DISNEYLAND!
This post is dated on Saturday, August 21st, 2010 because that was the day that I actually went to Disneyland. In actuality, this post is being written on Tuesday, August 24th.
Because how can someone go to Disneyland and not write about it?! To treasure the memory forever and ever and ever?? Well, I didn't the last few times. I really regret it because, duh, I don't remember! ;_;
Anyway.
Friday. Pilgrimage to Anaheim.
We got up at eight or so in the morning and dragged ourselves over to the new Yaris. We spent a lot of the morning waiting for each other, and packing and stuff.
Stupid person that I am, I didn't pack my retainer or any of my clothes, because I thought "It's only a few days, it shouldn't matter". Boyyyy was that a mistake. Ewwww. Also I was an idiot and for some reason decided that a long-sleeved shirt would be a good idea to wear around Disneyland in the middle of August. To be fair, it wouldn't have been half so bad if my dad and sis hadn't kept talking to me like I should be burning to death in it. D: Hey, at least I didn't get hellishly sunburnt!
I also broke in my copy of Heroes of the Valley. It's really awesome so far! I've already drawn fanarts of Halli Sveinsson and Aud Ulfars-Daughter, and I'm only halfway through the book, haha. Though considering how slowly I read usually, the fact that I'm already halfway through the book after only reading it for about three days is really saying something.
We stopped by at a Subway for lunch, to my dismay. I don't like to sound like Bella Swan, but I really don't like Subway. Nothing personal against it actually, but we always eat at it whenever we travel and it just seems very unoriginal and uggggh. Then, when we were touring around an Indian supermarket, my dad scolded me for reading while we were walking. I understand that he's worried for my safety, but it did annoy me a bit since we were in no danger from such a small thing. I can see perfectly fine as I walk!
Though the main reason for stopping by that random area was to trick out the new Yaris with remote entry. The remote they got was so fancy! It has a whole bunch of features and even an LCD screen on the remote, it's really awesome. I looked through the manual for it and it was pretty crazy what it could do. Also when we were sitting in the shop for it, they had a whole bunch of features that the shop offers to install in cars, and they seemed really cool; they had a board that showed the sort of tint you can put in your windows. I finally understand why people do that! It seems like it'd be really cool to peer out of a tinted window. Not to mention comfortable. That sunlight that burns at your skin when you're parked on hot days sure stinks.
We stayed at the Hilton hotel because my mom managed to score super-cheap rates, like fifty a night or something. Oooooh so comfy~
Saturday Morning. TO DISNEYLAND!
We couldn't get to the park fast enough, and it was so worth it to wake up at seven to do it. We got a one-day Park Hopper ticket, so we could go between Disneyland and California Adventures as we wished. The Hilton that we stayed at was only across the street from some part of the park, and since we did this before, we thought it would be pretty easy to just mosey on over to a parking lot and enter the park that way, but it seems like they've closed that door since last time. We ended up walking around at least a whole corner of the park, but it was great exercise.
On our way there, we passed by one of the Disney Themed Hotels. It was sort of a mixture between the Brother Bear sort of Ancient America and the Classic Fairy Tale Castle thing, and believe me, it works a lot better than it sounds. The place was beautiful! There were wood carvings on the outside and stained glass windows on the inside. My dad stopped a worker for directions to the park, and my gosh, her uniform was so beautiful! She looked like a dame from a medieval court, in her cute green dress and stylized apron. We walked through some yards on our way out, too, and they'd planted all these native-Californian/American trees everywhere, to fit in with the Brother Bear part of the theme. It was breathtaking even just to look at the plant life! They had this cute sort of grass that grew in all these tufts, and they looked really strong. My mom kept talking about how they seemed like a better idea and wondered why we don't use them more.
Then we trekked through Downtown Disney, and that was already an experience in itself because we'd never been to Downtown Disney before. I kept wondering why Anaheim local teens didn't just hang out there all the time. If I lived there I so would! The streets had those pole-ads, whachamacallems, that you see in other downtown areas, but the ones in DD were all these beautifully painted posters advertising their new World of Colour show, which only premiered two months ago. They were pictures of various Disney characters being formed out of water in this really pretty way. Characters included Simba, Tiana, Ariel, and Snow White. Arrrgh, I know there were definitely more, but I don't remember them!
The posters reached all the way to the gates. There are booths between Outside The Park and Inside The Park, with inspectors that check your bags to make sure you only bring in safe items. Hahaha, when I was going through mine, the zipper of my bag got caught on the scarf I borrowed from my sister! How embarrassing! The checking lady was really patient about it, though, and the only pressure I felt to leave came from the guy behind me. The park employees are just amazing!
Did I mention that the sound the ticket booths make when they scan your ticket is this magical sparkle?!
Saturday Morning. Early Disneyland.
One of the things my sis and I realized in this trip is this: The VERY BEST times to play around in Disneyland is Morning and Night. I will soon explain to you why.
When we first entered the park at around 8AM, there was practically no one. The longest line we had was maybe about ten people, for the forever-popular Peter Pan ride that's my sister's absolute favourite.
The first ride we entered for the day was. . . I forget its exact name, but it's the Dark Ride for The Wind in the Willows. In the middle of the ride my sis and I quickly realized that it's probably a mistake to ride a Dark Ride for a movie we barely remember anything about. It was REALLY SCARY. You get into this car and you steer the wheel yourself, but you don't actually control the car; it's just there for the feeling of immersion. Therefore, it feels like you're driving like a madman, swerving everywhere and making super-sharp turns. I was so scared of falling out! Since I actually know how to drive now, it was even worse because the reasonable turns I would make on the wheel did not amount to anything! When we walked out of the ride, deeply frazzled, my sis said, "If THIS ride scares us so much, how will we survive Haunted Mansion?!"
After that we rode on Pinocchio, which was actually really cool when you think about it from a design perspective. The operator sits behind a booth that looks like a ticket booth, and when she sent us off she said "Enjoy the show!" like we had just bought tickets for Stromboli's Puppet Show. And after that, sure enough, we start off with Stromboli playing the show host and then an actual puppet show with Pinocchio as the star, and it's only after that do we see that he's being mistreated by Stromboli and shut in a cage, and then the ride puts you in a cage like he's getting rid of witnesses! Instead of just retelling the story of the movie, it sort of walks you through your own adventure where you slowly find out what's going on and get more involved as you go. It's not until the end that you see the Blue Fairy and Geppetto's Workshop! It's rides like this that remind you that Walt Disney was, first and foremost, an artist and a storyteller.
After that one, we rode Snow White's Scary Adventures and then stood in line for the Peter Pan ride (naturally, since it is my sister's favourite). That's where I met the little boy with the Phineas and Ferb shirt, and this happened:
Me: Aren't you a little young to be wearing a Phineas and Ferb T-shirt?
Boy: No. No I'm not.
Which made that boy like. . . awesome.
We also rode It's a Small World, and it wasn't until then that I truly felt like I was at Disneyland. It was such a sweet ride; it made me feel like world peace has no reason not to happen.
Saturday Morning. California Adventures.
When it got close to 10AM, we hurried over to California Adventures and lined up to get FastPasses for the World of Colour show. The line for it was so long. We made jokes that the reason why there was no lines for anything was because everyone in the park was over by Grizzly Mountain lining up for those FastPasses. We ended up spending about a half hour just to get that little ticket, and the World of Colour show isn't even on until eleven hours later. Whew!
After we finally got the tickets, we walked around the empty place and thought about which rides we wanted to go on. The thing about California Adventures that makes it really different from Disneyland is that a lot of the rides are thrill rides, and my sis is really scared of them. It took me a long while to convince her to go on the Silly Symphony Swings, but after we stepped off of it she was so excited she wanted to ride it again, haha. (We didn't, but we had planned to.)
And speaking of that, they recently remodeled a lot of the California Adventures rides to be more relevant to Disney. If you look at the face of Paradise Pier it looks completely different. The Sun Wheel got a makeover, and now has a black-and-white Mickey face instead of a sun; it's named the Mickey Fun Wheel now. The ride itself is exactly the same, though. Silly Symphony Swings used to be the big Orange, though I definitely like this new version better-- they play classical music! And it's based on one of the old Disney cartoons where Mickey is conducting an orchestra and a tornado comes along. It suits the ride very well!
When we got on the Mickey Fun Wheel, we were seated in the same carriage as this mom and her two sons. While we were sitting in there together, we talked a bit; they were from Canada, and it was their fourth day at the park. The mom was scared of heights, but she went on the Fun Wheel because her sons are thrill junkies; one of the swinging ones, too, which she is super-scared of! It was so sweet of her, and so brave, I could barely believe it! The boys were cute, raving about the Tower of Terror and California Screamin', which I think were their favourite rides. They kept telling me I had to visit them, even after my sister told them that I used to go on them all the time, haha. (I would've gone this time too, but my sis is scared of them and I felt stupid going on a ride by myself and forcing her to wait outside for me.)
We bummed around a bit after that, since it was so hot. . . My sis decided four dollars was as good a price as any for frozen Pink Lemonade so she bought a cup and we shared it together on a bench, and would you know it, the High School Musical 3 float drifted by! We didn't see that movie, but we do know some of the songs, so it was pretty cool to sit there behind the float watching the cast members singing and dancing. Whoever was playing Sharpay was appropriately amazing. My sis took that time to tell me that those guys were probably singing live, too; wow. Singing while doing all that dancing, and so well too? Those guys are crazy!
Then my sis remembered that there was a Dark Ride in California Adventures too, for Monsters Inc. We trekked over to that area and ended up stopping by the Studios first, because what's a visit to Cal.Ad. without going through their Making Of display? The store we entered it from had a piano book for Nightmare Before Christmas-- wanted it so bad! But it was thirteen dollars, so I decided against it. My sis also flipped through this book called The Art of the Disney Princess, or something like that, and the pictures in it were so lovely! Mostly they were the original concept designs for the princesses. I think we saw Ariel, Aurora, Snow White, Jasmine, Mulan, and Tiana. Tiana looked exactly the same, haha, but the others were heavily stylized. Most notably, Jasmine and Mulan were both painted in the style of their original culture. They were so beautiful! Mulan especially, hers was a mixture between a powerful dragon, an elegant woman, and a brave soldier, and wowzee I don't even care that it wouldn't have worked as a design in the movie, it was an awesome picture.
We ran through the workshop thing, where they show you the processes of making a Disney movie. In the middle of it is a place called "Beast's Library," and it really did look like Beast's Library! It even had the painting of Adam when the room was all lit up, with this cozy fire, and after a few minutes the entire room would suddenly darken, the fire dim, a rose appear in the belljar on the mantel, and the portrait of Adam ripped. Sheeeesh!
Then of course we rediscovered the Voice Recording studio, which is stylized to look like Ursula's cove. It's a really neat place; there's a screen display in every little cubicle, and if you touch it then Ursula appears in a separate screen inside the cave and cackles at you, and asks you if you have a good voice. Then you can pick a scene to voice-act to, whether a talking portion or a singing portion, and after you record it Ursula decides to steal your voice! I'm not kidding! It's SO AWESOME!! (She gives your voice back, of course; Ariel's is better.)
The Monster's Inc. ride was also very clever; the line area was covered in posters, like you were entering a new city (Monstropolis), and then you get seated in little Monstropolis taxis. There's a monitor display on the side of it, and when you start off they talk like they're going to give you a tour of the place, and then the display gets interrupted by an emergency news report and you go on this zany adventure to run away from the police who are searching for a human! (The ride seems to assume you're a monster; maybe we all put on disguises!) In addition to smoother animatronics, though, one thing that this Dark Ride had above the older Dark Rides was that they included smell in two rooms; when you enter the Sushi restaurant, you get blasted with the scent of sushi, and when you enter the locker room, it apparently smells horrible (said my sis; I thought it smelled like freshener ._.;; ). At the very end of the ride, the slug lady asks you if you've seen Mike, and to tell him she needs to have a word with him about his paperwork. Masterfully done!
Anyway, after we left that ride and took a few pictures we realized it was close to noon, so we sat down and searched for eats. There was a stage show nearby that we sat down in to consult the map, though the show itself looked interesting; there were three Disney animators telling (and singing) about the magic of art and animation. I felt so bad for them because the crowd of little kids was really stale, but my sis didn't let me clap or cheer for them, and we ended up leaving before we could see much of it; I guess we were both getting irritated because it was so hot.
. . . Wow, I'm going into a lot of detail here, aren't I? o_o;;;; I guess I'll cut out the play-by-play from now on. Sorry. Details only on the really exciting/analytic stuff.
Saturday Noon. Lunch at Disneyland!
We dragged ourselves to New Orleans Square through the heat, famished. We ended up ordering one order of Vegetarian Gumbo, and then an Iced Mocha because it was just too hot. Oh my god, the gumbo was delicious. There was a lot of it, though, so even though my sis and I were both eating the same one order, we got stuffed and never actually finished the entire bread bowl. I packed it up with a gazillion napkins and then put it in my bag.
That was when we realized that Princess Tiana sings in New Orleans Square now. We heard her "Dreams do come true in New Orleans!" solo, but by the time we'd finished lunch and headed over she was gone. I got so excited; I've wanted to meet Tiana like whoa. But no; time for Haunted Mansion.
