Having essentially no queues to buy tickets and get in, we were on Main Street well before 10am when all of the attractions opened. We grabbed a coffee (that even tasted like coffee) and studied the map to work out where to go first. Chloe (Ian’s daughter) had given us a list of things that we had to do and they were pretty much in order too.
First stop was Star Tours. This is a group 3D movie experience where the seats move as well. It was good as C3PO and R2D2 navigated us around various galaxies. We then went to Buzz Lightyear’s Astro Blasters and attempted to save the Universe from the evil Emperor Zurg. We were doing quite well until our blasters stopped working half way around. The rest of Buzz’s army on the train were giving Zurg plenty though. It was fun. This brought us out in front of Space Mountain. We had no real idea what this was about but we went on it anyway. It is the closest thing to a roller coaster that we went on and a fair bit of it was in complete darkness too. I think that from Siobhan’s perspective it was good that we encountered that early on or she might have flagged it away. Still, apparently we had hit the highlights of Tomorrowland except for the Finding Nemo submarine voyage. We went there next. It was like the glass bottom boat that we went on in Fiji, where you are below the surface of the water. I have no idea whether the rest of the “submarine” went under. It was done very well with scenes adapted from Nemo projected under the water.
We then went through to Fantasyland. The first attraction was Mr Toad’s Wild Ride. We missed out on getting into Mr Badger’s car, but Siobhan got a photo of his profile outside. These rides were all aimed at a slightly younger audience. They still bought back memories of the characters though. As we came out at the start of Pinocchio’s Daring Journey and there was no queue, we went in there. Another fun reminder of a classic Disney tale. Peter Pan’s Flight was next, as we were sprinkled with fairy dust in order to fly over Victorian London and Never Never Land. The stars in this ride were actually more convincing than those in Space Mountain – or maybe it was just that we weren’t travelling as fast. Fantasyland has quite a few more of these types of rides – brief chances to glimpse moments of the old-fashioned Disney films, but the ones we did were enough to give us a taste.
From here we went on to Frontierland. Our first stop was getting our photo taken with Jesse from Toy Story. Unfortunately this was by one of the Disney photographers and not on our camera. There is apparently an easy web-based system where you can view and order these photos. If it worked. Never mind. We were then by a petting farm with the cutest miniature donkey. She was a real beauty, grey and white, but a little shy. As soon as she came over to see us we were surrounded by children so we moved out of the way pretty quickly. By now we were pretty hungry so we had a look at the Big Thunder Ranch BBQ. We decided not to stay – it turned out to be an all-you-can-eat style buffet at $21.99 per person and we really weren’t that hungry! Rancho del Zocalo Restaurante was a much better bet – we got a perfectly nice Mexican style meal for just over $20 for the both of us. Just before lunch we went to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. This was another fast-paced ride in train cars that whizzed through, over, under and around Thunder Mountain. While it was fast, this turned out to be Siobhan’s favourite ride. It was outside, in the glorious sunshine and you could see where the track was going (most of the time).
After Frontierland we moved on to New Orleans Square and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. This was great fun – we are sure it has been updated since the movies as Captain Jack pops up quite regularly and I am sure he did not look so much like Johnny Depp before the films were made!! The start is very lovely as the river runs past one of the restaurants so seated guests can watch the boats. After this we strolled to the sailing ship Colombia but just missed the sailing time. We compromised by taking a raft across to Tom Sawyer Island and wandering about the Pirate’s Lair. The canoes were not in use this time but we did see a beautiful green heron resting on them. Next we visited the Haunted Mansion. This was very cleverly done, but not scary at all. Disneyland is for children after all!
Critter Country was next, with the most exciting ride of the day. From time to time during our wander in New Orleans Square we would hear shrieks and screams. It turns out these came from Splash Mountain. We didn’t have too long a wait here, and as the queue meandered through, we saw the 50-foot drop that was the cause of the screams. The signs advised that you might get a bit wet, but based on the evidence of the people coming off the ride, it looked like it was nothing more than a few splashes. However, that was not the case. There were a few little dips and drops early on that saw water coming over the side of our log flume. When we went over the 50 foot drop though, our flume was nearly swamped! Maybe Disneyland is designed for kids or something, but when 6 large adults get into one of these flumes, they create more weight, inertia and mayhem – the kids don’t know what they’re missing. Things like soaked shorts and undies, soaked wallet, bottom of shirt and jacket able to be wrung out. Not that we got to complete the ride though. Somewhere towards the end all of the flumes got backed up and so we had to sit cold and wet with a cold breeze coming through for about 15mins while we were rescued. What was really annoying though was that we left this ride until about 4pm and so the sun was disappearing and the ability to get warm with it.
Anyway, we were at Disneyland where everything is wonderful. So when we got out and saw Eeyore and Winnie the Pooh we had to stop for more photos. The one with Eeyore had no official photographer so we have that photo on our camera. Unfortunately, the one with Winnie seems destined to never surface.
After that we went on the Jungle river ride – our last for the day. This seemed quite dated, although the patter of the river boat guide was mildly entertaining. Lame pun followed lame pun leaving us groaning in our seats, while some of the other Asian passengers simply looked on bewildered.
We then went shopping for souvenirs for the kids – hi kids, I know we didn’t take you to Disneyland but here at least is something so that you can pretend that you’ve been there. We then had dinner at the ESPNzone, which is a huge sports bar. That’s where they serve beer in handles that must hold between 800mls and 1 litre. What good is that much beer if it’s pretty average? Then we were back on the bus to LAX where Jo picked us up.
So we didn’t see everything at Disneyland but we saw enough. A very fun day – see the pics at: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2918885650316.2125451.1206003341&type=3&l=cc0d5acfb2
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