We kicked off the
day with some final packing, before a birthday lunch for my brother. We didn't
have to check in for the flight to Auckland until 5pm so we spent most of the
day waiting. Dad picked us up just after 4pm and we checked in at Wellington right
through to LAX.
We left Wellington
right on schedule at half past six and got into Auckland an hour later. We were
originally booked to fly at half eight but a week or so earlier we pulled this
back a couple of hours. This was originally to minimise the risk of delays
further down the line but also resulted in the excellent positive that we could
watch the Phoenix play Melbourne Heart in the bar inside customs at Auckland
International. FYI, the Nix came back from 2-0 down to win 3-2, get in!
We left Auckland
just before 11pm, and as we were on the Los Angeles leg of the Auckland -
Heathrow flight we were on the plane featuring Hobbit livery. Being the newest
plane this also gave us the bonus of having personal power points which was
very useful, although after two more viewings I'm still unimpressed with the
Middle Earth-themed safety video. The flight itself was
largely uneventful. We both found sleeping difficult and only got a
few hours rest, so I'm still not sure what the answer is to long distance
travel.
Seeing LA from
above was a new experience, having never seen a city of that size before. Once
we landed we were both struck by how much everything was different yet exactly
the same. LA may be a city on a whole new scale for us, but it is just people
living their lives in ways not much different from our own. The standard of the
vehicle fleet felt substantially lower than in New Zealand and there seemed to
be a huge amount of people who had just bought a van and started a transport
business.
We jumped onto our
transport out to our hotel at Anaheim. While it's a bit dated it's also walking
distance to Disneyland/California Adventure Park so we can't really complain.
Having got settled in and refreshed from the flight we managed to keep to our
original plan and check out the first theme park of the trip.
Because of the
size of Disneyland and the conflicting show times across the park we decided to
head first into California Adventure Park. I had been more looking forward to
Six Flags and Universal with their more thrilling rides but I was surprised with how much I enjoyed CAP.
The place was well
laid out, themed to amazing depth, spotless, and with us being there only in the evening,
the extensive lights added the magical touch you would hope to associate with a
Disney product. I found it significantly easier to be drawn into the Disney world
than I had expected.
We spent a little while just wandering around getting to grips with everything that was going on, before hitting our first ride on Goofy's Sky School. This was a short and sharp roller coaster where we also discovered the wonders of the single rider queue, which slashes the main queue by about 90% with the only catch being you have to ride by yourself.
From here we headed around to Paradise Pier and dropped in to play some sideshow games. For $20US we got to play a bunch of games and win stuffed toys, with Kathryn winning a Dumbo and I picked up a Toy Story horse and a lobster. We then jumped on the single rider queue for the California Screamin' roller coaster. We hadn't expected too much from this but it turned out to be an excellent ride, with a rocket launch and some pretty good drops.
This brought us nicely back in time to head back to Paradise Pier for the World of Color light and water show. There was a huge amount of people watching this so it was difficult to get a good spot, but we found a good place around the side to watch from. They had a huge amount of coloured light fountain jets all working together to great some amazing scenes, as well as projecting Disney characters onto walls of water.
We slipped away from this a bit early to try and get some final rides in while numbers were down. We headed over to Soarin' over California, a suspended motion master ride of the sights of California State. Unfortunately they had just closed the single rider queue but instead Greg the attendant just hooked us up with a FastPass for 15 minutes later! While not much of a thrill it was a fun ride so I'm glad that we got it in.
Lastly we headed around to the Grizzly River Run, a log flume with circular boats. This resulted in us doing a few drops backwards in the dark, and unfortunately Kathryn got a bit wet, but it was our last ride of the day and that wasn't going to get us down. Here’s hoping we can keep it up tomorrow when we have a go at a full day at Disneyland.
Until the next update!
Rob
 |
| This looks like snow but it's actually me standing in front of a waterfall , with the mist/spray blown up by the flash. |
Feeling pretty happy with ourselves so far, we moved on again and passed through the Pacific Wharf food area on our way to Cars Land. With so many different food styles in on place it was quite an assault on the senses. We entered Cars Land under a huge arch of 'rock' and was amazed at the size of this area. It's massive. The whole thing is encircled with massive 'rock' walls which feel like mountains. The main ride in this area is the Radiator Springs Racers, which took about 30 minutes to get to even in the single rider queue. While a little short, it was a blast to race in cars around a highly cambered track, and I'll admit it was a little bit exciting to win our 'race'.
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