I was really scared going into Haunted Mansion, but my sis agreed to hold my hand through the whole ride and to not laugh at me.
First thing I noticed was that the employees didn't speak in monotone anymore. Huh! I wonder why. That made it a little less scary, though. Basically everyone in the line just piled into the one room, and I was so amazed that we all fit in there, but was really scared that a lot of people would scream. That would make it a lot worse for me. But after the Ghost Host said "There's always my way" and the lightning illuminated his hung skeleton, my sister just laughed her head off, and that dispelled the mood a bit for me.
Once we got on the actual ride, it was actually pretty okay. Because I'd read the entire explanation as to how the ride works a few months back, I ended up paying more attention to the attention to detail in the walls and carvings, and I walked out highly impressed with Walt Disney's artistic vision and attention to detail. Wow! And the statue quartet looked so cool; I could sit there all day watching them sing so emotively!
So it turns out the only part that actually scared me was when everyone was staring up at the roof of the elevator and I realized our throats were all bare and vulnerable for someone to slash. I gripped my neck. And that was it.
Sometime I wanna go on that ride again! It was seriously really cool!
Saturday Afternoon. HOT.
We wandered around New Orleans for a while, and finally managed to catch one of Tiana's shows. She was so beautiful. Like SHEESH. I mean, she looked exactly like she should, of course. She was wearing her Lilypad Gown from the end of the movie, and singing all the songs from the movie, introducing them herself with her cute New Orleans accent. OH MY GOSH. And her voice was AMAZING. I couldn't believe how talented this girl was! She only got one break from singing and dancing on an outdoor stage in a ballgown in the middle of a blazing hot day, where she could sip a little water, and then got pestered by little kids with autograph books. The poor girl!
We ended up leaving in the middle of her performance of the Evangeline song, because it was too goddamned hot. I finally decided five dollars was a fine price for pineapple ice cream and got into the monster line for it. Sheeshes. There were lines for everything by this point. We waited for an undetermined period of time (it was flowing funny because the blood in my brain was evaporating), and when we finally placed the order and got the thing, I was dazzled. Apparently the five dollar order my sis wanted, "DOLE Whip Float," was a cup of pineapple juice with a humongous dollop of pineapple ice cream on top of it. It was one of the most delicious ice creams I had ever had, though of course I thought so because I was dying of heat. We got a spoon and a straw and alternated scooping ice cream from the top and sipping juice from the bottom. It was so good. (There was a little paper umbrella and a cherry on top, too. No wonder it was five bucks!)
On our trek back to Fantasyland (because those are our two favourite places, Fantasyland and New Orleans Square) we finally found the new Pixie Hollow attraction, but the Wait Sign said "45 minutes from this point." Sheesh! We rode on the Storybook thing instead, with the boats and the miniature settings. It was incredibly detailed, so beautiful!
Dangit, and now I realize we rode the Mad Teacup ride at some point and I forgot to mention it. I think it was before we rode Small World.
We tried for the Alice and Wonderland ride too, because my sis decided at some point she wanted to go on as many Dark Rides as possible, but the line was HUMONGOUS! There was a line for the line trailing out of Fantasyland even!
Frustrated with the huge lines everywhere, we decided to go back to California Adventures, but when we got there neither of us could remember why we were there and we went back to Disneyland.
Ahhh, Park Hopper tickets.
We spent some time in Toontown because we wanted to go on the Roger Rabbit ride, but it was closed for some inexplicable reason! Toontown itself was fun, though. There was a lot of artistry put to it, and I was very surprised to hear that it was built recently, too. I thought respect for cartoons had almost completely died in America by the eighties, but I guess not!
My favourite part of Toontown was Goofy's gas station window, which had the motto "If we can't fix it-- we won't!"
We eventually ran up the patience to wait for the Alice in Wonderland ride, mostly I think because it had cooled down a bit and we weren't both feeling quite so hotheaded. After that, we realized that we'd waited half an hour for Alice, so might as well wait half an hour for the attraction we'd never been to before!
But when we were in line for Pixie Hollow, slowly realizing with dread that the line was not moving, Mommy called and we had to leave. Pixie Hollow closes at 8PM; we never made it inside.
Well, a note for next time, I suppose! "Visit Pixie Hollow ASAP!"
Saturday Evening. Mainly shows and stuff.
We rested back at the hotel for about an hour. Which is a good thing too, because our feet were dead. One thing you can definitely praise about Disneyland; you get one helluva workout from there without even realizing it. Ow ow ow ow owwww. My sister's foot was blistered, poor thing.
At around 7PM, we left again and sat in for the World of Colour show. We waited there until the show started at 9PM. No, I'm not exaggerating. The thing about Disney shows is, while they are worth it, you have to sit there and bar a seat for that amount of time if you want a good view of the show. Luckily, it was fun just sitting there basking in the fact we were in the Land of Dreams. (The Mickey Fun Wheel is also really fun to watch at night, with its light tricks and stuff.)
A few minutes before World of Colour started, some lit-up characters showed up to put the crowd's mind off of waiting. There was Sebastian for the red group (us), Tigger for the orange group, Lumiere for the yellow group, Mike Sullivan for the green group, and Genie for the blue group. The colours were predetermined by the seating from our FastPasses, but there was a bit of team spirit nonetheless and it was really exciting to see characters show up where you didn't expect them!
The show itself was really pretty, with the lights and the water and the fire and the shooting and huhuhuhhhh. I was a little disappointed though, because there wasn't much heart in it. I couldn't put my finger on it while I was watching it, but I see it now-- it was just a very creative recap of the movies we knew and loved. I had expected it to be like Fantasmic, but comparing World of Colour to Fantasmic is like comparing television to the theatre; one just has more brains in it than the other one.
However, it WAS an amazing show and I am SO GLAD we stood through the long line that morning and waited there for about two hours to see it! It was sort of like a creative, synesthetic interpretation of certain aspects of the movie, and made very beautiful combinations between the medium of a movie (video clips projected onto water screens) and a fountain trick. Some of my favourite parts are when they showed the scene where Buzz was all "I'll prove I can fly!" and then the water screen suddenly vanished and a single jet of water shot straight up, like it was Buzz Lightyear flying up toward the sky, to the soaring music. Then there was the subtle introduction of drumbeats, with passing trees on the water screens, and green shoots of water straight up. It took a while to get what was going on, but then you realize, it's Pochahontas riding down the river in her canoe, and the green jets of water are the trees. And at the end of A Whole New World, the entire lake suddenly exploded in a shower of water and the Mickey Fun Wheel behind it suddenly lit up in a burst of light-- and then everything turns off, and on the water screen there's a moon that turns around with a Genie face that giggles and says "Made you look." GOW! The WHOLE Genie song afterwards was just a REALLY awesome use of Painting the Fourth Wall, where Genie seemed to be magically manipulating the fountains himself. AND THE TRANSITIONS, THEY WERE SO SMOOTH TOO!
