LA Holiday - Disneyland

So we had 3 mammoth days (Tues 26th, Thurs 28th and Fri 29th May) at Disneyland and California Park which were awesome. California Park is the newest addition to The Walt Disney Company, it opened in 2001, right across from Disneyland. I would recommend for any one going to these parks that you should have at least 3 days here, with only 2 of us I think this was a perfect amount of time. I would imagine if you had more people that you would need more time here. So our first day on the Tuesday was completely at Disneyland. It was a long 13 hour day. Just a hint to anyone planning on going to Disneyland make sure you utilise the fast pass that they have for certain rides, it is FREE, and helps you to get to rides quicker. Wish we had know this for the first day. There is only one catch you can only have one fast pass at a time.

Anyway back to the fun of Disneyland!! First stop was Tomorrow land for an inside roller coaster adventure and Shooting Z's (literally) at the Buzz light year ride, this was really cool the first interactive ride I have been on and worth it. You sit in the ride and shoot at the Z's with your gun to earn points, shame I couldn't beat Cam no matter how hard I tried, silly boys always better at those sort of things. Also at the end they had a computer that you could send your picture they took of you with your game faces on, to your email (really cool). We didn't even know it had been taken.

The teacups were one of the must do's as Cam hadn't been here before and surprisingly I enjoyed them. All I remember from last time was that they were slow and hard to move. So with my expectations low we boarded the teacups, perhaps last time was preparing me for this time. Turns out this time they seemed easier to turn and not so slow after all, don't know how fast everyone else was going as we could hardly see them as we spun furiously around. Maybe it was the energy Cam had gained from all the cotton candy.

These twirling adventures called for some slower rides, so we decided to have a trip on the story book boat and the famous "its a small world after all" ride. This was actually really well done, it has recently been refurbished and now features a small touch of Kiwi in it, which was really exciting. I think we ended up going on pretty much every ride this first day in Disneyland, we thought we would go hard one day in each park and then relax on our final day which was lucky as this day happened to be the busiest day of all.

Wednesday evening we decided to relax again for the day as the bus to Medieval times picked us up at 4.50pm and kind of ruined any plans to go to a theme park. We did a little shopping, 2 pairs of sketchers later (second pair half price, who could resist) we headed home before heading out for our dinner and show at Medieval Times. It was a tough choice between this show and a pirate show but due to recommendations we went with this one. It was good but I would say I have seen better. The meal however was awesome, no utensils necessary and half a chicken later there was a mess everywhere. The show was well done with jousting and other medieval games and stunts, except our silly knight didn't follow through with our expectations and fell to another component.

Thursday began as a magic morning at Disneyland. A magic morning means you get to enter the park, with other people of course, an hour before the park opens. We decided to go here first today, then switch over to California Park at 10am when it opened for the day. Turns out we picked the best day to do this as it was very quiet for Disneyland standards, we waited for one particular ride for 40mins, other than this 20 mins was the longest we ever waited, it was awesome.

Just a few fun photos:

California park is quite different to Disneyland I thought, has similar shows and the same happy feeling about it but its just different. The themes and rides are different. I get the feeling this is aimed more toward older children and adults. I found the rides were more generic and less Disney, but I still liked them. Plus they produced more adrenalin than Disneyland rides. I had 2 favourite rides here including the Hollywood Tower Hotel and the Toy story rides. Both very different to what I have experienced before and I think this was the reason I like them the most. The Hollywood Tower is awesome, however if you don't like elevators that work properly then I don't recommend this ride. The toy story is another interactive ride where you wear 3D glasses and play 5 different games along the way also very cool. This was the ride with the longest wait time, well worth it though.

Tonight we watched the Disney parade. This sort of fun entertainment really is what makes this place "the happiest place on earth". You get to sing and dance in the streets and get to see all your favourite Disney characters, my kind of party. I don't think anyone could stand here and watch this and not feel happy. Today we also got to meet Mickey it really was a magic day.

For our final day in Disneyland and Los Angeles we just cruised around, going on a few things we hadn't done, going on rides we enjoyed again and taking more photos. We had lunch at a restaurant that we had to book the day before, turns out it was very popular. It is in the dark with candle light only, it also happens to be the scene for the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. So your sitting there eating while people are drifting past in boats on a ride. Such a good idea. Finally tonight we set aside for seeing the fireworks display, we had seen it several times on the balcony of our hotel, but tonight we got to actually witnessed the storyline of the fireworks. They were very well done. Disneyland opened till 12am this night however we left about 10/10.30ish as we had to get up at 4.30 am for our flight to Vancouver.

All in all this was a tiring, busy, fun and exciting holiday. Just how it should be on holiday I guess, getting the best out of the time you have there.