Huxwolds California Dreaming (Aug 23) - Day 4: Disneyland Park

[HEMANCLOFTY]

Huxwolds California Dreaming (Aug 23)
Day 4: Disneyland Park (Mon 21/08)

Index
Day 3: Puente Hills Mall, Outlets & “Hurricane” Hillary

4 sleeps in and I was still waking up a couple of times in the early hours, however I actually managed to sleep until about 5:10am today.

As usual, I checked on this mornings Sooty update. He was doing was fine and being spoiled with lots of brushes - This is one of my favourite pics from the daily updates…

Rich woke up at about 6:10am and went for a smoke - I took a couple of pics of the morning drizzle and checked the weather - the drizzle was forecast until mid morning…

Twitter was full of posts about Hurricane Hillary - some showed that the LA River was high, and there were lots of fake claims of flooding in Vegas and other areas, which of course meant there were also a lot of posts like this…

At 7:45 Rich went for another smoke and brought me back a coffee from the lobby, which I had with one of the blueberry muffin’s we’d bought at Target last night (Rich and Tom had one too, but no coffee)…

Tom went for a vape and FaceTimed Lola, who was at ours giving Sotty some bonus attention and a Creamy Dreamies treat…

By 8:15 we were all ready for the day and headed to Disneyland…

There was lots of tree debris on the roads and pavements and it was still drizzling but not enough to need a cardi or umbrella…

By 8:40 we were through security and in the park…

We decided to see how it goes with queue times this morning, before deciding whether to buy Genie+ today.

We headed for Space Mountain first, as we knew it stays busy all day. Standby was just over 30 mins…

The ride was really good - much better than the Magic Kingdom version. We could have got a free ride photo, but we forgot to link the code to the app…

Keeping up with the plan to do the most popular rides before they got too busy, we headed to Mickey’s ToonTown for Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railroad, arriving by 9:30….

The sign said 40 mins standby, but it only took about 20, and it was a brilliant queue line loads of photo opportunities…

We really enjoyed the ride and the very catchy song - Nothing can stop us now 🎶

10:10 - We saw Aladdin strolling along through Fantasyland…

We walked through the Castle via a lovely little pathway, where we also had a restroom stop…

We arrived at Pirates of the Caribbean by 10:25. ..

The wait time was posted as 20 mins, which was accurate. Another ride that is better than the Magik Kingdom version, but still overrated IMO.

There was a really annoying girl in our boat. She was on her phone the whole way round, looking at Instagram pics of herself. On the few short accusations she put her phone down she was eating snacks.

10:55 - we joined the queue for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad…

I didn’t make a note, but think was showing as about 20 mins but it felt longer as the sun was out by now and it was starting to get warm. My back was also starting to ache, so I took some Ibruprofen. BTMR is always a good ride, and I couldn’t choose between versions of this one.

At 11:30 we joined the (outdoor) queue for Buzz Lightyear’s Astroblasters - we saw a marching band and all the characters in their 100 Years Celebration outfits making their way to the Castle.

The app was showing that all the queue times were getting high now, so we decided whilst waiting for Buzz that we’d leave the park after this and go to Pizza Press for lunch, then back to hotel for a rest and come back later this evening.

We ended up waiting about 30 mins for Buzz. Rich did ok with 61900 but I only got 13200. I’m not sure what Tom got...

We mooched in a few shops on Main Street on our way out. I got the Roger Rabbit tree dec I’d seen the other day at Downtown Disney in the Christmas Shop ($29.08)…

We left the park around 12:15 - I spotted the LAPD lookout in the Security area (Tom said it had been there all week)…

We arrived at Pizza Press at 12:30 and we were the only ones there (even though it’s less than 5 mins from Disneyland entrance on S Harbour Boulevard)…

I went for The Sun…

Rich had The Daily with Bacon…

And Tom had The Daily with Pepperoni…

We also shared a Caesar Salad with Chicken, and ordered 2 cokes and a Sprite ($60.81)…

The pizzas were really good, and the salad was nice too (we had to mix in the sauce ourselves).

I gave Rich a slice of mine (minus the pineapple) and Tom and I each had 2 slices left to take away for later…

We were back at the hotel by 1:30pm. Rich and I had a rest / snooze and Tom popped out for a mooch up S Harbour Boulevard.

When he came back, he’d bought a belt and buckle from ValueMax ($8.47) - No pic

He also got a cheap baseball cap in Dodgers colours, some bargain sunglasses and some sweets from Viva Bargains ($7.53) - Again no pics, but he wore them later

We were ankle refreshed and ready to head out by about 4:45 - arriving back in the park by 5:10.

