Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Waking up to news reports that people are already lining up to see the reintroduction of Captain EO: Tribute was a little disconcerting. We weren’t planning on seeing it today, in fact, we were planning on staying at Disney’s California Adventure the entire day and calling it an early evening so the crowds that we were anticipating at Disneyland weren’t going to affect us. Before dealing with the crowds at either park we were heading to Mimi’s for some breakfast.
Mimi’s is a restaurant right across the street from Howard Johnson’s, the food is good and the servers and staff are friendly. We had each had a coupon that basically made our meals free; to be kind we ordered a couple of drinks so we would pay for something. I got the Mixed Berry Pain Perdue (pronounced: pan pair due) which was a cream cheese and marmalade stuffed french toast topped with mixed berries. It also came with two eggs and four pieces of bacon. My mom got a hardy omelet with cubed fried red skinned potatoes and a muffin. It was all good and since it was free we couldn’t complain. It became tricky figuring out the tip since on the bill it didn’t show the discount of the meals so we couldn’t quite remember how much we would have spent on the food.
Here’s a tip on tipping. When you get discounts or free meals because of coupons, your tip should be reflective of the total cost of the meal before discounts. Also have some decent math skills, because we apparently weren’t able to add what the cost of our meals were and the cost of our beverages and figure the tip out. We realized our mistake before we left and corrected the bill, but it was close and we avoided another rather embarrassing situation.
After breakfast we had some time before we had to actually leave for the parks so we went back to the hotel and I continued to work on Day 2’s trip report until it was 9am when we left, got on the tram and made our way to Disneyland. Along the way there was a family sitting in front of us on the tram. It was a mother, father, their daughter’s first time and a baby. The daughter who was probably 3 years old began talking to me… I think we all know how I felt about this. It wasn’t something that I could ignore since she was looking right at me and the mother and father were right there, I had to interact and I think we all know exactly how I felt about this… I was not pleased. I was friendly and engaged the little girl about Alice in Wonderland and how she was going to see her and ride the ride. Then she went on and on about how she saw Mowgli along the tram route…Mowgli wasn’t on the tram route, she was wrong.
We get to security and you can tell who was there to see Captain EO and who was there to enjoy their times in the park. Well, I could definitely tell the two people who were there since they had Michael Jackson t-shirts on. I snapped a photo. Walking into the Main Entrance Plaza the lines into Disneyland were enormous, nearly summer length and the lines getting into Disney’s California Adventure were non-existent. We were able to walk right into Disney’s California Adventure without a wait, now that I think about it, that’s pretty much how it always is. I suppose that just goes to sow how popular that park is.
Since the park doesn’t officially open until 10am, they do have Soarin’ Over California open. We got some FastPasses and rode it for the first time this trip. Soarin’ at Disneyland is superior than the Soarin’ at Walt Disney World, not because of the quality of the ride like with Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters but because of the quality of the queue. I know that seems unimportant, and it is, but there is just something to be said for good theming. It doesn’t really matter because the ride is fantastic and one of the most popular attractions in the park and it is one of our favorites.
Following Soarin’ we piled up with the rest of the folks waiting for the rope to drop near Grizzly River Run. We only had to wait there a couple of minutes before the rope dropped and everyone started calmly, yet quickly making their way to Paradise Pier to get on the most popular attraction in the park, Toy Story Midway Mania! I don’t like walking quickly with a large group of people, especially when there are teenagers in the group texting or playing with their phones, not paying attention to where they are going. It’s a long walk from Grizzly River Run to Toy Story Midway Mania and we had to stop at Ariel’s Grotto so my mom could take a 15 second rest. We stopped, she took a breath and were continued on our way.
