, goblins, and spooks, and she has never really been scared by movies featuring any of those things. Celeste, on the other hand, was bothered by the Haunted Mansion because of the spooks & creepy crawlies...yet she loved Splash Mountain because of all the big drops, while Lorelai didn't like those as well.

It seems Lorelai was a bigger fan of the "imagination-fueled" rides, regardless of how scary they were supposed to be. For example, Lorelai also loved Pirates of the Caribbean, which is thematically very similar to Haunted Mansion. Celeste, on the other hand, preferred the pure adrenaline rush of the more intense rides. She loved all the rides that were coasters, that featured drops, spins, and other death-defying motion.

Speaking of coasters...

I was beyond thrilled to revisit Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, probably my favorite ride in Disneyland. It had been closed for over a year for refurbishment, but as luck would have it, it reopened the week we arrived in town! Hooray! Luckily, the whole family loved this one...except for poor Aurora, who thought the ride was going to be a "cute choo-choo ride," and ended up being rudely surprised when it turned out otherwise.

Thank goodness for Disneyland's many milder rides, such as the Winnie the Pooh ride and the Carousel in Fantasyland; those managed to cheer up our shell-shocked youngest child.

Celeste will not be the next King of England

And Aurora did enjoy some of the more exciting rides, such as Mr. Toad's Wild Ride...

Of course, I really don't know what the girls are doing to poor Mr. Toad here. Looks disgusting.

...and of course, the Mad Hatter's Teacups. Really, who doesn't like that ride?

Longest line of the day? Definitely the Matterhorn. Ugh. We waited for over an hour. And there were no FastPasses for the ride. Boo! Worst of all, the sled car design had been changed, so the ride had newer, more stringent height requirements, so Aurora couldn't ride it at all (not that she really wanted to). For this trip, once down the Matterhorn was plenty.

Most pleasant surprise? I'm sure the answer is different for each member of our family, but since I'm writing this blog, I'm going to say Star Tours. Nathan and I went on Star Tours when we visited Disneyland before our children were born; I remember it being a little outdated and hokey. It was under renovation last time we brought the family, so this was our first time visiting the newly updated version. It was much improved. Apparently, there are dozens of mission combos you can experience on the ride, so we went twice and got a completely different mission each time. It was a lot of fun, and the motion simulation technology was much better than it used to be. I'm no engineer, but I would love an explanation sometime of how it simulated extreme acceleration, when we were clearly still sitting in a little box that was shaking around.

Part of the reason this was a "pleasant" surprise was because our family essentially got free FastPasses for the ride, thanks to a nice Disneyland employee who noticed us planning out the rest of our afternoon. He handed us the extra FastPasses and sent us to the front of the line with a smile, telling us that "Magic Moments" like this were handed out at Disneyland all the time every day. Well, we were grateful to have it!

Aurora likes shooting at aliens. Our youngest may not have been the biggest fan of the thrill rides, but she got a huge kick out of the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters ride, in which the riders get to use their little "ray guns" to shoot at targets throughout the ride. She really loved all the rides with that kind of interactivity, and I believe she went on the Buzz Lightyear ride several times during our stay, each time getting more and more proud of all the aliens she killed.

We didn't see any princesses, but we did get to see Iron Man! I am soooo glad my girls are not so "girly" that they have to wait in line for hours just for the chance to say hello to an actress dressed up as a princess. They were (thankfully!) much more interested in going on lots of rides. Ironically, though, I was tempted to wait in a character line in a very different setting.

Innoventions is a large discovery/science interactive center in the middle of Tomorrowland. If it was anywhere but Disneyland, it would probably be packed with kids every day, but since there's so much other stuff to do at Disneyland, Innoventions is relatively free of crowds. As luck would have it, a bunch of Marvel Comics superheroes have also decided to squat there:

Those little boys (or girls...or their fangirl moms) who don't want to wait in a line to see Tinkerbell or Princess Jasmine now have another option! Thor was available to meet inside Innoventions, and so was Captain America (mainly due to the imminent release of his newest film). I have to admit, as a Marvel movies fan (and as a lady who has a bit of a crush on Cap), I was tempted to get in one of those lines. But Lorelai had other ideas...

...like meeting Jarvis, Tony Stark's superintelligent AI, and virtually "trying on" one of Iron Man's suits. She stood in place while the program was keyed to her movements, then she was able to "fly" the Iron Man suit around Tony's lab, and practice her target shooting as well. She loved it, and it was fun to watch her goof off with a multimillion-dollar piece of superhero hardware...virtually, of course.

 

I'm not sure which part of Disneyland the girls liked best. We did get to spend a lot of time in Tomorrowland (although Celeste was the only one who accompanied Daddy to Space Mountain, the centerpiece of that area). However, the girls also enjoyed stretching their legs at Tarzan's Tree House in Adventureland, and they all loved the Jungle Cruise (even though the line to get into it was crazy long):

Poor Nathan followed the girls up and down in the tree house, and his calves were screaming in protest for the rest of the day. Both Nathan and I wore tennis shoes ("good for walking," we assumed), but our feet were still killing us by the end of the day. We are just too old to have fun anymore, I guess.

We traveled back to the hotel briefly to have dinner (Crock Pot dinner in the hotel room for the win!!), but we managed to get back to the park in time to catch something we hadn't seen before...

The "princess" float, which featured Rapunzel's tower as the dominant feature.