We started by looking at the artwork in the Lobby of the Lincoln exhibit…

And we saw Walt’s bench from Griffith Park…

In the shop next door, Rich spotted the new Rescue Rangers 80s Decades ears which had just been released today…

They were even more amazing in real life than the coming soon pics. A bit on the pricey side at $39.99 + Tax but Rich encouraged me to get them.

Tom noticed that when the Cast Member had cut the tag off for me, the scissors had made a little dink in the headband part, so we took them back as she kindly let me swap them. Tom took the tag off this time and they looked fab on…

5:35 - Wait times were still high across the park, but we felt it was too late to get Genie+, plus we’d done most of the big rides now.

We headed into the queue for the Railroad, waiting about 20 mins, which was a perfect opportunity for me to show off my new ears on Insta…

We got the sideways seats train, and enjoyed our loop around the park…

I hadn’t realised there’s a little dark ride section near Tomorrowland - my pics of this were terrible, this one is the only one that wasn’t completely blurry…

It was 6:30 by the time we were back at the front of the park station, and the crowds were starting to gather for the parade.

Tom joined a (slow moving) queue to get us a couple of Cokes to share ($10.54). I took some more selfies in my fabulous ears…

Whilst we were waiting for him by the little wall nearby a Cast Member politely encouraged us to move along so we had to hover a bit…

We weren’t too bothered about seeing the parade, thinking it was going to be our best chance of doing Star Tours, which was showing as 35mins…

We joined the queue at 6:45 and it ended up taking about an hour, between a couple of periods of downtime and the LL guests. One guy in front of us got a bit arsey with the Cast Member about this.

Queue line pics…

After Star Tours, we mooched in a few shops around Tomorrowland.

We all wanted to rice Alice In Wanderland to see how it compars with the Blackpool Pleasure Beach version, but it had either been down or showing a 40 min queue all day.

By now most rides had really long Standby times - Pinocchio’s Daring Adventure was only 20 mins, so we headed there as Rich likes Pinocchio and we wanted to do one of the classic Disney dark rides.

Tom had a go at Sword in The Stone on the way (he was unsuccessful)…

We got to Pinocchio by 8:15 and were on in about 10 mins….

It was ok, very much an old school dark ride, with lots of black light paint scenes.

8:30 - None of us fancied queuing for any more rides, so we headed into Galaxy’s Edge to see it in the dark and to have a mooch at some Star Wars merch. It was very cool, and again my night pics don’t do it justice...

Tom got a couple of Droid Cokes, one for him and one for his mate Josh who’s a big Star Wars fan ($6.25 each)…

More pics…

At 8:50 we mooched via Frontierland back towards Main Street for the 9:30 Wanderous Journeys Fireworks, deciding to watch from the exit end...

We mooched in a few shops on Main Street to fill the time, Tom played the Pinocchio dancing game (25c) and did the Zoltare style fortune teller machine (50c) in the Penny Arcade…

I got a Disneyland magnet that Tom spotted for my collection ($12.92)…

Tom got the Remi plush he’d been looking at as a gift for Lola, as Ratatouille is his favourite animated film, so it means a lot to them both ($43.09 wTax)…

I took a few pics of the Fire Station / Walt’s apartment whilst we were waiting for Tom to pay…

Then we joined the back of the Main Street crowd at 9:20 for Wanderous Journeys…

At 9:30 they announced that tonight’s show wouldn’t feature pyrotechnics due to high winds, but the show would go ahead with projections and lights. A few people left the crowd but we stayed.

Even without the fireworks, it was actually really good - I couldn’t see all the projections on Main Street, but the music and lights were fantastic and we all enjoyed it. I really love the main song.

We were perfectly positioned to exit the park, so were out by 9:55.

Rich suggested that he get us some Byrd’s Hot Chicken takeway for us all, so Tom and I popped in CVS to get some room pop - Coke and Sprite ($4.50)…

We were back at the hotel by 10:15 and Rich was back with our 3 x Chicken Tenders meals by 10:30 (no receipt but Rich thinks it was around $34)…

We sat and ate in bed. The Chicken was really nice but quite spicy (even with us all going for Mild) - and a great bonus addition to the Food A-List

At 11:15 we bought our Knott’s Berry Farm Tickets for tomorrow ($59.99 each + Tax) and linked them to the App.

We were all absolutely shattered now - and I was too tired to do any notes and dropped quickly off to sleep to Community.

Today’s Step Count was 22,018

Day 5: Knott’s Berry Farm & Anaheim Packing House

[Cinderella]

Another great day !