Oct.- Week 1- Disneyland, Day 2 CA Adventure

Our second day was Wednesday.  We woke up around 6:30, had breakfast at the hotel and made it over to California Adventure by 8:30ish.  We headed straight for Cars Land to get a fast pass for the Radiator Springs Racers ride then we quickly got right on Mater's Junkyard Jamboree and Luigi's Tires.  The lines this day were also quite short.  I don't think we waited longer than 10 minutes for anything, the whole morning!  I remember quickly walking/weaving through the empty line for Luigi's Tires and thinking, "Wow!  The line can really get THIS long?!"  We were SUPER impressed with Cars Land over all.  They did such a good job with making it identical to the movie.  

 Then we headed over to A Bug's Land and also (pretty much) walked onto every ride: Francis' Ladybug Boogie, Flik's Flyers, Tuck and Roll's Drive 'Em Buggies, and Heimlich's Chew Chew Train.  The kids weren't too interested in getting wet at the little splash pad they had there, though.  Another whole area--DONE!  

 (The rest of these are not in order of how the day went.)
We also rode Ariel's Undersea Adventure and Goofy's Sky School (Ben was too short for that one.)  

 The kids loves all the Disney Jr. stuff they had in CA Adventure.  McKenna got to meet Princess Sofia!

And Doc! 

 We rode Mickey's Fun Wheel which made me pretty motion sick because Dan wanted the swinging gondola.  Nice view though!  Two days after we left the wheel got stuck for two hours! 

 We went into the Disney Animation building and loved the atmosphere in there!  They have HUGE screens showing songs and clips from ALL the Disney movies and showing the rough sketches of how some of the characters were first drawn.  Here is McKenna dancing to Bear Necessities and Dan "dancing" with McKenna too.  We also went to the Sorcerer's Workshop where McKenna took a picture of herself, answered some questions and found out she is most like the character, Mulan.  

 We also walked through the Character Close-up exhibit and McKenna's voice got "stolen" by Ursula the Sea Witch.  She recorded herself singing along to the Seven Dwarf's Hi-Ho, and Ursula played it back.  Pretty cute!  We saw the Disney Jr.-- Live show and the kids LOVED it!  As you can see, Ben was in awe!  They used puppets from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Sofia, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and Doc McStuffins.  They did the usual, "There's a problem and we can learn from these other stories how to solve that problem."  It was cute! 

 We got fast passes for the Cars Land Racers the same time our friends, the Boyacks, did.  The Boyack boys are about 6 months younger than McKenna and Ben, but they all got along great and were so cute together.  This ride was by far, one of my favorite rides!  Too bad we only had Ben's forehead in the pictures.

 We hit up the Aladdin show right after lunch in hopes that Ben would crash and take another nap.  And we were right!  Though he fought it for a while saying he didn't want to miss the show.  McKenna loved  it and it was quite funny with great effects!  We also met Woody on the day Ben had Woody on his shirt! 

 Dan took both kids (separately) on the Silly Symphony Swings.  Rides that go around and around make me motion sick, so I had to pass on this one.  

 We also took the kids on Tower of Terror!  You can see in the top left corner picture we are in the back row and Dan and I are both looking down at our kids who you can't see in the picture.  I prepared them by saying it would drop us and it would tickle their tummy.  I had no idea how super creepy the atmosphere was, so McKenna ended up crying at the end.  Oops!  She said she never wants to go on it again.  Oh well.  Ben said he wanted to go on it 3 times.  ;)  Also, the Boyacks were nice enough to take our kids on the Cars Racers one more time so Dan and I could do the BIG California Screamin' roller coaster (top right corner).  It was awesome!  We did have to wait about 40 mins to get on, but it was totally worth it.  I remembered thinking that was a pretty long ride for a roller coaster.  I think they said it's over a minute and 20 seconds long.  The bottom two pictures are from the Disney Animation building.  Thumbs up in front of these giant movie posters. 

 We also watched the Pixar Parade with the Boyack family: Monster's Inc., The Incredibles, Nemo, 

 Bug's Life, 

 Toy Story, and Cars!  Ben didn't like this parade as much because they squirt water at you.  But McKenna loved it! 

 Other rides we went on but are not pictured: Monster's Inc., Jumpin' Jellyfish (a super lame ride that goes up and down really slowly-- and Ben had to be measured twice to go on it.  You can't be too careful, you know? ;)), and The Golden Zephyr rocket ships.  We ate dinner in the park at a pizza and pasta place and ended up spending just as much $$$ as IHOP the night before.  

The last thing we did in California Adventure was see the World of Color water and lights show.  Even though we got a fast pass to come early for "priority seating," we still had crappy seats right behind a pergola. We just held the kids up as best we could and they didn't complain too much.  Our biggest flop of the evening, however, was that we forgot to bring into the park the glow sticks we bought for the kids to have at night!  Dang!  Thankfully, the kids weren't too upset and we said we'd use them the next night. 

 Ben fell asleep in the stroller on the walk home.  When we got back to our hotel that night, we saw that the maid service has tucked in the kids' stuffed animals.  Pretty cute! 

I feel like we experienced 98% of California Adventure and were so glad about that!  By dinner time, we felt like we were "done" and almost went back to Disneyland.  But I'm glad we stayed and finished seeing/doing as much as we did.