Captain’s Log: Monday, 28 July 2014.
I neglected to give you an important piece of information from earlier in the day:
We had another set of Radiator Springs Racers FastPasses in our possession. On our way out from California Adventure earlier in the day, I had noticed that the FP machines were still churning out tickets for late in the day. My understanding was that if FP’s were still available, the rule of thumb was to grab them, no matter what time it showed. In this case, the return time posted was 5:50 – 6:50 p.m. We had a 5:20 dinner reservation, but we still thought that return time was do-able. After all, the parks are so close! And it didn’t take much convincing for the kids to agree to another spin on RSR.
So, keep that bit of info in mind as we continue.
2:35 p.m.—We finish up our Dole Whips and start wandering back towards Pirates. Crowds here are still insane, and it’s slow going as we try to push our way through. I may or may not have thrown a few well-placed elbows to clear space. The line for POTC doesn’t appear to have dwindled at all.
2:50 p.m.—We check in with the CM working the back entrance and it’s not quite time for us to hop in line. So we busy ourselves in New Orleans Square for a bit. We check a couple of shops out, and Alison shows us where the door to the famed, mysterious Club 33 is located. She also points out which hallways/buildings in the square are a part of the Club. Do we take a photo? Of course not. Why would we do that?
3:00 p.m.—We are allowed to enter the line for Pirates of the Caribbean. Loading goes slowly, but it’s still much better than it would have been if we’d stood in the standby line. A few minutes later, we’re climbing aboard our sailing vessel.
3:08 p.m.—The whole feel of Pirates is completely different than the WDW version. The Disneyland ride eases you into things with a trip around a Louisiana bayou, a great extension of the New Orleans Square theme. We float along, slightly jealous of those customers eating at the Blue Bayou restaurant across the way, to the sound of crickets and soft banjo plucking. It takes a couple of minutes before you leave the bayou and hit not one, but two drops (my kids thought it was fantastic, having an extra drop) and then enter the familiar pirates world we all remember. It’s a much longer, much more immersive experience that blows away its WDW counterpart.
3:22 p.m.—So we’ve crossed a few of the must-see rides off of our list. Time is starting to run short, as we have a 4:20 return time for Space Mountain, a 5:20 dinner reservation, and a 5:50 return time for Radiator Springs Racers. Crowds are still bad everywhere we look. I take a quick peek at the Indiana Jones ride as we go past, and it’s a 45-minute standby wait. Can’t get another FP yet, either—and by the looks of things, they’re going fairly quickly. I start to worry that they’ll run out before I can get one.
3:35 p.m.—We’ve made our way back to the central hub of the park, and Alison asks if we’d like to have our obligatory family photo in front of the castle. Seems like as good a time as any. So we hand her the camera and set up our pose. As you can see, Alison knows how to properly frame a picture, as well as take multiple shots with different zooms so you have options. At the very least, she’s been reading my TR’s where I complain about poor amateur photography from random strangers. If memory serves, she even made a crack about me being too demanding while we were taking our photos. I probably deserved it.
Once that’s done, the kids move away and we ask Alison to join us, since we kind of don’t have any photo record of our visit with her yet. Better late than never!
Sarah acquits herself nicely behind the camera.
Castle on its own:
3:42 p.m.—We take a walk through the castle, just to say we did.
The back side of castle:
A bit of Fantasyland theming. Honestly, we were snapping photos and walking at the same time here, so this is all we got.
3:50 p.m.—We wander over to the Matterhorn, and it’s a 50-minute standby wait. No thanks. Julie and I are starting to worry we’re not going to get a ride in on that one. We do a quick family conference to decide what our next move is. And we decide that Dave really wants to ride the monorail (it’s always been one of his favorite things to do), so we’ll take a spin on the monorail and then head to Space Mountain. Or at least, that’s the plan.
On the way, we spot this, and think of Kathy and her balloon tradition.
3:56 p.m.—The line for the monorail is a bit longer than we’d hoped. And once again, we’re outside in the heat with no shade. Poor Alison looks tired—we’ve been running her ragged back and forth across the park all day. At this point, she probably thinks we’re the most psychotic vacationers ever. And she might not be wrong.
I’m doing the mental math and wondering if we really have time to ride the monorail, then ride Space Mountain, and still make it in time for dinner. I figure we’ll probably be ok if we can get on with the next group that loads. So we wait.
4:01 p.m.—A monorail arrives at the station. I like the sleek look of the Disneyland monorails. Yes, I’ll say it—it looks cooler here than the ones at Disney World. And I say this as a big fan of the Disney World monorails. They’re even on my t-shirt, for pete’s sake.
4:03 p.m.—We get cut off just short of being able to get on board. We’re forced to wait for the next train. Now it’s decision time. It could be another 10-15 minutes for the next monorail to come by. Figure the monorail takes 20 minutes or so to make a full loop. Another 10 minutes or so to walk to Space Mountain. 10-15 minutes in the FastPass line. 5 minutes to ride. Do it all over again with the child swap. Then 15-20 minutes’ walk to dinner.
