We’re home! It’s hot! ‘Nuff said about Arizona.
We had a good time in Disneyland. As I said in yesterday’s post, I kept making mental notes of things to blog about all day. I’m not sure how it happened, but we might have gotten lost in the Disneyland parking lot. We entered on the east side, and paid our $12 (yikes!) fee. The cheerful attendant told us to follow the signs around the park to the parking structure on the west side, where we would catch the tram to the entrance. We followed the road, and eventually found ourselves back at Ball Avenue. We had to make a U-turn back into the parking garage. But apparently, that is the only way to get there. Several cars were on the same route, and we even looked for another way when we came back in the afternoon after our hotel break, and there simply isn’t one. Seems like Disney would address that, or close the east entrance and just route everyone into the garage entrance from Ball Rd.
The park was really crowded, but the ride lines were not bad. We had a lot of fun in the morning, and along about 11:00, Glenda got a text message from a friend of her daughter’s who works for Disney. He is one of the web designers for disneyland.com. He had just found out we were at the park and wanted to meet up with us for lunch. We met him for lunch in Downtown Disney and afterwards, he walked us back over to California Adventure where he got us park hopper tickets for free! We had been dying to ride “Soarin'”, but didn’t want to spend the extra money to do both parks. We actually had a ton of fun in C.A. and spent several hours there. We rode “Soarin'” twice and several other rides including “Toy Story”, which is the newest ride at Disney. It’s very similar to Buzz Lightyear, but in 4D.
When we came off “Soarin'” the first time, we were looking the map over and a Cast Member stepped over and asked us if he could help us. We thanked him and explained we were just figuring out where the rides we wanted to check out were located. He grabbed my map and proceeded to give us a complete description of each and every ride in the park. I rolled my eyes over his head at Glenda twice, tried to gently pull my map back from him, considered being rude and walking away, but in the end just stood there and took it. After all, he was just trying to be helpful, but he went overboard just a bit. No, actually a lot!
We were plumb tuckered out by 10:30 and decided to call it a day. On our way out of Disneyland, we stopped to take a quick look at the 50 Years of Disney exhibit, and it was fascinating. They had a map of Walt Disney’s original concept of the park which included Mickey Mouse Island and Lilliputian Land. There were old ticket books, lots of photos and documents, and a model of the Space Mountain track without the mountain. It’s quite a mild roller coaster when you see it that way. It’s truly the dark that makes it so exciting. We stayed to watch the movie (hosted by Steve Martin and Donald Duck) and it was one of the highlights of our day.
We slept like logs last night and didn’t wake up until 8:15 this morning. We got on the road around 11:00 and finally started our audio book, The Pillars of the Earth. We only got through 4 of the 32 CDs, but it is so good we are both definitely going to listen to the rest of it on our own.
We took I-10 all the way home and didn’t get lost once.
Welcome home, and it’s not really hot; it is humid, as we are probably going to get rain before the end of the week–some places will get it, but if I were a gamblin’ woman, I would bet that it will skip Power and Main. It didn’t even get to 110º today. That’s the mark we use this year to designate “hot”.
It sounds like you enjoyed yourself! I am glad you are home safe!
How wonderful to be able park hop & see much more of the Disneyland experience. Guess you had to get lost in the parking garage which made it four for four, didn’t it? 🙂 Glad you’re home safe & sound!
I’ve never been to California Adventure. I thought it was all thrill rides, like roller coasters. Are there gentle rides there too?
Today is a lot cooler, and partially overcast. How wonderful!
I haven’t been inside Disneyland or CA in over 13 years. It’s just not worth the price or the pain of the crowds to me.
Daryl, there are lots of thrill rides and lots of kiddie rides at C.A. There are a few in-between rides. Glenda’s Disney friend told us there are Imagineers currently working on redeveloping the entire park because it is not doing well. So we should see many changes in the coming years.
As we were leaving Disneyland for lunch, there was an old man leaving, too. The cast member tried to give him a re-entry handstamp, and he said “No, I’m not coming back. I hate it here. It’s too crowded and I don’t like the rides.” Sounds like you and he would have made a good team, Don.
I like the rides but I hate the crowds and the price.
California Adventure has a couple of really cool rides. The rest of it is poorly designed. It’s filled with slow loaders and rides that aren’t much better than carnival rides. But Soarin’ is worth the price of the Park Hopper!
Uncle Don, if you do some research you can really make the most of your time and money. I actually enjoy planning my trip almost as much as the actual trip! It’s a challenge to try and find out all the tips that keep you scooting around bottlenecks and at the head of the line, while all the other poor schmucks are stuck in the crowds 🙂
My favorite place to go is Disneyland. Now that Jenny works two jobs with Disney, (Disney Store in Northridge Mall and Disney Company Child Care in Burbank) I can have her drive me. Although, she only has minimum store discount so far.
Robin: You’ve probably got some tricks for the crowds but how do you bring the price down to something manageable?
For the past few years, Chris and Dayna have been buying annual passes for Six Flags. They get some kind of special deal from somewhere. It makes it reasonable if you use them just a couple times, and they all like the rides there so go several times a year. That is one way to bring the cost down.
Jenny did Disneyland the right way yesterday. Before she entered the park she had saved about $200. How? Well, she had 3 free tickets because she works for Disney and she got free parking. She also saved on pretty much everything in the park. I might go if I could get in free and got a discount on everything.
Well, there you go. You just need to go with Jenny in mid December, and she’ll get you in for free and there will be no crowds. Once inside, you don’t have to spend a dime. I bought a churro and Glenda got some grapes. Oh yeah, we got some chowder for dinner. We left the park for lunch. That’s all we spent over the cost of our first ticket (which we wouldn’t have bought if we had met up with Bryan first!) Seems like your issues for not going to Disneyland are all solved.
Season passes to six flags cost less then 2 day passes. it’s around $100 for the one in gurnee.