The wait for Toy Story Midway Mania was less than 10 minutes. One of my favorite things to watch is when people get in line without their family and are constantly waving and looking for the family further back in the line. This was the case with two people in front of us. One woman and her children were looking for her husband further back in the line, they finally stopped and let everyone else pass until he caught up with them, which is exactly what you should do. The other woman was looking for her kids yet she continued on through the line almost right up to the loading area. It was kind of hysterical because she started the line out waving and looking, then she stopped waving and just continued to look until she finally gave up and waited. I don’t know if her children ever met up with her, but my Mom and I both got a good laugh, thinking, “Looks like mom is riding alone.”
I did poorly only reaching a little over 187,000 points bringing me to my standard Cat level. Whatever. We got off the ride and got right back in line. The board said it would be a 20 minute wait but it was only actually 10 minutes to the second from us getting in line to reaching the loading area. This time I hit 187,000 points exactly, a little less than my previous attempt yet I felt like I did a lot better the second time around.
We got off the ride, went to the restrooms and then sat down for a bit of a rest. My mom updated her trip report log and I snapped some photos of her updating her log. To the left of Toy Story was California Screamin’, The big roller coaster of the Disneyland Resort. My mom had told one of her co-workers that she was going to ride it and that it wasn’t that bad. In comparison to the other coaster we had ridden at Walt Disney World, this one really isn’t that bad. I didn’t really want to ride it and neither did my mom but she said she would. We talked about it for a bit and considered getting FastPasses and riding it later, but the wait was only 10 minutes. So we both just bit the bullet and got in line.
I can’t say that I enjoy the ride all that much but it’s one of those things you do because… I don’t know, just because I guess. I screamed my way through it, my mom was dead silent but we both just gritted our teeth and bared it. After getting off the ride my mom wanted proof that she could take home to show she rode the attraction. We bought the photo. It’s not something we normally do since they are so expensive. I didn’t realize since it’s been so long but they totally cropped out the losers behind us! It’s a nice souvenir, but worth $14.95? I think not! The price we pay for memories.
I was already battling a headache and it never fails that going on California Screamin’ makes it worse. That was one of the reasons why I didn’t really want to go on it to begin with. I didn’t understand why I was getting these headaches, it could have been a bunch of reason, possibly the change of season or weather. Living in Oregon I get used to a certain kind of environment and then coming to California, everything from the weather to the water is different. Maybe it could have been me putting powdered milk in my coffee, whatever it was, it was making my life miserable.
This was a vacation where my Mom was conquering her fears. She was seeing the pictures I was taking on the Sun Wheel and wanted to take pictures like that herself. She said she wanted to go on it. I knew what that experience was going to be like and I accurately pictured it in my head. We walked along Paradise Pier to what is now called Mickey’s Funwheel. Even before we got on the ride, she looked up and exclaimed, “That’s really high!” It was indeed high but I reassured her that it would be fine and she should go on it anyway.
We both got on the Non-Swinging Gondolas because those provide you with the steadiest shots. As we got on the gondola I could tell my mom was getting nervous. We sit down in the gondola and there is panic in her face; I was suffering with headache; by the looks of things one or the both of us were going to be passed out unconscious by the end of the ride. We start are way up, my mom is glued to her seat and feeling very nervous, I was busy taking pictures, though I couldn’t concentrate on what I was taking pictures of because of my headache and I was using a camera I wasn’t familiar with so I spent a lot of time messing around trying to get a good result. All along the way I began feeling nauseous from the headache or just because I’ve been eating garbage the past couple of days. It was probably a combination of both.
After getting off the ride I confess my discomfort and want a drink of water. I didn’t want to drink water from a drinking fountain I wanted ice water and here is another great tip, you can get free cups of ice water anywhere they serve fountain drinks. We go to Pizza Oom Mow Mow to get me a cup of water and then I think that maybe I’m hungry and maybe we should just eat something. We look at the menu and nothing seems good. My mom suggest that we go to Schmoozies that serve smoothies. That sounded a lot better; cool and less heavy than pizza. It was agreed we would go there. Along the way we would stop by Mission Tortilla Factory.
On the way to the Mission Tortilla Factory we decided that instead of going to Schmoozies we would go to the Bur-r-r Bank Ice Cream, first we stopped at the entrance to the Paradise Pier Bridge and sat down in the shade. There before us was the map for what would be the new Disney’s California Adventure. We looked at the map, took some pictures and just chilled a little while we notified family and friends with all the fun we were having. The nauseousness began to subside.
The Mission Tortilla Factory is a favorite place to go, especially on your birthday. It’s an unsupervised tour where you learn a little about tortilla’s and then you do a walking tour through a couple of rooms ending in an actual tortilla factory. It’s cool and they give you a free fresh from the press delicious tortilla. If it’s your birthday you get a generous 3 tortilla’s to take with you. That was a sarcastic statement. A couple of years ago they would give you a dozen. I remember my grandfather on his birthday passing out tortilla’s to us every chance he had till they were gone.
Next we went to the Blue Sky Cellar to check out all the work going into Disney’s California Adventure. They are really making the park infinitely better with all the improvements they are adding. There are a couple of things I’m concerned about namely Cars Land. I think it’s straying too far from the California theme, which shouldn’t have been a theme to begin with. It’s turning into Disney’s Pixar Adventure with A Bug’s Land and now Cars Land, half the park is all about Pixar. In any event, it’s going to all come together and be awesome. What I’m really excited about is the water show going in called Walt Disney’s World of Color opening later in the year. There’s also a Little Mermaid ride going in and what they are doing on Paradise Pier is wonderful.
Once we left Blue Sky Cellar I just wanted to get rid of this headache so off to the First Aid Station we went. It’s located to the left of the Mission Tortilla Factory. I love the First Aid Station because they give you ibuprofen, for free and they tell you to stay hydrated and drink lots of water. The only weird thing, and it kind of makes me panic is they watch you swallow the pills; I don’t know for sure because I don’t want to know if they are actually watching otherwise I would panic and choke on them. But honestly, they have nothing better to do than watch you swallow those pills.
Bur-r-r Bank Ice Cream used to have a Steamin’ Chocolate which was chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, nuts and a cherry on top. They weren’t fooin’ anyone, that chocolate cake was really a brownie, but that didn’t matter, it still was the best thing on the menu. Then they had the audacity to remove it from the menu, now we were stuck with a hot fudge sundae with two “freshly baked” Toll House Cookies shoved into it. We sat outside and enjoyed it. I noticed that there was a family sitting near us that were brazenly making sandwiches for their group and drinking Hi-C boxed drinks. It was amazing that they felt they could get away with that sort of behavior out in the open. My mom and I discussed it the next day and we both realized that if you don’t ride the tram there really are no signs or notifications telling people that they are welcome to bring their own food, but they have to eat it in the picnic area outside the park.
Once we finished our ice cream my mom and I stopped into Engine-Ears Toys so she could have them hold her picture while we continued with our day. We used the FastPass for Soarin’ we got earlier and it was an experience because we were passed over more than once for entering the ride early because they were looking for a group of two. It was a little frustrating but we tried to just let it go.
While we waited our turn, which seemed to take longer than average, we thought that we would just bite another bullet and go to Disneyland and just wait in whatever line there was to see Captian EO. It was settled. We finally rode Soarin’ and moved onto to the Animation Academy. There we drew Tigger the first time. I was more than a little disappointed that we drew Tigger, because I drew him before and he really isn’t all that interesting of a character to draw, him and Pooh also wasn’t interesting.
We went through again and this time we drew Pluto. Pluto is another one that wasn’t all that fun if you’ve drawn Goofy. They feel practically the same and sadly almost turn out identical. There are some differences, but if you look at the two characters side-by-side, they’re both dogs only one walks on two legs and the other on all fours.
