Tonight's supposed to be a celebration.

To pick up immediately (but belatedly) where Erin left off in our previous blog entry: that was not the end of our Disney experience. For those of you living on the Eastern shore, and who (like me) are not familiar with Disney outside of the World, Disneyland has a secondary park called California Adventure. It's akin in theory to EPCOT, Animal Kingdom, or MGM (I'm a traditionalist), but in the way that Disneyland is smaller than the Magic Kingdom, California Adventure is also smaller than the World's subsidiaries.

Posing with the "O" in "California."

That being said, it has some serious rides. Tower of Terror, for example, resides in California Adventure. Obviously, once we crossed the walkway into the park, we rushed right over to there, since it's one of the greatest ride experiences you can have at Disney. To avoid the line, we grabbed a FastPass for it.


To pass the time before we could ride Tower of Terror, we went to one of my all-time favorite Disney attractions: MuppetVision 3D. It never stops being funny (or should I say..."punny"?). After smiling away the hours (I'll stop now; it was only about 20 minutes anyway.), we were perfectly timed for the Tower, and it did not disappoint--even with the slight variations between coasts.

Next, we headed to arguably the coolest area of California Adventure: Paradise Pier. Now, yes, I am biased, because it does resemble Santa Monica, which resembles the Jersey Shore (not the MTV show), so I immediately found it beautiful. But, on top of that, there's California Screamin', a classic-style roller coaster with one loop.


And then there's the ferris wheel. You think, "Oh, there she goes again, rambling on because she loves ferris wheels." Yeah, that was everyone else's reaction, too, as we walked along the Pier and I shouted, "WHOA! Guys! Look at the ferris wheel!" They rolled their eyes and went, "Yeah, yeah, pretty, we know." But then I made them actually look.

This ferris wheel is terrifying. The individual cars are on elliptic rings, so that as the ferris wheel turns, the car glides and swings. That sentence means nothing to you. A picture, then?


I can't really explain it any better than that, so I recommend experiencing it yourself. We figured, we had to go on. After riding it, all I'll say is: most terrifying ride we did all day.



After a few more rides in California Adventure, Jenn had to leave us for a work function (read: party). Erin, Kristin, and I decided to go back into Disneyland to ride a few classics and see some fireworks before calling it a night.

So that's when we hit up Pirates of the Caribbean and It's a Small World. Erin's reactions to the latter, having never ridden it before, amused me to no end. And, just because I feel like someone needs to expose this cruelty: the song "It's a Small World" plays throughout the line as you wait to get on the ride. How are these employees not insane? How do we know they're not? I think someone of authority should look into this flagrant abuse.

As we ate dinner, and realized how utterly exhausted we all were--and how cold we were--we decided we would look at the line for Indiana Jones (the only other ride we were interested in). If it was too long, we'd skip the fireworks and just go home and to bed.

The line ended up being about 40 minutes. The reviews for the ride were really positive, so we thought it'd probably be worth the wait. Then, the nice family behind us offered us three FastPasses (they had four people, and couldn't use them), so we hopped right on. It was well worth the non-wait--especially because it was warm. (East Coasters: Think of World's Dinosaur, minus the dinosaurs, plus Indiana Jones.)

Anyway, post-Indiana, we had about half an hour until the fireworks. Tired, and debating if it was worth the wait, we decided to walk toward the parking lot, and if we could, watch some of the fireworks from there. That's when we noticed that all roads to exit were roped off. My sister asked an employee how we could leave the park, and he laughed and responded, "Ooh. That's going to be really hard. You'll have to walk in a circular pattern."

...What? Okay? We did walk on a silly "circular" route, catching the fireworks as we exited the park, while having a fantastic view, but still beating the crowd to the tram, and making it out before the catastrophic traffic.

A+, I'd say.

Now, having rambled enough, I guess I should pay attention in class, huh? Maybe I can come up with one more detail to type up...

--Lauren

Photo cred. in this entry goes to Jenn.