We had chalked up 30 hours in the parks over the past two days, but there were still attractions yet to visit, and favourites to ride again. Enthusiasm is undiminished by repetition!
Straight throught the gates just on opening, and who should be saying hello but Goofy and Dale (as an experienced Dale Artist, I can reliably say that it's Dale, and not Chip, because Dale has the big cheeks, the buck teeth, and a larger red nose).
It's always a lovely morning on Main Street:
Just a little further in was Chip!
How could you ever grow tired of gazing on Sleeping Beauty's castle?
But Sean was all for Adventureland, and round number three with Indy:
They even make the queue an entertaining experience. The last two times, we'd walked through this corridor of spikes uneventfully.
This time, someone nutted out that if you pulled this skull, the roof began to lower, freaking out the folks in line behind you!
Cool, huh? We escaped being impaled, but this poor soul was apparently not so fortunate:
Soon after, the ambient noise level decreased, the lights came on, and people started trickling back past us, quitting the queue because the ride had apprently broken down.
Oh no!
But until we heard any official word, we were staying put. And our persistence paid off. They had that ride fixed in around 20 minutes. Considering the milliions of dollars worth of animatronics, the extent of the vehicle engineering and effects, not to mention the track length of over a mile, we were gobsmacked at such efficiency.
So much so, that we commented to the nearest available cast member on how impressed we were, and raved at the amazing feats of the Disney mechanical engineers.
The cast member, Victoria, was pleasantly surprised at our reaction. She said it was very rarely that people were impressed by the speed of breakdown repairs; mostly people were just cross that they had to wait longer, or come back later. She was delighted with our praise, explaining that there were 13 engineers on call throughout the entire park at any given time. To us, this made their feat even more impressive.
Victoria said to enjoy the ride, and to be sure to come and see her on our way out afterwards.
After yet another hair-raisingly awesome jeep ride through the Temple of the Eye (by now we knew to ask to wait until we could be placed in a front seat), we looked out for Victoria. She said that it was really unusual to encounter "super nice" people, and she wanted to give us some presents. She proceeded to give us a time-flexible Fast Pass for Indiana Jones, and a front-of-line pass for any other ride of our choice!
How lovely was that?! Here I am with Victoria. It's times like this you need a clip-on souvenir koala.
Thank you, Victoria! Over the past few days, we had seen select people being jumped to the front of even the Fast Pass lines, and had wondered what that was about. Well, now that was going to be us!
But first, we decided to explore some of the lower-key, but no less fascinating, attractions. We'd already taken the Jungle Cruise the past two evenings. I'm sure this would be phoney and cheesey by day, but by night, and with an hilarious "river guide", it was a hoot.
Anyway, we decided to climb Tarzan's Treehouse. There was a little potted history of Tarzan's orphaning and upbringing among the apes, together with some little science experiments for children.
We'd been admiring the "Mark Twain Riverboat" paddle steamer for the past two days. It was time for a cruise. (That's the Thunder Mountain Railroad in the background. It was closed for maintainence during our visit, which was a shame, because it's a top ride - or at least, it was in the pre-Indy days).
The captain saluted us!
My enthusiasm on boarding must have been evident, because we were asked where we were from, and when we said "Australia", we were invited to come up to the bridge and be Honorary Captains!
The view from the bridge was spectacular! Sean got to blow the whistle. He liked blowing the whistle.
I got to "steer" (the boat runs on an underwater track. Sorry, kids). By the way, the badges you can see on my hat were given out free at any of the stores. We were presented with "1st Visit", "Honorary Disney Citizen" and "I'm Celebrating" badges. Quite an impressive collection!
We saw a 12-feather chief! Fortunately the natives were friendly.
Looking over New Orleans Square to Tomorrowland (you can see Space Mountain in the background).
I got to ring the bell! And Sean got to blow the whistle at the Disneyland Train and again at the Sailing Ship Colombia!
I did express my mild disappointment at the fact that gambling on board was prohibited. I had been looking forward to re-anacting the poker tournament from "Maverick".
