Day 2 - Tuesday 3rd October 2006

What a big day today. I awoke at about 8 after a blissful 12 hours sleep. Toni being Toni was still blissfully dosing. Made the day 1 blog update and had a shower and woke Toni up about 9:30. She was still tired but much happier then the day before.
Today was our first proper day at Disneyland and after sorting out a few loose ends at the hotel we arrived at the park just before 11. What a change from yesterday. Gone were the 100m lines from the ticket counters and bag check. We walked straight through the bag check and had to wait in a queue of about 6 to get into the park proper. It was about this stage I realised I forgot to bring my spare memory cards for the camera from the hotel and my camera only had the tiny 32mb card. D'oh!!! Lucky Kaylee has gigantic card in hers and can take enough pictures for both of us.
Our few hours in the park yesterday were imediatly of great benefit to us. We headed straight for Pirates of the Carribean, which has only re-opened in the last few months after a major upgrade which has made this ride very popular. Everytime we walked past yesterday it had a wait time of over an hour but this morning we were on and away in about 10 mins. Let me tell you, this ride is fantastic. It goes for about 15 mins and the animatronics and special effects are mindblowing. We missed the story that gets told during the ride as we were too busy looking at everything to pay attention, so we will deffinatly ride it again.
We decided next to head for Splash Mountain to get a 'fast pass'. A fast pass is a really great idea that they have at Disneyland which instead of waiting in queue, you can put your entry ticket into a machine and it gives you another ticket with a time to come back to the ride. Once you return, you go through a dedicated line that takes you right to the front. So for example if it was 11am and you got a fast pass for Splash mountain for 12pm, you could go to Splash anytime after 12 and go straight to the front of the line. You can only have one fast pass at a time but as soon as your return time arrives (in this instance 12), you can go and get another one, even if you haven't used your first.
Anyway, we went to splash to get a fast pass but saw that there was no queue. We backtracked to Haunted Mansion which is insanely popular at the moment as it has a Holloween/Christmas overlay and got a fast pass and then went into the Splash queue.
Splash Mountain is a flume ride similar in style to the ones at Seaworld and Dreamworld, that ends with a giant drop over a cliff and into a pool of water. We soon discovered why there was next to no queue, the ride wasn't working!!! We waited in line for about 10mins watching empty flumes hurtle through the ride and then they let us through and in no time at all, it was our turn. This ride was seriously fun, even if I did get pretty wet. Thankfully the camera survived. We even forked out $15 for the photo from the top as Toni's look of horror is priceless, even though we spent longer in the queue to get the photo then the queue to get on the ride itself.
Outside the exit to splash is a winnie the pooh area which had a giant tigger roaming around. Toni basically creamed her panties and went straight off to the nearest store to get an autograph book which the characters sign and has a place to put a photo of you with them next to it. Acutally the characters here do look fantastic and they do a great job with the visitors. You see characters all over the park and the 'costumed' characters (like Donald, Mickey etc) all look fantastic and all the 'human' characters (Ariel, Aladdin) all have been perfectly cast and act, look and speak as you would expect them to. Toni missed Tigger this time but did get pluto instead.

