Several of y’all out there very strongly advocating going over into California Adventure, and I assure you that that was absolutely on our agenda. We made that the overall point of Friday the 10th.

First up was Muppets 3D, which was pretty much mandatory because, well, Muppets. How could we not? So we popped in there and were mightily entertained by the room with all of the “pre-show” activity going on, which involved a lot of cutely labeled props as well as various video screens with amusing Muppet footage playing on it. Mostly stuff involving Scooter testing each screen and trotting around between them, but some chortle-worthy stuff involving the penguins going into the theater to rehearse for the orchestra. Hee.

But really, the main event was of course going into HOLY CRAP MUPPET THEATER. They did an excellent job building the place, and it was very, very much like walking into the set of the Muppet Show, complete with a balcony on the side for animatronic Statler and Waldorf. The penguins down front in the orchestra pit, also a Win. My 3D glasses were a little wonky but otherwise the whole show worked well, and there was a lot of humor involving a 3D creation of Muppet Labs escaping into the theater at large.

There were giggles on the way out as well, with the Muppet-themed movie posters they had hanging up for us to look at. Lawrence of Amphibia. Har!

After that we went over to Soarin’ Over California, which was also awesome. In no small part because of the intro video that shows while you’re in line being done by Patrick Warburton, who pretty much makes everything Funny; the man could be reading bus routes and be hilarious. The ride itself though was a lot of fun, and I was relieved and pleased that it did not actually make me motion sick. The various scents they queued up to add realism were a nice touch, although I spotted a flaw on the screen that kind of pulled me out of the experience a little. So did the fact that the scenes they showed you had no real transition between them; it was just “oh hey Golden Gate Bridge!” and then *pop!* “oh hey orange fields!” and then *pop!* “oh hey mountains!” It would have been a little neater if they’d done a smooth flow between the various locations.

Once that was done we popped back over into the main Disneyland park to get to the Blue Bayou for our lunch reservations. We were pleased that the service there was still splendid, and although they changed the breading on the Monte Cristo sandwich, it was still very, very tasty. solarbird and I split one between us, with each of us having our own side dishes, which was about the exact right amount of lunch. We figured that if we’d tried to eat a whole sandwich each, it very likely would have killed us!

Back then over into California Adventure, and the California Screamin’ rollercoaster. OMG big, big fun. One of the very few things I miss about the Midwest is the Kings Island amusement park, which is chock fulla rollercoasters. We don’t have anything remotely comparable in Washington state, since the climate here is generally not good for rollercoasters and big rides. So it was absolutely fantastic to get on a rollercoaster, and this one was a good one. Very good countdown to a hard punch of a launch, and the drops and the loop-de-loop were suitably scream-inducing. I squealed like a kid the whole time and bounced around repeatedly afterwards chirping “ROLLERCOASTER!”

Mulholland Madness was also more or less rollercoastery but not nearly as awesome. It got pretty much trumped by our going over to the Tower of Terror, which is set up with the theme of a Twilight Zone episode about a hotel that gets struck by lightning and OHNOEZ! You’re in the elevator and OHNOEZ! SUDDEN DROP! spazzkat is not a fan of the OHNOEZ! Sudden Drop! style of ride, but Dara and I had great fun with this and more squealing like a little kid was done. I apparently had my eyes closed tight when they took us up to snap our pictures at the top of the Tower, just before dropping us hard. Har.

After that we did the Screamin’ rollercoaster a second time, since it was Just That Awesome, and a Monsters Inc. ride with the schtick of you going through Monstropolis while the CDA is on the hunt for Sulley and Boo. Speaking of Sulley, we did spot somebody in a Sulley costume with folks lined up for pictures and autographs, and that was kind of neat; later, while we were at the Tower of Terror, we saw the same costumed person slumping off into a “Cast Members Only” area. Whoever they were, they looked tired!

But it’s worth also noting that the whole afternoon had a Pixar-y feel to it. We were lucky enough to catch the Pixar parade that they do in California Adventure, and that was great fun. They had floats for just about all of the Pixar movies, except WALL-E and Up, and many of the appropriate characters were represented very well. There was lots of amusement with people squirting sprays of water onto the crowd–though Dara kept making faces every time they nailed her.

Back again over to the Disneyland park for another crack at both Pirates and Haunted Mansion, and then Thunder Mountain for more rollercoastery goodness. We found out though that the BBQ place we wanted to eat at only did reservations after a certain time in the evening, so we made reservations for Saturday night instead and wound up eating elsewhere.

I learned much to my annoyance though that my hiking boots were up to tromping around Disneyland only up to a point. My feet started getting very sore after a while and I had to bail while Dara and Paul stayed to watch the Electric Light parade, because I just desperately had to get my shoes off.

