Having had a long journey we were now at our final stop over and looking forwards to three days in Disneyland and the Disney California Adventure parks.
Victoria and I awoke quite early and we had an hankering for a McDonalds Egg McMuffin, it's strange how you sometimes get these crap food cravings, so I popped over to the nearby McDonalds and returned with the goods. Bugger! the US version of an Egg McMuffin comes with a slice of ham! These went in the bin and we grabbed an egg & cheese 'biscuit' from the place in our hotel.
The park does not open until 1000 so we had a leisurely stroll over there and picked up our 'Celebrating 25 Years' badges from the Town Hall and were at the store ready to pick up our Photo Pass as soon as it opened. Disneyland is also having a celebration of its' own, the park opened in 1955 and is celebrating 60 years!
We are great fans of the Ridemax application and use this to most efficiently plan our days at the park so that we can try to get on our favourite rides, our first stop being Big Thunder Mountain where we walked to the front of the queue and were soon speeding along on the abandoned mine train yee-haa!. We then went straight to Pirates of the Caribbean and again after at most a couple of minutes in the queue were on the ride, catching glimpse of Captain Jack Sparrow and Davy Jones.
After picking up a fast-pass for the Indiana Jones Adventure we had a lovely brunch of a Mickey Pancakes (everything tastes better Mickey shaped) and a Fruit Salad at the River Belle Terrace before having a Photopass shoot in front of the castle. We then find that the queue for Pixie Hollow was only five minutes, the park was really quiet so queueing for five minutes here is a very rare event. So with a sprinkling of pixie dust we were shrunk down to size to meet first Rosetta then Tinkerbell.
Straight out of Pixie Hollow we bumped into Peter Pan so Victoria stopped for a chat and a photo. Our fast-passes for the Indiana Jones Adventure were now active so we boarded our jeep and had an exhilarating ride through the temple, avoiding looking into the Eye of the Idol and thankful that Indie was there to help us through.
Emerging safely from the temple we made our way to Tomorrow Land and picked up fast-passes for Star Tours and then had a meet and greet with Captain Hook, we were certainly bumping into the Neverland characters today!
After sharing a frozen lemonade and strawberry lolly on the Tomorrowland Terrace we had our photos done at the Captain America meet and greet by which time our fast-passes were active again and it was off to Hoth on the first leg of our Star Tour before making light speed and arriving at Naboo to a heroes welcome. We then made our way back to Frontierland for a gentle cruise on the Mark Twain riverboat followed by a ride on the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh,
This was quite cool as the ride broke down as we were nearing the end so we had to be evacuated by the cast-members, there is one for the record!
We picked up a couple of fast-passes for Splash Mountain and as it had been a good few hours since we shared pancakes and fruit for brunch, so we had a lovely lunch at Hungry Bear, one of Victoria and my Disneyland favourites, fried green tomato sandwich, sweet potato fries and a mango coleslaw.
After lunch, our Splash Mountain fast passes were now active so we boarded our 'boat' and were soon careering through the story of Br'er Rabbit including a 50ft drop on the log flume, all great fun and we did not get nearly as we as the previous visit.
Ridemax now had us on 'free time' so we visited the animals at the Jamboree Petting Zoo before entering Toon Town for photos in the town square and then with Donald Duck. We also rode the Who Framed Roger Rabbit ride after a ten minute queue, when we first came here with Jasmin in 1995 we had to queue for an hour to get onto this! We must have picked a really good time to come, it was the run up to the Labor Day weekend and I think the parks would have gotten a lot busier at the weekend but they were very quiet while we were there,
The food options for vegetarians at Disneyland is great and it was time to indulge again with a Dole Whip at the Enchanted Tiki Room, as we were stood in the queue a lovely couple saw our 'Celebrating 25 Years' badges and insisted on buying our Dole Whips, thanks guys! We then ate them enjoying the great Enchanted Tiki Room show.
Ridemax now suggested we head over to Tomorrowland and pick up fast-passes for Space Mountain and after that we rode the saccharine sweet It's a Small World ride before having a drink at the Starbucks and more photos done on our Photopass. I then had my greatest disappointment of the day when I found out that Pretzel Rods are no longer on the menu, how shall I cope! Victoria and I shared a cake-pop instead.
It was now time for our space mission, we boarded Space Mountain and were blasted into outer-space, doing a loop of the galaxy and returning to earth. Back on terrafirma we noticed that the queue for Buzz Lightyear was only a few minutes so we were soon boarded and blasting away at Emperor Zurg, I don't recall the scores but I did get the high score this time.
Food time again, this time it was sharing a very tasty vegetarian gumbo from Royal Street Veranda, this is served in a delicious sourdough bread bowl and is highly recommended.
Approaching 1900 and starting to get dark Ridemax suggested that we made our way along to Peter Pans Flight, oh no! they had closed the queue in time for the later fireworks, one of Victorias favourite rides and we would have to give it a miss!
I had another ride on my to do list and was determined to get on the Matterhorn Bobsleds, we joined the single riders queue and were soon boarded in our sled and on our way up the Matterhorn to come hurtling down avoiding yetis and avalanches on the way. I had a bonus run as our car was given a go-around, great stuff!
It was getting quite late now so we made our way to the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage which we had first ridden in 1995 when it was just called the Submarine Voyage. The queue was much shorter than it had been earlier in the day and we were soon enjoying our undersea adventure before it was time to leave the park after a twelve hour marathon and catch up with our sleep for the next days adventure.
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