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| Good value at $4!!! |
When I put that our body clocks were ‘totally screwed’, it really manifested itself by about 1:30am (though I’d previously woken at 11:30pm…) and with both of us wide awake, at 2:30am we switched on the TV. Two episodes of ‘Married With Children’ later, we tried once again to sleep. Not easy. The next thing we knew, the cleaner was trying to get in, as we’d forgotten to hang the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door!
The next time we were awake it was 12 noon!
After the ablutions, we wandered up the street to Denny’s again and Paula managed the $4 breakfast plus a smoothie. Now for the equivalent of $4 in NZ you’d be lucky to get toast, but Paula scored two poached eggs, 2 sausages, two so called mini pancakes with butter and maple syrup.
For my $8, I got the above plus two strips of that disgusting crispy bacon that some obviously prefer, a pile of hash brown (more like potato rosti), coffee and a small juice. Note to our NZ Thursday coffee club. When you next gather, please tell Scott that he may need to examine his menu pricing…
We waddled out leaving a pancake each untouched (a certain son and a couple of grandsons would be horrified) and opted to use our three day Disney Hopper passes with no expectations of riding, as we knew the Memorial Day crowds would be huge.
We opted to amble around clockwise and a few minutes later we were seated in the cool air of the theatre to enjoy 3D Muppet Vision – no queue. Next around was the imposing “Hollywood Tower Hotel” attraction but we passed that by, though I will ride it one day, even though I am not huge fan of ‘drop’ attractions.
When we last visited Disney’s California park, it was just a few day before they opened the expensive and extensive “Cars Land”, based on the “Cars” movie. Wow! Needless to say, the star attraction is “Radiator Springs Racers” and with a posted 85 minute queue time for those without Fast Pass tickets, we had no intention of queuing. Yet, a few metres back, it was only a five minute queue for the spinning tyres ride.
A clever system of inflated tyres on a pad that blows air upwards so that the tyres float. To steer, the occupants lean left, right, backwards or forwards. I GOT PAULA ON A RIDE!!!! Good fun.
A stroll outwards to “Bugs World” where instead of the usual 4D movie, they were showing a preview of “Malificent”, Sleeping Beauty updated. So we went into that as once again, there was no queue.
A stroll around the whole park which was of course busy, but it seemed to us, no worse than in 2012 when it was overrun with people using up the last days of their annual passes before they expired.
As we had hopper passes, we strolled across to Disneyland just as the Military band were performing in the square and we hopped onto the train for a ride, getting off at the far side of the park and walking back. Feeling quite weary (hey, we’d been up for nearly six whole hours…) we decided to eat at Captain Jack’s Buffet, straight opposite the Disney entrance. Advertised as $9.49 (see pic), that only applies before 4pm and having had good reports from the Thorpes, we opted to give it a go at $10.49. It was surprisingly good (though we do know to trust Thorpe’s foodie assessments).
Although we’d not long been out of bed that long, we were still feeling a bit dopey but the walking had also taken its toll in the heat, so back to HoJo’ to relax and we nodded again briefly, until we finally crashed at an impressive 11:15.
We have an early access on our 3 day Disney pass so a theoretical early start. We’ll see. We are not setting the alarm.
Tuesday May 27th.
True to form, another hopeless night and another episode of ‘Married With Children’ in the early hours – finally waking at 10am… A bit too late for the early access.
We opted to skip breakfast and headed for California Park with the intention of seeing what the queue was like at Radiator Springs Racers. It said 60 minutes and we decided that wasn’t too bad. The number of people piling in on Fast Passes was unbelievable. We found out later that you had to head straight to Bugs Land for a Fast Pass, but by about 11am, they’d issued the allocation for the day, which probably means that later on, you returned anything up to 10 hours later to use it! Anyway, that 60 minute queue stretched to about 80 minutes before we finally climbed aboard our car for a 3 minute experience. Quite mad really. You can’t help but admire what they have done, creating a rocky desert on what was, a few years ago, a car park.
A rice based Thai/Chinese meal then on to ‘Toy Story’ with a queue of another 35 minutes before getting a fast pass for ‘Soaring’ (over California) and a return about an hour or so later – so enough time for a coffee at Starbucks. Ironically, we’d passed it the day before and not even realised it even was a Starbucks. We enjoyed the sit down (and shared a warm, cinnamon iced bun) and as this park is all about the 1920s to 1940’s, I certainly enjoyed the music, both live and over the speakers as it was very much to my liking.
Paula managed “Soaring” but still had her eyes closed for a fair bit of it.
Although this was the day after Memorial Day, the crowds were still huge late afternoon, so we wandered over to Disneyland again - just in time for the afternoon parade. Another train ride and a short walk. The queue at 5pm for Indiana Jones (my favourite ride) was 95 minutes and no single rider speedy access either. So we walked back to HoJo’s instead.
We returned to Denny’s and managed to stay awake until 10.25.
Paula has had enough of walking so although the crowds will be much smaller tomorrow, we have elected to relax tomorrow morning before the flight to the UK, so the two day Disney Pass would have been enough.
Much as I love the whole Disney thing, it really is essential to visit out of season to get the most out of it otherwise it is impossible to experience anywhere near as much as you would like.
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