When I sent out the announcement to my friends in LA, I found out that 10 of us were going to get together on Sunday the 27th. We made arrangemnets to meet at noon outside Tinkerbell's Toyshop so we could catch the Princess Storytelling. So we could take in more rides, and also celebrate part of her birthday at the park, Cathy and I decided to also go on Saturday.
We decided to fly down Friday night and back on Monday morning (after all, on Southwest Airlines, friends fly free). We made arrangements to stay with Dori, Larry, and Daniel Hoffman in N orthridge (When Dori asked me "What kind of arangements?", I said "Seperate.") on Friday and Sunday night and to stay at a hotel in Anaheim on Saturday night.
Since I'm not familiar with the area around the San Jose Airport, I parked at the airport. San Jose has two Long Term Parking lots: the Green lot, which is closer to the terminals and was full, and the Yellow lot, which is further away. The only spots available were at the very end of the lot, almost a stone's throw away from the end of the runway. If you ever saw the scene in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles", where Steve Martin has to get from the parking lot to the car rental counter, you have some idea of how far we were from the terminal. When I spotted the shuttle bus, I said "A transport!", started waying my right hand in the air, and said "Over here!".
There's a funny part to this too. The last time both Cathy and I had visited at the same time (for the USC game last October), there was a small temblor before we had gone to sleep. This made me comment that maybe the two of us should not visit Northridge at the same time ;) I also commented "I hear the movie 'Volcano' starts with an earthquake too." Cathy got in the comment "Well that's a shakey start for this trip."
The quake this time was a 5.0 centered somewhere between Castaic and Simi Valley and was followed by a 4.0 aftershock. After about a half hour, we went back to sleep, but it wasn't a comfortable sleep.
Cathy> I think I'm going to relish this experience.
Me> Now that we're passed it, you'll have to look back.
Cathy> I guess it will have to ketchup.
Me> If it can mustard up enough speed.
Cathy> Well, you're being frank about this.
Are you going to keep dogging this topic?
Me> This conversation is becoming a pain in the buns.
"Of course, you realize, EVERYONE who passes the WienerMobile probably has the same conversation."
Eventually we stopped at Bolsa Chica State Beach. I wasn't prepared for the water, so I played around a little with sand, kicked back and watched a couple people try to surf (the waves didn't last long enough for board surfing). It was an ok day to go to the beach; not too warm, and definately not a clear day as we could barely see Long Beach. After working on a sand castle, and playing a little bit in the water, Cathy was ready to go.
After getting settled, we decided to use the hotel's shuttle to get to the park. The shuttle is provided by Western Transit Systems, which provides service for several of the Anaheim area hotels. We were picked up at 2pm and the ride, which included stops at a couple of other hotels on Katella, took about 10 minutes.
Getting my AP was a snap. I bypassed the regular lines and went to the annual passport booth, which had no line. The same was true at the Main Street Bank...no line. After a few minutes, I became an APer (amongst the others who don't live in Southern California).
In the meantime, Cathy picked up a 2-day passport, and met up with me just as the Lion King Cellebration was passing through Main Street square. The parade did not stop, so I guess it was too hot.
Cathy wanted to go on rides rather than take in any of the shows. Much of Saturday was spent walking between rides and standing in line. Here are a few quick notes:
Because the lines at Splash Mountain were over an hour, we went to the Matterhorn next. We got a sled on the right hand track. The ride was fun as always, though we didn't race anyone. When we reached the end, I was wondering how they pulled the bobsleds onto the siding. No sooner than I had wondered this, our sled pulled up a little more, and a cast member (or CM) crossed the track and asked "Do you want to go around again?" We said "sure". The CM then pushed a control button and we sat as we found that the section of track our sled was on was part of a platform. The platform slid to the right and connected our track to the siding...at the same time, I noticed that the "switching platform" extended underneath the loading platform, so that the gap in the main track could be filled in. We had no idea why we needed to be pulled off the track, but after several sleds came by, we were placed back on the track and got our chance to ride again.
As we went through the loading area, we noticed another sled was also off the track. Several cast memberes were cleaning the sled which had a brown substance in an around its back seat (eeewwwwwww). They even used a special cleaning spray to disinfect the car.
The second time around was much more fun, because we got to race another sled. I think we won the race. ;)
When we were in line, there was a group of about 6 teenage girls trying to figure out what they wanted--they ended up splitting 3 childs plates of fettuccine. This prompted Cathy to comment that they must be training to be anorexic. (I could see them splitting the adult portion...it was pretty big, but a childs?) I wasn't in a pasta mood, so I ordered the herb roasted chicken, and Cathy ordred the fettuccine. They didn't have any chocolate milk, so Cathy decided to save that for dessert later. (Yes, I remembered to take advantage of my 10% AP discount.)