...the parade! Usually we are off riding rides by this point, but the girls were happy to sit still for a while and watch all the big, expensive, carefully crafted whimsy on display. The music was really loud, but other than that it was pretty cool to watch. Simba the Lion King was on one of the floats, and I was pretty impressed at how articulated and animated he was...at least, for a fake lion perched high up on a float.

Tiana (from The Princess and the Frog) got her own float, though! She and Merida were the only two princesses we saw wandering randomly around the park for the whole trip.

We squeezed in a few more rides after the parade, then headed to our beds for the night, tired but excited about the day to come in Disney's California Adventure.

Our Spring Break Disney-cation, Part 1

EEK! It's been almost a month since I blogged anything. We have been very lax bloggers for the last month or two. In fairness, our family has been very busy; on the other hand, that means I have a ton of blogging to do in the next few weeks. Here goes nothing.

As I may have mentioned a few months ago, our family was planning its second trip to Disneyland. We had been meaning to take this trip for close to a year, with one thing or another putting us off. Last summer was difficult for us financially (we needed to treat the house for termites, our A/C unit went out, our garage door opener needed repairs...you know, "life" stuff that is annoying but necessary), and we had been playing "catch-up" ever since. We were worried that a trip to Disneyland would be more than our wallets could bear.

Unfortunately, Nathan and I are both the "worry a lot about money" types of people. Fortunately, only one of us seems to be in "freak-out" mode at a time; somehow, we manage to balance each other out and give each other the support, perspective, and encouragement we need. Over the course of a few months, both of us ultimately came to the same conclusion: yes, the Disneyland trip would be expensive, but the whole family would really enjoy it and we would have a lot of great memories from the experience. We have learned over the years that we will always have struggles with money...everyone does, after all! However, there is also something to be said for splurging once in a while and creating some awesome memories with our family. This was (hopefully) going to be one of those times!

We decided to take this trip during the first week of our kids' Spring Break. We'd leave on a Monday morning, spend three whole days at Disneyland, and head home that Friday. Since our school has a two-week Spring Break, that would give the girls an extra week to rest up after all the Disney excitement. So we packed our bags, got our affairs in order (haircuts, piano tunings, laundry, you name it!), and impatiently waited for Spring Break to come. And on Monday, March 17th, we hit the road!

We decided to take Interstate 8 west into San Diego, before turning north and heading into Los Angeles. We love San Diego for many reasons, so we were excited to take our "lunch break" there. Nathan found a beautiful city park, Mission Point Park, surrounded by water on three sides, with a little playground for the girls to play in. After driving through desert for several hours, it was a beautiful, welcome sight, and a good chance to stretch our legs.

 

After that lunch, we told ourselves we'd take our sweet time heading north. Turns out, our desire had nothing to do with our speed...driving between San Diego and Los Angeles is always going to be long, congested, and tedious. To break things up a bit, we decided to find a nice beach and take a stroll before getting to the hotel. The good news? We found a beautiful beach, Doheny State Beach, that was relatively deserted. The bad? It cost us $15 just for the privilege of parking there! Welcome to California, indeed.

In the end, we deemed the money well-spent; the view was spectacular and spiritually refreshing after a long dusty drive. It felt great to take our shoes off and get a little sandy between the toes. Well, it did for most of us: once again, our girls ended up scared of the ocean!

On our last trip to California, Aurora got caught in a wave and flipped over, soaking her through. She was traumatized by it, and apparently has never forgotten it, because she didn't want to get near the water this time! She warmed up to the beach experience over time, but she rarely ventured close enough to the water to get the least little bit wet.

This time, Celeste and Lorelai got to experience the mighty power of the ocean. In her eagerness to play on the beach, Celeste ran a little too fast (and too recklessly) toward the water's edge. As luck would have it, she was knocked on her face into the water by an oncoming wave. She was soaked. After that, she was more cautious about venturing near the water; she still looked like she was having a great time, for the most part.

Lorelai was also enjoying herself...until the waves almost washed one of her Crocs out to sea. That terrified her more than it should, and she thereafter viewed the ocean with distrust.

I guess our kids just aren't beach people! That may sound shocking to many who love the beach, but Nathan is no fan of the beach either, so maybe it's partly hereditary. I was raised in Colorado, and prefer mountains to beaches. Oh well, to each their own. At least they enjoyed playing in the sand, in a large mound well up the shore, away from the water...

 

After our "dangerous" beach trip, we finally drove the rest of the way to our hotel. This was a different hotel than the Anaheim Del Sol, which was our destination last time. That hotel was directly across the street from Disneyland's main entrance; you couldn't beat the location! This time, we got a better deal at the Stanford Inn & Suites, about a mile south on Harbor Boulevard. We got bus passes, though, so we didn't feel too far away from the action.

Since we weren't entering the park until the following day, we decided to take a quick visit to Downtown Disney, the large shopping complex just outside the park. Just like our last trip to Downtown Disney, our favorite stop was the ginormous Lego Store:

 

 

The Sleeping Beauty tableau outside the store was amazing! I love Dragon-Maleficent!

We enjoyed walking around for a bit, but we tired out quickly. We headed back to the hotel and snagged some Taco Bell to tide us over until the morning (we did not eat like kings on this vacation!). The hotel room wasn't especially large, but it was cozy and met our needs just fine. We all went to bed excited, eagerly awaiting the adventures to come the next day.