Day 6 - Disneyland California

---

Disneyland Park, Anaheim, California - 31°c

After yesterday’s crazily exhausting day at Disney’s California Adventure Park, there was no time for let up! Today was all about park number two, and so ladies and gentlemen of blog-world, allow me to introduce the first, the classic, the original since 1955, the one that started it all off, Disneyland park California!!

Although I’ve been to Florida so many times now, there was something quite special about heading here today. There’s of course always something special about heading to any Disney park, especially one I’d never been to before, but this was particularly special because of the history and significance attached to it. The place where the main man Mr Walt Disney originally laid all of his theme park ideas out and had them come to life way back in 1955. It’s pretty cool to think that this place has been here for nearly 55 years now, and I can’t imagine how many guises, face-lifts and expansions it’s been through since that time!

Before we got to Disneyland though, I met up with Michelle, Marnee, Joey, Karen and Tim down at breakfast. I text Caddie as promised and she came down to meet up with us too. Was great to meet her after we’d chatted and exchanged messages for so long on the global communication wonder that is Facebook.

We walked over to Disneyland Park in about 15 minutes or so, and after everyone had sorted out their tickets, we were in and rushing over to the Tomorrowland area of the park. We all agreed to do some of the bigger rides first, so as to beat the queues that would inevitably build later on in the day, and by 8:30am we were all in the queue for Space Mountain, including a very nervous and slightly shaking Caddie, however she was soon just as geared up for it as everyone else by the time we were loaded on board and ‘took off’. After racing around in the dark for a few minutes, I have to say that I think this version of Space Mountain is definitely better than the Florida one. Firstly it’s bigger, with two side by side rather than just one person behind the other like the Florida version, and secondly the rock/heavy metal style music they play from the headrests behind you make it all the more exciting and dramatic. After we got off, everyone was so pumped up with adrenalin, even Caddie who thought it was fantastic, which was really great!

We did a few of the other big rides soon after, each with a queue time of between 5-15 minutes, which was a phenomenal difference to the 60-105 minute lines we saw later on! I think we managed to do Big Thunder Mountain, Star Tours, Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters, and the California-exclusive Matterhorn Bobsleds, (which was fantastic) all within a couple of hours.

Just after lunchtime we met up with Naman from the Contiki tour who text to say he was heading to Disneyland, and also Lauren who arrived in LA earlier in the day, who decided to come and meet us all too. Was so great to finally meet Lauren, we’ve been chatting so much for the past couple of months, and she’s been so much fun online, and is exactly the same in person. So cheeky and funny, and within an hour we were already playing off of one another with quips!

Having never been on before, I myself was a bit apprehensive about going on Splash Mountain. The 50ft drop on the log-flume style ride and the splash at the bottom has always seemed a bit daunting to me for some reason. But after being well outnumbered and spurred on by my new mantra of “I’m here, I’m doing (nearly) anything!” I went on, and I thought it was brilliant! Even though I got a bit wet, Michelle and Lauren who were sitting near the front got absolutely soaked!

Later on in the day we caught the parade around 6pm which was so much fun. It was so energetic and the music was really catchy - All of us were singing and dancing along to it, which was great!
After the parade we went on some more rides around Fantasyland, walking through the castle to have a look inside beforehand. We all went on the Mad Hatter teacups, which was a new experience for me. I’ve always looked at them and thought they’d make me feel really sick, but after being encouraged to go on by everyone else, I thought it was really good fun! I managed to squeeze in a teacup with Michelle, Marnee and Lauren, with Michelle spinning the wheel.

After a few more rides we managed to find a few spare square inches of the park and stand in front of the castle to watch the fireworks. There were so many people in the park by this stage and we all ended up standing shoulder to shoulder in order to get a good view. They were really amazing, and although I’ve seen firework displays at Disney parks before, it was so great to see them with a different style of castle in the foreground.

Soon after the fireworks, Michelle, Lauren, Naman and Caddie decided that they’d each had enough of the theme parks and headed back to the hotel, whilst Tim and I headed off to catch Fantasmic, and Marnee, Joey and Karen went off to do a few more rides. Fantasmic was really great, although it was somewhat different watching it standing up. Because the park was so crammed full with things to see and do, there’s so little room for seats, so it was all standing room only around the Rivers of America, which felt strange because in Florida there is an enormous 10,000 seat stadium!

It’s only when I was in the park that I kind of got an idea of why Disney bought so much land out at Florida for the parks over there. It’s so clear that the land that Disney originally bought for the California parks was never going to really be big enough. Once Disney moved into the California area nearly all of the land around the park was snapped up by other companies leaving very little room for expansion.

After Fantasmic we headed back to the hotel around 11:30pm, making it a very successful 14.5 hour day at the park!

Oh, and in case you’re reading this, Hello Mrs Krohn from Marnee who is being extremely lazy and can’t be bothered to type up her blog!

---

Comments

[pauline krohn]

thanks for the greetings Carl.tell Marnee to get her act together cos all the family want to know what she is up to.sounds like u r all having a great time.xoxo

[ckbe]

Thanx Mrs K! We most definitely are all having an amazing time, and I shall definitely be giving Marnee a poke in the ribs to get on and update her blog!