Day 12

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Our 5 day park hopper pass allows us one early entry into Disneyland (7:00am instead of 8:00) so we thought we would use it today to get in early and go see the redesigned Submarine ride which now has a Nemo theme and avoid the 3 hour line ups which have been common since it opened. Unfortunately, we didn't get there right at 7:00 and although we still got in early the line up was already 2 hours long. Given that none of us had a really strong desire to see the ride we decided Nemo would just have to wait until our next trip to Disneyland. Apparently the same thing happened with Pirates of the Caribbean last year when they redesigned it with the Johnny Depp Captain Jack theme, 3-4 hour line ups which this year are 20-30 minutes without a Fast Pass and it's essentially the same ride it was 28 years ago. We did go on a few rides taking advantage of the smaller crowds early on in the day and visited the Tiki Room which we hadn't seen yet, but come lunch time we decided we would leave the park and head to the beach.

After some lunch back at our hotel we headed off to Huntington Beach - Surf City USA. Justin was going to get a chance to fulfill his surfer dreams ... without a surf board this time. The beach was quite blustery and therefore very quiet. Justin jumped around in the waves for a while and the boys played in the sand and Michelle went in the water quick enough to say she did but it just wasn't a great beach day so after a couple hours we decided to drive a couple miles down to where the pier was. There was more action here with some Surf World Cup being set up and some people practising for a Beach Volleyball Tournament. The city around the pier actually had a bit of a small town feel, similar to Nelson, BC with small shops and a lot of "dudes" hanging around.

After heading back to the hotel; I'm getting pretty good about this LA driving; we had some supper and the little boys had a bath to wash the sand out of all sort of places. Michelle and Justin headed back to see the fireworks from right in front of the castle and then watch Fantasmic in Frontierland.

One day left in Disneyland.

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