We’d be cutting it close. Really close. Sure, we could be late to dinner, but then we’re putting pressure on ourselves on the back end due to the Radiator Springs Racers FP’s.
Another kink in the plan: it’s time for Drew’s afternoon snack, so Julie needs to nurse him somewhere. So, we make an executive decision: the big kids and I (and Alison) will skip the monorail and head for Space Mountain. Dave is protesting a bit, because he really, really wants to ride the monorail. But he also really, really wants to ride Space Mountain (for the very first time!). Sarah and I definitely don’t want to miss out on Space Mountain, and Scotty is feeling very brave after conquering Big Thunder Mountain. Alison just wants to know what the heck is going on. Julie will take Baby Drew for a spin on the monorail, nurse him somewhere, and meet us after our ride. Being the gracious, loving, sensitive wife that she is, she’s taking one for the team here.
4:30 p.m.—It takes a little while for us to climb back down off the monorail tower, make a pit stop, and get to Space Mountain. But we’re here now, and ready to get our ride on.
4:35 p.m.—Once again, I have to give the edge for the ride to Disneyland. Space Mountain here has 2-seat vehicles instead of the single-rider versions in Florida. So you can ride with a buddy. It also has a custom musical score timed to give the ride a perfect soundtrack, written by top-notch composer Michael Giacchino (who has written the scores for the new Star Trek and Mission: Impossible movies as well as being Pixar’s go-to guy for music: The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Up, Cars 2, etc.). And it somehow manages to be a smoother ride than the WDW version while also feeling incredibly fast. I have no idea if it actually is faster than the Florida counterpart, but it sure felt that way. Even better: all of the kids loved it. We’re blossoming into coaster junkies!
Side note: if you ride with Alison, she knows exactly where the ride camera is and is happy to pose for it. Unfortunately, I only got a crappy blurry iPod photo:
4:50 p.m.—Another ride conquered, we wait a bit for Julie to show up with Baby Drew. When we do find her, she informs us that the monorail wasn’t air-conditioned, and it was packed with people, so the ride wasn’t necessarily as relaxing and enjoyable as she thought it would be. This is professional-level guilt tripping, and it’s working like a charm. But she also says we never would have made it to dinner on time if we’d ridden it, so I’m feeling better about the decision to bail.
We start wandering back across the park for the thousandth time, and when we reach Main St. Alison decides she needs to head out in order to beat the traffic and get home to Fran. So we bid a fond adieu there. Hugs and goodbyes are exchanged, and Julie and I both hope we have conveyed to Alison how grateful we are for all that she did for us. I hope our paths cross again someday.
5:10 p.m.—Julie heads on with the kids to dinner while I make a detour to do an Indiana Jones FP run. I figure this is my only shot to get FP’s for the evening. So I head over to the machines and grab my FP’s. Return time: 6:15 – 7:15 p.m. I actually stand there and wait for a few minutes until it turns over to 6:20 – 7:20 p.m., just to give me a few extra minutes to play with. With those in hand, I head to our dinner spot: Café Orleans.
We’re here for one reason. We want the Monte Cristo sandwich. Julie and I are suckers for Monte Cristo sandwiches. We’ve even knocked our own kids out of the way just to get a few extra bites for ourselves.
5:22 p.m.—When I arrive, the rest of them have already been seated. We follow the advice of Alison and other DL vets and order pommes frites as an appetizer. For those of you who don’t know, pommes frites are french fries sprinkled with garlic. If the restaurant had called them “french fries”, they would only charge $4.50 or so, but giving them a fancy foreign name means you can charge $8 for the same basket. Anyway, they’re pretty good, but a little too garlicky for me. Julie, being a garlic addict, absolutely loves them.
No matter, it’s soon time for the main event. We actually split two orders of these among the 5 of us, and it worked out just fine. And it’s really, really good. No regrets here whatsoever. I highly recommend this dish, and would definitely come back for it.
6:25 p.m.—Remember, our return time window for Radiator Springs Racers ends at 6:50 p.m. We did pretty well to eat dinner in about an hour, but now we have a long walk ahead of us. And the place still looks crowded, even as they begin to set up for the evening events.
Somehow, we have to walk all the way back to Cars Land, ride RSR, and then walk all the way back to DL so we can ride Indiana Jones. Then we would head back to California Adventure for the World of Color show, and we still haven’t ridden the Matterhorn. Also, we’ve been up since 6:00 a.m., we’re hot, our legs are tired…
You might think this day is turning ludicrous. And you’re probably right.
Coming Up Next: The wild, exciting conclusion to our Disneyland day! Will we accomplish everything on our list? Or will we crash and burn?
Maybe I need a second cup of coffee?
Cheers.
Good call.