We sighted Pooh and Eyeore but their queues were pretty long and it was lunch time and we were hungry. We went to New Orleans square but being lunch time all the food places were packed, so we decided just to get a snack from a street vendor to tie us over and went off to use our fast pass at Haunted Mansion. This ride was serious impressive. It is designed sort of like the old haunted house rides you would see at the local show but a billion times better. There's this one scene in particular where there is a series of ghosts dancing a waltz around a christmas tree that is so lifelike its unbelievable. The only downside to this ride was it lost a little of its atmosphere when the music cut out part way through so someone over the lound speaker could remind us not to use flash photography (looking at you MOTHER). Yet another ride to go on.
We got a fast pass for indy and then headed off to Tommorow Land which was one of the two places we didn't stroll through yesterday.
We first went to the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blaster ride. This is such a simple idea done so perfectly that words just can't describe how much fun it is. Basically you get into a self driven capsule, that hurtles you around a track. You have a gun that you hold and you have to shoot the evil space aliens. In front of you you have a scoreboard showing your score. The gun has a laser pointer so you can see where your aiming and the capsules have a joystick which you use to turn the capsule in a 360 degree loop on the track to get a better shot at the badies. I gave Toni an absoulte flogging by a whooping 300 points (25500 to 25200) but my gloating was short lived when my mother pointed out her score of 46000!!!! And every time I looked up at her capsule she seemed to have it pointed at ours shooting at us. It seems all those years of playing computer games didn't help me all that much.
We walked out of that ride and seeing there was no queue, jumped straight back on again!!! This time I proved my nerdiness by racking up an impressive 76000 points to Tonis 35000 and Kaylee's 28000. I have no idea how you could come to this park with a 6-12 yr old boy, especially one who loves Buzz, and actually get them off this ride. It was ok for us due to there being no queues today but this ride often has over an hour wait time which would eat most of your day if you had to do it multiple times. Can't wait to have another go tomorrow.
By this time our fast pass return time for Indy had arrived so we were able to get another fast pass, which we did for Space Mountain. We had lunch where after learning from the debacle that was lunch yesterday, we split meals. I had a beautiful pepporoni pizza (Acutally typing this blog up I feel like another one now...) and the girls shared a salad and a perroroni pizza. Everyone was very happy and once again the food was not only delicious but well priced. One of the things we have noticed with the food here is that there is always a healthy alternative. Sure, there are 50 million different varieties of unhealthy food, but every vendor/restraunant always has an offereing of fruit or salad. Even the kids meals here you get a choice between fries of fresh baby carrots (which were very nice actually).
After lunch the old girl piked at riding Space Mountain. Our fast passes return hadn't arrived yet but so we waited about 15 mins in queue instead. Space Mountain is a totally indoor rollercoaster. What makes it different is the fact it is almost perfectly dark inside. You can't see the track ahead of you so you have no idea where the next turn or did is. The ride 'hurtles' you through space, you go through a galaxy with stars and comments flying by and you really feel the wind in your hair. Just like everything else here, B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T. Hopefully tomorrow we can get her oldness onto it as well.
We then rode Star Tours which is the Star Wars ride here. It is a simulator ride and I hate simulator rides, I tend to feel pretty sick afterwoods and this one held true to form. It was ok for what it was but I'll give it a miss for the rest of the holiday.
The best thing about it was that it lead out into the Star Wars shop. So far other then buying food and a pair of socks I needed, neither Toni or I had bought any merchindise so far. I found this awesome yoda shirt which seen as I only bought 3 shirts over here and was wearing my last clean one will give me something to wear tomorrow and Toni and I had our faces digitally added to a photo of Anakin and Amidala which came out really well. Let me tell you Toni's face on Amidala's "Attack of the Clones" abs..... YUMMY.
On the shopping front, there is just soooo much good stuff to buy here. Toni and I are waiting to early next week so that we get a chance to see it all before deciding what to buy (and also what to get people for presents for Xmas/Birthday/Thank you for helping with the wedding). The old girl has gone nuts. She has bought about 6 bag fulls of stuff so far and there doesn't seem to be any end in site. There would easily be at least 25 stores within Disneyland and each store has stuff unique to just that store which is good in some ways as you get to see different things and each store is themed to its land, but bad in the fact you need to go into each and every store. Still it is going to be hard to talk Toni out of bringing a suitcase full of stuffed minnie mouse and tinkerbell dolls home with her.
We went back and rode Indian Jones but didn't need to use our fast passes as there was no line. This ride yet again was a lot of fun. Was sort of a roller coaster but you were in an old 4wd like car, and when you went around corners the back of it would slide like it would as you spead around a dirt road. It also would come to a stop and back up a bit to get a run up and the harrision forn animatronic looked very good.
Toni then got her photo taken with Ariel (who was HOT!!!!) and then we went to Its a Small World. This was one of the first major attractions opened at Disneyland and it basically a boat ride with different animatronics representing different countries from around the world. The girls loved it, I was just driven spare by the inane tune that keeps playing over and over and over again.
Then it was off to the other 'land' we hadn't seen yet, Toontown. We didn't stay here long as it was getting late and the parade was soon to start but the theming here is awesome. We did get to go through Mickey and Minnies house and got our photo taken with them. We will deffinatley spend more time here tomorrow


Now it was time for the parade. We found our self a nice spot on Main Street and waited 1/2 hour for the parade to start. What was really cool was everyone sat down on the side walk for it with only the people standing about 10 rows back standing, so everyone could get a great view. Kaylee almost missed the start while visting the worlds slowest vendor but the parade itself was awesome. The floats were imaculate and the show they put on was breathtaking.

By now it was 7:40pm and the park was to shut at 8. While waiting for the crowds to leave at the end of parade we took some pics of Disneyland at night, most of which came out terribly. We went to have one last go on the blaster game but the line was too long so we went and looked at some more stores on main street that we hadn't been into. At about 8:30 we finally left the park in search of dinner. We went to go to Denny's but the wait to get a table was going to be at least an hour so we walked to McDonalds instead. We then were far too lazy to walk home so we caught a shuttle bus back to our hotel which was driven by the most friendly bus driver I have ever met.
All up we spent over 9 and a half hours in the park today, when it was quiet and we still didn't even make it into 2 of the lands today (let alone the other disneyland park here, California Adventure). We rode all of the 'Headline' rides today except 2 (one of which is having a major overhaul and won't re-open until December) but we only went on a couple of the other 30 odd rides that aren't consider the 'Headliner Must Do' rides here nor did we see any of the shows or stop to watch any of the roving entertainment. We would have seen about 15-20 characters roaming the park today but only stopped to let Toni get pictures and autographs 5 times so she has plenty to do there as well. After 9:30 hours we were exhausted, there is no way we could go the full 8am to midnight hours that they do here on the weekends.
We have so much left to do but thankfully we have allowed the time to do it all. We will be at Disneyland again all day tomorrow, though this time we don't have to stay for the parade, then we are off to San Diego on Thursday (Friday Aus time) for Seaworld, Friday we have hired a guide and town car to show us the sights of LA and then back to Disney on Saturday where we plan to spend the day in the other theme park.
If anyone actually got to the end of all of this drivel, then you have earned the right to call me Joe Dwyer.