A Tale of Two Cities - Day the Seventh - Why am I getting up at this hour?!

[ukstitch]

Sunday was my last whole day in the park. I woke up at about 5:30am, threw on some clothes feeling very sleepy, then headed across the street to wait for Disneyland park to open.

Unsurprisingly, there were very few people around at that time, so I was eventually one of the first people into the park. It was early enough that it still wasn't fully light yet...

I headed straight for fantasyland as I had avoided that area the day before as it was quite busy (much like in DLRP, fantasyland seems to be extremely popular and gets very crowded).

I headed straight for Peter Pan which seemed very similar to the Peter Pan in DLRP, then headed to Dumbo. They were just opening this, so I was actually the first person on Dumbo for the day.

I then proceeded to work my way round the rest of the rides in Fantasyland - Teacups, Alice in Wonderland (a really nice little dark ride that I'd love to see at DLRP), Storybook land (very similar to the boats near Caseys), Casey's (basically the same but more like a train than a tame roller coaster), Snow White (basically the same), Mr Toad's Wild Ride (another fun little dark ride) and Pinnochio (again basically the same).

You'll notice one big omission here in It's a Small World - unfortunately it was closed throughout my trip as they were doing a big refit on it.

After Fantasyland, I headed to frontierland and took another ride on Big Thunder Mountain which was as enjoyable as ever.

After big thunder, I headed for Pirates which was fun, although the areas are in a different order to those of DLRP (you go through the graveyard first, then drop into the town). The addition of Jack Sparrow was a bit of a shame as he crops up in a number of places around the ride and is quite noticable, although I do think that the Davy Jones projection on the waterfall near the start is very good.

After Pirates, I took a walk around to Splash Mountain, before meeting Pooh and then just walking around the park, taking pictures of some of the sites.

I then decided to head round to Main Street and take a lap around the park on the train. Remembering something that Danauk had mentioned to me before I went, I paid a visit to City Hall and asked them very kindly if they would allow me to take a ride in the Lily Belle (a special car that Walt had built for his wife Lily that is still decorated exactly as she had it). After a couple of phone calls to Main Street Station to see if a CM was available to take me (you can not ride alone and must be accompanied by a CM), they came back and said yes I could, then gave me a special ticket to present to the CM's on the station platform. I headed up to the station and showed my ticket. There was a little wait while I waited for the train pulling the Lily Belle to arrive but was then escorted into the Lily Belle (just me and my CM).

I was then treated to a full lap of the park and was told about some of the history of the park - about the fire insurance plaques on buildings in New Orleans Square, about the special mark just in front of the castle which represented the exact middle of the park and about many other things that escape me right now.

Unfortunately, I was so engrossed in the Lily Belle that I didn't get much time to look outside at the park itself. But - when we finally arrived round at Main Street, I was given a special Tinkerbell pin by my CM which you cannot buy, plus she gave me a special, more decorative ticket to keep. I felt extremely privileged to have ridden in the Lily Belle, knowing that it is not a privilege that everybody gets and is one that is usually reserved for members of club 33.

As I exited the station, I saw minnie and donald in their halloween costumes, so I stopped off to collect some more autographs.

I then walked round towards DL's version of Woody's round up which was quite heavily themed to halloween.

I then decided to head back to the Jungle Cruise for a ride round in the day (my previous one had been during the evening). It would be nice to have seen a Jungle Cruise at DLRP, but I'm not sure how well it would work due to the heavy narration, which would require different language boats and would probably end up hurting the throughput of the ride.

After the jungle cruise, I decided it was time for some lunch, so I headed to Carnation Cafe on Main Street. I had the meat loaf stack here - a large slice on meat loaf, on top of mashed potato, on top of a bread slice.

For dessert, I decided to try the pumpkin cheesecake which was surprisingly nice.

By the time I'd finished lunch, it was time for the parade. I managed to take a spot on top of the Main Street station which gave me a fantastic view as the floats came round the roundabout and then went along right in front of me.

