April 17, 2015

After our ride on Goofy’s Sky School, we went on the Silly Symphony Swings – a classic carnival staple! It’s a simple ride, but it’s one I’ve always loved and this was no exception. 

Next up was The Little Mermaid – Ariel’s Undersea Adventure. This was another Cole’s Notes version of a ride, which involved sitting in a large oversized sea-shell while it took you through a dark, animatronic-filled re-telling of the story. I’d have to say my favourite part was the two 20-something guys in the shell ahead of us who were belting out “Under the Sea” at the top of their lungs.

At this point in the day, we decided to make our way over to Cars Land as it was getting close to our fastpass time for Radiator Springs Racers.

We decided to go on Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree first, which I thought was really cute. You sit in a little trailer being pulled by a tractor (like the ones that Mater takes Lightning McQueen to tip over in the middle of the night) and it moves around like a square dance while Mater sings.

There’s  a photo opportunity just outside this ride, which is pretty adorable, and had no line. 

I loved the attention to detail in Cars Land! We didn’t get a chance to on this trip, but I’d love to eat at Flo’s some day when we go back, it looked so cute!

We passed the statue for Stanley on our way to use our fast-passes, and of course I had to take a picture.

It was then time to ride the Radiator Springs Racers – the darling of rides at the California Adventure Park. We were there during a fairly slow time of year, and were walking on to most rides, and this one had a posted wait time of 75 minutes. Thank goodness for fastpasses! We ended up waiting about 10 minutes even with our passes, but it was so worth it! What an amazing ride! The animatronics were great, the scenery was fantastic – this was impressive. After getting off, Luke and I were talking about how much that ride must have cost to build – “That must have cost Disney like $20 million to make!”. Turns out we have no idea how much building a ride costs – according to google that ride actually cost $200 million to make – we were only off by a bit haha.

We decided we were getting thirsty, and could use a drink. I also knew I wanted to buy at least one souvenir mug, and I had seen a few people with the ones from the Cozy Cone Motel over the course of the day and I knew it had to be that one.

So, I bought the 16oz souvenir cone mug filled with root beer for $8.99 and Luke got the 24oz cone filled with coke for $11.99. It was pretty difficult for us to admit we had just spend $20US on two non-alcoholic drinks, but look at how stinking adorable these mugs are! After finishing them, we washed them out in the bathroom so they wouldn’t be sticky, and we did bring them back to Canada with us 🙂 We have used them a few times since buying them.

After leaving Cars Land we walked around the wharf again.

We stopped to watch a performance by the green men from Toy Story!

We walked through the bakery (where we got to taste some delicious sourdough bread) and then we headed towards Toy Story Mania. It had long lines all day, but we decided to just suck it up and wait, and we’d have good luck with lineups up to that point. The posted wait time said 30 minutes, I think it ended up being closer to 40 or 45 though. It was fun! I don’t like waiting that long for rides, but I’m glad we did. Of course, Luke beat me, but just barely.

We then walked back over to Hollywood Land, where Luke enjoyed the name of this hot dog quick-serve location. 

We wanted to check out Turtle Talk with Crush, but we had no idea what it was. We finally got into the theatre, and it was really cute, but not something we’d do again. It is great for kids though, they were all loving it. We actually cut out a little early as we wanted to watch the Pixar Parade. We ended up with a great spot to watch the parade. As I’ve mentioned before, Luke and I love Pixar movies so we thought this parade was fantastic! My pictures ended up mixed up, so they are probably not in the correct order of the parade, but you’ll get the idea.

Ooohhhh! The chosen ones!

After the parade, we still had a bit of time before our dining reservation so headed to the Mickey Ferris Wheel. We decided to hop in the stationary gondola line, as it had a posted wait time of 10 minutes, but the swinging one had a wait time of 35 minutes. I guess the swinging one is a little too intense for a lot of people, because we watched while they washed the vomit out of 2 different swinging gondolas. This made our wait time to be pushed closer to 20 minutes, so I was starting to worry that we would be late for our reservation. Turns out it was fine, we had to wait about 10 minutes for a table to be cleared off for us once we arrived at Wine Country Trattoria.

Our night ended with World of Colour – a water, music and lights show that lasts almost half an hour over the water in Paradise Pier. It was unbelievable, and well worth the dining reservation for our front-row centre viewpoint. The following pictures are of the pier lit up while we were waiting for the show to start. I didn’t actually take any pictures of the show itself, I was so caught up in the beauty of it.

Overall, I think we did a good job of covering the park – we were able to cover almost every attraction in the park, minus only a few – Soarin’ was closed for refurbishment, and we didn’t go on King Triton’s Carousel or California Screamin’ Roller Coaster (we had even grabbed fastpasses for this, but I couldn’t work up the courage to get on it after watching it – I’ve never been on a roller coaster that goes upside down. I know, I’m a wimp. Maybe one day…