Day 1 – January 5th, 2016 – Travel Day Part One!

The day before we left, we woke up extra early to drop our dogs off at the kennel before going to work for the day. We take them to one that is about a half hour drive away, and they are only open during certain hours, so we knew there wouldn’t be time after work while we were trying to finish packing, and our flight left early the next morning so no time then either. I’m always sad saying goodbye to them, but I was just so excited that I was going to be in Disney by the next day!

On our travel day, our alarm went at 4am. I am NOT a morning person, but that morning I had no problem getting out of bed – we were going to WDW! We had most of our packing complete the night before, so we were on the road by 5, and had a very quick and easy drive to the airport. Traveling can sometimes be a bit of a risk in January, but lucky for us there were no storms in the forecast! We checked our car in at our preferred parking lot by 5:30, and waited less than two minutes before a shuttle bus to the terminal had pulled up. We had decided to splurge and reserve valet parking, so it’s the last stop and the bus was full by the time we got on, so we had to stand. We were the only ones on the bus going to the US Terminal of the airport, so we were the last ones off the bus. Luke had checked us in online, so we used the kiosk to print off our baggage tags, went to the desk to get our boarding passes, and off to customs! Security was really quiet, we were the only people in our line. Once we got to customs there was only one other person using the electronic kiosks, so we walked right up to one. Once it printed off our receipt, we took it up to an extremely friendly customs agent who made a few jokes with me about my hair colour, and then we were through! While we were looking around the duty free store, I remembered that I had forgot my headphones at home, boo! So I had to go to the tech store and spend my first $20 of the trip. Oh well, such is life.

We decided to grab some Quiznos for breakfast – turkey, swiss and ranch on white bread for me and a honey chicken club on whole wheat for Luke. Sorry, no pictures of that meal. By the time we finished eating it was still only 6:30 – our flight didn’t leave until 8. We were expecting security and customs to take a bit longer…but better to be early than risk missing the flight. While we were waiting, Luke went to Starbucks with a gift card we had found on the weekend to get himself a coffee and a Very Berry Hibiscus for me.

Our flight to Minneapolis/St.Paul left on time, even with de-icing. The flight offered free Wi-Fi and had a decent selection of free movies to watch, so we watched the original Jurassic Park (which I had never seen…).

We ended up landing early in Minneapolis, so we had plenty of time to get to our next gate (we were originally worried we might be cutting it close). Our next flight was to Detroit, and it was packed. It left a few minutes late, but made up the time in the air and ended up landing early as well. We had trouble getting the Wi-Fi to work on this plane, so we just played games on Luke’s iPad. I was really impressed by the Delta Terminal at the Detroit airport, I thought it was really nice! I was way too entertained by watching the mini-monorail thing inside the terminal…

Our flight from there to Orlando was close to full, but not 100%. There were actually less children on it then I thought there would be. The flight left on time, and arrived in Orlando on time. We spent our time on that flight getting into the Disney mood by watching Brave (we’re big Pixar fans).

After our quick ride on the fake monorail, we saw our first sign of Disney – the Disney Store in the airport!

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…

April 17, 2015

We did very little research on Disney before going to California for the first time, it was not a destination at the top of our list. Luckily we went during a slower time of the year; in April after all spring breaks and Easter breaks were over, but before school let out for the summer. We knew we had Friday and Sunday free to check out Disney parks on the weekend we went, so we bought a 2-day pass (no parkhopper, we figured one park per day would be fine for our first trip).  Here’s the link to the post about our overall trip 🙂

Friday we decided to check out California Adventure. 

Most Disney people will swear you have be there at rope drop. I am not a morning person, especially when I’m on vacation, so that didn’t happen. I think we arrived at the gate around 10:30 – our hotel was only about a 15 minute walk from the entrance. As soon as we entered the park, we stopped for a quick photo with Pluto – my first Disney character meet and greet!

After meeting a giant dog, we went and grabbed Fastpasses for Radiator Springs Racers, as instructed by one of my co-workers in the two days we had to plan this trip. This kiosk is located close to A Bug’s Life Land, so we decided to start our day there. 

I had only ever watched A Bug’s Life once, and it was years ago, so I didn’t remember anything about it. (I know, I’m the worst Disney person ever – but don’t worry, I watched it shortly after getting home). But the decor was not lost on me, I thought it was pretty awesome!

The first ride we went on was Flik’s Flyers, because the lineup looked super short. We only ended up waiting maybe 5 minutes before getting on the ride. Luke was really hoping for the Chinese Food box, but we ended up sitting in the Raisin box. This was a very tame ride, the perfect way to start the day 🙂

From there we headed over to Francis’ Ladybug Boogie, where you sit in a ladybug that spins around (the speed depends on how fast you spin the wheel in the centre, very much like the teacups at Disneyland). We had another wait that was less than 5 minutes.

Next up – Tuck and Roll’s Drive ‘Em Buggies. Again, another ride we basically walked on to. This is essentially just bumper cars, but all the cars are designed to look like Tuck and Roll, the Hungarian pillbugs. There are little speakers inside each car that sound like them too! My car worked great, but Luke’s did not unfortunately.

Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train was next. This is a children’s slow-moving train ride narrated by everyone’s favourite caterpillar as he tells you about his favourite food. It was cute, and we didn’t even care that we were the only ones on the ride without kids. We also walked straight onto this ride with no wait. And of course there was giant candy corn!

Before we went I had told Luke I was not going on the Tower of Terror, I was not a fan of free-falling rides. We walked over to see the building anyways, and saw that there was only a 15 minute wait. Luke really wanted to do it, so I reluctantly agreed. Turns out I loved it! Worth noting – we did not buy any of our on-ride photos on this trip, so any you see are pictures I took with my phone haha.

At this point, we had already been on 5 rides – and had only been in the park for about an hour. We were doing so well! 

After leaving Tower of Terror, we walked around the Hollywood Land area, where we saw these guys performing while driving around in this old car. 

We then headed towards Monsters Inc – Mike & Sully to the Rescue. I don’t have any pictures of the ride itself, but it’s a slow-moving ride that Luke liked to describe as a Cole’s Notes version of the movie. Cute, nothing like the previous ride we had been on (TOT) but it was worth seeing for us – we both love Pixar movies. It also had a fairly short line, we waited under 10 minutes for it.

Next on our list was to head to the Grizzly Peak area to ride Grizzly River Run. It was a really fantastic water ride, but I had my camera and phone tucked safely into a plastic baggie, hence no pictures. This was one of our longest waits of the day, I think we had to wait close to half an hour before getting on this ride. Sadly Soarin’ was closed for refurbishment, so we didn’t get to go on that (we’re pretty much destined to never get on that ride…)

At this point we started heading towards the Paradise Pier area – how freaking beautiful is this place?! We were also starting to feel a little hungry so Luke grabbed a turkey leg (review here). 

I knew I had no interest in a turkey leg, so I found the Paradise Garden Grill (review HERE).

After our snack, we decided to go on the Golden Zephyr – which is just a spaceship looking thing that spins you around – almost old-school carnival-like. It doesn’t spin too fast, and would be safe for almost everyone. It’s kind of boring, and I don’t feel the need to go on this every trip.

We noticed a short line for Goofy’s Sky School Roller Coaster, so we jumped into that line. In less than 10 minutes, we were twisting and turning with Goofy! This ride was ok, it’s essentially a crazy mouse style roller coaster with some sharp turns.