Way Out West - Day 7 – Disney’s California Adventure

After our late night we were not up until 8:30 today. I was ready first and so while Dad was getting ready I went out to take some photos of the hotel and Downtown Disney.

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We gathered our stuff together and left the room at 9:30 and arrived at the hotel’s own entrance to California Adventure just as it opened. We headed round towards Tower of Terror but as the park was not due to open until 10:00 that area was not open yet. Instead we re-traced our steps and went on Soarin’ where we were lucky enough to get front row seats.

From Soarin’ we continued round the park to the Sun Wheel which is like the London Eye with, if you want it, a twist – several of the gondolas slide and swing! Having watched them from our balcony there was no way either of us would go in a swinging gondola for any amount of money so we picked the stationary ones. We actually got two rotations – the first stop/start as the gondolas were loaded and the second a non-stop rotation.

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Tower of Terror from the top of the Sun Wheel

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From the Sun Wheel we went back for the 11:00 showing of Golden Dreams, which is a film starring Whoopi Goldberg giving the history of California, it’s people and their dreams.

After the show we made our way round to the Mission Tortilla Factory where we were saw machines making flour tortillas and were given a nice warm sample tortilla to try. From there we stopped off to have a coke each and a sit-down watching the world go by.

Next stop was It’s Tough To Be A Bug where I remembered to make sure I sat forward on the seat so I didn’t get ‘stung’. From there we went to see another 3D film – Muppetvision 3D, which is still my favourite of all the Disney 3D movies.

After Muppetvision we went round to the Hyperion Theatre to see the 1:50 performance of Aladdin. As part of the package we got when booking the room we had vouchers for preferred seating, which we used and got seats in the orchestra section around 15 rows from the front. The show is a 45 minute live action version of Aladdin and includes performers ‘flying’ over the audience on a flying carpet. It was a good fun show and included lots of laughs thanks to the performance of the cast member playing the genie who came out with some great topical one-liners.

After the show we wandered back to the hotel where we spent some time relaxing before going back out at 5:40 for dinner at ESPNZone.

We had a reservation for 6:00 and almost immediately after checking-in at 5:50 we were seated. I ordered the Summer Rolls and Dad had a plate of cheesey fries to start and for main course Dad had a Smoke House Burger and I had a Cajun Chicken Sandwich, both with fries. Dad had a pint of Bud Lite, I had a Sam Adams light and the whole lot came to $65 including tip.

Once we had finished we went back to California Adventure where we rode Monsters Inc. This is a traditional Disney dark ride where you ride in a taxi through various scenes depicting Mike and Sulley’s attempts to get Boo back through her door before the Child Detection Agency catch her.

From there we staked out a spot opposite the Sun Wheel for the Main Street Electrical Parade. We had been sitting at the front of the roadside and as the parade started we decided to stand up as there was nobody behind us and we thought we would not be blocking anybody’s view so we were quite surprised when somebody tapped us on the back just as the last float came in to view and complained that nobody further down the road could see and maybe we could step back a bit. Why it had taken him the whole 20 minutes and 9 ‘scenes’ to complain is anybody’s guess but I really don’t think we were causing that much of a problem.

Once the parade finished we wandered back to the hotel (using the ‘private’ entrance again) and were back in the room by 9:40. We were in bed by 10:00 ready for our Amtrak adventure to Universal Studios Hollywood tomorrow.

Tomorrow: Day 8 – Universal Studios Hollywood and an old favourite.