On day two of our trip we decided we would spend the morning in California Adventure which is the park right across from Disneyland. Disneyland, California Adventure and Downtown Disney are all effectively the same place but they have different entrances off the same square and Downtown Disney doesn't require a ticket. Each year we go the security gets a bit tougher and this year they have added metal detectors. They aren't super sensitive since I don't have to take my belt off but they do slow things down a bit.
The fun part of going first thing in the morning is that there is often a character waiting for you right at the entrance for pictures. California Adventure always seems to get the 'less popular' characters and today it was some odd looking rabbit. Callie knew his name was Oswald and I recognized him as that character that was created around the same time as Mickey. Poor guy. In a different world maybe they sing songs of Oswald instead of M-I-C-K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E.
As soon as we got in we Fast Passed Radiator Springs Racers and then went to Soarin, previously known as Soarin Over California. They've made it more worldly now and have simplified the name so they can switch out the scenes more often. I think they took some of the footage from Flyin Over Canada and you could tell they had higher quality footage with the new show. The only thing I missed was the smells that they had with the old version. When you flew over an orange orchid it smelt like oranges. I don't think that there were any smells now. (Except the feet of the people above you.)
We spent the next couple hours hitting rides on the Paradise Pier. This included Arial, the Rockets, Jumpin Jellyfish and Goofy's Fly School. Each of us took turns avoiding rides we weren't very interested in. I avoided the Jumpin Jelly fish since it doesn't really do anything and Callie made a good effort of trying out Goofy's Fly school but as soon as we got close and she saw the roller coaster esque hill at the start she jumped off pretty quickly.
Our fast past for Radiator Springs Racers was ready so we walked over to Cars Land. This has to be one of the most elaborate rides in the entire world. The ride itself has scenes from the movie and ends with a high speed race where you are banking at a very high degree. The ride itself is surrounded by manufactured mountains which includes my favourite scene which is a waterfall with a bridge. Not quite full scale but the way they do the perspective it looks amazing.
After the ride we headed back to Paradise Pier where we had Fast Passed California Screamin. This is a very fast paced roller coaster that includes a section where it goes upside down and Carter and Kerry had been talking about it for months. He will now be talking about it for years. Things didn't go well with his first attempt as he chickened out and decided not to go on. As we decided who would go next he got up the nerve and tried again. Success!!! Of course he screamed the whole way and took two hours to fully calm down. Never again.
As we left Callie got in line to see Jesse who was a character that in previous years has absolutely terrified her. Now they are good friends. Jesse left early but still walked down the line and gave everyone a hug. Carter also picked up a new stuffed animal to hug. This time it's a bear from the Grizzly River Run area that he has named brownie. Kerry and the kids then took one more ride on Soarin while I scoped out my next sweet purchase.
In the evening we decided to skip Disneyland and do California Adventure again. We had an early day planned the next day and felt a quick tour of Bugs Land would be a good way to finish off the day. We did Flick's Flyers, the angry lady bugs, bumper bugs, and Heimlich's Chew Chew train and finished off with Mater's Junkyard Jamboree. We thought about going on the new Luigi's Tire ride. The old one was some giant floating tire bumper cars but was very slow and not very exciting. Unfortunately they replaced it with yet another tea cup style ride. I think they could have done better.
Tomorrow will be an early day as we have our Magic Morning opportunity which has us start at 7:00a.
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