California Adventure Park - Saturday

We slept in until the 8.00 am as hordes of people were expected for the weekend at Disneyland so decided to take it easy, avoid the rush and spend some time at the pool. This is Sienna coming off her fifith ride down the hotel's waterslide.

For lunch, it was the Story Tellers Restaurant at the Grand Californian Hotel constructed in the Arts and Crafts style. It inflicts a Teutonic impression but parts of it are excellent. It also has an entrance to the California Adventure Park (CAP) we can use.

Sienna says: I made it. It has a smiley face. It was delicious.

This is what Sienna had for lunch. We had good food, especially the corn chowder, but service was poor.

We focussed on CAP today to avoid the crowds at Disneyland. The parks are adjoining so it's easy to swap from one to another. The afternoon and evening was rides and shows.

We did some tame things like the bug ride above and these dodgems.

Heimlichs Chew Chew Train was also fun with watermelon smelling water being sprayed on riders. In the tunnel, it was vanilla essence from the inside of a very large biscuit box (reference A Bugs Life).

We went to a stage show called Drawn to the Magic featuring singing animators expounding the virtues of the Disney characters. I thought they'd sacked all their 2D animators but I wasn't unkind enough to mention that. Besides, the next princess movie supposedly returns to 2D.















Peter and Derek were braver than the rest and ventured inside an episode of The Twilight Zone in The Hollywood Tower Hotel experience. This is truly a great ride with a great story placing you inside an episode of the old TV show before some excellent terrifying freefalling from the ~13th story of the ghostly, lighting burnt out hotel!

The agreed highlight for everyone was the Californian Soarin' which was a simulated gliding ride in an Imax style movie theatre. Truly impressive. After that, we went on the "Orange" and the ferris wheel. Then the park closed and it's time for bed again! The photo below shows the ferris wheel and the orange tonight.

A big hello to Sebastian and Ian who we will see in a week from today! Here are some more Star Wars pictures for you: