Disneyland day 2: FASTPASSES, park hopping and the exclusive Club 33

We started our first day in the parks at Hyperspace Mountain to get FASTPASSES. Disneyland temporary re-did Space Mountain with a Star Wars theme and called it Hyperspace Mountain. The line was unusually short so we rode the ride after we got our FASTPASSES. The new and improved Space Mountain launches you into the middle of a space battle and navigates you out. It was pretty awesome!

After Hyperspace Mountain we left for Fantasyland. We went through Sleeping Beauty's Castle, went on Pinocchio's Daring Journey and Snow White's Scary Adventures. I wanted to ride Peter Pan's Flight but the line was too long. It's one of my favorite rides at Disneyland. On our way out we ran into The Mad Hatter, one of my favorite characters! During our short chat learned that the Hatter's favorite color is green, like green tea, and Alice still keeps in touch with the Queen. They couldn't make it to Disneyland today because they were off playing croquet in the garden.

Our next stop was the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at California Adventure. I love that ride but my grandma didn't care for it too much. When we got to the highest point in the ride my sister and I yelled, "Hands up!" and my grandma threw her hands up... little did she know what was going to happen next. It's like my sister and I operate on the same wave length. While we were in the area we made a stop at Monsters Inc. Mike and Sully to the Rescue and Ariel's Undersea Adventure.  On our way out we paid a visit to the Boudin Bakery at Pacific Wharf. There was also a tortilla factory in the area at one time but it closed down. During our time in California Adventure we acquired FASTPASSES for Soarin' Over California, Radiator Springs Racers and World of Color.

Lunch today was amazing! Right outside Disneyland's property lies Tony Romas. The night before my grandma told us about Tony Roma's $10 lunch menu. She discovered this with her friends at the restaurant in Elk Grove. The lunch menus differed between locations. The menu at the Restaurant in Elk Grove consisted of mostly pasta and salad but the lunch menu here had chicken and salad. Grandma enjoyed the selection at the Anaheim location better. I ordered the ribs and they were amazing as always! Way to go grandma!

We did a lot of hopping back and fourth between parks today. Good thing we got Park Hoppers! Last time we were here the Mad Hatter hosted musical chairs at the Carnation cafe at 2:00. We happened to be in the area and waited for a bit but he didn't show up. The Dapper Dan's arrived and did a show with their piano playing friend, Eric, instead. We continued through the park and grabbed Indiana Jones fast passes.

Club 33 in the french quarter was renovated last year with a new entrance so we had to find the new door. Club 33 is an exclusive, secret club in Disneyland that isn't so much of a secret among Disney fanatics... the wait list is about 10 years long and the annual dues are insane! I'm not quite sure about the "33" in Club 33 but some say it's because the club is located at 33 Royal Street, others say it's for the 33 initial investors of Disneyland. I've also heard that if you simply turn 2 pairs of mouse ears on it's side it creates the number 33, so Disney used 33. Quite frankly they could all be right... Disney could have intentionally had 33 initial investors because he realized that if you turn a pair of mouse ears on it's side it creates the number 3 and built a club for them on 33 Royal street. In regards to the quest for the door, we found another door! But I don't think a new entrance was made during this renovation. Club 33 has been renovated a couple of times since it's establishment and I think I found the main entrance that they currently use and have used before the renovation. The door I had thought was the main entrance was probably the original that was used when the club first opened.

My sister wanted to ride Splash Mountain so my mom and grandma went with her. The wait was 70 minutes but they did it anyway. While they were waiting in line I killed some time at the gift shop near the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. That didn't take up all of the time so I used the rest of my time wisely and rested.

As we were heading out to California Adventure to ride Soarin' Over California we stopped at the Haunted Mansion. We found a new haunt inside the mansion, the hat box ghost. He's placed inside the ride right where you enter the graveyard. He's a funny looking ghost holding a hat box who's head transfers between his box and his shoulders.

We weren't able to use our FASTPASSES at Soarin' Over California because we were 3 hours late. Normally they allow you to use your FASTPASS even though you're late and outside of your time frame, just not early. How disappointing!

Since we weren't allowed to use expired FASTPASSES anymore we made sure we were in time for our next ones at Radiator Springs Racers. This ride has 2 possible story outcomes before the race. Every time I've went on this ride I've always gone to the side where your car gets a new paint job. This time my car got new tires. It was pretty interesting and very cool.
We had one more FASTPASS to use before we went back to the hotel to grab dinner. Indiana Jones hasn't been updated since the last time I was there. They did take out the section where your car stalls right before you drive into the hallway of skeletons. I'm not sure if they did that because it was busy or if it was a permanent change.

After we rushed back to the hotel to eat dinner we rushed back out to California Adventure to watch World of Color. We ended up arriving an hour before it started so there was no need to rush. World of Color was a "Fantasmic" type show in the past, now it's more of a biography about Disneyland and how it came to be. There's also a lot of scenes from Disney movies and Disneyland rides both modern and classic with super cool effects.

We dashed out of California Adventure to Disneyland to catch the Paint the Night parade. I thought it was cool that The Paint the Night Parade paid homage to the original Electric Light Parade. They used the Electric Light Parade melody and some of the characters during the parade. Of course the new parade had better technology, visual effects and newer characters. I absolutely loved it!
After the parade we were exhausted and headed back to the hotel for the night.

Disneyland day 1: The first post.

We left for Anaheim late this morning. On our way here we stopped for lunch at a truck stop in Coalinga. My mom wanted Burger King because she likes their tacos so we dropped her and my grandma off and the rest of us left for McDonalds. There were 2 or 3 tour buses at the truck stop and everything was packed! We decided to go to Carl's Jr. and we still ended up waiting forever. The Burger King there didn't have taco's either! So much for fast food.

When we got into Anaheim we checked into our hotel, unpacked and left to get our tickets for tomorrow. While my parents waited in line for the tickets the rest of us went to Downtown Disney. We didn't get very far before my parents caught up with us so we left for food! My mom's favorite sandwich shop closed down in Sacramento so she insisted we go to the one here. All of us got sandwiches and some to go!

I wanted to go back to Downtown Disney but everyone was too tired to go back with me. So back to the hotel we went.
 
Tomorrow, we go the parks!!!

Next stop... Disneyland!

It's been a long time since I've been on a trip and it's about time we went on another one.
I have a 4 day weekend coming up and we can't let it go to waste!
We'll be going to Disneyland later this week. Keep your eye on the blog!

Universal Orlando: Day 4, The last day in Florida

Today is our last day in the parks. We woke up later than usual. We entered Island of Adventure and took the Hogwarts Express to the main park to ride Harry Potter and the Escape from Gringots. The ride had not opened yet and there was already a long line outside. My sister and I went ahead to get our belongings in the lockers. The line had moved faster than we anticipated and we had a hard time finding the rest of our party. It was kind of cool getting to walk around the bank while we were looking for them. We wandered around Diagon Alley after the ride until 10:30 so we could get lunch for breakfast at the Leakey Cauldron. 

After breakfast we tried to get on the E.T. Adventure ride again but the wait was too long so we went to the kids area for a little bit. The kids area had a Barney and Curious George theme. According to my mom I was Barney's #1 fan as a kid. 

We sat down in a seating area while my grandma went to see an animal show. She thought it was really cute, comical and surprised that cats could be trained to do certain things. She wanted us to catch the next available show so we went to ride the Revenge of The Mummy and back to E.T. Adventure while we were waiting.

We didn't get out of the ride in time to catch the next showing of the animal show so went back to Hogsmede. There was a Frog Choir show going on and I got to catch the end of it. We did a little more shopping and happened to catch the next show on the stage. This show was the introduction of the 2 other schools participating in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Beauxbatons Academy of Magic and Durmstrang Institute. Each school did a routine. The choreography was exactly the same as in the movie! 

My sister finally caved in and bought a wand in Hogsmede. At The Wizarding World of Harry Potter you can buy special wands that interact with displays in certain store windows. There are plaques placed on the ground with instructions on how to do a spell and you can try it out in the window. We discovered that some spells are harder than others

It started to storm like crazy as we were heading out of Hogsmede. The rain was so heavy that we had to find shelter. I've never heard louder thunder in my life. When the rain let up we rushed over to Marvel Super Hero Island and rode The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man again. The storm got worse but it didn't last very long. We got pizza at Cafe 4 to snack on while we were waiting for the rain to let up. It wasn't that great. The pizza resembled Chuck-E-Cheese pizza. 

After our snack we explored Toon Lagoon some more. One of the places we discovered was Popeye's boat the Olive. On the Second floor of the boat there's water cannons that you can use to soak passengers on the water ride below. My sister and I had some fun with that. 

The storm started to come around again so we went to the Comic Strip Cafe to hide for a while. It was getting late so we left for the hotel. 

