Australia 2024 - Day 2 & 3

 Day 2 - June 27  Disneyland

Got up nice and early so that we could be ready to go by 7:40am.  Thankfully we had driven in past the intersection that I was worried about on the way in so I knew that it was going to be OK to walk to Disney (I'm guessing this is the only freeway overpass/clover leaf with a foot path in the US).  It was an easy 20 min walk down to the Disneyland main gate then a short line up for the security - easy when you aren't carrying bags - we'd purposefully made sure that everything we needed to bring would fit into a zipper pocket in our pant.  Then straight through the ticket check and we were in Disney... Yeah!

First stop was going to be the Indiana Jones ride, but when we got there the ride was still closed, so we went next door to Pirates of the Carribean. The kids first Disney ride was going to be a classic.  I was impressed, they have updated it without changing any of the character of the ride.  Josh was a bit sad that it was so tame, but I promised him that would be the tamest ride of the day (I lied).

Thankfully the Indy ride was open by this time so we went straight there - was a great experience, then since we were just around the corner we went to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad next.  25 min wait here which wasn't too bad, and that ride is so fun, then across to Tomorrowland to do Star tours.  From there we headed to the Matterhorn, which I really loved, especially since I got the front carriage all to myself.  But the lines were starting to get long - 45 mins for the Matterhorn.  We decided that if we were going to have to do a long wait - it may as well be for one of the rides that always has long wait times so decided to Rise of the Resistance.  This was a 60 min wait which was getting a bit much in the hot midday sun.  But thankfully once you get inside there is plenty to watch and do.  The ride was actually better than I expected - there were a couple of stages to keep things interesting.  Once you are through the initial line you gather in a waiting room where BB8 introduces you to what is happening, 

Then you board a shuttle flight, flown by one of the original star wars characters.

But your shuttle is caught by the Imperial stormtrooper and then you are on the star destroyer - and It really feels like you are in that scene with all the stormtroopers lined up and the view of the galaxy beyond  - it was so immersive.  The actual ride was really fun, especially the final drop.  It was definitely worth the waiting time.  

By now it was lunch time.  We were going to eat in the new Galaxy's Edge land, but couldn't find a good place without long lines so went back to the Mexican place in Frontier land.  Food OK, but portions all over the place, Lexie's was huge, mine was normal, but Josh's was tiny!

After we finished eating I checked out the Disneyland App - I do like this app, you can see wait times for all rides at a glance so it makes it easy to figure out where to go next.  I noticed that the Millennium Falcon ride had only a 15 min wait.  So we hustled straight there - there were a bunch of  mini shows going on with cast members walking around doing shows which is probably why no one was on the rides - we skipped them and went straight to the line. It really was a 15 min wait for the ride - we were put in a pod with two other people, they had taken the pilot positions so the kids got to be gunners and I was the lone Engineer down the back.  It was fun, but we realised that it would be even more fun as a pilot, so since the line was still supposed to be 15 min we decided to try it a second time.  The line was a bit longer this time...but it ended up great - because everyone around us was in large groups we ended up getting a whole pod to ourselves.  The kids took Pilot duty and I did double duty as Gunner and Engineer.  It was really interesting seeing how the entire experience changed based on our situation, and it was so much fun being in the pod by ourselves.  A great experience.

By this stage were down to only one more big ride to go - Space Mountain - but it was temporarily closed, so in the mean time we decided to do the original It's a small world ride.  Short line and long sit time. I was interested to see again how they had updated it without removing any of the original character of the ride.

Space mountain was still closed, so we headed next to Sleeping Beauty Castle and did the walk through which I had never done before, we were then just going to try Mr Toad's Wild Ride, when we saw that Space Mountain was now open and only a 20 min wait so we jumped out of the line and headed back to tomorrow land.  Space mountain was so much fun!  but by that time our feet had had it, so we decided to head back to the Motel for a rest and swim.  Stopped briefly on main street to buy souvenirs.

It was a long trudge home, had to stop and get a Maccas shake to give us the energy to keep going.  Josh and I jumped in the pool when we got back, and Lexie came down shortly afterwards, then we just relaxed for the afternoon.  We thought about going back to the park after dark, but we kept an eye on the ride times and they never went down below 40 mins so, since we were sore and tired we decided to conserve our energy for tomorrow and just grabbed Taco bell for dinner.

Day 2 - June 27  Disney California Adventure

Same start time again today, walk felt a little longer as our feet were still a little sore from yesterday. There seems to be more people around (it is a Saturday), but no issues getting into Disney California Adventure, then we headed straight for the Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout since this was one of the big rides we wanted to do.  Again I love the way you have breakout rooms to keep things flowing and interesting and set up the story.

I also managed to find the original Abominable snowman from the Matterhorn up in the corner of the line.

I loved this ride so much, the rise and fall, and rise and fall again and again, and the music and story, all so well done.

We really only had 3 or 4 big rides that we wanted to do today. this was one of them, and the Incredicoaster was another, but this was still closed, do we decided to head to Soarn' over the world since it only had a 10 min wait.  It was great, but where we were seated the view was quite distorted, the Eiffel tour was curved!

Incredicoaster still closed to headed for the Spiderman Web slinger ride.  The line on this ended up longer than expected due to a malfunction, and I didn't really love the ride so that was a bit disappointing.  But then we went to Goofy's Sky school which was old time fun (think midway crazy mouse).  Getting off this ride we found that the Incredicoaster was finally open so went straight there for a really fun roller coaster ride.  We all loved that one.

We then did the big swings on the way to Grizzly River Run before heading to the Smoke Jumper Grill for Lunch.  Our feet were super sore by this time so we decided we would do one more ride before heading back to the motel to get ready for our flight out.  We decided on the Incredicoaster and stood in line for 20 mins before they closed down the ride entirely and sent us all away - our moods were not great at this point so we just headed home for a rest, swim and a nap.  (We found out later that the next day people had been stranded on the ride for an hour so we were glad that that wasn't us at least).

At 6pm we were packed and ready to go.  I was having issues with my messages and hadn't heard from the car service but they were still there on time.  A smaller car this time, but still quite luxurious and a good easy ride to the airport.

Unfortunately we were not able to do the online/kiosk check in (they don't understand the dual passports), and they had just cancelled a flight to Brisbane so the check-in line was really long and they were atrocious at line management (unlike Disney) so it took a good hour to get to the check in - thankfully we had plenty of time as we were really early.  Got our boarding passes, got through check in and then relaxed at the gate for a while, before heading to the food court for a pizza dinner.  Boarded the plane at 11pm and went straight to sleep, missing the dinner service entirely.