California Day Three!

On Wednesday we decided to devote the whole day to California Adventure. I was pretty excited to go there, because its a fairly new park, and from what I've been told, really cool! And boy, that sure is true! It was really nice because it wasn't crowded at all (unlike Disneyland), and the longest we had to wait in line was about 10 minutes. So where to begin...

As to stick with tradition of the last two posts, here's a picture of me and michael, but since you're probably getting bored of just the typical big cheesy smile pictures, I'll post a little bit different of one (You won't see most of the pictures I took, but half of them feature me making different faces at the camera...welcome to my life!) :-D We're on the tram again, ready for another exciting day in the happiest place on earth!

When we first got into Cali Adventure, we went over to get a fast pass for Soaring Over California, which Cindy and AJ just raved about! We also got a fast pass for Grizzly River Run, because it is disconnected from the fast pass system (thanks Ridemax for the tip!). Since we had a little bit of time before we could use those fast passes, we headed over to an area that seemed to have a lot of fun looking rides!

The first ride we decided to go on was something called the Orange Stinger...or maybe it was stringer. Anyways, you just sit in these seats and fly around..seems harmless enough right? Oh my goodness, my dad sure was smart when he opted out of this one! I don't normally get sick on rides, but after this one, I was so dizzy and felt like I was going to puke! It definitely wasn't the nice and easy ride we were expecting!






After the orange ride, we spotted a little rollercoaster, and since the wait was only 10 minutes (if you can't tell, we don't ride rides with long waits!), we decided to go on it! It was called Mullholland Madness...It was full of twists and turns! But it was still more calm then the horrible orange ride! It was kind of funny cuz my dad's hat (which gave us tons of trouble on this trip...more on that later!) flew off his head, and I caught it! Its similar to what happened last summer at elitches, when AJ's hat flew off while we were on a crazy rollercoaster, and it hit Diana! What are the chances of that happening?

Well, around this time, we had about 15 minutes left til we went to get in line for a performance of Aladdin, so we browsed some of the shops. We found this cute little sunglass shop, and lets be honest, who can resist something like that! okay..maybe the fact that it was airconditioned also drew us in :) Anyways, I decided to try on tons of different sunglasses, and you guessed it, took pictures of myself with them! Of course we didn't buy any cuz they were pretty expensive, and I'm sure the lady in the shop was pretty happy when we left...even though I don't understand why! Who wouldn't want to watch someone trying on millions of sunglasses and taking self portraits?!




We were just about to find our way to Aladdin, when we spotted everyones favorite mouse! The line to see him was short, so we hopped right in! I just love seeing all the Disney characters! They are so much fun and full of energy. This Mickey kissed me on the hand...he was totally in love with me ;-) I think its fun how at california adventure, all the disney characters like mickey and donald, are dressed up in vacationing clothes!




This is the entrance to Hollywood Pictures backlot..this place is so cool! It's set up to look a lot like Hollywood, and has all types of things in it from smoothie shops to huge theatres were amazing performances are put on! I wish we could have spent more time exploring in here!





So I mentioned a few times earlier about how we were going to go see Aladdin...Well we had several people tell us that we absolutely had to go see a 45 minute performance of Aladdin that shows a few times a day in California Adventure..I have to say, i COMPLETELY agree. It was absolutely amazing. The actors were spectacular, and the music was equally amazing. The BEST part of the whole show was the Genie...he was HILARIOUS (yes, I feel the need to captilize random words to emphasize their importance). He kept saying all these funny jokes pertaining to current affairs throughout the world...it was a hoot. It was definitely a broadway quality perfomance..not to mention the smokin hot guy playing Aladdin ;-) I took a couple of videos during the performance...so Enjoy! In the second video, the flying carpet kept disappearing because it was pitch dark...I wasn't just being a bad camera person!

After leaving the nice, air conditioned theatre that Aladdin was in, we were disappointed to find that a sudden cloud cover hadn't appeared, and yep, it was still over 100 degrees outside. Luckily, it was time for Grizzly River Run! This ride was like a mini white water rafting trip! Which might be good practice for me since I'll be going white water rafting this Saturday for youth conference (you can definitely expect a blog about that, be assured!). This was SUCH a nice refreshing ride! We had this nice couple on our boat that gave us some suggestions for rides to go on at both parks, so it was fun! The water was very cold, which definitely felt good :-D Don't go on this ride if your afraid of getting your hair messed up or your clothing soaked!

Our fast pass for soarin over california was right after grizzly, so we went right on over! Have i mentioned how much i love fast passes? Something about passing all the poor people who have been waiting in line for an hour, and going straight to the front..just makes me feel so powerful! haha just kidding. It was nice not to have to wait in the hot sun outside! This is definitely one of my all time favorite rides in California Adventure! Even the "safety video" at the beginning was really entertaining...even if it was extremely corny ;-) It's amazing the rides that they are able to make nowadays..I really felt like we were "soaring over california". I think my favorite part was when they released different smells like trees and oranges! It made the experience even more real. Me and my dad both kind of got a headache after this ride, but hey, it was a sacrifice i was willing to make!

As we were walking over to get in line for Hollywood Tower or Terror, we spotted an aread dedicated to the movie Cars. We didn't end up going into the builiding that probably had cool things in it, but there were these gas tanks set up outside. So...after realizing that it said gas was .05 a gallon, I couldn't resist taking a picture of how appalled i was. Can you even imagine gas being that price?! My face looks really weirdly shaped in this picture though!

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. That is pretty much all I can say to describe Hollywood Tower of Terror. It is by far my favorite ride in California Adventure. The whole building was decorated with memorabilia from the Twilight Zone series! It was pretty spooky. I'm not going to reveal any of the exciting parts of this ride, just so you all can experience yourself, but I will say its pretty intense. Definitely didn't even have time to think about what was going on ;-)







This is just a picture of the tower..sweet isn't it? I think its pretty intense how real it looks, and you definitely your in for an experience like no other before you enter it!

One of my favorite things on rides is when they take your picture! Now, for some reason I'm the only one screaming...I just dont' understand this! I mean, we were close to our death, and everyone else seems to be fairly calm, including the rest of my family! I just dont' understand this..anyone care to explain (And no, don't tell me that the ride wasn't worthy of such intense screaming, because trust me, it was!).

So as our day was beginning to wind down, we settled on going on a ride featuring Monsters Inc! It was just a nice, leisurely ride, basically replaying the whole Monsters Inc movie! It may not have been full of thrills and excitement like some of the other rides of the day, but it was really cute :-)





So as we were making our way towards the exit of the park, we spotted something called "drawn to the magic"...and boy, were we drawn in! haha. It was a musical/painting performance, and guess what! When they asked for a volunteer, they picked Michael! And because he was one of the volunteers, he got this neat picture the guy drew of woody. It was awesome cuz at the end, three disney characters came out at the end (Woody, Cinderella, and Mickey Mouse), and everyone got to meet them afterwards. I really enjoyed this performance, especially cuz it was all done with music and singing!

So to end our day, we went to watch the Disneyland parade that goes on every day. The floats were amazing! There was a lot of singing and dancing, and I just loved watching it, even though I was sitting on the hot pavement and it was just burning my rear end off but I definitely enjoyed it. Disney definitely ceases to amaze me :)


















So yeah, this day was definitely awesome! We went to IHOP for dinner, and they still uphold the tradition of being the slowest restaurant EVER, but it was pretty decent. I think we went swimming afterwards, but honestly, I don't remember! I was exhasted!
until next time!