fishing for words » Disneyland

(Mini) California Adventure

Patrick — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 03:54:14 +0000

While I do still enjoy the various rides, sights and sounds in Disneyland (and the smells in California Adventure, I find myself, as an adult, more than fascinated by the “behind the scenes” aspects of world imagined by Walt and his many imagineers.. For example, nowhere in Disneyland have I seen gum (or any junk) on the walkways. Dust doesn’t settle anywhere it’s not supposed to be. Every chain and pole in the queues are shiny. Pretty amazing…

We spent most of today in California Adventure, which seems to me to be more of an overgrown carnival and can’t compare to the “experience” of Disneyland. I did enjoy Soaring Over California and the Grizzly raft ride, but the remaining rides are tuned more towards the thrill seeker. (For those who know of inclination to avoid roller coasters, I did get on Screaming Over California for one ride. And one ride on this beast was enough for me. …oh, Chris also lied to me, saying that California Screaming didn’t turn upside down. It does. I also braved out the Hollywood Tower of Terror, which wasn’t all that bad. During half the day I spent at California Adventure, I did see the Muppets 3-D show, which was fun, thought not as funny as the original Muppet Show.

It was nice to take a long break that afternoon before returning to Disneyland, where we spent the evening chasing down FastPasses. That evening we again sat in front of It’s a Small World to watch the entire fireworks show. This time, the pathway into Toon Town was blocked off, I’m guessing to keep folks out from under the fireworks, as the trains were also stopped. In the end, we had missed only ten minutes or so the previous night, but it was good to see the whole show.

I knew we were in Los Angeles…

Patrick — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:26:02 +0000

…not because of the smog on the horizon. (However, it is relatively clear.)
…not because it is hot!
…not because the last 17 miles of our trip, because of traffic, took an hour.
…but because I found my car covered by a layer of ash from the various brush fires.

Southward Oh!

Patrick — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 03:33:37 +0000

Today we traversed much of the Golden State…which is quite “golden” right now. With these golden hills comes our season fires, and we saw one as we buzzed down the highway and evidence of others. Of course, we stopped at Split Pea Anderon’s in Santa Nella, where our short walk from the car to the restaurant hinted at the heat we would face. Still love that soup, though! While it took us about six hours to travel from Benicia to Los Angeles, we found ourselves in stop and go traffic at the junction of Hwy 5, 10, 101 and 60. It took us about an hour to travel the last 17 miles to our exit!

After a quick check in, it was off to Medieval Times. Everyone else in the family had been there and were quite excited. I didn’t know what to expect. I’ll tell you what, it is quite the experience. The food was good and the entertainment nonstop, with knights participating in full contact games in the arena, which was less than fifteen feet away from our seats. Then it was off to bed with visions of Mickey dancing in our heads.