Setup:
June 2nd, 2011. Preparing for a LONG day at Disneyland. We decided that we would bring sandwiches and water with us to the park tomorrow. Since we knew it would be busy, we could snack while waiting in lines, and not really have to search for food or a place to eat it. We head to Walmart first, and then Vons across the parking lot. My bff is something of an anomaly. He can make you laugh at the darnedest times. Case in Point. When asking him to get a cart for the store he spots a "car"... oh heck.. there are pictures. Lets go that route!
to which he exclaims (while on the phone with my cousin) "hey, you think I could fit?" To which I casually reply "hold on, let me get the camera out!" What follows is a big man in a little car event that had me rolling with laughter and tears of joy!
But hey. He fit!! And we have pictures to sort of prove that right? So onward, we get our snacks and sandwich fixin's and head home for the night. The rest of the day is uneventful and not worth reporting.
It's June 3rd, 2011. My alarm goes off at 5am. Could it really be that soon? I just went to sleep 3 hours ago! Get up, take a shower, get ready to drive to Anaheim! Wake up Best Friend, and force him out of bed. We finally manage to leave around 6:30am. Still plenty of time to get to the park before opening at 9am...or so we thought.
Our Day at the Happiest Place on Earth:
6/3/2011 8:30am we finally manage to get off the Freeway at Ball/Harbor. Anyone who goes to the parks knows that this is probably the quickest way to the Mickey and Friends Parking Structure.. Unless you are forced to sit through Bible Thumpers CONSTANTLY pushing the "walk" buttons and making the lights take absolutely FOREVER to change.. I took pictures of these people, and I'm not even sure what church they belong to, but messing with my Disney Day is how you get on my BAD side right away..
Despite the arrogance of these people, my Bff who is devout Christian decides to interact with them and yells that "God Forgives all Sins"... Being Wiccan I can see his point, but quietly enjoy the music on one of the local radio stations. You can see in the picture that it APPEARS to be heavy traffic getting over the bridge, but it moves quite quickly, and after dealing with the idiots pushing the crosswalk buttons constantly, we finally manage to get into the park.
While waiting for a tram, we found some nice girls who we chatted with briefly, and shared a tram row with. They let us know that there weren't going to be fastpasses for Star Tours today, and so we altered our plans, and decided to go to Little Mermaid First, and then head over to Star Tours for what would surely be the longest lines EVER. Disney Cast Members were incredibly helpful in pointing people in the right directions, and not letting people cut in line. They let us all into DCA about 45 minutes early, and started distributing Fastpasses for World of Color at that time!!
The sun came out in blinding force after the marine layer burned off, and we immediately doused ourselves in a second layer of sunscreen...
Bff Tim asking me "did I get it all?"... yup. Good to go. So if you look at the pictures, you can see that we are almost back to the entrance to Soarin. We were pretty far back in line. Come to find out people had been there since 10pm the NIGHT BEFORE. We are definitely NOT hardcore. =) But The Little Mermaid IS Tim's favorite Disney Movie (Mine is a tie between Beauty and the Beast and the Lion King), so we patiently wait in line. At exactly 10am we start moving. Yay! Then we realize how truly long the line really is, but thankfully after consulting Twitter, MouseWait, and GotPlans, we knew we made the right choice. Star Tours was reporting 250-300 minute waits! Little Mermaid was reporting 150-180 minute waits. We knew we weren't at the end of the line, and figured it'd be about an hour for us to get on the ride. We were only off by about 15 minutes! While waiting in line, I snapped a few pictures:
Hidden Mickey? We debated this because it is all over this section. I say YES, that it is a Hidden Mickey, only because, although it is repeated many times, it's not immediately obvious that it's Mickey, and would have to be interpreted as such.
When we realized that the line swept into the World of Color viewing area I nearly had a heart attack. Are you kidding me? And NO UMBRELLAS for shade! It was while waiting in THIS area that we slathered on a THIRD layer of sunscreen. No way was I getting Burned today! =P
The wait continued, and when we got into the WOC area, it really seemed to slow down. Seems like they started allowing handicap people on the ride, and were constantly stopping it to allow them to get on and off. I understand, but gosh darn it was hot. My suggestion would be that if they are going to continue to use the WOC area, to bring in some umbrella's for shade in the summer. It's REALLY hot in the sun out there, and without a breeze or shade, they could be looking at some sunstrokes, dehydration for sure, and unhappy burned guests! I'd suggest Misters, but then that makes the ground wet, and that opens up other lawsuits. I'm just saying that I believe Disney needs to consider the heat when using this park of the line queue.
This next picture is funny in a fail kind of way:
They have these in various parts of the park for electrical needs, and there's a reason why I made this picture Huge. Whats funny is there is a Handicap version...and a regular version. It appears that they ran out of regulars, and used a handicap one... right by the stairs! Anyways.
The view from the waterfront edge. This is one of my favorite spots, when it's not 90 degrees outside!
