Week 6 - California
Like everyone else who grew up in the seventies and eighties we had a Mickey Mouse vinyl record. Ours was the particularly fun Mickey Mouse Club Original TV Cast Album. M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.
And that was probably the extent of any Disney related stuff we owned. Unlike our children who have accumulated a fair whack of stuff and predictably even more once we visited the most Magical Place on Earth.
Disneyland is like a whole other world. You have to see it to believe it. After queuing for bag searches, and having our photos taken for our four-day pass we walked in through the gates and felt immediately overwhelmed by the sheer number of people and what to do first, where do you go, what do we do? Hard to know. Let’s download the App and have a look.
We took it reasonably gently on the first day, especially as we had tickets for an ice-hockey match in the evening. We spent the day in Disneyland Park going on the teacups, watching the parade, queuing for an hour for the underwhelming self-drive car ride Autopia (I aged a couple of years when Archie took the driver’s seat and I was relegated to passenger - no way am I teaching my boy to drive - he reminds me too much of me!). We went underwater on the Finding Nemo Submarine and Bruce and Archie took on a small rollercoaster before we headed for a giftshop.
Day two and we turned left out of the gates into Adventureland, preparing for a long day. Highlights included Cars Land (although we decided not to queue for 90 mins - 2 hours for Radiator Springs Racing), Pixar Pal-around (ferris wheel) and Lyla and I hit the slower rides while Bruce and the boys went on the Zephyr and Grizzly River Run. Lyla and I queued to meet Elsa and Anna - normally chatty Lyla was unusually quiet in presence of royalty. Unfortunately the Haunted House was closed and we took the time for a breather on the Mark Twain Riverboat before heading back onto the rides. The evening was spent waiting for the World of Colour show at 9pm - which was fun to watch. The restaurant bill for our so-so dinner (although we had front row seats) was less impressive but I did wrap the bottle of wine we ordered but didn’t finish in a napkin and secreted it into my handbag for consumption later.
Day three found us up early and queued up at the gates for Adventureland by half-six. Bruce and I eavesdropped on the American family in front who were discussing their plan of attack for the day. It turns out that they like most of us were heading to Radiator Springs Racing first - you have to walk fairly fast, not run (earnest staff will remind you of the rules) to get across the park to the ride. The wait time by the end of our turn was already at thirty minutes.
”It’s not a rollercoaster, Lyla, I promise...” was uttered more than a few times and we bundled onto one of the empty cars - boys in front, Lyla and I in the back, all strapped in and off we went, hearts thumping - some in excitement, some in fear. It was hard to focus on Mater’s narration through the first slower part of the ride through the pit lane as a small head jammed itself into my ribs. Muffled words of protest could be heard as another car came level with us and lordy, lord off we took in a fairly fast race - think Scaletrix but on a much larger scale. Lots of corners, hills and valleys and switchbacks. Turns out it was a rollercoaster.
Sorry Lyla.
After finding Lyla’s lost nerves we went on a couple of quick fairly sedate rides before joining the line for Soaring Round the World - a surprisingly exciting adventure which involved strapping into rows of airplane type seats which were then elevated up several metres off the ground, and just like being in a plane we took off and across the world, the seats tilting forward and backward as we traversed across Sydney Harbour, along the Great Wall of China, Germany, America, of course and parts of Africa.
So much fun and all before 9am!
We crossed plenty of rides off our list for the rest of the day and left at a reasonable hour happy with our loot including four custom made lightsabers, t-shirts, pins and other... stuff.
Saturday afternoon found us hitting the motorway heading south towards San Diego for a two day stay. We’d heard great things about the city and it reminded us of Sydney. Big harbour, temperate climate and very similar beach side suburbs. Our Sunday was spent exploring, taking us along the spaghetti motorways to La Jolla Cove where we watched the seals sunbake on the sand. After a good long-ish walk around the town we headed back into the city and into the Spanish Colonial architecture of Balboa Park.
Monday morning we packed up and on our way out of town visited the USS Midway, a 1940′s air-craft carrier turned museum. We marvelled at the small sleeping quarters; the massive anchor chains; the variety of aircraft and the enthusiasm of the volunteers - mostly former sailors.
The rest of the day we spent driving north-east to Palm Desert. The road into town reminded us of the Radiator Springs ride - plenty of ups and downs and twists and turns. On the plus side, the hotel had an excellent pool and we met a lovely American family who also had a Lila in their midst.
Next stop Grand Canyon via Las Vegas and Hoover Dam.
Thanks for reading!
Fi, Bruce, Q, A & it’s too scary Lyla.