A Disneyland adventure!

    I know, I know....little more than a month after leaving Disney, I go again?? What can I say? You can take the girl out of Disney....(but she'll remember that she can get in free to any Disney park around the world and will find some way to go again ;]).


Anyway, right at the end of my college program, my friend Andrew and I became seasonal Cast Members, which means we can also get into Disneyland for free. Since  he doesn't live too far away (he goes to school at the University of Reno), and I have a relative that lives very very close to Disneyland (thanks, Aunt Judy!!), we decided a Disneyland trip together was definitely a necessity.

 

Andrew and Eric. I told them to look excited; you be the judge of how well they accomplished that

 

Fast forward to last weekend, when we actually made that trip! We had debated going over the holiday weekend, but we decided it would probably be a lot more crowded, and we figured a not-so-crowded day and a half was better than a jam-packed two and a half days. I don't have classes on Fridays, and since I fly free (gotta take advantage of that whenever possible), we decided I would fly in to Reno, and then we would make the 8 hour journey to California. Along the way, Andrew's friend Eric was added to our plans to help with the driving (because Andrew hates driving and also so I wouldn't murder Andrew) sidenote: Eric didn't do the college program; he and Andrew are engineering majors together. Andrew also made him pick me up from the airport since Andrew had class, even though we had never met. Awkward.

 Luckily, Eric is a super nice dude, so he picked me up from the airport at about noon and we went and got sandwiches while we waited for Andrew to get out of class. From there, we made a quick stop at Andrew's parents' house to get an umbrella and see his new puppy, and then we were off!

Eric drove for the first few hours while Andrew controlled the music and we did Disney trivia for about 45 minutes before getting bored with it.   The drive down was pretty uneventful, minus the HUGE AMOUNTS OF SNOW  we first encountered while in northern California. It was pretty ridiculous, but we never had to put chains on and it cleared up after about an hour. We stopped for lunch (where I offered about six times to take over), and then Andrew took over to drive the rest of the way. 


We arrived at Aunt Judy's at about 11, then took a quick tour of the house before immediately falling asleep because we wanted to get up at 6 so we could be there for the 8 AM park opening. We started off the next morning a little late, but got to the parks fine.Chip, Dale, and Cruella de Ville (strangest combination) were hanging around Main Street, so we took pictures with them before Andrew ran off with our tickets to grab Space Mountain Fastpasses and I wandered around Main Street dragging Eric behind me and saying how short  everything looked. Seriously. After seeing majestic Cinderella's Castle practically every day, Sleeping Beauty's abode is tiny. It just kinda looked like a really large, absurdly fancy house.

See what I mean??

 Eric and I ran over to Indiana Jones first (because that's the BEST RIDE and one they don't have at Disney World :[ ) to wait for Andrew. In the meantime, we ran up Tarzan's Treehouse because it was literally right next to Indiana Jones, and by the time we were done Andrew was back and we were able to finally go in to Indy....only to reach the loading area and hear that the ride has already broken down. So much for that!

We headed for Pirates of the Caribbean, since it was also close, and I will freely admit their Pirates is WAY BETTER than WDW's (minus the fact that they don't have the new mermaids, which are actually super rad in my opinion. And their queue isn't as cool, but I digress...). We hit up all the rides that aren't in Disney World (Matterhorn, I've missed you!), and enjoyed Disneyland's far superior Space Mountain, and then we decided to head over to California Adventure.


It's been about three and a half years since I've been to Disneyland/CA Adventure, and a LOT has changed over in CA. The entire front half of the park has been redone to resemble 1920's California, as Walt Disney would have seen it when he first moved there to start a film studio. It reminds me a lot of Hollywood Studios in WDW, but obviously much newer and it's super pretty! And, of course, they've added an entirely new area; Cars Land!

I had to deal with two tall dudes trying to get into every other picture I took

 I

This ride uses magnets to whip poor unsuspecting riders violently about. We managed to fit all three of us in one of those seats. It was probably not the best idea.

It was amazing  how much detail was put into this area; it really was like walking into the movie....it was pretty incredible at night with all the neon and I thought I took a picture, but apparently not. So I found one online.

Oooh...aaaaah

This was also around the time we ran into Jared! He was in Disneyland with a few of his friends, but he hung out with me and the two weirdos for a couple of rides. We went on Tower of Tower, and the main ride in Cars Land, Radiator Springs Racers! It had been a really long time since I'd seen Jared (way before my college program), so it was really nice to catch up and talk about past Disneyland trips with the family.

As you may have seen on Facebook, we also spent quite a bit of time hunting for characters, which I had never done before, even in WDW! For some reason, it became Andrew's main goal to meet as many obscure characters as we possibly could for the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday (I don't even want to talk about how long we wasted hunting down Pinocchio only to never find him!). I don't mind taking pictures with characters, especially when you just sort of stumble on them (we ran into Sulley on a random corner after riding Tower of Terror), but rides are definitely a priority of mine.

We spent quite a lot of time talking to Merida, and her brothers! The bears behind us actually moved and growled; so cute!

A visit with the boss is always necessary. Look at his cute little 1920s outfit!

One of the few times I get to feel short

 

We were also joined by Kevin and Kelina (both of them worked at Pirates during my DCP)

I think this is the moment where Andrew was telling Merida that he was considering becoming an archer, but then decided it had too many 'drawbacks'... Merida is making the same face I make when he starts into his Jungle Cruise jokes.

Our posing was all over the place in this one. Oh well.

Ok, it is really fun meeting characters, but not when it takes away from Indiana Jones time!

We spent most of the evening in California Adventure, where we watched World of Color (aka the BEST SHOW EVER); I didn't take any pictures during this one because I was too busy gasping in awe every three seconds.

Like the fountains at the Bellagio...but with Disney MAGIC.

 It was amazing and we ran around for a little while afterwords until the park closed at 11, then returned to Aunt Judy's and immediately fell asleep again, since we'd be doing the exact same thing the next day, except then having to drive back to Reno at four.

So we got up bright and early to spend a few hours in the park; re-riding our favorites and  hunting down more characters. We left promptly at about four, and started back towards Reno. Andrew needed to do some homework, so we decided Eric and I would drive back while Andrew worked (what really happened was Andrew decided to sleep instead, so he could stay up and work once we got to Reno while Eric and I slept). The drive back was pretty uneventful....Eric and I talked about our majors until we woke Andrew up to take a dinner break about 3 hours in. I took over from there, and Andrew stayed awake to talk with us while I drove. It started snowing about an hour and a half from Andrew's parents' house (where we decided to sleep since it was closer than Andrew's apartment), and Eric took over from there, since I have never driven in snow and I didn't want to kill us.
We didn't run into any trouble, and arrived in Minden, NV at about 1:30 in the morning, where Eric and I promptly crashed on some air mattresses and Andrew stayed awake to do engineer things. We all woke up bright and early at seven to make sure I could get to my flight on time and say goodbye.

We're planning to go again, of course, in April (gotta take advantage of free entrance!). Overall, it was a little bit exhausting but lots of fun and it was super fun to experience that Disney magic again. Obviously Andrew and I spent a lot of time talking about how different everything was, how easy it was to experience pretty much all of Disneyland and California Adventure in just two days, which would be impossible in WDW. Characters seemed to have a lot more freedom as well; when we first saw Chip and Dale in Main Street on our first day, they didn't have any sort of character attendant, which would be unheard of in WDW. I've heard a lot that Disneyland usually gets returning visitors (Annual Passholders and whatever), while Disney World gets a lot of first-timers, and I think that difference really shows. Disneyland always has to look for new ways to entertain the returning visitors, while Disney World tries to maintain the classics so they'll always be there for the new guests. At the same time, I think guests are way less frustrating in Disneyland, because everyone knows how a Fastpass works there ;)