Still though, an overall day of California Adventure and Pixar-y Win! Part 3 and Saturday and Sunday tomorrow.

solarbird

Anyway, the trip down there was more or less okay. There were the inevitable deep annoyances of going through airport security–really, the whole process gets more and more annoying every time I fly, but I’m sure all of you can come up with stories to meet and match ours–so I’ll skip over that and go straight to how the flight itself was more or less smooth. Once we landed at John Wayne Airport, we got our bags in short order and a cab in almost as short an order, got to our hotel, dropped off our stuff, and were soon charging right into the park.

Damn, I’d forgotten that it’s almost impossible not to feel more cheerful as you approach the main entrance. Sure, it’s because they’re shamelessly manipulating you with the relentlessly perky piped music, but hey, they do it because it works. I didn’t remember a bag check from my first visit in the 90′s, but wasn’t surprised to have to go through one in this day and age. It all went relatively quickly, anyway, and we got pretty fast into the park itself.

Main Street looked about like I remembered it, picturesque in that way only Disney can achieve, and swarming with people all through its shops of various kinds. Not surprisingly, we headed straight for the best corner of the park: the area occupied by Adventureland and flowing straight over into New Orleans. Also not surprisingly, the first ride we hit was Pirates of the Caribbean.

The first time we’d visited the park was of course long before the first of the Pirates movies came out, so all the changes they made to the ride to capitalize on the movie were new to me. On the whole I felt they were cool, although like the movies, I think the ride was playing the whole Captain Jack Sparrow angle too hard. The various animatronic figures were spouting off way too often about him, which in general IMO lessens the impact of the character. On the other hand, the curtain of mist onto which they projected a hologram of Davy Jones from the second movie? WIN.

After that of course, since it was so near, Haunted Mansion was pretty much mandatory. We discovered that the three of us were a tight fit in the car, but that didn’t really diminish the fun of the ride any. I didn’t remember the particulars of this one all that well, although spazzkat, who is of course the Disney geek of the household, enthused about the pictures of the Bride who murdered all of her husbands, in which the heads of the husbands in question kept disappearing. The Bride has an actual animated face now where she stands at the end of her part of the ride, and Paul says that that’s a recent change.

We got cotton candy, which was a more obvious hit to my 40-year-old metabolism than it was ten years ago. As I mentioned on Twitter, “internal organs vibrating” was about a fair description. Fortunately, I only had about half of the cone since we were sharing it all between us.

Next we wandered around to these canoes that make a circuit around the lake in that part of the park, which we hadn’t done the last time we visited. They get a whole bunch of people into one big canoe and make everybody paddle, generally timing it so that two boats are going around the lake at once so the guides at the heads of each boat can get a bit of a race on. Our guide made amusing jokes about the famous “striped moose” we could spot in the surrounding trees, which were of course littered profusely with the animal statues to make it all look woodsy and stuff. There were ducks as well, but those were actual living ducks, with actual living duck babies, and they were very cute.

Then we steeled ourselves, sucked it up, and headed for It’s a Small World, feeling that we had to at least brave it once. But man, I’d forgotten the overwhelming saccharine sweetness of the thing. At least everywhere else in the park, it’s dialed down a notch; not so here. Paul did pretty much nail our overall sentiments when he put up his Disneyland comic that features his own take on that particular ride. We felt it particularly keenly when in the final stretch our car actually stopped and remained stationary through about three whole choruses of the song. (*shudder* The song. It still haunts me!)

Afterwards we cleansed our palates with ice cream and with a heaping helping of the Indiana Jones ride. I chortled with glee at the array of shirts the nearby shop had on sale, of course, and really wanted one they had with the caption “Where There’s a Whip There’s a Way”–although it turned out later that they didn’t have that shirt in my size, sniff. But the ride itself was every bit as delightful as I remembered it, and using FastPass to shoot through the line was very, very sweet.

We finally got a fairly late dinner, timed well to catch the fireworks display over the lake. We were very close by, and therefore got quite the bright eyeful of the show. I don’t know if it was simple proximity to the display or something about how they stage it at Disneyland, but Disneyland fireworks? Super bright and super sparkly.

Post-dinner, we wound down a bit and went over into Tomorrowland to get on Star Tours–which I had totally forgotten from our previous trip, and here I call myself a Star Wars fan. *snerk* But I was amused by the gifts on sale near that ride, too, especially the figurines of Disney characters playing the various Star Wars roles. Donald Duck as Han Solo was priceless.

We finished off with the low-key Snow White and Storybookland rides. Snow White was mostly notable for doing one neat thing with the evil Queen figure whipping around in her witch form; upon seeing her, I said, “Winnowill!” Dara replied, “Shuddup, you!” (It’s true though! Sweet Winnie owes a lot to this evil Queen.) Storybookland was even more lowkey and was mostly a diorama kind of thing.

And thus ended Day 1 of the Mouse! More tomorrow!

ETA 7/15/09 7:22am: Spelling errors corrected. Thanks, marzipan_pig!