Day 14: The one with the crazy crowds!
Sunday 2 September 2018
Animation Academy, Incredicoaster (finally), Corn Dog Castle, Pineapple Cotton Candy then the evening in Disneyland Park for our last night in California
Index
Today was our last full day in Disneyland and in California. To start the day right we headed straight to DCA to grab breakfast at Starbucks again. This time, despite arriving at about the same time as before, Starbucks was PACKED. The parks were so much busier at weekends in Disneyland, which was as expected but you could notice the difference a lot more than in WDW. After a long queue we struggled to find a seat as most tables were being reserved by families who hadn’t ordered yet
Food was good again and filled us up ready for the day ahead.
We decided to head straight for the Instagram walls whilst it was still early to avoid the inevitable crowds later on. Our plan worked and there was only a couple of people ahead of us
The insta-famous ‘Blue wall’
Next, we queued up for Animation Academy. We were so excited to be doing this as we were really sad when it got taken away from WDW.
The wait was only about ten minutes and we were in. The character we would be drawing today was an angry Donald Duck! We chose a front row seat and grabbed a board and pencil and listened intently to the instructions.
We had pre-warned Imogen not to get upset if she wasn’t happy with her drawing as it was just for fun and we knew how much of a perfectionist she is.
Izzy’s amazing drawing
My attempt!
Immy wasn’t happy with hers and got a bit annoyed… her drawing was brilliant but she didn’t want me to share it so I haven't and I can't for the life of me find Andy's!
It was a lovely building to hang around in here, we could've chilled for a couple of hours listening to all the Disney music in the air conditioning!
We checked the app for an Incredicoaster fast pass but despite it being up and running there were none available for the whole day! We were really annoyed. We had five day tickets and had spent $200 on max passes, had booked and had our fast passes cancelled so many times and we had ridden it ONCE the whole time because of how often it was down - it was ridiculous.
Andy wanted to mention our frustrations with guest services. She agreed that wasn’t a good experience and arranged for us to have a fastpass to Incredicoaster straight away! OMG! We quickly walked to the ride before it went down again… how lucky were we!
We were so thankful we got to ride this a second time
We decided to have an explore around Pixar Pier and we had a wander round to Goofy’s Sky School for a quick fastpass
I was a little concerned about the lack of qualifications but we braved the ride anyway and survived
Next, we HAD to try a famous Disneyland Corn Dog
It was as good as we’d hoped and one to share was just right to keep us going for now
Our original plans were to go to Napa Rose for a special evening meal tonight but we ended up cancelling it the day before. In hindsight we probably should have stuck with our well thought out plans but we just felt like we wanted more time in the parks as it was such a short time we were there for we just wanted something more casual, plus the dinner would have cost us well over $300.
So we could spend the whole of our last evening in the parks we decided to go back to the hotel now to finish packing and print our boarding passes etc.
On the way round, Andy spotted a fast pass had come up for Grizzly River Run and grabbed it.
Andy and girls went on while I looked after all the bags and browsed in the gift shop by the exit.
They got absolutely drenched as expected but they dried remarkably quickly due to the midday California sun.
On the way back to the hotel we popped to Downtown Disney to get the girls the pineapple cotton candy they had seen earlier in the holiday
It was ginormous and didn't really taste of pineapple however, they were thrilled to bits and it was a bit of fun!
We walked back to the hotel and I used the opportunity to check in online and print our boarding passes in the lobby, which was really handy. I then went back to the room to pack our bags whilst Andy took the girls to the waterpark to play for a while.
We all freshened up and got changed for the evening, the girls got dressed in their princess dresses and we walked back to the parks for our final evening of magic before we went home.
Ready to go!
Trying out pink hair all-round...
In WDW we always liked to spend our last evening at a special restaurant and then at Epcot to watch the fireworks and have a few drinks but there was no alcohol in DL and we had cancelled our special meal in favour of more park time so it was a bit different...
The princesses have arrived!
The parks were so horribly busy, although we had managed to bag a great spot with less than half an hour to go midweek for Paint the Night, even TWO AND A HALF HOURS before the Pixar fireworks show at DL, there was nowhere to sit and I am not exaggerating. It was nuts!
Also, with the castle being so small and the trees the way they are positioned, there’s only a very select area that you ca really see the projections compared to HEA at MK.