During dinner I noticed a few things:
Inside the queue, Cathy found one of the Mara translator cards and tried reading the warnings. We started to get how the font work, but the queue moved too quickly to translate anything long. When we reached the "spike room", the room was ready, so I pushed the pole which labeled "Do not touch the pole" and set off the room. Only a few people in the room screamed. When we reached the film room, I pulled out my flashlight to point out the Eyeore sign up in the platforms, but I couldn't find it (I would later). Once through the queue, we boarded our jeep and enjoyed the ride...until we got to the snake. It wasn't working, which made that part lame.
After Indy, we walked towards Splash Mountain. The first Fanstasmic had ended, but the area around Rivers of America was still crowded with people awaiting the second show. As we passed by the Cafe Orleans, we popped in to see if Cathy could get some cake for her birthday. They had chocolate cake, which we both decided looked good. However, when Cathy looked at her piece, it appeared that someone had already taken a bite from it. The cast member behind the counter apologized and replaced it. Unfortunately, the cake did not tase as good as it looked. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't that good either.
By the time we finished, the second Fantasmic show had started. Since we were going to watch the show tomorrow, we went to Splash Mountain. The line wasn't that long. This was the first time I had been on Splash Mountain at night...I prefer it during the day, just because you can see the drop into the briar patch. During the drop, I expected the flash for the photograph, but there was no flash. It made hearing Prof. Owl's spiel (to buy a photo) at the end of the ride funny. We got off of Splash Mountain just in time to watch the Twain go past the Hungry Bear landing. We followed the exiting crowds around the ROA to Big Thunder. The line wasn't too long. In front of us were these two women, one of whom asked me in a raspy high pitched voice "Who do I sound like?" I replied "Well, I don't know who you sound like, but it's not Mickey Mouse." Big Thunder was a lot of fun, and Cathy agreed that it's much better at night.
Next came the Matterhorn. The line was quite short, and they were only the left side track (which is the one we wanted). Cathy said she liked the left side better, because you get better views of the park compared to the right. I thought that the right hand side was a little faster. Anyway, after we exited, I convinced cathy that we had enough time to ride Space Mountain *and* catch our shuttle bus. We barely made it into the queue before the strains of "When You Wish Upon a Star" came over the Park's sound system. We had made it. Cathy hadn't been on Space Mountain since FedEx became the sponsor, so she enjoyed the redone queue (more on the queue later). One thing I noticed...the captioning on the video displays. I don't remember it being there before.
When we reached our room, I tried my "key" card in the electronic lock, but the door wouldn't open. Cathy did the same...as with me, the light saying the door is unlocked came on, but when we turned the handle, to door wouldn't budge. After several more tries, we walked back to the front desk, and told the night manager about the problem. He made us a new key, and came along with us to open the door. He had the exact same problem and said "Ohhhh shoot." Then he tried again, and gave the door an extra shove. As the door opened, the crack it made as the seal broke reminded me of the cracking of something that's been frozen shut with ice. At that point we were happy to be back in our room, and we quickly went to sleep (it's a good thing that the beds were comfortable, and yes, "The Walls of Jericho", were up).
The thought for Saturday goes to Cathy who had mentioned during the day that she couldn't get a handle on what Karma was doing to us...bad things would happen, but we'd come out o.k.
After that, the Disneyland band marched in, serenaded us, and sang the little song that reminds everyone that "If you leave, stamp your hand, or else you won't be able to come back into Disneyland" (I didn't read the post asking for the lyrics until I had returned. If *knew* you folks wanted the words, I'd have asked for them.) Then we were given the ok to enter, and the mad dash for the rope began...except we walked. Mickey was near the flagpole, and very few people were around, so we stopped and I took a photo of Cathy with Mickey...after that Mickey gave me a "high 5" and we advanced towards the rope (after a stop at the lockers).
Cathy then wanted to ride Splash Mountain. The queue was short enough to ride twice...the second time we made sure to get the front seat of a log, even though a CM asked if there were any pairs who wanted to move up. After reading posts on alt.disney.disneyland (or a.d.d. for short) about taking pictures from certain rides, I brought my camera with me (a Point It and Shoot, Stupid type of camera) and snapped a shot each time we reached the top of the drop. I'll get the pictures back later and see how they turned out. This time we ended up getting wet, which wasn't too bad.