After the parade, I headed back up main street, but found that they had started closing areas of the park off in preparation for the Miley Cyrus Sweet 16 event which was causing the park to close early. I took a quick look around the tree house in adventure land, then decided to head out of the park and across to California Adventure for the evening.

California Adventure to follow below shortly

 

[ukstitch]

My memory of what I got up to in California Adventure isn't fantastic I'm afraid, so I'm just going to talk about what I do remember, rather than try to make up a list of everything I did.

I rode everything I hadn't ridden the day before, as well as re-riding some of my previous favourites. The Monster's Inc attraction was very good and is yet another attraction I'd put on my wish list for the DLP studios. Muppet Vision 3D was a fun little show - one I haven't seen since WDW, so I couldn't remember very much of it. Tower of Terror was exactly the same as the DLP version, so I only took one ride on this as the queue was huge (I used fastpass for my ride).

I also had a ride on most of the attractions in Paradise Pier - Toy Story midway mania (not as good as Buzz due to the fact that it's basically a bunch of mini game type things rather than a continuous ride, although the 3d glasses and effects were good), Orange Stinger, Maliboomer and Mulholland Madness (all fairly standard fairground type attractions and nothing special to be honest).

I got to see the parade this time, which turned out to be one of my favourite parades. It's a pixar themed one, with one float for each of the Pixar themes that have been released. Each of these floats and many of the characters in between floats are loaded with water, which they then proceed to spray into the crowd at every available opportunity. Fortunately, the weather was perfect for this, although I can see it being a little less enjoyable on an already wet or cold day.

Once it was dark, I noticed that the queue for the rapids had gone right down. Feeling a little daft, I decided to ride them for the experience of riding them in the dark. Coming out of it fairly dry (in comparison to how wet you can get) and knowing that there was basically no queue, I got off, walked round and headed straight back on again. This proved to be a huge mistake as the second trip was a far wetter experience. Compounded with the water from the first ride, I was now absolutely soaked - so much so that I could feel my feet squelching in my shoes and my trousers were now clinging to my legs!

As I walked around the park feeling a little damp, I decided to have a look around the brother bear themed area. This would have been fine, had i not managed to get myself a little lost - I ended up walking around in circles quite a few times because it was dark and I had no idea which way the entrance / exit was. It meant that I got to have a good explore of the area which was nice, although it meant that I spent more time in there than I'd intended on doing.

Once California Adventure shut at 11, I decided that rather than waste precious time on my last day, I would head to Downtown Disney and do as much of my shopping as possible. So, I spent a good amount of time walking round the shops deciding what I wanted to buy, before carrying it all back to the hotel again at around midnight.

Back at the hotel, I still wasn't able to think about heading for bed as tomorrow was my last day. So - I proceeded to throw (almost literally) everything into my suitcase so I would be packed. It was at this point that I realised that although I would be able to fit everything into my large suitcase, there was no way it was going to come in under the weight limit. So, I decided to place everything into the one case for now, then I would have to go in search of a bag the next day...

Finally, at about 1am or so, I finished my packing and put my head down, ready to begin the process again in a few hours time, ready for my final day which I thought was going to be my final day at DL for a long time to come (guess that's been thrown out the window now as I'm going back in 8 months time)

 

[Dianetigger]

Fabulous report and pictures Rob, love that Pixar parade!

 

[tennisfan]

Fab photos, awesome that you got to ride on the Lilly Belle. I so need to book a trip to DL

 

[torsie24]

Yay! Loving the DL report!

 

[DLPdaft]

WOW, loving the Lilly Belle pictures, and my DD would be really excited to see a Pixar parade like that - it looks brilliant .

 

[minnie tracey]

My husband has done both DL california and DLP so he will love to read this. I have not had the privellige to do this yet. Perhaps soon I will do california.

 

[Tillybud]

wow, what a great report and fab photos, I love it

 

[A Small World]

Brilliant Rob- Im glad you eventually managed to finish writing this it was worth waiting for.

You got loads done in such a short time

 

[ema74]

Ah, what wonderful report and great photos!!! You did so many things in such a short time, well done!!!

Love the look of that pumpkin cheesecake - YUM!