Disneyland

Day 7 - 17/6/2010 - Disney's California Adventure

The plan today was to spend the whole day at DCA but the kids were desperate to ride Space Mountain one more time so I told them we would get to Disneyland early and spend a couple of hours there before heading to DCA for the 10am opening. Based on the past two days, I assumed that DLR opened at 8am so we had an early McDonalds breakfast in our room again, and arrived at the gates at 8am. As we walked up and saw that the crowds were still lined up outside, I remembered that opening time today was 9am. Doh! We joined the line at gate 13 but after a quick family discussion about how there wouldn't be enough time to really do anything if we were to make rope drop at DCA, we decided to skip DLR this morning. I would have made more of an effort to get them back on Space Mountain again if we weren't going to WDW a couple of weeks later, but everyone was happy to leave it until we arrived at the Magic Kingdom.

We had some time to kill so we wandered up to Downtown Disney but unfortunately nothing was open yet. We decided to check out the Grand Californian which was very impressive! We bought some stamps, wrote some postcards, got a coffee and were first in line at the far left gate of DCA where the cast members were getting ready to open.

After a few minutes one of the cast members announced "I'm going to choose this family from Australia" and came out to where we were waiting. He explained that he needed a family to open the park and we were it! In addition to being the first people through the gates that day we were also being made Honorary Citizens of Disneyland!! So my mistake at getting the opening times wrong worked in our favour in the long run!

He took us inside, gave us our Honorary Citizen badges and explained what we had to do.

We faced the crowds waiting on the other side of the gates and counted down from 10 to 1 then shouted "Let the Adventure Begin" which was when they opened the gates. We turned around and hotfooted it to Soarin' before too many people got through and were the first ones there. Soarin' was fantastic, we loved it!

After Soarin' we stopped in Radiator Springs and met some friends

and then joined the crowd waiting at the rope to get into Paradise Pier. At rope drop we went with the crowd towards Toy Story Mania but were stopped by a cast member outside California Screamin' who told us it wasn't operating. Boo!

We quickly made a new plan. We grabbed Fast Passes for California Screamin', then joined the relatively short line and rode it within 10 minutes. Wow, what a fun roller coaster! We used our fast passes and rode it again straight away then got more fast passes for later (although twice was enough for me!). By that stage Toy Story Mania had opened but the wait was already 30 minutes so we decided to skip it and visit the rest of Paradise Pier.

The wait times were short but the rides here were fairly unimpressive. We did Mailboomer and Mulholland Madness before lining up for Mickey's Fun Wheel. We went for a moving car and boy, did it move! That was the scariest ferris wheel I've ever been on!! Sammy was terrified!

After Silly Symphony Swings and Golden Zephyr we decided to have an early lunch at Pizza Oom Mow Mow. I hate sitting around as I feel like I'm wasting time, so I decided to run over and get FastPasses for Tower of Terror while the kids finished eating. I got around to ToT only to find that the FP machines were not working but the lines were not long at all. I tried to call Alex to tell them to come straight there and I would get in the line, but he wasn't answering. So I decided to run back to Pizza Oom Mow Mow and get them, but I was stopped in Sunshine Plaza as the High School Musical show was going on. I finally got Alex on the phone and they were on the other side of it and we couldn't get to each other. They ended up cutting through the Wine Country Trattoria and we were reunited! We went back to ToT and got straight onto the elevator. I'm not sure why it wasn't busy, but I wasn't complaining! We had to do child swap as Sammy didn't want to ride but that made the other two happy because they got to ride it twice! It was definitely a favourite!

Sammy is a huge Playhouse Disney fan so the Playhouse Disney Live on Stage was a priority for us. He had been watching clips of it on YouTube for months and was so excited to go. We lined up for the next show but 10 minutes before showtime, a cast member came out and said they weren't sure if the next show was going to go ahead or not. We were welcome to wait but if they cancelled it, we'd be waiting another hour till the next one. We decided to come back later and check out the rest of Hollywood Pictures Backlot instead.

First up was Monsters. Inc Mike and Sulley to the Rescue

Daddy needed a nap so next up was Muppet Vision 3D! Then Turtle Talk with Crush where Sammy was chosen to ask Crush a question which was a lot of  fun! We wandered around a bit while waiting for the next Playhouse Disney show and ran into a couple of fun characters

We walked over to Golden State

but the lines for Soarin' were too long so we didn't ride that again (not until we got to Epcot that is!). There was only a short wait for Grizzly River Run so we rode that and then headed back for the next Playhouse Disney Show

Then it was off to "a bug's land" for It's Tough to Be a Bug

We ran into Pluto

and got stuck behind the High School Musical show again on our way back to Paradise Pier!

We used our California Screamin' Fastpasses and then lined up for Toy Story Mania. The line was the same as the day before, around 40 minutes, but it seemed to go quickly.

We had the most amazing day at DCA. Being chosen as the family to open the park was really special. We were stopped all day by people (the public and cast members alike) asking about our Honorary Citizen badges. One man said he's been going for 40 years and it's his goal to be made Honorary Citizen but it hasn't happened for him yet. We got lots of congratulations from cast members as apparently it's a real honour :). My family is Irish and my husband's family is German so the kids always say they are 3 nationalities - Australian, Irish and German. Now they say they are 4 - Australian, Irish, German and Disneylandish!

We left the park just before closing and went back to HoJo for a swim, then drove down to Anaheim Garden Walk for dinner. I was really surprised by how quiet it was. There was hardly anyone there. We had dinner at Johnny Rockets which was nice enough. The boys loved their hats that they made.

We heard a lot of cheering coming from the bars so we wandered over to one to find out what was going on. It was the NBA grand final (or whatever it's called) and the Lakers were winning. The game was nearly finished so we stopped to watch it for awhile. There was great excitement when the Lakers won the championship!

We drove back to the HoJo to pack and have an early night ahead of our 4.30am departure. We were sad that our time at Disneyland had come to an end but very excited to be going to New York City the next day!