I think my ABSOLUTE favourite was the end, though-- the World of Colour song (which was sort of overarching over other song segments and tied the whole thing together) swelled, and then exploded in a big spell of water, and then at the very end of it, Ariel's song from earlier on in the show is suddenly picked up again with no warning, for one line - "Part of your world!" - and then ALL the lights turn off and "The End" flashes on the water screens.
HELLA. BIGASS. AWESOME. ENDING.
Saturday Evening. Fantasmic and lineless rides.
As soon as World of Colour ended we piled as quickly as we could out of Cal.Ad. and headed over to New Orleans Square. Luckily for us, most of the people by that point were leaving in a huge mass, because the fireworks had just ended and apparently most people end after them. Ha! Why on earth would you pass up Fantasmic to see fireworks?! Fantasmic has fireworks, but they're MAGICALLY CONTROLLED BY MICKEY!! That makes them SEVERAL times more awesome!
The audience for it was still huuuge, though, and because we didn't bar seats for it two hours ahead of time we had to peer over other people's heads. SO worth it still. Fantasmic remains my favourite show.
They recently replaced the Maleficent dragon from it, too. It used to be a humongous dragon head made out of cloth and wire, which was really imposing since it was so huge, but they opted for a different approach; the new animatronic Maleficent dragon is much smaller, but it's smooth and acts very real, and shoots fire straight from its mouth in a plume. It looked very convincing, especially since it is now the ENTIRE dragon that you can see in the show, and its relative size is closer to what it was in the movie. So brave of Mickey to face THAT thing!
Another thing about Fantasmic this time which was different from the other times was the number of people on Mark Twain at the end-- there was barely anyone! I remember spotting Hatter and Alice on the top, Tiana in the middle, and the Toy Story characters in the back. There were Chimney Sweeps on the roof, which I don't recall ever seeing before, and of course the ship was being manned by Steamboat Willie Mickey. Where did everyone else go? There were more characters than that on the ship, but not many. It made me kind of sad. Maybe it's just because it's almost off-season.
After that, most things were a cakewalk to get into, because Fantasmic is basically the last thing that people really stay for, and most of them leave after that. We got into Pirates of the Caribbean without any trouble, and there was almost nobody around when we skipped over to Small World to close up the trip. There was only an hour between when Fantasmic ended and when the park closes, though, so we couldn't stuff too many things in there anyway.
Saturday Footnote. Characters?!
One thing we noticed throughout the entire day was that we didn't really run into characters very often! Most of them were in scheduled stations waiting for people. It was kind of sad; as always, I was insane over wanting to meet Alice and Hatter (blame Bri-chan for that), but nothing.
We saw three characters roaming free around the park, unscheduled: Fairy Godmother, Tuxedo Mickey, and Peter Pan. We only got to hang out with the Fairy Godmother, because Tux Mickey had a huge line of kids betting him for autographs and Peter Pan looked so busy that my sis didn't want to bother him. Godmother was wonderful, though; she had this perfectly soothing voice like she has just fixed all of your problems, and she was so cute with her gesturing toward the camera and trying to remember what it was called, "that, picture-taking device, with the button, you press the button right?" She let me hug her as much as I liked and was perfectly sweet the entire time. Eeeee!
As for scheduled appearances, of course we didn't get to talk to any of them (sadly), but they were still pretty cool to see. We sat at the Princess Faire for a while during the period where we were dying of heat, because there were places to sit down in the shade, and caught some of their coronation. There was Aurora, Cinderella, and Snow White, and oh, their dresses were so perfect! They all looked like they had walked straight out of their movies! Disneyland has some wicked seamstresses, it seems. We also saw Tiana in New Orleans, like I mentioned earlier, and Goofy in Toontown, but we didn't bother with Goofy because he had a ridiculous line trailing in front of him and he looked so busy.
I miss the days when we could run into Goofy on the street in Toontown, wave to him, and watch him walk into a trashcan while trying to wave back.
Sunday. Downtown Disney & going home.
We got up early on Sunday so we could bum around in Downtown Disney. We entered Rainforest Cafe first, which was cool since it had moving animals inside and had storms like it was actually outdoors in the wild.
After that we wandered around and admired the downtown decor, but I was in a bad mood because my dad said "If you're hot, you can roll up your sleeves" like I couldn't figure that out by myself.
Then we entered the DISNEY STORE.
At first I was still grumpy, though the sheer concentrated amounts of Disney stuff around me made it sort of hard to stay mad. But then my sis dragged me to this gallery room, and OH MY GOD IT WAS SO AMAZING. The entire place was ART. Not kidding. Figurines, paintings, magazines, watches, ceramics, ANYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF. A lot of the furniture in the room was made out of statues of the baddies, too; Captain Hook's hook was protruding from one wall, complete with a lantern with a terrified Tinkerbell inside. A humongous Ursula stared menacingly over a display of jewelry, her tentacles weaving in and out of the display. WOW.
There was also a tiny book section in the corner of the Gallery room, with very specific sorts of books; some of them were things like "The Art of the Disney Princess" and "Information Guide on Disneyland," but there were gems like "Fairest of All," which was a hardcover novel with a dust jacket that showed half of The Queen's face, and the font of the title all snooty and the lighting all dark. It was a Disney Villain-style parody of the teen-angst novel cliche.
I dug up a picture of the cover so you can see for yourself:
SO MUCH WIN.
There was also this book that I forget the name of, which was an actually useful guide to help you be a better storyteller. It was basically an "exercise book for your imagination," because "you need to exercise your imagination to keep it fit, just like you need to exercise your muscles." Reading that, I realized they were completely right! And the contents of the book were so nice, with tips straight from Disney Animators' mouths on how they exercise their imaginations to create their Disney wonders. I wanted that book SO MUCH but it was fifteen dollars, which is too much for a book for me. Hopefully someday I can get my hands on it for a cheaper price; I'm thinking of searching for it online.
I walked into that store in a sour mood, and walked out of it thinking life is beautiful. THIS is the magic of Disney!
The drive home itself was uneventful in comparison. I opened the Alice in Wonderland game I'd gotten in Disneyland.
That game is nothing like what you'd expect from a Disney-produced Game Of Movie. First of all, on the box, instead of "based on the movie" like you usually see, it says "Inspired by".
It's a perfectly wonderful game in its own right. Instead of straining the DS graphics like what you would expect from a Disney Game Of Movie, it redesigned all the characters in its own cartoonish style, which at once was adorable and fit into the Wonderland craziness and Tim Burton creepiness at the same time. I highly recommend this game to fans of Alice! You don't even have to have seen the movie to enjoy it.
