Day 7 - Sunday October 8th 2006

Its a bit sad when the highlight of a day at Disneyland is a deep fried toasted sandwhich!!!
The day didn't start well. I have been coming down with a cold for a couple of days and it hit hard this morning. I didn't wake up until almost 11 and if I rolled over Im sure I would have slept a few more hours. We didn't make it to the park until almost 11:30 and it was scenes reminisinit from Monday. The lines were enormous. We got inside Disneyland in surprisingly good time and headed to New Orleans area to try something I had heard about from the Disney community sites online, the Monte Christo Sandwhich. Even after reading about it I still wasn't sure what it was but everyone I had ever talked to about it had recommended trying it so try it we would.
We got to the place that sells them just as they were opening and were promptly escorted to a table were we ordered 2 of them and a ceasor salad. When it arrived 10mins later I must admit to being a little disapointed, it was certainly the smallest serving of food we had seen in our time here so far, and I was starving. It is basically 1 Turkey, ham and Cheese Sandwhich, cut into 4's and lightly battered and deepfried covered with a light dusting of icing sugar, put on a massive plate with a bunch of grapes and a couple of strawberries. Didn't seem like much but it was amazing. Who would have thought to deep fry a sandwhich? The other surprising thing other then the taste, was how filling it was. I was starving, hadn't eaten since lunch time the day before and I could barley finish it I was so full.
On a slightly off-topic note, one of the other things that I love over here is root beer. I had always wanted to try it but had no idea how it would taste. I thought it would taste somewhat akin to Ginger Beer but it actually tastes pretty close to Sarsparilla and it is devine. I have been drinking far too much of it the last couple of days, I even passed up a real beer the other day for one. I was feeling sick though.
The amount of people in Disneyland was amazing. Rides were having 2 hour plus standby waiting times. Toni was finally able to get Winnie the Pooh's photo and autograph and scored even bigger by being in the right place at the right time to get Jack Sparrows (the guy playing him really does look like Johnny Depp. In another slightly offtopic rant, the 2 women in front of Toni in line were funny. One would have been about Toni's age and the other was probably her mother. They had makeup bags and mirrors out trying to pretty themselves up. When they go to meet 'Jack' they were like a couple of schoolgirls. They got there photos taken and then were trying to hit on him, giving him their phone numbers and not letting go of him. You could see he was getting creeped out by them, it was pretty funny. He was relieved to finally get to someone more normal in Toni (Never thought I would say that))
We rode the winnie the pooh ride which was cute and then road the riverboat around the Rivers of America. This was really disapointing, I thought this would be great but it was just a 20 min trip around the island with just a couple of animatronics set up to look like indians. Even Dreamworld does a better job then this. We used a fastpass I collected earlier in the day to ride the Haunted Mansion again. We rode this on Tuesday and loved and it was even better the 2nd time around. There was so much we missed the first time and some of the effects I have no idea how they would do it. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Will deffinatly ride this again before we leave LA.
We wanted to spend the rest of the day over at DCA where we planned on seeing all of their shows, watch their parade at 5:15, then take some pictures of the Pier area at night and ride the rollercoaster over their at night which I have never done before.
Well it didn't really pan out that way. We got over there and you basically couldn't move because of the people. I went to go to one show, we arrived 30 mins before hand to find that the show was already full from people who had missed the show that started 90 mins before it. We then went to see the aladdin show to find that it had been cancelled for the day. We couldn't get a fast pass for anything, couldn't get around the park easily and there was no where to sit and rest. I was feeling crook from my cold and the old girls legs were playing up. We weren't having fun. We commented that it was sad that we would have preffered to be back at the hotel watching the SVU marathon then being in the parks today.
We decided to leave the parks and do something that I had promised Toni before we arrived, and that was to Make Your Own Teddy Bear. There is a shop in the Downtown Disney Shopping Area to do this. This got the girls excited again until we got there and the line was out the door and 1/2 way around the block. GRRRRRR, we will have to try and do this tomorrow.
We decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel, even though it was only about 3:45pm. We thought we should finally pick up all those Disney things that we wanted to buy seen as we were heading back and we wouldn't have to cart them around the parks all day and so we could pack our suitcases to see how much room we had left. We went to the big disney store and it took us about 25mins to find everything we wanted and about the same amount of time again to get served. We made it back to the hotel finally about 5pm were we ordered pizza, I drunk a Bug Light which came in a 915ml can (but only had 96 calories, which it proudly tells you on the can but doesn't mention anywhere what the alcohol content is) and watched SVU until 10pm. Never did get around to packing up those suit cases either.
I did get online and I found out that today was what one website was calling a 'Perfect Storm' situation for bringing unexpected levels of people to the park. On top of it being a Sunday (the busiest day of the week), it was also the second day of the 'Gay Days' weekend + it was the 2nd weekend of the Halloween Celebration where a lot of events and decorations have been put up in the parks. This is the first time they have done this and it has been heavily advertised in the southern california area so I lot of people have come in to see it. Lastly there was a 4 mile charity walk for the local childrens hosptials where the walkers got free entry into Disneyland afterwoods. So a lot of these people and their families would have been there that otherwise would not have normally been.
Tomorrow is the Columbus Day Public Holiday here. This holiday seems strange as everyone I have talked to has said that it is only a public holiday on the west coast for public servants and bank workers, but everyone else will be at work and just about all schools will be running as normal, so fingers cross it won't be anywhere near as bad as today.