The twins arrive at Disneyland! Guess which one’s me?
Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve been having a fantastic summer holiday, enjoying beautiful sunny California – particularly, Disneyland! The Happiest Place on Earth! And also, one of the most expensive! Luckily for me, I was able to get in free thanks to some family connections, and bonus – it was a Park Hopper ticket, meaning I could go back and forth from Disneyland Park as well as Disney California Adventure.
A summer Saturday is evidently not the best time to go, as the crowds were quite large and wait times were ridiculous, some of which were alleviated by acquiring Fast Passes – for instance, we didn’t even have to stand in line at all for Space Mountain!
Iron Man exhibit at Innoventions
I don’t want to bore you all by recounting every detail of the day, but perhaps a few highlights? The first ride we went on was my personal favourite, Indiana Jones. It really does have that wonderful adventure-y feeling that you can only get from a place like Disneyland. We then went on Pirates of the Caribbean (smelled a wee bit funny in there) and a bunch of the cute kid rides while waiting for our Space Mountain Fast Pass time to arrive – Snow White’s Scary Adventures and Mr Toad’s Wild Ride. Brought back all sorts of lovely childhood memories, naturally. Just kidding. The Wind in the Willows actually gave me nightmares when I was a child. God knows why. We also visited an Iron Man exhibit they had at Innoventions, which my sister, the comic book junkie, got a kick out of.
Toad of Toad Hall!
After Space Mountain, lunch (one of those fantastic big turkey legs and a churro, of course!), and shopping (but buying nothing) on Main Street, we decided to pop over to California Adventure to check it out. Enjoyed a funny wee Bug’s Life show there, and Ariel’s Undersea Adventure, although the animatronic mermaids did scare me a bit. Then it was on to California Screamin’ and Soarin’ Over California. I suppose the park is quite fond of using apostrophes, no? Supper consisted of a bread bowl with tomato bisque, and then we headed to “Hollywood Land” which I think my sister, a film student, quite enjoyed. They have this room designed like the library in Beauty and the Beast where you can take a quiz to determine which Disney character you’re most like – apparently, I am most like Scar, which is nonsense. I’m the nicest person ever. Well, sometimes, anyway.
Paradise Pier, California Adventure
After wearing out California Adventure’s major attractions, we made a quick stop at Downtown Disney because I was in need of more YSL Baby Doll mascara from Sephora before heading back to Disneyland Park for cotton candy and their famous pineapple Dole Whip.
The last ride we rode was Peter Pan’s Flight, which, sadly enough, hurt my back even more than Space Mountain did, due to a malfunction near the end that caused our “pirate ship” to jerk back and forth quite violently. But it was still fun “flying” over a miniature London, as I took great glee in pointing out the wee Big Ben to my sister, who still suffers from an irrational childhood fear of London’s iconic clock tower.
It malfunctioned a wee bit. :(
I think the bit I liked most about Disneyland was the playful recreations of history – walking down the Victorian Main Street, going back to the Golden Age of Hollywood, an unsettled and untamed California, art deco architecture, and so on and so forth. Disneyland is, after all, quite famous for inducing nostalgia. In fact, I’m feeling nostalgic as we speak…for the long-gone time of last Saturday. Ha. Hopefully, we’ll be coming back sometime soon to ride what we didn’t get to this time – namely, Matterhorn (the queue stretched practically to Antarctica) and Thunder Mountain, which was closed that day.
So, we’ll end on a spam of more photos from the day!
Tomorrowland at night.
It’s A Small World looks charming at night!
We all know which ride this is, don’t we?
Wish I could live in Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.
Scary crowds on Main Street…
♬ Song of the Day: Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve
The Tragedy of Errors. 