As we walked in the sunlight to dry off, I saw one sight that made me do a double-take...Two "goths" (for those of you who aren't familiar with the term--imagine two women dressed up like Winona Ryder in "Beetlejuice") got in line for Splash Mountain. Imagining them getting their black dresses and white pancaked made-up faces wet made me think "What the heck are they thinking?" Two other women overheard me and said "Oh, we were behind them on the Haunted Mansion. If they're going to be stupid, let 'em...they deserve it."
After quick stop at the Haunted Mansion, we went to "the World Famous Jungle Cruise"...unfortunately, our guide, Isaac (maybe he should have been our bartender instead) was mediocre. The only decent new joke he told was at the elephant pool--"and here we come upon a convention of Republicans. If you look under the waterfall there, that's Bob Dole".
On my own, I rode Snow White's Scary (but incomplete) Adventures, Mr. Toad's Wile Ride (when I asked the CM if there were any traffic jams, she told me to watch out for the train ;), and the Mad Tea Party (I found one tea cup which I had no problem spinning by myself).
It had been quite a while since I had seen the ceremony and I always thought it was special to see the kids react. Unfortunately, they longer have live musicians, or live crier as part of the show...only Merlin. Having canned music, and a canned crier just didn't impress me. Now I see why Al has this as a "don't bother" on the DIG. I walked away from the ceremony as the kid pulled the sword...it was time to meet a bunch of people.
The kids then wanted to ride Dumbo, while the single adults--David, Cathy, Tim, Cindy, and myself--wanted to ride Space Mountain. We agreed to go our seperate ways and meet back at Main Street Square in time for the 4:30 Lion King Parade. The queue for Space Mountain looked like it was not that long...but we ended up waiting about 10 minutes longer than expected. While we were in the queue, we heard the announcement that the ride was closing down temporarily. This prompted a group of girls to start singing, which they quickly stopped after they started singing the theme for "Barney". At the same time, they turned the lights on inside the mountain (something I'd never seen before). Then we heard announcements as they were clearing the cars from each zone on the mountain. The wait didn't seem that long, though we noticed that as we were leaving the video screen area, the tape had cycled through to the point where we had entered the room. During pert of the video presentation, Tim said "Hey look! It's Slater!" (from Saved by the Bell) which generated a few laughs. And then, when we reached the "Warning" room, Tim pointed to the monitors and said "Look! It's Shannon Doherty", even though it isn't (the woman in the warning video does look like her).
Tim and I sat next to one each other on our rocket. He recalled on his last ride how a couple of riders started beating their hands in time to music as the rocket made it's climb. We decided to do that this time. It took us a little while to get in sync, but we did eventually. While riding I was wondering what needed to be done to record the soundtrack (which was on the Sounds of Disneyland web site recently); Where was the mircophone placed to record the track?
For some reason after we exited Space Mountain, David left us. Cindy, Cathy, Tim, and I went to the Matterhorn...the line wasn't too long. For some reason, they boarded the four of us early. They asked up and down the line for the size of a party...we said "four", and they put us onto a sled. Since we were on the left track, I again took out the camera and snapped a few shots from the ride. (I still haven't taken the roll in.)
By the time I had gotten my pin and ticket, and then booked back into the park, the parade had just started. Everyone else had made it to the meeting place too. The only problem? I was across the street. It actually was a better spot for photos, so I wasn't upset. I not only got some of the parade, but also some of my group sitting across from me. As the performance continued, I walked around to take photos of the other floats and also wondered "Which one of the performers, if any of them, is Tracy Turbo?"
Also, during the parade where we heard "Simba, it is your turn to take your place in the Circle of Life", I couldn't help but think of the joke at the end of the Simpsons' episode "'Round Springfield" (the one where Bleeding Gums Murphy dies).
After getting Springfield's jazz station to play a Bleeding Gums song, Lisa looks to the sky and says, "That was for you, Bleeding Gums." A cloud appears, with the face of Bleeding Gums Murphy, who says, "You made an old jazz man happy, Lisa" Then, the image of a lion appears next to Bleeding Gums and says, "You must avenge my death Kimba, duh-I mean Simba" Then, the image of Darth Vader appears next to the lion and says, "Luke, I am your father." Then, the image of James Earl Jones appears next to Darth Vader and says, "This, is CNN." This causes Bleeding Gums to turn to the other three and say, "Will you guys pipe down? I'm saying good-bye to Lisa" Finally, the other three say, "We're sorry."
When we reached the Lion's cave, she told the "and isn't it nice how those lions are protecting that sleeping Zebra?" and sung "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" in an obnoxious voice. The past few times before I had heard the joke as "Isn't nice how Simba and Nala are protecting that sleeping zebra?", but didn't this time...Is the Simba and Nala part now on the blacklist?
