Disneyland & California Adventure
Day 2, Wednesday, April 23, 2008

See the pre-trip report here.
See the Day 1 report here.

We started this day at 6am when the alarm went off. We got ready and went to breakfast right when it opened at 7am. They have a free continental breakfast at the Candy Cane and it’s in a room right behind the front desk. They had toast, fruit, muffins, bagels, oatmeal, and cereal. They also had coffee, hot chocolate, juice, and milk. They had toasters available for guest use and I think there may have been a microwave and also hot tea.

The park opened at 9, so we left sometime around 8:30. We saw the new monorail on the walk to the park. We wanted to be there at opening so we could go straight to Nemo. We made it in time, and we were held on Main Street for the rope drop. When the rope dropped, we made our way through the crowd and around the Matterhorn to Nemo. They route all the Nemo rider-wannabes around the Matterhorn because the line gets so long so fast. For those of you familiar with DL, we hit the back of the line at about the spot where you get on the line for the Tomorrowland side of the Matterhorn; we were under the section of monorail track that goes over the walkway. About two minutes later, we heard someone scream that the Nemo line was all the way back to the teacups! It moves quickly at fist, as the line “settles” into the queue area and as the people board the subs that are already empty. After they fill up, it moves slower as we have to wait for the subs to go through the ride and then unload, then load, etc. I’m not sure how long we waited, but we were exiting the ride around 9:45.

After Nemo, we went to the Mad Tea Party. This is one of my mom’s favorites (mine too) and a must do. After staggering out of our teacup, I realized I was hungry so on our way out of the park we stopped at the bakery for a cinnamon roll.

We hopped to CA shortly after 10, which is their opening time. I wanted to do the Disney Visa Meet & Greet, and it’s only open for 90 minutes after the park opens. We were the only ones there and we got Chip and Dale all to ourselves for a few minutes. After the Meet & Greet, we watched a singing quartet called the Delta Daddy-o’s. I really enjoyed their music. After listening for a bit, we went into the Animation Academy building and watched the Toy Story zoetrope. It’s this round thing with Toy Story characters on it and it spins and it makes it look like they are jumping around. Then, it was 11:00 and I HAD to go draw Mickey! After Mickey, we went to Monster’s Inc. This is a dark ride and it was pretty cool. I especially liked how the cars had little tv screens on the side to show the “breaking news” of a child in Monstropolis. The door scene (like in the movie) is cool too.

After Monster’s Inc., we hopped back to DL. (Are you starting to see why this is a Tiggerific trip report? We bounced from park to park like nobody’s business!) We had to go back to DL because we wanted to catch Billy Hill and the Hillbillies and combine it with lunch time. We were a little late for the 11:15 show but too early for the 1:00 show so we went through Tarzan’s Treehouse, which looks mysteriously like a Swiss family’s boat crash. We snagged a Fastpass for Indy and then went and got our meal from the CS place inside the Golden Horseshoe. We got the chicken strips with the fries. We started out at a table on the first floor, but decided to move upstairs so nobody would sit in front of us.

The Billy Hill show is really funny. I didn’t know what to expect from the pictures I’d seen of it, but it was funny. Really stupid humor but we were laughing the majority of the time. After the show, the line for Jungle Cruise was short so we took a little boat ride. This was good timing for the Jungle Cruise, since we could just continue our streak of silly jokes. Our skipper was in character and there were some guests on the boat that were really into it and going back and forth with the skipper on the jokes. It was really corny, yet really funny.

After Jungle Cruise we went on Indy. This was great. One of the best things about going to Disneyland was that I did not know what to expect on every ride, so the anticipation excitement was present on many rides for me. This was one of those rides. I have been on it before, but that was 6 years ago so it was like new to me. The ride was very bumpy but soooooo fun!

As we left Indy and walked through the New Orleans Square area, we caught the Jambalaya Jazz Band. They are quite talented and they have a fun performance. They toss out beads like Mardi Gras. We didn’t stay for the whole performance and I was a little bummed I hadn’t gotten any beads, but we wanted to go catch Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain. As we were walking away, my mom got hit in the head with some purple beads, so she gave them to me. We went and got fastpasses for Splash and then rode Pooh and Haunted Mansion. By this time, our FP was ready so we rode Splash. We requested the back seats and I’m glad we did. We barely got wet but the girl in the front seat was totally drenched! Splash at DL moves a lot faster than Splash at WDW. I was surprised at how fast the boat moves. At WDW, you really have time to look at all the little details. At DL, that wasn’t the case. I felt like we were going so fast through the mountain! It enjoyed it, and I’m not sure which version I like better.

After Splash, we saw a bunch of tv cameras standing around the Dream Suite. Turns out it was more of the Quinceanera celebration stuff. I guess the girls were spending the night in the Suite and they were interviewing a few of them on the side by Tarzan’s Treehouse. It was kind of funny when we first saw the cameras, because everybody was stopping to see what the hubbub was all about. One lady said she had heard on the bus that “some king was visiting”. My mom and I later decided that she probably was not familiar with a quinceanera and heard “king” from “quin…”. We got a little giggle out of that. It was like the old game telephone where you whisper a message from person to person and it gets totally jumbled from the original message.

We headed over to do Big Thunder, another of my mom’s favorites (and mine). This is very similar to the WDW version. There was no line; we walked right on. We asked for the back row and got it, since the train was almost empty. The first few rows were full and then the last two rows.

In a bizarre situation, after walking onto Big Thunder we had the longest line of our trip....on (wait for it)…the Storybookland Canal Boats. We had about a 20 minute wait. The line looked short, but it moved so slowly! We enjoyed the ride anyways. While we were waiting, we kept laughing because every time the monorail passed, it had to honk so the ducks on the tracks would move!

We went and ate dinner at the Village Haus in Fantasyland. Then, I had to get one of the new Pooh popcorn buckets to munch from during the parade. They are so cute! We went to Toontown and browsed before the parade started. Then, we watched the Parade of Dreams from across from Small World. It was right at the beginning of the parade route and so the parade ended quite early. We went back to Toontown and walked right onto Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin and then Gadget’s Go Coaster. We even went into the Chip’n Dale Treehouse, which was obviously not designed for adults! We almost got stuck LOL.

One of the coolest parts of the day happened next. I wanted to stroll through Mickey’s house but there was a rope across the front door. So, we went into Minnie’s house and played with the little knobs and stuff. Then, when we left Minnie’s house, we found a side door to Mickey’s house that was not blocked. We followed the people in front of us into Mickey’s house. We get to the end of the house when a CM is like “hurry!” and he closed the door behind us. Turns out we walked right into the Mickey meet & greet with no wait! And because we were the last people in the group, after the other people left we had him all to ourselves for a few minutes! It was so much fun to just walk into that without expecting it!

(Continued in next post...apparently I talk too much!)