On our way back we stopped at Red Oven Pizza Bakery, a pizza joint unique to the CityWalk. My mom got us an Alla Benno pizza that had prosciutto, heirloom tomatoes and jalapenos on it. We were originally going to take it back to the room but we ended up eating some of it there. It was a pretty sweet ending to our night. 

Universal Orlando: Day 3, More rides, Seuess Landing and possibly an earthquake

We got an early start in Hogsmede again and rode Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey because we enjoyed it so much last time . Then we tried Flight of the Hippogriff because the lines were really short. It was a short quick ride where you fly around Hagred's place in a Hippogriff. There wasn't much more to it. Maybe that's why the line was so short.

On our way out we went through Poseidon's Fury. Poseidon's Fury is a walk through attraction where you get trapped in an ancient temple with no way out and the only way you can go leads you deeper into the temple. At the end you find yourself in between a fight with 2 gods and are freed by Poseidon at the end.

The lines at Seuss Landing were short so we took advantage of that and hit The High in the Sky Seuss Trolley Train Ride. It was an overhead tour of Seuss Landing. You got to see Seuss Landing from a different perspective. The narrator also told stores about the residents of Seuss Landing 

We wanted to get lunch at the Three Broomsticks for lunch but they don't start serving lunch until 10:30 and we didn't want breakfast food so we made a quick stop to Honeydukes, a candy store in Hogsmede. They sold candy from the movies and the books like Chocolate Frogs, Bertie Bott's Every-Flavor Beans and Exploding BonBon's. In the book Honeydukes is also the entrance of a secret passage between Hogwarts and Hogsmede. By the time we finished, lunch was being served at the Three Broomsticks. 

Lunch at the Three Broomsticks was really good! We ordered The Great Feast Platter which had ribs, rotisserie chicken, veggies and these amazing garlic roasted potatoes. It was hard to take our leftovers out with us because the restaurant didn't have take out boxes. I went to the front and got a few disposable cups with lids to put our food in and had to go to a retail store to get bags to put cups in.   

After all that food we were tired so we decided to go back to the hotel for a quick nap. We also needed to get the food into the fridge. 

When we arrived at Islands of Adventure after our nap we started things slow at Seuss Landing. This time we went on the Cat in the Hat and the Caro-Seuss-el. The Cat in the Hat is a slow ride that narrates the book and the Caro-Seuss-el is a wacky carousel with some of the animal's from Dr. Seuss's books on it.   

We had to pass through Toon Lagoon to get to Super Hero Island. Toon Lagoon is a retail and dining area based off of comic strip characters. Some of the characters represented there are Dagwood, Heathcliff and Betty Boop. Toon Lagoon is a really cool place to take pictures. There's little cartoon speech bubbles suspended around the area that say things like, "It must be Sunday... We're in color!" or, "I'm going to need a vacation from this vacation!"

At Super Hero Island we went to the Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man attraction. This attraction was recently  upgraded with high-tech 3D, lighting and graphics. From what I heard there's also a 400ft. drop somewhere in there too.

We did some more shopping at Islands of Adventure, took the Hogwarts Express back to Kings Cross Station and headed to Diagon Alley. My mom wanted to get pictures of Olivanders wand shop and some other places she missed like the Gringots Money Exchange. The Gringots Money Exchange is a place where you can exchange muggle money for Gringots bank notes. This place is small and I don't think I've ever seen it crowded. One of the coolest things about this place is, you can interact with the head goblin while you wait in line. While we were in Diagon Alley we went back to Knockturn Alley to take a few more pictures.

After Diagon Alley we went to check out the Men in Black Alien Attack attraction, Disaster- A Major Motion Picture Ride and the Transformers ride again. The Men in Black attraction starts off as a training simulator but real aliens arrive and you have to zap them and chase them down. The Disaster ride was pretty cool. A cast of actors is picked from the audience and the stage crew demonstrates how some special effects are made. You end up getting casted and are put to work on a movie as an extra immediately. The scene they put you in is a underground subway train in San Francisco during the middle of an earthquake. While you're in the subway the crew sets off special effects and films your reactions. At the end of filming they show you the movie you've made. My mom thought it was especially cool because the section of subway they replicated was her subway stop when she was living in Oakland, the Oakland West stop.

It was getting late and we still haven't taken the Hogwarts Express from Kings Cross to Hogsmede yet. While you're in line you can see the people in front of you disappear into Platform 9 3/4. I thought that was pretty cool. There was different scenery on the trip back.

