After a short interlude in our vacation for me to attend a work meeting, we continued to Anaheim, CA, for a couple days at the Disneyland resort. While Walt didn’t like the hotels, t-shirt shops, and other commercialization that built up around Disneyland (which is why he purchased so much land in Florida), a nice aspect of Disneyland is the ability to stay in a hotel right across the street from the parks and walk. You can walk from our hotel to Sleeping Beauty Castle in about 10 minutes, depending on the number of people waiting to get through the turnstiles.
The first day we spent the morning and a little of the afternoon at Disney’s California Adventure park. While this park has a few interesting rides, it just doesn’t seem “Disney.” The whole Paradise Pier area seems more “Three Flags” than Disney. We really enjoyed the Toy Story attraction (hitting it five times), which is like the one at Disney Studios in Florida. We also enjoyed the Grizzly River Rapids raft ride. New since our last visit to Disneyland was the Cars Land, themed on the Cars movies. The Radiator Springs Racers ride combined aspects of Test Track (Epcot) and Splash Mountain (all the Magic Kingdoms). I thought it was a little short for the amount of time spent waiting. Disney seems to be spending a lot of time developing splashy rides that are too short and are not “people eaters.”
Then we went over the the Magic Kingdom for the rest of the day. We had intended to just hit a few rides this first partial day, knowing that we had a whole day the next day.
We beelined for The Matterhorn. This has always been a favorite of mine, being one of the many rides at Disneyland not found at Disney World. It was closed during our last visit.
The next day we went to The Magic Kingdom as the park opened, heading straight for Fantasy Land to hit all those rides before the crowds got bad. We also had a chance to see all the new parades and many of the new shows. We stayed late for the fireworks. Sam really wanted to go on Splash Mountain, which was closed all day. It opened about 2130, and after a 20 minute wait we were finally able to go on this ride. We finished just in time to watch most of the Fantasmic water, light, and fireworks show and then hit a few more rides before the park closed.
The third day we spent just a couple of hours in the parks before beginning our death drive to Utah through the Mojave Desert. We took this time for a little last-minute souvenier shopping and to hit the Toy Story and Indiana Jones (another Disneyland exclusive, deemed “awesome” by Sam) rides before bidding a sad farewell to the “happiest place on earth.”
One last note. The last time we visited Disneyland and sat through Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln we were sorely disappointed. They had modified the show — not for the better. In fact, I wrote a letter to the company, entitled “Cheap Technology Tricks at the Expense of Mr. Lincoln.” Great news! They have gone back to the original show and added the most advanced animatronic figure to date. The show was terrific, and Mr. Lincoln’s words about the nation only being defeated from within, not from external enemies, is a poignant and timely today as they were when he first uttered them. I wish our national “representatives” could watch this attraction and take his words to heart.