We were done with California Adventure for the now and so we picked up my mom’s picture and headed over to Disneyland where we were going to get ready to battle the crowds of Captain EO. We dropped the picture off at the Newsstand and rode the Double Decker bus to the end of Main Street because my mom didn’t want to walk all that way. Our driver I think was named Irvine or something similar and he was funny to listen to. More unintentionally funny because he talked with such a monotone that nothing sounded exciting when you talked about it. The funniest thing he said was Captain E-O. He said it in a way that he really spoke each letter separately. Most people would say it like saying Theo, Irvine didn’t.
We walk to the end of Tomorrowland fully expecting huge crowds and at least an hour wait. We get to the attraction and there was only a 20 minute wait. 20 MINUTES!! Where was this giant crowd of die-hard Michael Jackson fans who should have been watching the movie from the moment they walked into the park to the moment it closed. We went through the queue and sat down on a bench and just waited. There was a lot of people in line sure but to our delight and surprise we were able to get a seat… in the 3rd row on the far left side of the theater.
When castmembers say there is no bad seat in the theater, they are utterly and completely wrong!!! We, and a large group of people around us had some of the worst seats in the house. This is a show and all 3D shows are best viewed if you are seated in the center or relatively near the center and further back than the third row. The show started shortly after everyone got seated and everyone applauded. I remember seeing this in the 80’s several times because well, I along with millions of others were obsessed with Michael Jackson. So when I heard that it was coming back, I was really excited and also filled with dread. When you see things when you’re little and then you see it again, most of the time it doesn’t hold up and you walk away disappointed. I didn’t want that for Captain EO, I just remember really loving it back then. It had to stand the test of time. Thankfully, the attraction came out in the 80’s and there is a huge 80’s comeback happening so people who were too young to remember it the first time might think it’s “cool”.
What did I think of it? It’s corny, really corny… cornier than I remembered, but it totally holds up. Even though I could barely see it because of the bad 3D effects we were watching from the 3rd row on the far left side, my mom and I laughed almost through the whole thing. Sure part of it was we both felt like we were going blind, but a lot of it was just from the ridiculousness of the movie. The key to unlocking the beauty within is with music and dance? Puh-leeze. This is one movie that I think epitomizes the 80’s. You look at it and everything you see screams of that era, the hair, the music, the style, the dancing even the thin plotline, it’s exactly what you would expect from an 80’s movie.
Satisfied having seen Captain EO we walked over to Enchanted Tiki Room and got ourselves a Dole Whip Float. My mom noticed that we were only charged for one float the day before and she wanted to make it right. That was one of the reasons why we went there. She told the castmember at the stand and he said not to worry about but consider it a birthday gift. We then watched the show and made our way back to the car. Before we could exit Main Street my mom was accosted by a castmember who asked her to take part in a short 5 minute survey. He told her there was only enough room for her and I would have to wait outside. My mom said later that if we weren’t at Disneyland and a strange man asked her to take a survey in a small room and I had to wait outside, she would be worried. Because we were at Disneyland she had no problems doing it. It’s weird when you think of it that way.
I waited outside with 5+ minutes to burn, so I took this time to take pictures. I got some of characters but was happy when I heard that the Dapper Dans were going to be performing the flag ceremony and so I got some pictures of them doing their thing until my mom was through with the survey. I saw she was sitting down in front of the Guided Tour building next to City Hall and we were off.
The tram ride was fine, we sat separately because we really just wanted to make this first tram so we took the first two seats we could find. We got back to the car and headed to El Pollo Loco. Only recently has an El Pollo Loco opened up nearish to our house in Portland, Oregon. Still we always look forward to going when we are in the area. They have great chicken and their instant flan is outstanding. I love their macaroni and cheese and so along with the rest of the meal, I got double mac and cheese and my mom got pinto beans and mashed potatoes and gravy. I know this is so super interesting but, my mom likes to make little burritos with the tortillas we get with our meal using the pinto beans and chicken. Alright, that’s it, that’s the end of day 3.
I wrote this when I was tired and so some/all of it may not make sense. I didn’t proof it because it’s long. If you have any questions let me know in the comments.