She also told us a new joke (new for us anyway). When we got to good old Trader Sam, she said "This is my good friend Sam, who runs the Cannibal Cafe. The last time I talked to Sam was at his cafe. I told that I didn't like his brother very much. He told me 'Next time, have the salad.'" When we exited the boat, I turned to Cathy and said "See, that's a good skipper!"
After Pirates, the two families and David decided that it was time to go home. On the otherhand, Cindy, Cathy, Tim, and I went to Splash Mountain. After waiting in line for maybe five minutes, the announcement came out "This attraction will be down for the 45 minutes"...oh well, at least we weren't in line for too long.
Other evening highlights:
When the train started moving again, we asked him if they ever run the train at "Big Thunder Mountain" speeds. He said that they run at full steam on the last run, but there aren't any passengers on that one (Darn!). As we pulled into New Orleans Square, both the supervisor and conductor jumped off the train. We shouted "Hey! you're not supposed to get off the train until it comes to a complete stop!" The conductor, "Oh we can do it because we've been well trained."
Cathy wanted to sit in the front again, but when we heard them ask for a group of four, Tim and I said "right here!". I was glad we moved up...I finally rode a jeep that didn't go into the future room...we went to the "Fountain of Youth" instead. Oh yeah, when we reached the snake, the jeep didn't stall. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, as the snake still wasn't working. Even Cindy thought it was lame.
Other late night notes:
His first comment was to Cindy, who was proudly wearing her Phil Collins concert shirt (she had attended his concerts in Las Vegas and Anaheim a week earlier). He said "Phil Collins eh?" and then sang a little bit of one of the songs from the most recent album.
Our first stop was the Indy queue. He said "And this must be the best bathroom in the entire park as the line is usually long. Since this is the last cruise, let's wait and ask some people how it was." We waited for a while, but nobody came out...then we saw this group walking into the exit line...Our skipper tried to warn them.
When we reached the temple, we saw a duck sitting on one of the aligators, which made us crack up...I think that distracted our skipper.
When we reached the Elephant pool, we said "Let's go back!" He then put the boat in reverse for a little bit.
When we reached the Nile, he said "And now we're on the Nile River... it's the longest river" and we filled in "in Anaheim".
When we reached the bull elephants he said "And here's one of the highlights of the trip...Skippy the flying elephant. There he is now...Now watch". He then shined the spotlight into the trees, swirled it around while going "Who--ooOH--ooOH--oa" and then "clunck" and then pointed the spot on the other other bull elephant.
When we reached the baboons, he started naming off each of them "Pat Baboon", "Debbie Baboon", etc. When he got to the last said "Oh...that's my ex-girlfriend." and then explained that his current girlfriend could leap 20 feet and weighed of 500 pounds.
When we reached the hippo pool, we found out on the first shot attempt that our skipper had forgotten to load the caps into the gun. When he pulled the trigger twice more, we shouted "Bang! Bang!"
When we reached the back of Schweitzer Falls he said "Ok, this part is for you Disney wakkos on the boat...that's (turns to us) you, you, you, and you (points to each of us)." He then went through the Fantasmic routine.
When we reached Trader Sam, he shined the spot on Sam, which made Tim comment "Now he's blinded like us", which made the skipper turn the inboard light on one more time. The skipper then went through the Trader Sam spiel "He's got a special on right now, two of his heads for one of yours. If you decide to take advantage of it, you will come out ahead." and then added "Sam had me over for dinner the other night. I enjoyed it and said to him 'Your wife sure does make a good chili' He said 'Yeah, but I'm sure going to miss her.'"
When we pulled into the dock, everyone in the boat applauded, for a long time.
It was time to go home. After one last bit of shopping (Cindy and I wanted mochas so we had caffeine and sugar for our drives home, and Cathy wanted a lollipop, which she she ate on the flight home the next day), I gave Tim and Cindy rides to their cars (I was in Jimmny Cricket, they were in Thumper) and then drove back to Dori's and Larry's in Northridge.
After landing in San Jose, I dropped Cathy off at her office and had an uneventful drive home.
Just so you know, here's our Disneyland ride summary.
The Matterhorn: 5 Big Thunder Mountain: 3 Splash Mountain: 3 Space Mountain: 3 Indiana Jones: 3 Jungle Cruise: 3 Pirates of the Caribbean: 2 Haunted Mansion: 2 It's a Small World: 2 Autopia: 2 The Monorail: 2 one way trips Peter Pan's Flight: 1 Mr. Toad's Wild Ride: 1 The Mad Tea Party: 1 Disneyland Railroad: 1 Star Tours: 1