Saturday, June 04, 2011

2011 Disneyland Day 2


I started the day with Tom, Becky, Jack and Sharon for breakfast in the Storyteller Cafe of the Grand Californian Hotel.

Leaving Jack with Eric and Kevin, Sharon and I headed to Disneyland with the intention of getting fast passes for Star Tours. The updated version of Star Tours opened on Friday and there is a crush of people around the ride. Standby wait times have stretched over 2 hours!

From there, we headed back to California Adventure to meet up with everyone else. Sharon and I made a quick stop at Soaring Over California. At this point, Drew called and was pulling into the parking lot. While I went to meet Drew, Sharon met part of the group at Grizzy River Run Water Ride. Drew and I got there in time to see them come down the drop at the end.

Kevin, Eric, Tom, Jack, Drew, Sharon and I looped back around and did the Grizzy River Run again.

With Becky, this group headed back to Soaring over California. Exiting that ride, we picked up Tim, Kathy, Erin and Eileen. In addition to the new Star Tours ride, a new Little Mermaid ride opened on Friday. We used one of the fast pass coupons that we got from the hotel. It turned out to a be waste of time; I can't imagine the ride being of interest to anyone but a six year old girl. While we lamented using one of the fast pass tickets, we would have been more upset if we had waited in line for an hour or two.

Splitting up, Jack, Eric, Kevin, Drew and I rode the California Screamin' rollcoaster. Afterwards we caught up with Tom, Becky and Sharon at the Wine Country Trattoria for a snack and a glass of wine.

The group then headed to Disneyland. We grabbed some fast passes for Space Mountain. With some time to kill before our Star Tours fast passes, we rode the Buzz Lightyear ride, Mister Toad's Wild Ride and Peter Pan. The ending to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride is very odd. With Drew searching the internet for tips and tricks, Drew and Jack took a couple of extra rides on Buzz Lightyear rather than heading to Castle with the rest of the group.

Finally, we rode the new Star Tours ride. This is an updated 3D version of the old ride with 54 possible experiences. In our case, the beginning was taking off with the Millennium Falcon, the middle was a podrace on Tatooine followed by an appearance by Princess Leia, and the ending was on Coruscant.

Afterwards, Sharon took off to get cleaned up for dinner. I stayed with Jack, Eric, Kevin and Drew. We dashed into Buzz Lightyear one more time [Drew scored an unbelievable 657,000 points], ran over and got fast passes for Splash Mountain, came back and rode Space Mountain, stopped briefly at the Frontierland shooting gallery, went on the Pirates of the Caribbean and finished the evening getting soaking wet on Splash Mountain. Jack and Kevin were soaked as we walked back to the room.

I got cleaned up. The adults had dinner reservations at the Napa Rose Restaurant at the Grand Californian; we had a very nice dinner. Sharon had duck and I had a fixed meal that included boar and veal for the entree. Drew went with Jack, Eileen, Erin, Eric and Kevin to dinner at the trattoria in California Adventure. After dinner, Drew and Jack took the Toy Story ride.

I finished the evening walking Drew to the parking lot tram. I really enjoyed having him join us for the day!

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