While we were in Hogsmede we ate a quick dinner at the Three Broomstics. I ordered shepherds pie, those fantastic potatoes and pumpkin juice. The potatoes weren't that great this time. I'm not quite sure what changed since lunch but it wasn't as good as they were earlier that afternoon. 

After dinner we went to the Hard Rock Cafe for drinks and retired to our hotel room for the night.

Universal Orlando: Day 2, Hogsmeade, Diagon Alley and the luxurious Hard Rock Hotel

Today was an early day today. Because we're staying on property we got early admission to Islands of Adventure. We passed through Suess Landing and went straight to Hogsmeade. There was still snow on the buildings! It must always be winter over here. We hit the feature ride first, "Harry Potter and The Forbidden Journey." There's absolutely no space to bring any belongings on the ride so we put our bags in lockers. This first hour for the lockers was free and they charge you for time after that. Luckily we didn't have to wait longer than an hour to ride the ride. The line cue for this attraction is impressive. You go through Dumbledore's office, the defense against the dark arts classroom and the room of requirement. During the ride you get to tour Hogwart's campus and flirt with a little mischief. After the the ride we hopped on the Hogwarts Express to Kings Cross Station and checked out Diagon Alley.

Diagon Alley is the newest attraction at Universal Orlando and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. There's mostly shopping and dining but we were there for the main attraction, "Harry Potter and The Escape From Gringots." We grabbed lockers as quick as we could and headed to the line cue. The line cue for this ride was impressive as well. You start In the bank's grand marble lobby where there are many grumpy goblins hard at work. These guys look bigger in person. Then you shuffle to the back, around the corner, into a lift and down into the carts. My sister and I made a Haunted Mansion reference while in the elevator, "is this haunted room actually stretching, or is it just your imagination?" I don't think it was appreciated.

After the ride we took a bathroom break and went down the dark passages of Knockturn Alley. In Rowling's books Knockturn Alley is described as a shady shopping area associated with the dark arts and that's exactly how Universal portrayed it. One of the most notable shops is the infamous Borgin and Burkes where they have a very well rounded collection of dark arts objects, clothing and accessories.

The Weasley twins also have their own store in Diagon Alley called, "Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes." It's a colorful novelty joke shop with everything you need to cause any type of mischief. It was crowded so I didn't spend much time there.

We headed out of Diagon Alley into the main part of the park and walked through a small part San Francisco. There was a burger place, seafood restaurant, Ghirardelli factory and a replica of the Fisherman's Wharf sign. I took more pictures of the Fisherman's Wharf sign at Universal Studios than I ever have at the actual sign in San Francisco and I've been to San Francisco numerous times! I don't even think I have any pictures of the actual Fisherman's Wharf sign. Funny how things work out, I had to go all the way to the other side of the country and got a picture of the replica sign.

The next few rides we went on were, "Transformers: The Ride- 3D," "Despicable Me Minion Mayhem," "Shrek 4D," and "The Revenge of the Mummy." The Transformer ride was really cool. You get mixed up in a battle between the Autobots and Decepticons and have to fight to keep the all spark from getting in the wrong hands. The Despicable Me attraction was a cute one. Gru needs new recruits for his latest scheme and he chooses you! But something isn't right... You're not a minion and you're not trained! So you get morphed into a Minion and go through a crazy training course with the girls-- Margo, Edith and Agnes. After you leave the attraction there's a minion dance party where you can take pictures with minions. The Shrek attraction was lame but the Mummy one was awesome! At first I didn't think I'd like the ride because I haven't heard much about it. This ride is a lot like the Indiana Jones ride. It's a super dark ride with a lot of sudden drops and movements. This evil Imhotep has awaken and you have to escape his wrath.

After those rides we went back to Diagon Alley and explored Olivanders Wand Shop, Diagon Alley's premier wand shop and saw the show they had there. They took a group of people into the back room, chose a spectator at random and helped them find a wand. There was lots of theatrics involved. We also got lunch at the Leaky Cauldron while we were there. I ordered a cottage pie which, to me, was just like shepherds pie. I had bought wands at Olivanders and the packaging was a little bulky so I went back to the hotel to drop them off after lunch.

I passed through Springfield to meet up with my group at the "Men in Black Alien Attack," but it had just broken down. What to do? What to do?

The park was closing early today due to an event with the Mark Travel Corporation so we went to grab food at Mel's Diner before it closed. I had a burger and fries that I was not impressed with.