So from this point, the line actually started moving again. We weren't standing still for more than a few seconds anymore. Finally inside I started snapping LOTS of pictures, unfortunately, for some reason when I went back to review them afterwards, it had not actually saved many of them! I did get quite a few of the ride:
Tim being a fan of Ariel, made me get a picture of him with her mural.
Triton and Prince Eric's Ship. Stunning clarity and detail!
Scuttle telling us the tale of Ariel!
This is way more impressive than a photo. I do believe it came out quite lovely though.
Sebastian leading the song and dance. It was at this point that we start singing along. The constant FLASHES going off from people snapping photos is REALLY annoying though. Like every 3-5 seconds. Most newer cameras have an option called "FLASH OFF". Here's where I rant for a moment or two. I know you only come to Disneyland once a year, but I am there ALL the time. At least once a month, and in May, I was there 4 times! I understand that you are excited for all the new stuff, but for the LOVE of ALL that is DISNEY, please please please turn off your flashes for the dark rides. You are NOT going to get a good picture using your flash, and you annoy others around you whom are trying to enjoy the ride. Not only do I give this warning for Little Mermaid, but for Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Peter Pan. I don't ask for a lot, but some common courtesy to your fellow park goers would be appreciated. If you absolutely MUST take pictures in dark rides (and I frequently do), invest in a camera that has a "low light" setting where you don't need a flash to take good pictures.
This little guy is extremely photogenic.
I LOVE the way her hair moves in this part!
I love all the little touches to this scene. The fish playing and singing and dancing really made me want to go home and watch the movie again!
Flotsam and Jetsom. The evilest eels ever. Gosh I love these guys! And the photo turned out pretty well!
Beluga sevruga Come winds of the Caspian Sea Larengix glaucitis Et max laryngitis La voce to me Now, sing!
Go on and Kiss the Girl!!
Foiled! Curses!
La Voce Gloriosa
Unfortunately the last photos of the ride did NOT turn out well, so they won't be posted. After this we ventured over to Tower of Terror. The sign said 25 minute wait. We waited less than 10 minutes before we got into the opening spiel, and then less than 10 minutes before we were on the ride! I thought it moved incredibly quick for a busy day. Sadly my hair misbehaved and we got a WEIRD photo:
We are in the bottom right corner.. lol. My Hair is something else!
After this we headed over to Disneyland to check out the waits and rides. The info board said that Star Tours was DOWN to 240 minutes. 4 Hours seemed like an excessive wait for us, so we went over and rode Pirates of the Caribbean (10 minute wait), and Tim got to see Blackbeard. I'd seen it 2 weeks earlier when I was at the Parks with my friend Curtis.
No matter what anyone says, I love Pirates of the Caribbean. It's a relaxing ride on a hot day!
After Pirates, we sat down and drank Mint Juleps at the French Market, and my friend Katrina called to say she finally made it into the park, and was on her way to meet us! I hadn't seen her in a while, really enjoyed hanging out with her! We rode Haunted Mansion, Teacups, Alice in Wonderland, tried to watch the Saloon Show (no seating =( ), Space Mountain, and finally got in line for Star Tours.
I'm pretty sure we hit the line at the exact right time for Star Tours. We were told upon getting in line that the wait was down to 120 minutes! Woohoo! It was the lul in the afternoon where the morning people were done, and the evening crowd had not yet arrived. The line moved MUCH quicker than I thought it would, and we ended up waiting for just around 100 minutes! Katrina has rode during soft opening, and so had I. Tim was the only one who had never rode before.
This is where our day took a turn for the HILARIOUS! So 30 seconds into our ride, we had gotten Storm Troopers (bummer), and were headed for Kashyyk when the ride abruptly shut down! Pewwwwwww. I can't make the noice, but it was like a computer shut down... Everyone started blaming our Spy, and laughing about it. Saying he broke it. I chimed in that my friend Tim was certainly the culprit and everyone laughed again. There seemed to be a malfunction with one of the seatbelts that shut down the ride, and they transferred us to a different StarSpeeder. They were Pretty quick about getting us switched, and our new Cabin Steward was HILARIOUS with the puns and jokes. She was definitely a Highlight! Our new Ride we got Storm Troopers, Tattooine, Princess Leia, and Coruscant. Both Katrina and I only got 1 new element each. She'd had General Ackbar instead of Princess Leia, and I'd have Kashyyk instead of Tattooine. Really bummed about our "randoms", because we all really wanted Darth Vader, Hoth, Yoda, and anything but Coruscant!
It was time for Katrina to leave, We had a wonderful time together, and headed back over to DCA around 7:45 to get ready to line up for World of Color. As always It was Spectacular, but the crowds were REALLY big for the first showing, and it was hard to get around them at the end. Next time I will definitely wait around like Curtis and I did a couple weeks ago. So I leave you today with some beautiful shots of a beautiful water show:
