Goin' Back To Cali

Yesterday we went to Disney's California Adventure. Good Times!!! I did several tweets while we were there, but none of them seemed to work. Disney phone filters???



The back story on how we came to be going to California Adventure: Disney has been doing commercials locally about Disney is giving free admission to both parks on your birthday. A brilliant ploy, it is my contention that Disney could let everyone in free and still make good money. This way, I would guess on average there are at least 2 paying guests for every birthday pass they give away. Of course, the youngest sees these commercials and says that's what he wants to do!!! I considered doing it, they are having the 2 parks deal for residents these days. I mentioned this to one of my co-workers, and she tells me that her nephew works there and can get us in gratis!!! Whoo hooo, I'm there!!!



Both the boys stated preference to go to California Adventure. I knew one of the main reasons the younger wanted to go there was to ride on the ferris wheel there, the Sun Wheel. It's pretty cool, 2 of every 3 cars are on elliptical tracks, and slide from the outside to the inside as the wheel rotates, causing it to swing wildly, and considerably increasing the excitement. Alas, it was under some sort of construction!!! All the cars are off, and it is sheathed in scaffolding. The conceptual pictures have Mickey's head in place of the sun in the center.



The lagoon has been drained, and there are a lot of barriers up, too. 512 corner was blocked off, but at least it's still there.



Took everybody to Soaring over California, a large hang glider simulator, for the first ride. The youngest had never been on this ride, and he now has a new favorite!!! From there we went to the river raft ride and got fairly soaked. We were aiming for the Sun Wheel, but stopped for the Golden Zephyr and Jumping Jellyfish rides along the way. Also, we realized that it wasn't working. The Jellyfish ride we'd never been on before.



Actually, there are several attractions there we've never been on or seen. We also rode Mulholland Madness for the first time, and saw the Aladdin stage show.



Another new addition is the Toy Story Midway Mania ride. You ride through, while wearing 3-D glasses, and shoot a ball launcher gun (simulated) at various targets. Here's a shot of the older boy's and my scores. I won the beaver!!! My wife would not allow me to have another beaver at our house. Both of our accuracy levels were fairly low, but our scores were higher. My wife and the younger both got much lower scores, but their accuracy was something like 72% and 68%!!!



We managed to ride the river raft ride again, and the big coaster (California Screaming, the second best Disney coaster in my opinion), as well as a couple spins on the Jumping Jellyfish, rode the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (didn't seem to have too many long drops on my ride) and got to see the parade. The weather was quite nice, but cooled off in the evening. Also, the park wasn't too crowded.



Our passes were good for both parks, and as California Adventure was closing, the older boy had the brilliant idea to go over to Disneyland for some bread bowl gumbo. We did just that, and then rode Pirates of the Caribbean, which is directly below that, and had almost no line. After that we proceeded to the newly refurbished Small World to check it out. They split us into two rows, and halfway through I looked around at the younger, and he had a look on his face like, "Enough with the song already!!!" I looked again a moment later, and he shrugged at me. It was pretty comical. It was near midnight when we finally left, and with the hour of lost sleep last night, we slept fairly late this morning!!!