On our way back to the hotel we got drinks at the bar during happy hour. When we got back my grandma decided to pick up her welcome package and coupon book at the attractions counter. It turns out that her travel package didn't include a welcome package or coupon book but the clerk gave her a coupon book anyways. She went back up to the room and called the travel agency. We were on the phone with the representative for an hour. During that hour we found out that we could use any of the amenities at the Universal properties. After we got of the phone with the representative we took the river taxi to The Hard Rock Hotel, the most expensive hotel.

The Hard Rock hotel is luxurious but laid back.They had live entertainment, a sand beach pool and lots of Rock N' Roll memorabilia.

It was getting late so we didn't stay at the other hotel very long. We made the trip back to our hotel by water taxi and retired for the night.

Universal Orlando: Day 1, travel and exploring the CityWalk

We got to the airport at 6:05 am and saw a long line of people outside of the security check. We thought we were going to miss our flight! While we were in line we saw other people skip ahead to another line. It was the "pre-check" line and we decided to use it! I'm still not sure what the "pre-check" line is or how you qualify to use it but we used it anyways.

There was a few complications before we took off. The sensor on the cargo door said it was open but it was obviously closed. The pilot had to call maintenance to make sure it was ok to go. We had 50mins once we landed in salt lake city to eat lunch and find our next terminal. Every minute they took to sort everything out cut into our layover time. Once we got going we had a hour and a half plane ride to Salt Lake City. Delta doesn't provide free Wi-Fi but they had some free content that you could stream to your phone. I tried every which way I could to access that content but my device wasn't supported. My phone isn't a very common one. I decided to give up and take my tablet out of my luggage during our layover and try again on the next plane.

By the time we got to Salt Lake City we had to rush to the next terminal. Luckily we brought food so we didn't have to stop and get food and we could eat on the plane. Pre flight checks went smoothly and we were up in the air in no time. I took out my tablet and it wasn't supported by Delta's media content either! It was a 4 hr flight from Salt Lake City to Orlando. If they didn't have an in flight movie I wouldn't know what I would do! They showed the new Cinderella which was pretty cool. I liked it a lot. It was a lot like the Disney Classic Cinderella but with more realism and back story.

We arrived at Orlando on time and met up with our driver. The weather here is very humid but not as hot as I thought it would be. We get to stay on property at the Loews Pacific Resort Hotel as part of our travel package this time. How exciting! I've never stayed at a hotel on a resort property before. We had a 25min drive and we passed by a lot of theme parks and ad's for theme parks on the way. This is definitely the land of theme parks! When we arrived at the resort my mom felt obligated to tip the driver her last $5 she brought in cash because I pointed out a sign that said most of the drivers salary comes from gratuity. We need to find a bank! Not just because we forgot to get cash on the way out but I forgot my cards too! We checked into the hotel, used the ATM, my mom and I got our city passes and went up to our rooms. This hotel has a Polynesian theme to it and it's pretty cool! It's like staying in a rain forest hotel. After we unpacked we found a dead brown baby cockroach in our closet and our hot water didn't work. When we went downstairs to get my grandma and sister their city passes and head out to the CityWalk to get food we told the front desk clerk about our cockroach and the hot water they moved us to a different room. That meant we had to go back up stairs, pack and move and I was getting hungry! They moved us to a newly renovated room which is a lot nicer than the other room but a little bit out of the theme. This room was trendier.

We arrived at Universal CityWalk by water taxi. The CityWalk is a lot like Downtown Disney but smaller with entertainment options. It rained the whole time we were there. It was kind of odd because it was a warm rain. I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep my jacket on or not. There are a few surf shops, boutique shops and regular retail shops here like Fossil and Element. Emeril and Jimmy Buffet have restaurants here too. The Blue Man Group has a stage at the CityWalk! I've already seen The Blue Man Group in Vegas so if I miss them here it's not such a big deal. After we explored we decided to eat at Hard Rock Cafe. We got our picture taken in the entryway. I've never had that done at a restaurant before. This is the largest Hard Rock in the chain with lots of pop and rock memorabilia. I ordered a Hickory Barbecue Bacon Cheeseburger and it was awesome! The CityWalk also has a theatre, mini golf course and a night club. We were comp'd tickets for the night club so I might go there one night.

After dinner we took the water taxi back to the hotel, explored the hotel a little more and retired to our room for the night. The real adventure begins tomorrow!