Disneyland Day 2

On Tuesday we had high hopes of getting to the park early...as part of our park-hopper pass we had one "early morning" into the park. However, after our late night on Monday, we weren't nearly as early as we had hoped! We ended up getting away from the hotel at about 9 am. We headed over to Disneyland with the intention of getting on some of the bigger rides that usually have long line-ups later in the day.

First, showing off the new Mickey ears...



First stop was the Matterhorn. This has always been one of my favourite rides and we were sure Amanda would love it. We were right! She actually rode it twice – this was where we learned about the rider switch pass. Because we had Sam with us, and he couldn't ride (duh!), we both waited in the line – only about 20 minutes – and then when we got to the front, Amanda and I rode together. Then when we got off the ride, Jeff went right on and Amanda went with him! So she got two rides in a row and we only had to wait in the line once. We used this quite a few more times over the course of the trip!

Next we headed over to It's A Small World. This ride, too, has been recently overhauled and the lines for it were huge! However, in the morning we waited only about 10 minutes so we were pretty happy with that! It was fun trying to spot the "new" characters they have added...we saw Ariel and her friends, Aladdin and Jasmine, Nemo and friends, and several others. Sam also seemed to really like this one – so many things to look at!


After that the lines started to get long at Disneyland, so we decided to head over to California Adventure for awhile. This was my first visit and I thought the park was fun! The rides are definitely geared to older visitors for the most part, but my favourite part was just walking around and seeing the funny signs and inside jokes posted everywhere – for example:


We did a quick walk-around in the Hollywood Backlot section of the park, and managed to fit in one ride –Mike & Sully to the Rescue. It was pretty neat, especially the part with all the doors...they managed to make it look like the place was huge!

Next we headed back to the hotel, because we had a surprise planned for Amanda – lunch at Ariel's Grotto! We had to get her outfitted in her beautiful Ariel costume before heading back to California Adventure for lunch at 1:50 pm (precisely, on the nose!). They definitely run the lunch like a well-oiled machine...we were lined up on the winding staircase in a specific order so each child would get a turn with Ariel. Then we were shown to our table and the princesses started arriving fast and furious...only a few minutes between each one! It was a bit crazy at the beginning as we were trying to get both kids settled (and Sam was a bit grumpy), order our food, and take pictures/get autographs from all the princesses.






The good news was that the food was pretty good here!



After lunch we were all filled up and ready to do some more exploring at California Adventure! We headed over to Soarin' Over California, which Amanda again got to ride twice. It was a short ride, but fun – we liked how they added special effects to the video, like the smell of oranges when we were flying over the orange groves. I especially liked the introductory video before we got on the ride – funny!

Next we headed over to the middle of the park to see the Pixar Play Parade. Luckily we ran into Darryl again, and he had scoped out excellent seats right in front and had just texted Jeff to find out if we wanted to join them! So we were very lucky to get great seats for the parade with no effort on our parts! We settled in for a bit of a wait and then enjoyed the parade.




After the parade Sam was in need of some refueling, so Jeff and Amanda headed over to the Bugs' World area while Sam and I hung out in the parents' room for a bit. Amanda enjoyed riding Flik's Flyers and Francis' Ladybug Boogie, and cooling off in the Princess Dot Puddle Park (it was HOT that day!).


At this point it was starting to get pretty late and we needed some dinner, despite our very late and filling lunch! So we decided to do one last ride at California Adventure, using our FastPasses for Grizzly River Run. Amanda rode twice again, and this was probably her favourite ride of all! There are big round rafts that you ride on with 8 people per raft. This one was definitely a soaker! Amanda was so thrilled that she got drenched on her first ride with Jeff, then couldn't wait to go again with me...in fact, she insisted on sitting right by the entrance to the raft where she would get the wettest! The only downside was they were having some technical problems when we were on the ride, so we spent a lot of time waiting for the rafts ahead of us to clear. I'd love to ride it again when it's working properly!



We made one final stop before ending the day – we stopped back at Disneyland for a ride on the Mad Tea Party. I was a bit reluctant...I hadn't been on it before, but I know I'm not great with spinny rides. It was OK, but I was very dizzy after getting off. Lesson learned – no more spinny rides for Jen!


That was about all the excitement we could handle for the day! We walked back to the hotel, stopping for take-out Tony Roma's on the way home. Another very busy day!