. . . And that's all I have to say about that.
Because how can someone go to Disneyland and not write about it?! To treasure the memory forever and ever and ever?? Well, I didn't the last few times. I really regret it because, duh, I don't remember! ;_;
Anyway.
Friday. Pilgrimage to Anaheim.
We got up at eight or so in the morning and dragged ourselves over to the new Yaris. We spent a lot of the morning waiting for each other, and packing and stuff.
Stupid person that I am, I didn't pack my retainer or any of my clothes, because I thought "It's only a few days, it shouldn't matter". Boyyyy was that a mistake. Ewwww. Also I was an idiot and for some reason decided that a long-sleeved shirt would be a good idea to wear around Disneyland in the middle of August. To be fair, it wouldn't have been half so bad if my dad and sis hadn't kept talking to me like I should be burning to death in it. D: Hey, at least I didn't get hellishly sunburnt!
I also broke in my copy of Heroes of the Valley. It's really awesome so far! I've already drawn fanarts of Halli Sveinsson and Aud Ulfars-Daughter, and I'm only halfway through the book, haha. Though considering how slowly I read usually, the fact that I'm already halfway through the book after only reading it for about three days is really saying something.
We stopped by at a Subway for lunch, to my dismay. I don't like to sound like Bella Swan, but I really don't like Subway. Nothing personal against it actually, but we always eat at it whenever we travel and it just seems very unoriginal and uggggh. Then, when we were touring around an Indian supermarket, my dad scolded me for reading while we were walking. I understand that he's worried for my safety, but it did annoy me a bit since we were in no danger from such a small thing. I can see perfectly fine as I walk!
Though the main reason for stopping by that random area was to trick out the new Yaris with remote entry. The remote they got was so fancy! It has a whole bunch of features and even an LCD screen on the remote, it's really awesome. I looked through the manual for it and it was pretty crazy what it could do. Also when we were sitting in the shop for it, they had a whole bunch of features that the shop offers to install in cars, and they seemed really cool; they had a board that showed the sort of tint you can put in your windows. I finally understand why people do that! It seems like it'd be really cool to peer out of a tinted window. Not to mention comfortable. That sunlight that burns at your skin when you're parked on hot days sure stinks.
We stayed at the Hilton hotel because my mom managed to score super-cheap rates, like fifty a night or something. Oooooh so comfy~
Saturday Morning. TO DISNEYLAND!
We couldn't get to the park fast enough, and it was so worth it to wake up at seven to do it. We got a one-day Park Hopper ticket, so we could go between Disneyland and California Adventures as we wished. The Hilton that we stayed at was only across the street from some part of the park, and since we did this before, we thought it would be pretty easy to just mosey on over to a parking lot and enter the park that way, but it seems like they've closed that door since last time. We ended up walking around at least a whole corner of the park, but it was great exercise.
On our way there, we passed by one of the Disney Themed Hotels. It was sort of a mixture between the Brother Bear sort of Ancient America and the Classic Fairy Tale Castle thing, and believe me, it works a lot better than it sounds. The place was beautiful! There were wood carvings on the outside and stained glass windows on the inside. My dad stopped a worker for directions to the park, and my gosh, her uniform was so beautiful! She looked like a dame from a medieval court, in her cute green dress and stylized apron. We walked through some yards on our way out, too, and they'd planted all these native-Californian/American trees everywhere, to fit in with the Brother Bear part of the theme. It was breathtaking even just to look at the plant life! They had this cute sort of grass that grew in all these tufts, and they looked really strong. My mom kept talking about how they seemed like a better idea and wondered why we don't use them more.
Then we trekked through Downtown Disney, and that was already an experience in itself because we'd never been to Downtown Disney before. I kept wondering why Anaheim local teens didn't just hang out there all the time. If I lived there I so would! The streets had those pole-ads, whachamacallems, that you see in other downtown areas, but the ones in DD were all these beautifully painted posters advertising their new World of Colour show, which only premiered two months ago. They were pictures of various Disney characters being formed out of water in this really pretty way. Characters included Simba, Tiana, Ariel, and Snow White. Arrrgh, I know there were definitely more, but I don't remember them!
The posters reached all the way to the gates. There are booths between Outside The Park and Inside The Park, with inspectors that check your bags to make sure you only bring in safe items. Hahaha, when I was going through mine, the zipper of my bag got caught on the scarf I borrowed from my sister! How embarrassing! The checking lady was really patient about it, though, and the only pressure I felt to leave came from the guy behind me. The park employees are just amazing!
Did I mention that the sound the ticket booths make when they scan your ticket is this magical sparkle?!
Saturday Morning. Early Disneyland.
One of the things my sis and I realized in this trip is this: The VERY BEST times to play around in Disneyland is Morning and Night. I will soon explain to you why.
When we first entered the park at around 8AM, there was practically no one. The longest line we had was maybe about ten people, for the forever-popular Peter Pan ride that's my sister's absolute favourite.
The first ride we entered for the day was. . . I forget its exact name, but it's the Dark Ride for The Wind in the Willows. In the middle of the ride my sis and I quickly realized that it's probably a mistake to ride a Dark Ride for a movie we barely remember anything about. It was REALLY SCARY. You get into this car and you steer the wheel yourself, but you don't actually control the car; it's just there for the feeling of immersion. Therefore, it feels like you're driving like a madman, swerving everywhere and making super-sharp turns. I was so scared of falling out! Since I actually know how to drive now, it was even worse because the reasonable turns I would make on the wheel did not amount to anything! When we walked out of the ride, deeply frazzled, my sis said, "If THIS ride scares us so much, how will we survive Haunted Mansion?!"
After that we rode on Pinocchio, which was actually really cool when you think about it from a design perspective. The operator sits behind a booth that looks like a ticket booth, and when she sent us off she said "Enjoy the show!" like we had just bought tickets for Stromboli's Puppet Show. And after that, sure enough, we start off with Stromboli playing the show host and then an actual puppet show with Pinocchio as the star, and it's only after that do we see that he's being mistreated by Stromboli and shut in a cage, and then the ride puts you in a cage like he's getting rid of witnesses! Instead of just retelling the story of the movie, it sort of walks you through your own adventure where you slowly find out what's going on and get more involved as you go. It's not until the end that you see the Blue Fairy and Geppetto's Workshop! It's rides like this that remind you that Walt Disney was, first and foremost, an artist and a storyteller.
After that one, we rode Snow White's Scary Adventures and then stood in line for the Peter Pan ride (naturally, since it is my sister's favourite). That's where I met the little boy with the Phineas and Ferb shirt, and this happened:
Me: Aren't you a little young to be wearing a Phineas and Ferb T-shirt?
Boy: No. No I'm not.
Which made that boy like. . . awesome.
We also rode It's a Small World, and it wasn't until then that I truly felt like I was at Disneyland. It was such a sweet ride; it made me feel like world peace has no reason not to happen.
Saturday Morning. California Adventures.
When it got close to 10AM, we hurried over to California Adventures and lined up to get FastPasses for the World of Colour show. The line for it was so long. We made jokes that the reason why there was no lines for anything was because everyone in the park was over by Grizzly Mountain lining up for those FastPasses. We ended up spending about a half hour just to get that little ticket, and the World of Colour show isn't even on until eleven hours later. Whew!
After we finally got the tickets, we walked around the empty place and thought about which rides we wanted to go on. The thing about California Adventures that makes it really different from Disneyland is that a lot of the rides are thrill rides, and my sis is really scared of them. It took me a long while to convince her to go on the Silly Symphony Swings, but after we stepped off of it she was so excited she wanted to ride it again, haha. (We didn't, but we had planned to.)
And speaking of that, they recently remodeled a lot of the California Adventures rides to be more relevant to Disney. If you look at the face of Paradise Pier it looks completely different. The Sun Wheel got a makeover, and now has a black-and-white Mickey face instead of a sun; it's named the Mickey Fun Wheel now. The ride itself is exactly the same, though. Silly Symphony Swings used to be the big Orange, though I definitely like this new version better-- they play classical music! And it's based on one of the old Disney cartoons where Mickey is conducting an orchestra and a tornado comes along. It suits the ride very well!
When we got on the Mickey Fun Wheel, we were seated in the same carriage as this mom and her two sons. While we were sitting in there together, we talked a bit; they were from Canada, and it was their fourth day at the park. The mom was scared of heights, but she went on the Fun Wheel because her sons are thrill junkies; one of the swinging ones, too, which she is super-scared of! It was so sweet of her, and so brave, I could barely believe it! The boys were cute, raving about the Tower of Terror and California Screamin', which I think were their favourite rides. They kept telling me I had to visit them, even after my sister told them that I used to go on them all the time, haha. (I would've gone this time too, but my sis is scared of them and I felt stupid going on a ride by myself and forcing her to wait outside for me.)
We bummed around a bit after that, since it was so hot. . . My sis decided four dollars was as good a price as any for frozen Pink Lemonade so she bought a cup and we shared it together on a bench, and would you know it, the High School Musical 3 float drifted by! We didn't see that movie, but we do know some of the songs, so it was pretty cool to sit there behind the float watching the cast members singing and dancing. Whoever was playing Sharpay was appropriately amazing. My sis took that time to tell me that those guys were probably singing live, too; wow. Singing while doing all that dancing, and so well too? Those guys are crazy!
Then my sis remembered that there was a Dark Ride in California Adventures too, for Monsters Inc. We trekked over to that area and ended up stopping by the Studios first, because what's a visit to Cal.Ad. without going through their Making Of display? The store we entered it from had a piano book for Nightmare Before Christmas-- wanted it so bad! But it was thirteen dollars, so I decided against it. My sis also flipped through this book called The Art of the Disney Princess, or something like that, and the pictures in it were so lovely! Mostly they were the original concept designs for the princesses. I think we saw Ariel, Aurora, Snow White, Jasmine, Mulan, and Tiana. Tiana looked exactly the same, haha, but the others were heavily stylized. Most notably, Jasmine and Mulan were both painted in the style of their original culture. They were so beautiful! Mulan especially, hers was a mixture between a powerful dragon, an elegant woman, and a brave soldier, and wowzee I don't even care that it wouldn't have worked as a design in the movie, it was an awesome picture.
We ran through the workshop thing, where they show you the processes of making a Disney movie. In the middle of it is a place called "Beast's Library," and it really did look like Beast's Library! It even had the painting of Adam when the room was all lit up, with this cozy fire, and after a few minutes the entire room would suddenly darken, the fire dim, a rose appear in the belljar on the mantel, and the portrait of Adam ripped. Sheeeesh!
Then of course we rediscovered the Voice Recording studio, which is stylized to look like Ursula's cove. It's a really neat place; there's a screen display in every little cubicle, and if you touch it then Ursula appears in a separate screen inside the cave and cackles at you, and asks you if you have a good voice. Then you can pick a scene to voice-act to, whether a talking portion or a singing portion, and after you record it Ursula decides to steal your voice! I'm not kidding! It's SO AWESOME!! (She gives your voice back, of course; Ariel's is better.)
The Monster's Inc. ride was also very clever; the line area was covered in posters, like you were entering a new city (Monstropolis), and then you get seated in little Monstropolis taxis. There's a monitor display on the side of it, and when you start off they talk like they're going to give you a tour of the place, and then the display gets interrupted by an emergency news report and you go on this zany adventure to run away from the police who are searching for a human! (The ride seems to assume you're a monster; maybe we all put on disguises!) In addition to smoother animatronics, though, one thing that this Dark Ride had above the older Dark Rides was that they included smell in two rooms; when you enter the Sushi restaurant, you get blasted with the scent of sushi, and when you enter the locker room, it apparently smells horrible (said my sis; I thought it smelled like freshener ._.;; ). At the very end of the ride, the slug lady asks you if you've seen Mike, and to tell him she needs to have a word with him about his paperwork. Masterfully done!
Anyway, after we left that ride and took a few pictures we realized it was close to noon, so we sat down and searched for eats. There was a stage show nearby that we sat down in to consult the map, though the show itself looked interesting; there were three Disney animators telling (and singing) about the magic of art and animation. I felt so bad for them because the crowd of little kids was really stale, but my sis didn't let me clap or cheer for them, and we ended up leaving before we could see much of it; I guess we were both getting irritated because it was so hot.
. . . Wow, I'm going into a lot of detail here, aren't I? o_o;;;; I guess I'll cut out the play-by-play from now on. Sorry. Details only on the really exciting/analytic stuff.
Saturday Noon. Lunch at Disneyland!
We dragged ourselves to New Orleans Square through the heat, famished. We ended up ordering one order of Vegetarian Gumbo, and then an Iced Mocha because it was just too hot. Oh my god, the gumbo was delicious. There was a lot of it, though, so even though my sis and I were both eating the same one order, we got stuffed and never actually finished the entire bread bowl. I packed it up with a gazillion napkins and then put it in my bag.
That was when we realized that Princess Tiana sings in New Orleans Square now. We heard her "Dreams do come true in New Orleans!" solo, but by the time we'd finished lunch and headed over she was gone. I got so excited; I've wanted to meet Tiana like whoa. But no; time for Haunted Mansion.
I was really scared going into Haunted Mansion, but my sis agreed to hold my hand through the whole ride and to not laugh at me.
