Disneyland October 2010 Trip: Day 3

Back to the Disneyland trip re-cap. Amanda complained that the previous Disneyland entry was kind-of boring, so I’ll try to make this one more entertaining.

FRIDAY

Let’s start with a picture I took of the boys sleeping in their hotel bed:



The boys had one bed, Amanda and I had the other, Elliott slept in a pack-and-play crib, and Maddy slept on an air mattress. Considering our rocky history of sleeping in hotel rooms, I was pretty surprised at how well we all slept. I think the fact that Elliott didn’t get his usual naps and the fact that we were all doing a lot more walking than usual made it so we were all worn out and slept really well. Also, the nice temperatures (no A/C OR heater needed) made us sleep a lot more comfortably.

One of the mornings, Abe sat up in bed and I said, “Are you ready to wake up?” and he said, “No, I just want to get off the ride…” and plopped back into the bed. He never did tell me what ride he thought he was on.

On Friday, Disneyland held their “Mickey’s Trick-or-Treat Party” (which we didn’t attend). That meant that the park closed early so the party guests could have the park to themselves. To counteract that, they opened Disneyland earlier that morning (8:00), so we took advantage of that, knowing fewer people would be getting up that early, especially since people would also be going to the party in the evening.



Because all my planned Friday morning rides got done on Wednesday afternoon, we spent the first hour in Fantasyland—



From 8am to 8:55, we rode Dumbo, the Teacups, Maddy and I rode the Matterhorn while Amanda and the boys rode the Alice ride TWICE (they let them go again with no wait because the ride had no audio playing the first time through), and It’s a Small World.


9:15: We went to Toontown and the kids and I went on Gadget’s Go-Coaster (it was the first time for Abe and me). Abe was very scared to go on it, but afterword, he wanted to go again, so Amanda took them all again while I fed Elliott some applesauce.
9:25—The kids went into Chip and dale’s treehouse, which is the most boring treehouse EVER.
9:45—we took the train from Toontown over to New Orleans Square.
10:20—Amanda and Maddy went on Thunder Mountain, then Maddy and I went (first time for me—I sure was daring with the roller coasters this time around!)
Over in Frontierland, they had set up a Dia de los Muertos display, here are some pics:




There was also a Halloween Tree, based on a Ray Bradbury story:



11:00—We rode the Jungle Cruise.

11:20—we rode on Pirates again, then Maddy decided to get her souvenir, a caricature portrait:



Too bad she doesn’t have a family member that could draw this well—woulda saved us $16!

This picture shows what the weather was like the whole trip, rainy/sunny:



12:25—I got us some Fastpasses for Autopia, then the kids and I walked through Sleeping Beauty Castle while Amanda went to the Baby Center to make a warm bottle for Elliott (all the bathroom faucets at the parks had cold or lukewarm water, but Elliott never drinks much when it’s not warm enough).

From 1:00 to 3:00 we had a rest/lunch at the hotel, then we headed into Disneyland at about 3:30. We ended up not needing the Autopia Fastpasses, but the kids (especially Joel) definitely needed driving lessons. Maddy and Joel each had their own cars, and Abe and I shared a car (he made me drive AND press the gas!!) They had Maddy and Joel go in the batch of cars before Abe and me, then we were in the front car of the next batch.

Abe and I started our journey, travelling fine through the miniature roadway, when we suddenly came upon a stalled car in front of us—it was Joel! He kept having problems pushing down the gas pedal. After several stops and starts, an Autopia worker showed up with a tow cable (assuming the car had broken down). While crossing in front of Joel, Joel pressed the gas and the guy had to quickly leap to the side to avoid getting run over. The worker got in the car with Joel and pressed the gas the rest of the way through the ride—pretty hilarious.

4:10—We rode the Nemo Submarines again—but THIS time, we used another of our magical readmission passes, so we only had to wait about 5 minutes instead of 20—we were off the ride by 4:35!
4:50—We rode Peter Pan’s Flight using our other readmission pass.
5:15—By this time, they were starting to let people in for the Halloween Party, and the crowds were getting worse, so we took the Monorail to Downtown Disney. The kids loved looking through the Lego store.
Around this time, Amanda started feeling really sick—she had an upset stomach that she blamed on eating too many Cheetos and Red Vines at the hotel.

At 6:15 we went into California Adventure, but we just sat on a bench for a while. I went and bought 3 Chimichangas for the 4 of us to eat (not Amanda)—I should’ve gotten 4, though, because the kids wolfed them down and hardly let me have ANY. Amanda and Elliott decided to go back to the hotel, but the 3 older kids and I stayed for ElecTRONica.

What is ElecTRONica, you ask?

It’s a nighttime party on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays in the Hollywood Pictures Backlot area of DCA, themed to the new TRON movie coming to theatres in December. There’s a lot of techno music, dancing, and cool video projections on the buildings. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures, but it was pretty cool-looking. Here’s a video that Disney put together that gives a pretty good idea what it’s like:



The first thing we did was head over to the Muppetvision 3-D theater for an 8-minute 3-D preview of the TRON movie. The movie will be shown in 3-D in theaters, but this special sneak preview also included wind and lighting effects inside the theater—pretty cool. While sitting in our seats for the movie to start, I saw a guy enter the theater that looked a lot like the host of one of the Disney World Podcasts I listen to. I tried to keep my eye out for him during the rest of the evening to see if I could talk to him, but I was unable to. When we got back to Arizona I emailed him, and yes indeed, he had come out to CA for the weekend to report on some of the local Halloween events and also to see ElecTRONica!

After the preview we headed over to Flynn’s Arcade, a recreation of the arcade from the original TRON movie—they had 80’s music playing on the loudspeakers and all the classic games, like Pac-Man, Arkanoid, Centipede, Pole Position, Dig-dug, etc. And they only cost 25 cents each to play! Actually, you had to buy tokens (special Flynn’s Arcade ones that were cool—shoulda kept one for a cheap Disney souvenir!). Madison played Pac-Man, I played Arkanoid, Abe played Foozball, and Joel played a TRON-themed game called Space Paranoids. Joel would’ve stayed there all night if I’d let him and if it wasn’t so crowded.

After that, we were walking around and Joel was like, “Hey is that Cody and Toby?” I turned around and Toby was directing people along the walkways while Cody was hanging around by him. We chatted for a little bit, and I gave them a small gift we’d brought—a Christmas Tree-scented candle (they’ve been talking a lot on Facebook about the holiday candles they’ve been collecting).

At 8:15 we rode Monsters Inc., which made it so we were just in time to see Laser Man at 8:30. Who is Laser Man? Well, if you saw the video above, you got a quick glimpse—he’s a stage performer that does cool stuff with lasers (hence the name). It was totally awesome. Here’s a pretty good short clip of him doing his thing:



After that we headed home at about 8:45 to find Elliott asleep and Amanda feeling a little better. She’d had some juice and she even called the front desk to tell them our TV remote didn’t work—which they quickly came up and replaced.

So that was day 3 of 4—hope it was more interesting to read than the previous one!