I'm baaack...
Last week was spent vacationing with the family. We flew out to California for my brother-in-law's retirement from the Navy. We went out a bit early and met with my sister-in-law's family to visit Disneyland.
We had been to Disney World several times, but this was our first visit to Disneyland. Many aspects of the trip were repeats of the Disney World experience. To me, Tower of Terror is still the coolest ride of the park, and I still fail to see the joy of Soarin' despite the fact that the wife and kids seem to love it. Space mountain is still space mountain, Buzz Lightyear the same, etc.
The first major difference is the stage show. At Disney World, they had an excellent retelling of Beauty and the Beast in an outdoor theater. By contrast, at Disneyland, they had a great retelling of Aladdin, this time in an indoor theater. The show is again obviously based on the Disney take on the tale, though some elements were changed or absent. The big blue genie is there, but he is very de-Robin-Williams-ized, and given a whole new (and somewhat updated) set of cultural references. Two hits amongst my kids is the threat by the genie to make Iago into a "chicken nugget" and a quip of Molly Shannon's SNL "superstar" bit (though they have no idea where it comes from.)
DisneyLand also features the Indiana Jones Temple of the Forbidden Eye ride, which was a nice lead-up to watching the new Indy film later in the week. The ride was interesting, but not my favorite. It's a jerky car ride sort of affair, much like Animal Kingdom's Dinosaur ride with different scenery. Similarly, Grizzly River Run is almost identical to Animal Kingdom's Cali River Rapids.
What goes at DisneyWorld goes here: FastPass, FastPass, FastPass! As we separated, we had one person gather most or all tickets and grab FastPasses for rides that we were interested in catching later in the day. This is invaluable in spending more time riding than standing in lines. The one time we did try to make it on a ride with a long line (Splash Mountain), the ride broke after we spent half an hour in line.
DisneyLand's TomorrowLand also featured a cool little Jedi Training Academy show. My 7 yo daughter has been a fan of jedi since the Lego Star Wars game, and had a lot of fun dressing up like a padawan, learning to use the lightsaber, and dueling with Darth Maul:
Kristen also participated in the academy, but the heat was already taking its toll and she was acting a little out of it and we had to pull her out.
I did have a few more pictures stashed away for the visit, but they seemed to big for livejournal.
The retirement went well; it was a well done yet sufficiently brief ceremony, which had some of the cooler Navy traditional ceremonies in it.
We had planned on visiting SeaWorld as well while we were down there, but had to cancel. We hit the beach one day and we took insufficient precautions against the sun. Those who chose to swim stayed too long without refreshing their sun protection, and some of them got burnt fairly badly. My oldest daughter was the worst and basically spent two whole days in bed. I feel pretty bad about that and plan to be an annoyingly conservative father when it comes to sun protection from here on out.
She was well enough to catch a showing of Prince Caspian (short take: good but not great) and the wife and I snuck out later for the midnight opening showing of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (better, but still at best the 3rd among Indy films to me).
More generally, lots of nice family bonding time was had. My daughters got to hang out with their cousins and they mostly had a good time. My 7 yo daughter cried a little when it was time to leave.
Oh, one final note: we flew out of San Diego International, and let me say: worst airport ever. The rental car returns weren't co-located with the airport (something I've become accustomed to at most other major airports I frequent) and we lost half an hour backtracking to find the rental agency. Then when we got to the terminal, it was hideously arranged, with poor amenities and insufficient restroom facilities on the terminal side of the security checkpoint.
We had been to Disney World several times, but this was our first visit to Disneyland. Many aspects of the trip were repeats of the Disney World experience. To me, Tower of Terror is still the coolest ride of the park, and I still fail to see the joy of Soarin' despite the fact that the wife and kids seem to love it. Space mountain is still space mountain, Buzz Lightyear the same, etc.
The first major difference is the stage show. At Disney World, they had an excellent retelling of Beauty and the Beast in an outdoor theater. By contrast, at Disneyland, they had a great retelling of Aladdin, this time in an indoor theater. The show is again obviously based on the Disney take on the tale, though some elements were changed or absent. The big blue genie is there, but he is very de-Robin-Williams-ized, and given a whole new (and somewhat updated) set of cultural references. Two hits amongst my kids is the threat by the genie to make Iago into a "chicken nugget" and a quip of Molly Shannon's SNL "superstar" bit (though they have no idea where it comes from.)
DisneyLand also features the Indiana Jones Temple of the Forbidden Eye ride, which was a nice lead-up to watching the new Indy film later in the week. The ride was interesting, but not my favorite. It's a jerky car ride sort of affair, much like Animal Kingdom's Dinosaur ride with different scenery. Similarly, Grizzly River Run is almost identical to Animal Kingdom's Cali River Rapids.
What goes at DisneyWorld goes here: FastPass, FastPass, FastPass! As we separated, we had one person gather most or all tickets and grab FastPasses for rides that we were interested in catching later in the day. This is invaluable in spending more time riding than standing in lines. The one time we did try to make it on a ride with a long line (Splash Mountain), the ride broke after we spent half an hour in line.
DisneyLand's TomorrowLand also featured a cool little Jedi Training Academy show. My 7 yo daughter has been a fan of jedi since the Lego Star Wars game, and had a lot of fun dressing up like a padawan, learning to use the lightsaber, and dueling with Darth Maul:
Kristen also participated in the academy, but the heat was already taking its toll and she was acting a little out of it and we had to pull her out.
I did have a few more pictures stashed away for the visit, but they seemed to big for livejournal.
The retirement went well; it was a well done yet sufficiently brief ceremony, which had some of the cooler Navy traditional ceremonies in it.
We had planned on visiting SeaWorld as well while we were down there, but had to cancel. We hit the beach one day and we took insufficient precautions against the sun. Those who chose to swim stayed too long without refreshing their sun protection, and some of them got burnt fairly badly. My oldest daughter was the worst and basically spent two whole days in bed. I feel pretty bad about that and plan to be an annoyingly conservative father when it comes to sun protection from here on out.
She was well enough to catch a showing of Prince Caspian (short take: good but not great) and the wife and I snuck out later for the midnight opening showing of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (better, but still at best the 3rd among Indy films to me).
More generally, lots of nice family bonding time was had. My daughters got to hang out with their cousins and they mostly had a good time. My 7 yo daughter cried a little when it was time to leave.
Oh, one final note: we flew out of San Diego International, and let me say: worst airport ever. The rental car returns weren't co-located with the airport (something I've become accustomed to at most other major airports I frequent) and we lost half an hour backtracking to find the rental agency. Then when we got to the terminal, it was hideously arranged, with poor amenities and insufficient restroom facilities on the terminal side of the security checkpoint.