Sunday, July 7, 2013

Magic Happens - Pt 03

Before we got onto rides here in California Adventure, we stopped for a second to see a captivating street jazz show on Buena Vista Street. The group was called 5 Dime or something like that, and the singer truly had a jazzy voice that hypnotized all the visitors to stop by to spend some time seeing the show. She surprisingly has the charisma of Tiana from Princess and the Frog! Once in a while, she would invite one person to three children to come up and sing with her (at this moment, my friends and I just moved back a little bit so she wouldn't notice us).

The first guy was just normally dancing with her as she was playing her scarf with him. Then she pulled another one - a woman - to dance with the guy. It turns out the woman was the guy's wife. That was the sweetest thing ever.




After the brief entertaining show, we went straight to get the fastpass for World of Color, located right outside the Grizzly River Run. Then, Tiffany and I took Vinny and Sherin to Tower of Terror, a very much anticipated ride, at least by Vinny and Sherin. Tiffany and I are not very much into drop rides. Those rides would make me get queasy easily, so we both decided to skip it and let Vinny and Sheirn enjoy its thrill.

Anyway, I kinda wished I could get into the ride though, seeing the ride had the most exquisite building out of all rides in California Adventure (it looks like a legit hotel building if seen from the distance). But I got to say no to any drop rides. Sorry.


The plan was, while waiting for Sherin and Vinny, Tiffany and I would go to Radiator Spring Racers to get the fast pass. This would also actually mark my first time visiting Cars Land since its first opening last week. So I was pretty excited! Especially I've heard some good reviews about Radiator Spring Racers and that being the most popular ride in the park.



Cars Land is unsurprisingly designed to resemble Radiator Springs in the movie, complete with Flo's Cafe, Casa Della Tires, Cozy Cone Motels, and Stanley statue in the middle, near the entrance to Radiator Spring Racers. However, when we reached the entrance to Radiator Springs Racers, a sign saying that the fastpass of the day had concluded was displayed, and that was pretty heartbreaking because that particular ride has been one of a few that I've been anticipating to get on.


The standby line reaches out until the entrance tat assured me that it must be one heck of a line. The wait time shows 75 minutes, which was the longest wait time I've ever seen in a Disney park that day. We didn't want to risk wasting our time, especially we got World of Color to catch up on later at night. So Tiffany and I decided that we should skip Radiator Springs Racers for our visit this time. But since we live in the area (not sure if Pasadena counts), we can go here anytime with the help of complimentary passes, and we would eventually get on that ride. At least that's what Tiffany told me.

From Cars Land, we moved towards Paradise Pier, where we found Ariel's Adventure, another not-so-brand new The Little Mermaid dark ride. Well, still, I've never been on this ride before. So I'm pretty excited. Surprisingly, there was BARELY ANY LINE when Tiffany and I got in. Some people just went straight to the ride vehicle and so did we. I wondered why it was so quiet, or maybe why the park in general was so quiet. Tiffany and I assumed that everyone either flocked in Disneyland or they were inside the attractions right now. But seriously, The Little Mermaid is one of the sweetest Disney movies, and anyone barely got into its ride?


The ride was slow-moving. The way it works resembles to Haunted Mansion, which we didn't get to hop on that day. Instead of the black doom buggy just like in Haunted Mansion, The Little Mermaid had cute yellow shell-shaped vehicle. It's just like another Haunted Mansion ride, except The Little Mermaid has obviously a more playful vibe, more colors, and ocean-ish theme. We were brought to each room full of dancing animatronics. My favorite one would be the Under The Sea part, because I got to see sea animals partying (watch out for Sebastian!). It was a good, chill ride and probably one of the rides that Tiffany and I got to take pictures due to it slow-moving nature.







After we were done from The Little Mermaid, we went back to Buena Vista Street and sat down in front of an ice cream restaurant (I guess it was Clarabelle?). We talked for quite a while before Vinny called. Tiffany asked her and Sherin, who just got out of Tower of Terror, to meet up with us outside Clarabelle. They quickly caught up with us with a huge turkey leg they got from somewhere near Tower of Terror. Since the turkey leg was so big, we all had to share.

Then we decided to move inside the restaurant since Vinny wanted to try its ice cream. We ended up chatting (and munching on the big-*ss turkey leg that was even more than enough for 4 people). for almost one and a half hour. I know maybe it sounds like we were wasting time while we could just do stuff like getting onto other rides. But our legs were sore so bad after walking and standing in line for almost 10 hours straight (we walked and stood more than we sat on the ride, which only took up to 3 minutes every ride compared to the much longer line).

Later on, we got off the restaurant and walked around to see what ride we could get into. Most rides' wait time were only about 10 minutes. Radiator Spring Racers had the longest wait time (up to 75 minutes, still) and Grizzly River Run's wait time was up to 60 minutes. We went to Cars Land again and it looked more glamorous at night. The scenery looked just like it was ripped straight out of the movie, especially the scene where Lightning McQueen went on a date with Sally after he finished fixing the road, and the town residents basically relived Radiator Springs hey-day.





We didn't spend that much time there. We moved to Grizzly River Run and went straight to the fastpass line. Be prepared to get soaked! It was dark and it was getting windier. We picked the wrong time to go for this ride. I know we should've done that when it was still sweltering hot at noon. But anyway, at least we could still get to feel how this ride was like. The ride turned out to have two small drops. The first one was shorter but I could feel more Gforce.

The second one was a bit higher. When we plunged down, the water splashed from beneath my seat, soaking my shorts in results. It was fun though. Too be honest, I'm not a big fan of drops. The rough waters drew my attention the most. Anyway, all in all, we were soaked all over when we got out of the ride.

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Apparently, one ride wasn't enough, and Tiffany was asking for one more. But the thing is, we already used our fastpass and we could only use it once. It was 9.30 pm and we were torn whether we should just go to World of Color venue and saved some spots before the show started in thirty minutes, or whether we should just get on to Grizzly River Run for one more ride. For your information, we already missed the first World of Color show.

The attraction is shown twice a day. One is at 9.00 pm, which already missed, and the last one would start in an hour, which is exactly at 10. It was then decided that we would get on to another Grizzly River Run ride, but this time, without a fastpass. The standby line wasn't that long either, probably because people started to leave the park as it was closing in half an hour (or they were going to World of Color venue).

After fifteen to twenty minutes, we hopped on to our circular boat. Three kids and their father were sitting right across us, with of the kids only wearing socks. When the cast members were checking if we already put on our safety belts, she noticed the girl with only wearing socks. She kindly asked her and the rest of her family to get off the boat as she needed to wear appropriate footwear. At first, the father slightly objected on letting his daughter keep her socks on, but the cast member insisted due to safety precautions. After a while, the family got off and we finally had the boat for our own.

While the boat was climbing up the conveyor belt to the heights, we heard loud explosion sounds from the distance. It turns out Disneyland park was just having a fireworks show, which was even seen from as far as we were in California Adventure. Too bad we missed to see the show closely, but at least we could still get to see the fireworks clearly from the distance. Tiffany said that the fireworks was long and huge that it could be seen from outside Disneyland. Even she said that she often passed by Disneyland after work just to get a glimpse of the fireworks.


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