Disneyland 2008: Sunday!

Sunday was our longest day at the parks (and will probably be the longest blog entry, too!). Because it was a “Magic Morning”/Early Entry day, the park opened at 7:00, meaning we were up and out of the hotel by 6:40am. Let me make special note here of the hotel shampoo: it smelled like Andes chocolate mints—I can’t decide if that’s a good smell for shampoo or not. What’s next, pumpkin pie scented shampoo?
Anyway, once we got to Disneyland, we headed over to the Finding Nemo Submarine Ride first thing, but they didn’t let us enter through Tomorrowland. We had to walk through Fantasyland, around the Matterhorn, and into the line set up north of the submarines. I don’t know if this is the normal routine, or if it was just because the ride wasn’t quite ready to open.
The ride itself was OK, but nothing I’d wait very long for. Not worth more than a 20-30 minute wait, for sure, although I think the kids liked it quite a bit. It’s definitely an upgrade from the original Subs ride, but while they got rid of the cheesy fake fish, they’ve been replaced with video screen projections, leaving me with the feeling that I just watched a movie underwater. But like I said, I’m sure that kids--who don’t see the technology behind the magic—find it a lot more fun.
Then it was time for Amanda and Maddy to go on Space Mountain. While they did, Joel, Abe and I rode the Buzz Lightyear ride 3 times in a row. Here are a couple pics:



You’ll notice that in both images, Abe's score is actually not too bad, compared to Joel's. Abe had been talking for weeks about how he was going to go on Buzz and shoot Zurg (that’s the bad guy in the world of Buzz Lightyear, for those of you that don’t know). He definitely made good on his promise. Really, I think he just had better technique: he just kept shooting the whole time, whereas Joel would only shoot while aiming for specific targets.
After that, Amanda and I each took turns going on Star Tours with Maddy and Joel. Then I went over and got Fastpasses for the Indiana Jones ride for Joel and myself. By now, it was about 8:30, and the park was open to everyone, but being Sunday morning, it was still pretty uncrowded. Really, I didn’t even need to get the Fastpasses, since the regular line was only a 10-15 minute wait.
We took our first bathroom break of the day, then went on the Jungle Cruise. I like when we get a good skipper that’s actually funny and uses some new jokes occasionally. One year we had this old guy that just WASN’T funny.
At 9:05 it was time for Joel and me to ride the Indiana Jones ride. He was a little nervous, and shed a couple tears while in line, but he went through with it and conquered the ride (luckily he wasn’t required to keep his eyes open during the ride). For his reward, he picked out a Pirate Mickey Mouse stuffed animal.
By then we were getting hungry (we’d had breakfast at 6:15 or so, after all) so we had another first: a Dole Whip (as well as a Dole Whip float). I forgot to take a picture, but Dole whips are kind-of an airy, soft-serve pineapple sherbet treat. The float is the sherbet in pineapple juice. It was good, but again, not something we HAVE to get every visit.
Conquering his “challenge ride” must’ve done something good to Joel, because his next ride was the “Gadget’s Go-Coaster” in Toontown (with Amanda and Maddy, while I watched Abe and refilled our water bottles—we must’ve filled those things 50 times during our trip—gotta keep hydrated!)


At 10:00, we rode Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin, but as we got to the very end of the ride, everything stopped, went black, then ALL the lights came up. I don’t know if it’s cause of the spinning of the cars through a dark ride or what, but apparently this ride breaks down a lot. As we sat in our cars for 10 minutes waiting to be escorted out, it was fun to look around and see the “behind the scenes” of the ride. Unfortunately, Amanda had the cameras in the car ahead of us, so I couldn’t get any secret pictures of the groove in the floor that the vehicles follow, or the torn, taped-up black fabric that you don’t notice when going through the “portable hole,” or even the great close-up I could’ve gotten of Roger Rabbit. Amanda did get his arm in the picture, though:


By this point, it was starting to get pretty hot, and Joel kept looking for any spot of shade he could find and sitting down in it for a minute. So we decided to take the Disneyland Railroad for a shady, breezy rest. We took a full-circle journey from the Toontown station, back to Toontown, then to Tomorrowland, where we exited. We got Fastpasses for Autopia, since the kids REALLY wanted to go on that. By then, Abe had fallen asleep in his stroller. Amanda sat in the shade with him, and Maddy, Joel and I went into the Innoventions building.
I hadn’t been in Innoventions for several years because I thought it was fairly boring and too crowded at the exhibits. But this time, it was really fun and not too busy. I’ve got some video I’ll share on Monday from inside Innoventions (we returned again with Amanda and Abe that day). Joel loved it, mostly because there were a lot of video games to play. One annoying thing: because they’re currently building a “house of the future” on the lower level, you have to walk up the very long exit ramp to enter the 2nd floor. Very tiring in the middle of a hot day.
Next we rode Autopia, which gave Amanda and me anxiety about when our kids reach driving age. Although we were each pressing the gas in our vehicles (the girls in one car, the boys in another) Maddy and Joel were steering. I think it was a rougher ride than Indiana Jones. But the kids totally loved it, and we rode it again on Tuesday.
By now it was really getting hot (a high of 102 degrees that day) and since we’d gotten up so early, we were ready for a rest. We shopped on Main Street for a few minutes, then went back to the hotel at 12:45.
After a really long rest, we headed to Downtown Disney at about 4:00pm. Let me mention here how annoying the “bag check” is at the parks. I know they do it to make Disneyland a safe place, but it’s really obnoxious having to unzip all the pockets in our backpack every time we go in. Anyway…
Joel had to use the bathroom twice within about 10 minutes while walking through Downtown Disney. Now, if we were inside Disneyland, this wouldn’t be a problem. I know where pretty much every bathroom is in there, as I’m sure you know. But I’ve NEVER had to use the bathroom while walking through Downtown Disney, so I was looking around for signs and consulting maps—I’ve never been so lost at Disneyland before!
At 5:00 we had our Dinner reservation at Goofy’s Kitchen at the Disneyland Hotel. That was really fun. Abe was a little nervous of the characters at first (and was pretty grouchy, too—this was the day we realized Abe was getting an ear infection: the nastiness oozing out of his ear was our big tip, along with his overly whiny temperament and the fact that he only wanted me ALL the time), but after a while, he started having fun. Here are a few pictures:






The food was pretty good overall. I liked the potstickers a lot, but the chicken was too spicy. Here are some pics:



There were tons of desserts, but I was too full to enjoy them all. Here’s a sampling:


At one point, Joel and I were walking over to the buffet and Goofy dropped a bucket full of plastic measuring cups. I told Joel to go over and help him pick them up, but Goofy started using them to bang on the bucket like a drum. Joel and a bunch of other kids joined in, playing “music” with the utensils. I REALLY wish I’d had my video camera for that one. It was fun.
After a bathroom break, we headed over to DCA. We got Amanda and Maddy Fastpasses for California Screamin’, but Maddy chickened out and said she was definitely NOT going on it, which made Amanda rather upset, as you can imagine. However, it was then that Joel declared that he wanted to go on the Indiana Jones ride again, but this time with Amanda. So we planned that for the next morning.
We rode the King Triton Carousel:




then went up in the Sun Wheel. We went to the Tortilla Factory, but I was still too full to eat my free tortilla (plus it was corn—who wants to eat a plain corn tortilla? Flour tortillas are good, like a slice of bread, but corn? Blech!)
At about 8:00, we headed over to Heimlich’s Chew-chew Train and the Tuck and Roll bumper cars. On that one, Maddy drove her own car and Joel and I rode together. Again, Maddy’s driving skills were lacking and she got stuck pretty quickly. Meanwhile, Joel was heading in the wrong direction and we almost crashed into a whole collection of other riders.
At 9:00 we headed back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep. And Amanda was very excited that we were going to get to sleep in Monday morning.

Total bathroom breaks: 4