Mike & Sam Go West! Day 14 - Disney California Adventure...Take 2!

[soarinfan]

Mike and Sam Go West!

A Holiday Extravaganza

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Apologies for the delay in these - been stupidly busy doing videos and vlogs galore for my YouTube channel, trying to keep up with the schedule and of course enjoying more Disney holidays! Lets try and get this TR finished!

Today was our final day in Disney California Adventure, as naturally we wanted to spend our final Disney Day in the main Disneyland Park which was tomorrow. We had a super late night last night with getting back home from DCA so we were fairly pooped this morning. But somehow we managed to get Jade & Jake out of bed and into the car at a reasonable hour to sit in our daily traffic jam to get to Anaheim!

We left Jade & Jake to their own devices today because Jake wasn't really feeling up to the larger rides (though I think he went on them anyway in the end!) so we headed for a healthy breakfast as you can see above. Sam went for a sugar cookie, and I went for the healthier option, one of my five a day in the form of the Disneyland Diamond Celebration Cupcake. It wasn't too bad, though had some weird tasting orange goo in the middle I wasn't too fond of. That blue icing stained my fingers for days - what on earth was in it!?!

Our first stop of the morning was for Tower of Terror - which turned out to be an absolute nightmare most of the day! The queue was horrendous and they were having severe management problems of their fast pass for this attraction today, so we decided to move along and come back later (fingers crossed!) and headed into the Bugs Land area, which we hadn't really explored at all yet.

Here we went on probably the slowest every dodgem ride created in the world. We even somehow managed to get wedged between 2 other very slow moving dodgems, and consequently spent most of our ride time totally stuck! Sam loved it and kept doing funny impressions of the little fleas...!

After a couple more rides - including a cheeky ride on board a caterpillar (I really need to watch A Bugs Life again!) we decided to and watch one of our fave rides from Walt Disney World - It's Tough To Be A Bug! But oh wait...what is this?!? NOOO! It wasn't showing! For the moment a preview of the new Marvel movie Ant Man was being shown in the theatre instead. Even to this time now when I'm writing this I still haven't seen the movie - but the preview which I have seen several times since then seemed really good! The theatre also used some of its 4D effects for the screening which was pretty neat.

We grabbed a few FastPasses for tonights World of Color as they were now being distributed, and then headed on over to Paradise Pier, as we wanted to get a few rides in on California Screamin'! Unfortunately, it was down due to technical difficulties, as it would remain for the rest of the day. We wouldn't get to ride it again this holiday after all

We stayed in the area and went on a few rides before lunch, including the little coaster Goofy's Sky School (bit of a cat & mouse thing really) whereby Sam turned into a duck screaming on the ride

After a quick bite to eat over by the closed California Screamin' we headed to the Ghirardelli place to grab ourselves the largest chocolate shake in the shop! We love milkshakes, especially thick hand dipped ones, so this was pretty awesome !

We had earlier in the day managed to get a cheeky fast pass for the Grizzly River Run which we hadn't managed to get on yesterday, so we used that afterwards as it was getting incredibly hot in the park again! It was such a good ride. Comparison wise, if you can imagine Kali River Rapids but multiply it by about 5, then you have the Grizzly River Run - its so good! On our boat was a family which had ridden before and they were great fun to talk to on the way around.

Still in dire need of air con, we went for the first time ever to an Animation Academy (can't believe we NEVER went to the one in Orlando before it closed! ) and was taught how to draw Baymax from Big Hero 6! Loved that. I though mine looked pretty good for a first timer! Plus the air con in there was awesome

We headed back to Tower of Terror which now had a 90+ minute queue and the Fast Passes were gone. Whether or not it was ever open for distribution we will never know! In despair, we slowly headed back towards California Screamin' in hope it was open - it wasn't. Sam explained her total dismay to the cast members doing some exercises and games outside the entrance to CS, that this was the final Tower of Terror in the world that we had to go on and now it looks like we won't be able to! Cue the Disney magic! The wonderful CM's gave us 2 Fast Passes for ToT to use whenever we liked this evening! How awesome are they!

Naturally we headed straight there and were on the ride within minutes. So glad we got to ride - even though its identical to Paris (but in English! ) it was great to finally be able to say we had ridden all of them in the world (including the one in Japan which has a totally different story line! )

The rush was on next to get back over to Radiator Springs Racers as we had a final Fast Pass to use for the day and we were severely running out of time! Luckily we arrived with just a couple of minutes to spare and rode this ride for the final time - so amazing and the theming is something else!

Dinner tonight was at Flo's V8 Cafe. I went for the Roast Beef Sandwich which came with a side of Mac & Cheese (the best!) and Sam went for the chicken and veg option. We managed to get a seat outside as the heat was starting to die down now, and we had a great view of the Cars characters driving around the area for photo ops.

We decided after dinner and a little shopping that we were going to head back over to the World of Color viewing area and grab a good space in our reserved area - the same area as last night. I can see we were going to get absolutely soaked again! We bumped into Jade & Jake totally unexpectedly on the way - they had been on some of the rides and had also gone to see a movie in Downtown Disney which was cool! They didnt want to stick around to watch World of Color - no way were we going to miss it! So we gave them the car keys and they went and sat in the car for a few hours

World of Color was once again out of this world! Absolutely love this show. I think the inclusion of NPH is really good and seems to lend something to the show, but Sam can't stand him so isn't that keen! I can't say I've seen any of his work, but his voice in the show works well!

We did a bit of last minute DCA shopping, and then headed back to the car after this - to find Jade & Jake asleep in the back dead to the world! We had to wake them up to get the keys to start the car but they soon were back asleep again, and I think Sam joined them - typical! Talk about trying to keep me awake whilst I was doing the long drive back to Hollywood

Anyway, we had a great day, and it was our last proper day with Jade & Jake today because tomorrow was our last day in LA. And where were we off to? Disneyland of course!


Thanks for reading - Day 15 coming very soon! In the mean time please check out my YouTube channel - SoarinFanProductions for lots of Disney vlogs and ride POV's - I love making them for you guys to enjoy!