First thing I noticed was that the employees didn't speak in monotone anymore. Huh! I wonder why. That made it a little less scary, though. Basically everyone in the line just piled into the one room, and I was so amazed that we all fit in there, but was really scared that a lot of people would scream. That would make it a lot worse for me. But after the Ghost Host said "There's always my way" and the lightning illuminated his hung skeleton, my sister just laughed her head off, and that dispelled the mood a bit for me.
Once we got on the actual ride, it was actually pretty okay. Because I'd read the entire explanation as to how the ride works a few months back, I ended up paying more attention to the attention to detail in the walls and carvings, and I walked out highly impressed with Walt Disney's artistic vision and attention to detail. Wow! And the statue quartet looked so cool; I could sit there all day watching them sing so emotively!
So it turns out the only part that actually scared me was when everyone was staring up at the roof of the elevator and I realized our throats were all bare and vulnerable for someone to slash. I gripped my neck. And that was it.
Sometime I wanna go on that ride again! It was seriously really cool!
Saturday Afternoon. HOT.
We wandered around New Orleans for a while, and finally managed to catch one of Tiana's shows. She was so beautiful. Like SHEESH. I mean, she looked exactly like she should, of course. She was wearing her Lilypad Gown from the end of the movie, and singing all the songs from the movie, introducing them herself with her cute New Orleans accent. OH MY GOSH. And her voice was AMAZING. I couldn't believe how talented this girl was! She only got one break from singing and dancing on an outdoor stage in a ballgown in the middle of a blazing hot day, where she could sip a little water, and then got pestered by little kids with autograph books. The poor girl!
We ended up leaving in the middle of her performance of the Evangeline song, because it was too goddamned hot. I finally decided five dollars was a fine price for pineapple ice cream and got into the monster line for it. Sheeshes. There were lines for everything by this point. We waited for an undetermined period of time (it was flowing funny because the blood in my brain was evaporating), and when we finally placed the order and got the thing, I was dazzled. Apparently the five dollar order my sis wanted, "DOLE Whip Float," was a cup of pineapple juice with a humongous dollop of pineapple ice cream on top of it. It was one of the most delicious ice creams I had ever had, though of course I thought so because I was dying of heat. We got a spoon and a straw and alternated scooping ice cream from the top and sipping juice from the bottom. It was so good. (There was a little paper umbrella and a cherry on top, too. No wonder it was five bucks!)
On our trek back to Fantasyland (because those are our two favourite places, Fantasyland and New Orleans Square) we finally found the new Pixie Hollow attraction, but the Wait Sign said "45 minutes from this point." Sheesh! We rode on the Storybook thing instead, with the boats and the miniature settings. It was incredibly detailed, so beautiful!
Dangit, and now I realize we rode the Mad Teacup ride at some point and I forgot to mention it. I think it was before we rode Small World.
We tried for the Alice and Wonderland ride too, because my sis decided at some point she wanted to go on as many Dark Rides as possible, but the line was HUMONGOUS! There was a line for the line trailing out of Fantasyland even!
Frustrated with the huge lines everywhere, we decided to go back to California Adventures, but when we got there neither of us could remember why we were there and we went back to Disneyland.
Ahhh, Park Hopper tickets.
We spent some time in Toontown because we wanted to go on the Roger Rabbit ride, but it was closed for some inexplicable reason! Toontown itself was fun, though. There was a lot of artistry put to it, and I was very surprised to hear that it was built recently, too. I thought respect for cartoons had almost completely died in America by the eighties, but I guess not!
My favourite part of Toontown was Goofy's gas station window, which had the motto "If we can't fix it-- we won't!"
We eventually ran up the patience to wait for the Alice in Wonderland ride, mostly I think because it had cooled down a bit and we weren't both feeling quite so hotheaded. After that, we realized that we'd waited half an hour for Alice, so might as well wait half an hour for the attraction we'd never been to before!
But when we were in line for Pixie Hollow, slowly realizing with dread that the line was not moving, Mommy called and we had to leave. Pixie Hollow closes at 8PM; we never made it inside.
Well, a note for next time, I suppose! "Visit Pixie Hollow ASAP!"
Saturday Evening. Mainly shows and stuff.
We rested back at the hotel for about an hour. Which is a good thing too, because our feet were dead. One thing you can definitely praise about Disneyland; you get one helluva workout from there without even realizing it. Ow ow ow ow owwww. My sister's foot was blistered, poor thing.
At around 7PM, we left again and sat in for the World of Colour show. We waited there until the show started at 9PM. No, I'm not exaggerating. The thing about Disney shows is, while they are worth it, you have to sit there and bar a seat for that amount of time if you want a good view of the show. Luckily, it was fun just sitting there basking in the fact we were in the Land of Dreams. (The Mickey Fun Wheel is also really fun to watch at night, with its light tricks and stuff.)
A few minutes before World of Colour started, some lit-up characters showed up to put the crowd's mind off of waiting. There was Sebastian for the red group (us), Tigger for the orange group, Lumiere for the yellow group, Mike Sullivan for the green group, and Genie for the blue group. The colours were predetermined by the seating from our FastPasses, but there was a bit of team spirit nonetheless and it was really exciting to see characters show up where you didn't expect them!
The show itself was really pretty, with the lights and the water and the fire and the shooting and huhuhuhhhh. I was a little disappointed though, because there wasn't much heart in it. I couldn't put my finger on it while I was watching it, but I see it now-- it was just a very creative recap of the movies we knew and loved. I had expected it to be like Fantasmic, but comparing World of Colour to Fantasmic is like comparing television to the theatre; one just has more brains in it than the other one.
However, it WAS an amazing show and I am SO GLAD we stood through the long line that morning and waited there for about two hours to see it! It was sort of like a creative, synesthetic interpretation of certain aspects of the movie, and made very beautiful combinations between the medium of a movie (video clips projected onto water screens) and a fountain trick. Some of my favourite parts are when they showed the scene where Buzz was all "I'll prove I can fly!" and then the water screen suddenly vanished and a single jet of water shot straight up, like it was Buzz Lightyear flying up toward the sky, to the soaring music. Then there was the subtle introduction of drumbeats, with passing trees on the water screens, and green shoots of water straight up. It took a while to get what was going on, but then you realize, it's Pochahontas riding down the river in her canoe, and the green jets of water are the trees. And at the end of A Whole New World, the entire lake suddenly exploded in a shower of water and the Mickey Fun Wheel behind it suddenly lit up in a burst of light-- and then everything turns off, and on the water screen there's a moon that turns around with a Genie face that giggles and says "Made you look." GOW! The WHOLE Genie song afterwards was just a REALLY awesome use of Painting the Fourth Wall, where Genie seemed to be magically manipulating the fountains himself. AND THE TRANSITIONS, THEY WERE SO SMOOTH TOO!