We were presented with official Honorary Captain certificates. Whoo hoo!!
It was a beautiful warm day, and the sun was starting to make its presence felt. Solution? SPLASH MOUNTAIN!!!
This time we sat up the back. We also got smart and brought our thongs. No wet shoes for us!
Then it was back to cross the lake on a wooden raft. We were explorers, heading to Tom Sawyer Island in search of pirate treasure!
I nearly fell foul of the pirates, but I managed to escape their gruesome cage.
After squeezing through tunnels in the hillside, and exploring Tom Sawyer's cabin, we found the treasure!!!
PLUNDER!!!!!
Well chuffed with ourselves, we bounced on the suspension bridge to celebrate.
We caught the next raft back to land, although we had to give way to Columbia!
Even the canoes were out in force! Awesome - something requiring a bit of muscle. We were up for that.
But first, we said G'day to Eeyore and Pooh in Critter Country.
It appears that Aussies who eat their Weetbix paddle their canoes better than your average Disneyland tourist. Upon realising that paddling around the lake actually involved WORK, many of our fellow canoeists simply gave up. But Sean and I got the job done. Our guide rather fancied his muscles and his aviator shades:
We felt we'd earned a cruise on Columbia. Apart from firing the cannon, and checking out the quarters below deck, this was yet another burn around the lake. The animatronic Indians and animals were looking very familar by this point!
Time for another modus of transportation.
We decided to hop on the Disneyland Train at the New Orleans Square station.
All aboard!
We thought this would be a kind of tame ride, but not only did the train afford splendid views of the park, we also went through tunnels with animatronic dinosaurs! We were moving too fast to get a clear shot, though, so here's the animal topiary at "It's a Small World" instead.
I asked the engineer if I could have a photo with him. He agreed only on the condition that we swap hats. (I'd bought my pink Disney number on the first day - a cap wasn't cutting it in the Southern California sun).
How do I look as an engineer?
We had to take a quick break back to reality, because we had to post some of our excess baggage home (a certain SFMOMA catalogue may have had something to do with that). But this in itself was yet another adventure. First, the very helpful James back at Candy Cane Inn bent over backwards to find us a box and paper padding, and then taped it all up for us. Thanks James!
Then we had to take a walk around the park to the post office, just over a kilometre or so away. Sean had been saying it would be great to get up early and take a jog around the outside perimeter of both parks. Given that the getting-up-early-efforts were dedicated to getting-to-the-park-early, the jog never eventuated, so it was good to have an opportunity to see a bit of Anaheim life outside the parks.
And we got to walk back through the "Downtown Disney" precinct, which basically equated to a bunch of shops and restaurants between the Disney hotels and the parks. Just in case you hadn't been given enough opportunities to part with your cash, you know. As it turned out, Sean did find a t-shirt there, after rejected everything in the parks, so it worked out well.
I was delighted to have the postal errand out of the way, and to return to Disneyland!
In Fantasyland, we rode into the whale's mouth for a little adventure in Storybook Land.
Then we decided to flex our Front-Of-Line Muscle, courtesy of Victoria and the efforts of the Disney engineers. We headed back to the Matterhorn bobsleds. I have to say it was very satisfying to be jumped right to the start of the queue in VIP style, but I did feel kind of sorry for the poor people who had been at the head of the line, and who were wondering why we got to jump them.
Okay, now for something kind of bizarre, but that showcases the marketing genius of the Disney corporation.
We had been seeing all these little children in full on Disney princess outfits. For example:
At first, we figured they had just worn them from home - that they'd been old Halloween costumes or similar. But no.
These outfits - and we're talking dresses, tiaras, shoes, wands, the works, were all sourced at Cinderella's (wait for it) "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique".
Egad.
Follow me inside, if you think you can stomach it.
Here we have every conceivable Disney Princess Outfit known to personkind. And starting at just $64.95 (dress only), your little girl can be the princess of her choosing.
It gets better. In the back is a full-blown SALON, where the little girls have their hair coiffed, sprayed and tiara-ed in the best imitation of their princess.
Given just how many sub-adolescent bouffanted babes in ballgowns we saw cruising the parks, I have to hand it to the Disney Marketing Machine.
I'll give you a moment to recover. Here, have some Tinkerbell punch:
Yes, it comes in a souvenir cup complete with a glowing LED Tinkerbell clip-on figurine. Hurrah!
We had figured we had to have at least one meal in one of the classier Disney restaurants. The Blue Bayou, at the start of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" was amazing, but a little out of our price range, so we settled for Cafe New Orleans.
We had a gumbo starter, which was yummy, if not a patch on Mike's.
Then Sean enjoyed a vegetable ragout, while I got stuck into chicken crepes with asparagus. YUMMO!!!!
Check out the gorgeous umbrellas at the outside tables.
New Orleans Square looks so authentic and pretty, you can almost forget you're in California:
As we were leaving, I took this photo of the counter and the coffee machine (our table was just to the left of the picture). We headed out the door only to have a waitress call out to us. I was worried that maybe I'd broken some unwritten rule by taking the photo, but no, she simply wanted to tell me that the coffee machine was the original one imported and used by Walt Disney himself. Wow!
It really was our lucky day for staff going out of their way to give us a wonderful time. The Disney staff are awesome in any case, but today it was as though they went into overdrive. While we're on the topic, I never saw one of them drop their happy face, or show any irritation. If it were me, I would have been SORELY tempted when dealing with whining, over-indulged tourists - and particularly with the little so-and-so who deliberated went and thwacked the huge balloons held by sellers in a large bunch. (I know what I would have got from my parents if I'd pulled that stunt, and it wouldn't have included any further time at Disneyland).
Moving on. We finished dinner just in time to catch the end of the parade, from yet another vantage point.
It was a great opportunity to get on some of the rides in Fantasyland while the crowds were focused on the parade (although the crowd situation was surprisingly mellow for all three days).
We decided to take the monorail from Tomorrowland to Downtown Disney and back, just for fun and to check out the park from yet another angle. For example, we got this amazing view of the "Finding Nemo" submarines:
The monorail was opened in 1959, and has been in daily operation ever since!
And then we went back to Indiana Jones and used our special Fast Pass. That ride SO rocks.
And then came creeping the sad realisation.........
.........that our time at Disney was slowly but surely drawing to a close.
There was nothing for it but to go and get thrown in the briar patch - from the front seat -
TWICE MORE!!!!!
(Well, it was going to be once more, but we nutted out a cool pose for the picture that's taken at the top of the drop. We worked it like Vogue supermodels, only to find that a glitch in the system had voided our photo - and only our photo. So we were left with no choice but to ride again! Life is tough).
Here we are! Do we look AWESOME, or what?!
I heart Splash Mountain!
- Indiana Jones: 4 times
- Splash Mountain: 4 times
- Pirates of the Caribbean: 3 times
- California Screamin': 2 times
- Matterhorn Bobsled: 2 times
- Every other ride (apart from those we were too tall to go on, that were down for maintainence, or that we couldn't whore our way onto for a preview): once
Satisfaction: 100%!!!!!
With full hearts, we watched the fireworks for the final time. Tinkerbell flew to the top of the castle, and it was time for us to go.
The park is usually open until midnight, but it was closing early tonight for high school graduation students to exclusively run amok all night long (at first, I naively assumed they'd only be there until midnight, and was thinking that wouldn't give them much time, until the reception staff at Candy Cane Inn explained the grad students get the parks for the entire night. Ouch!).
It was probably just as well the park was closing at 9pm. There was no way we were leaving until it closed, and we had the small issue of a very early flight to Cancun the next morning.
But just to squeeze the last drops of Disney magic from the Three Day Sponge, we sat in Main Street, soaking up the atmosphere as the crowds slowly dispersed through the gates.
We had truly had a magical time at the Happiest Place on Earth.
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