Disneyland

Today we go to Disneyland. After last night's big shift, we hadn't gone to bed until after 11, so we weren't expecting the kids to be bouncing around early. However, we were catching the shuttle bus and wanted to make the most of the day, so we decided to make for the 9:15 one. With a great flurry of activity we made it, but Nicole had left her hat behind and Joel, his camera.

Once in through the gates we put our stuff in a locker and made for Tomorrowland, where Nicole wanted to go on the Space Mountain ride, one which had large queues the last time she had been here. We got on fairly quickly. We were taken through rooms which were like the inside of a space station, and we were still in the queue. The ride itself was tremendous, whizzing past stars and galaxies and so on. Totally exhilarating. I'd never been on a roller coaster like it.

The next one was "Mission to Mars". There were two steps. First we were briefed and the second, we were in a circular room which was supposed to simulate a flight through a space warp and so on. The chairs vibrated but it was as exciting as the first. It's difficult to remember the order of events but at some time we went on Star Tours - probably even better than Space Mountain. Again, there was entertainment all the way along the queue including C3PO, R2-D2, Ewoks, robots and so on. Then the ride was not a roller coaster, but in a room which moved, titled and vibrated with a large screen in front. The sense were very easily fooled into thinking you were really flying along through space. We breakfasted on hamburgers and hot dogs, then went on a monorail ride - we thought around the park, but it only went to the hotel and back. Other rides we went on during the day included the Sky Way, Autopia (small cars), all the fast rides in the park including the bobsleds on the Matterhorn, the Splash Mountain ride in Critter Country, the Big Thunder Ranch ride. All of them basically "turbulent roller coaster rides" according to the warning signs, each with a slightly different flavour.

We also went on a couple of classics: the Mad Hatter's Teacups, It's a Small World, Storybook Village. We stayed until quite late as we wanted to see Fantasmic. We also saw another parade with large Goofy displays. The Fantasmic show was really wonderful. Sean was worried about being able to see as there was quite a crowd. However the fireworks and projected animation into fountains of water and smoke rose quite high into the air. It was quite spectacular and as good as anything like that in the world. Theme was something like "Mickey Mouse saves the world". THere was a lot of fireworks also as we tried to make our way out of the place and found we were going the wrong way. I made sure to hang onto the kids pretty tightly as there were heaps of people and it was dark.

We were worried about delaying too long as we wanted to make sure to catch the shuttle bus at 10pm back to the hotel. We had to make our way to the Jiminy Cricket section. We made it and returned to the hotel very tired.Read more