Disneyland!
Quote of the day: "Weeeeeee!"
Had a nice trip to DISNEYLAND today! We didn’t plan to go to Disneyland before we came to America but the opportunity looked to enticing. It was a overcast Monday so we thought that Disneyland wouldn’t be too crowded.
Franger left and visited a family friend of his so the group was reduced to four. This was advantageous for Disneyland as rides were typically either four or two seats so it worked out fine.
Our bus that dropped us off at Disneyland made us repeat the name of our return bus ‘Mickey and Friends’ about three or four times. It was quite funny having a big burley black man say ‘This is very important, do not forget – Mickey and Friends’. He didn’t appreciate me bursting out in laughter/giggling during his speech. When we got the entrance gate it was so cool seeing Disneyland again, quite a few things have changed since I came four years earlier. There is even McDonald’s in the park now! I’m pretty sure the boys were impressed with the look of Disneyland, though with all the lack of sleep didn’t help matters.
Fast passes are awesome. Normally a typical line up for a good ride is about one to one and a half hours. Whilst the waiting is entertaining and you have a great opportunity to talk to some American families, it can be a little of a downer. Luckily Disney has solved this since I was last there with the Fast Pass. You stick your entry ticket into a Fast Pass machine near the ride and it’ll spit you out a ticket with a time when you can come. You can’t choose the time when you want to go, but when you do go with a fast pass you wait time is about 15 minutes. Without the fast pass we wouldn’t have gone on as many rides as we did, thank god for fast passes!
My favourite ride was the Indiana Jones ride, it had a good mix of suspense and adrenaline. You’re in a big jeep driving around in a maze. Awesome special effects and animatronics – even a fireball inferno that we drove around. I had the biggest smile on that ride.
One of the awesome rides we went on was Splash Mountain. It’s a pretty typical water rafting ride, except like everything in Disney has heaps of animatronics and lots of work. I decided to make the ride a little more interesting by grabbing the water and splashing it on Wilko and Ben. This resulted in a battle of epic proportions, I’m amazed I came out as dry as I did – even though it did take a few hours to dry my pants afterwards.
Apologies about the quality of the photo, we took it in a hurry on the preview screen – though later the boys decided to grab some souvenir photos.
Unfortunately some of the bigger rides in Tomorrow Land (my favourite section) were shutdown due to major upgrades scheduled for re-opening in 2005. This was quite disappointing – the upgrades were for their 50th anniversary next year. I’m quite keen to find out what the upgrades are, though I don’t think I’ll be coming back to Disneyland any time soon.
In Disneyland there are heaps of various things to look at and buy. Lots of characters and happy faces, a real positive atmosphere. One of my favourite things about Disneyland are the bands and music. When the sun goes down, the bands cranks up. In Tomorrow Land there is a burger bar where a huge statue raises and underneath pops up a band called Voyager. Awesome music of most of the latest hits, really great to listen to munching on a cheeseburger.
After twelve hours of running a muck in Disneyland it was time to come home. At about 21:30 the lights of all of Disneyland dimmed and a huge fireworks show began. I never thought you could make fireworks in the shapes of mickey or hearts, but you can!
The magical kingdom was cool and everyone left with a little piece of Disney. Ben the most, he cursed me for leaving him alone in a Disney store and came out with a significantly lighter wallet.
Was a huge day – time for some rest… I had such a great time seeing Disneyland again, it’s such a ‘magical’ place. Hopefully Franger will be back in the morning so we don’t have to put out a ‘wanted’ poster.
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