I think my ABSOLUTE favourite was the end, though-- the World of Colour song (which was sort of overarching over other song segments and tied the whole thing together) swelled, and then exploded in a big spell of water, and then at the very end of it, Ariel's song from earlier on in the show is suddenly picked up again with no warning, for one line - "Part of your world!" - and then ALL the lights turn off and "The End" flashes on the water screens.
HELLA. BIGASS. AWESOME. ENDING.
Saturday Evening. Fantasmic and lineless rides.
As soon as World of Colour ended we piled as quickly as we could out of Cal.Ad. and headed over to New Orleans Square. Luckily for us, most of the people by that point were leaving in a huge mass, because the fireworks had just ended and apparently most people end after them. Ha! Why on earth would you pass up Fantasmic to see fireworks?! Fantasmic has fireworks, but they're MAGICALLY CONTROLLED BY MICKEY!! That makes them SEVERAL times more awesome!
The audience for it was still huuuge, though, and because we didn't bar seats for it two hours ahead of time we had to peer over other people's heads. SO worth it still. Fantasmic remains my favourite show.
They recently replaced the Maleficent dragon from it, too. It used to be a humongous dragon head made out of cloth and wire, which was really imposing since it was so huge, but they opted for a different approach; the new animatronic Maleficent dragon is much smaller, but it's smooth and acts very real, and shoots fire straight from its mouth in a plume. It looked very convincing, especially since it is now the ENTIRE dragon that you can see in the show, and its relative size is closer to what it was in the movie. So brave of Mickey to face THAT thing!
Another thing about Fantasmic this time which was different from the other times was the number of people on Mark Twain at the end-- there was barely anyone! I remember spotting Hatter and Alice on the top, Tiana in the middle, and the Toy Story characters in the back. There were Chimney Sweeps on the roof, which I don't recall ever seeing before, and of course the ship was being manned by Steamboat Willie Mickey. Where did everyone else go? There were more characters than that on the ship, but not many. It made me kind of sad. Maybe it's just because it's almost off-season.
After that, most things were a cakewalk to get into, because Fantasmic is basically the last thing that people really stay for, and most of them leave after that. We got into Pirates of the Caribbean without any trouble, and there was almost nobody around when we skipped over to Small World to close up the trip. There was only an hour between when Fantasmic ended and when the park closes, though, so we couldn't stuff too many things in there anyway.
Saturday Footnote. Characters?!
One thing we noticed throughout the entire day was that we didn't really run into characters very often! Most of them were in scheduled stations waiting for people. It was kind of sad; as always, I was insane over wanting to meet Alice and Hatter (blame Bri-chan for that), but nothing.
We saw three characters roaming free around the park, unscheduled: Fairy Godmother, Tuxedo Mickey, and Peter Pan. We only got to hang out with the Fairy Godmother, because Tux Mickey had a huge line of kids betting him for autographs and Peter Pan looked so busy that my sis didn't want to bother him. Godmother was wonderful, though; she had this perfectly soothing voice like she has just fixed all of your problems, and she was so cute with her gesturing toward the camera and trying to remember what it was called, "that, picture-taking device, with the button, you press the button right?" She let me hug her as much as I liked and was perfectly sweet the entire time. Eeeee!
As for scheduled appearances, of course we didn't get to talk to any of them (sadly), but they were still pretty cool to see. We sat at the Princess Faire for a while during the period where we were dying of heat, because there were places to sit down in the shade, and caught some of their coronation. There was Aurora, Cinderella, and Snow White, and oh, their dresses were so perfect! They all looked like they had walked straight out of their movies! Disneyland has some wicked seamstresses, it seems. We also saw Tiana in New Orleans, like I mentioned earlier, and Goofy in Toontown, but we didn't bother with Goofy because he had a ridiculous line trailing in front of him and he looked so busy.
I miss the days when we could run into Goofy on the street in Toontown, wave to him, and watch him walk into a trashcan while trying to wave back.
Sunday. Downtown Disney & going home.
We got up early on Sunday so we could bum around in Downtown Disney. We entered Rainforest Cafe first, which was cool since it had moving animals inside and had storms like it was actually outdoors in the wild.
After that we wandered around and admired the downtown decor, but I was in a bad mood because my dad said "If you're hot, you can roll up your sleeves" like I couldn't figure that out by myself.
Then we entered the DISNEY STORE.
At first I was still grumpy, though the sheer concentrated amounts of Disney stuff around me made it sort of hard to stay mad. But then my sis dragged me to this gallery room, and OH MY GOD IT WAS SO AMAZING. The entire place was ART. Not kidding. Figurines, paintings, magazines, watches, ceramics, ANYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF. A lot of the furniture in the room was made out of statues of the baddies, too; Captain Hook's hook was protruding from one wall, complete with a lantern with a terrified Tinkerbell inside. A humongous Ursula stared menacingly over a display of jewelry, her tentacles weaving in and out of the display. WOW.
There was also a tiny book section in the corner of the Gallery room, with very specific sorts of books; some of them were things like "The Art of the Disney Princess" and "Information Guide on Disneyland," but there were gems like "Fairest of All," which was a hardcover novel with a dust jacket that showed half of The Queen's face, and the font of the title all snooty and the lighting all dark. It was a Disney Villain-style parody of the teen-angst novel cliche.
I dug up a picture of the cover so you can see for yourself:
SO MUCH WIN.
There was also this book that I forget the name of, which was an actually useful guide to help you be a better storyteller. It was basically an "exercise book for your imagination," because "you need to exercise your imagination to keep it fit, just like you need to exercise your muscles." Reading that, I realized they were completely right! And the contents of the book were so nice, with tips straight from Disney Animators' mouths on how they exercise their imaginations to create their Disney wonders. I wanted that book SO MUCH but it was fifteen dollars, which is too much for a book for me. Hopefully someday I can get my hands on it for a cheaper price; I'm thinking of searching for it online.
I walked into that store in a sour mood, and walked out of it thinking life is beautiful. THIS is the magic of Disney!
The drive home itself was uneventful in comparison. I opened the Alice in Wonderland game I'd gotten in Disneyland.
That game is nothing like what you'd expect from a Disney-produced Game Of Movie. First of all, on the box, instead of "based on the movie" like you usually see, it says "Inspired by".
It's a perfectly wonderful game in its own right. Instead of straining the DS graphics like what you would expect from a Disney Game Of Movie, it redesigned all the characters in its own cartoonish style, which at once was adorable and fit into the Wonderland craziness and Tim Burton creepiness at the same time. I highly recommend this game to fans of Alice! You don't even have to have seen the movie to enjoy it.
. . . And that's all I have to say about that.