Oct

California 2014 – Day 4 (Disneyland)

We wanted to visit Cars Land but were unwilling to wait an hour + in line for some of the rides. As a result, we made Cars Land our first priority for our second day in Disneyland. We made Rachel our FastPass runner for Radiator Springs Racers and planned to meet up with her in the standby line once she got passes. Our plan worked out perfectly! We were guaranteed 2 pretty short waits for the one of the most popular rides in the parks.

While we waited for the in-park rope drop (and Rachel readied her racing shoes), we did a little shopping. Translation: I finally got the Minnie ears I had been wanting!

I wore the ears non-stop for the rest of our time in Disneyland. I may or may not wear them around the house on a regular basis too. LOL

Waiting to run!

Waiting in the standby line once we met up with Rachel

We’re up NEXT!!!!

Meeting up with Lightening and Mater at the end of the ride

We won our race! Woooo!!!

Next up was Luigi’s Flying Tires – you sit on tire shaped cars that are lifted by fans on the ride “floor”. You have to lean your tire to move it and bump into the other riders. Sort of bumper cars with a twist.

See the tire topiaries in the background? Gotta love Disney’s attention to details. Cars Land was ridiculously awesome when it came to the little details.

Steering took a little bit to get the hang of…

The boys got a big kick out of bumping into me and Mike. LOL

While we waited for our FastPass return time, we got our picture taken with Red and explored Cars Land a bit.

It was like being in the movie!

Tail light flowers in tire planters 🙂

Almost time to ride again

While we were waiting, Matthew found this Hidden Mickey all on his own! Do you see it? In the wire above the trees/building? It was pretty much the only real Hidden Mickey we found the whole trip. We brought a Hidden Mickey book with us and every other one we saw we learned about in the book first. Except this one. This Hidden Mickey wasn’t even in the book that we had. How ’bout that?!?!

Our second race. We won this one too! 🙂

Next up: Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree

Paradise Pier

We kind of stood beside/under the Zephyr when we watched World of Color the night before and Matthew begged to ride it so we did that next.

See us in the last 2 rows?

We wanted to ride Toy Story Midway Mania but the line was pretty long and it doesn’t have FastPass in Disneyland. While we were deciding what to do, strangers walked by and said they had handicap guess passes and that 2 of us could go with them if we’d like. We took them up on the offer and Ian and I rode the ride with little wait.

I kicked his cute little butt. You may think it’s mean that I’d brag about that but he likes to rub my loss in Disney World in my face on a regular basis so I figure it’s fair. 😉

We were going to ride California Screamin’ a second time but Ian kind of freaked out and was feeling dizzy so we stopped for lunch instead. After lunch we saw some green army guys making a racket.

After this we hightailed it across the park to see the Aladdin show. I only had a few must-sees in Disneyland: Cars Land, World of Color, Fantasmic, fireworks over the castle, a Dole Whip, and Aladdin. Aladdin was only playing a few times each day so we really wanted to get into the post-lunch show. Thankfully we got there in time and had great seats even though we were way up high. The show was a lot of fun and the boys were really into it. 🙂

After that we did “Monsters, Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue!”, got a few snacks, and then went back to the hotel for naps.

Pre-nap snacks: Ian’s first Mickey head ice cream bar and Matthew’s 783rd churro. LOL

After naps, we headed back to California Adventure to do ride Radiator Springs Racers one more time as well as a handful of other rides.

We saw DJ rocking out on Route 66:

http://youtu.be/ejzWDm3gtrk

Then we rode Radiator Springs Racers again and, you guessed it, WON OUR RACE!

Courtney joined us via FaceTime for this race! 🙂

My one regret was that we never got to see Radiator Springs light up at dusk and I’m not sure we saw it in the dark either. I can’t remember. LOL

Parade photobomb

http://youtu.be/NJgfgSiX5QA

http://youtu.be/SFRi6fDhbew

After getting in our last few rides at California Adventure, we headed over to Disneyland where we hoped to catch the late showing of Fantasmic.

We had dinner as soon as we entered the park and then did: Indiana Jones, Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion…that may have been it. It’s hard to remember the exact order of everything. LOL

In line for Jungle Cruise

We walked by the castle all lit up and pretty.

By the time we went to stake spots for the second showing of Fantasmic, we were all tired and frustrated with the crowds. We ended up grabbing seats with a pretty bad view but we were tired of fighting the crowd and worrying about sticking together. After sitting for maybe 5 minutes, a gentleman came up to us and asked us if we were waiting for Fantasmic. When we said “yes”, he asked if we were interesting in joining him on blankets near the front. We said “sure” and were blown away. Our new seats were probably 8-10 people back from the water.

Fantasmic is a musical adventure where the forces of good and evil battle in Mickey’s dreams.

Here is video I found online, it was a little different at the end (characters on the riverboat, not on the island) but it gives you a really good idea of what we saw: