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Saturday, October 06, 2007

California Trip Pictures Day 3

Current Mood:
CC is listening to: an episode of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel--whoops, make that Dirty Jobs

September 27
Disneyland California Adventure

Today we visited the other Disney park: California Adventure. Steve and I have never been there, so it was fun discovering it together :-). Click on the picture for a bigger map view of the park :-).

As soon as we got past the gates, we went straight to the other end of the park towards the big roller coaster: California Screamin'. I'm a big roller coaster freak and I haven't ridden one in *years* :-).

So I was a *little* disappointed when we got to the ride and the attendant said the coaster was temporarily under maintenance and they hope to have it running later today. He couldn't give an ETA, though.

While waiting, Steve and I started to look at what else was in the park. That led me to my first thrill ride of the day: the Maliboomer.

Out of all the thrill rides in the park, the Maliboomer was the scariest one for me. It doesn't *look* very scary when you watch other people on it. As a matter of fact, it looked like so much fun and I couldn't wait to get on it.

But as soon as you see how minimal those seats really are...

...you realize you're sitting on nothing more than a plastic stool and the only things holding you down are a seatbelt and a shoulder harness. At the end of those armrests are little metal handlebars and trust me, you hold on to those things for dear life :-).

One of the sound effects is the sound of a rubber band streeeettttccchiiing... and then BLAM! You're shot up 180 feet into the air and you're off your chair for a few seconds. If you have *any* fear of heights at all it makes the ride even scarier :-).

Here's a video of what it looks like. See the guy sitting on the leftmost side, in the shorts? I'm the one on his right, wearing the black shirt (Steve couldn't get a good angle). I'm dangling my feet trying to calm myself down before the ride started :-). In the video you can hear the streeeetccchiing sound effect right before the takeoff :-).

I'm pretty sure that's me you hear screaming--the one that's a full scream going up, and then half-screaming, half laughing while the ride was bouncing up and down :-).

I had jelly legs when I got off that ride :-). Now that I've been on it, I'll probably ride it again :-).

The next thrill ride was the Grizzly River Run.

Steve would have wanted to ride this one, but I'm glad he didn't. *I* was getting nauseous with all the spinning it did. It was great fun, though, and you DO get majorly wet :-).

After the ride Steve and I decided to sit down and rest some while I dried off. Great timing too, because another performing group was setting up to play where we were sitting :-). They're the Miner 49ers and at one point, they asked for volunteers to help them play the washboards :-).

Steve and I then moseyed on over to the Hollywood section of the park. On the way there were several photo opportunities that we took advantage of :-).

Here's one of me and the Evil Queen/Witch from Snow White...

And one with Goofy :-)...

And one with Chip...

And one with Minnie...

And one with Tow Mater and Lightning McQueen from Cars...

And here's one of Steve with a plane :-).

We then walked by the Hyperion theater...

and we saw that the next Aladdin musical was in 30 minutes. That was the longest we waited for anything during our entire Disneyland stay, and it was SO worth it! The genie was SOOOO funny!

This isn't our video, but it's the same genie. He was that funny throughout the whole show :-). Many of his jokes touched on current events, and they were a hit with the parents :-). This was recorded by someone else in February 2007:

The show lasted 45 minutes, and it was great :-). Steve and I were still laughing as we left the theater.

Right next to the Hyperion theater was another thrill ride: The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Since we were already there, we decided that I'd go ride it :-).

I didn't know much about the Tower of Terror, so I didn't quite know what to expect. Because of that, it turned out to be the 2nd scariest ride in the park for me, next to the Maliboomer.

It was the 2nd scariest not only because of the ride itself, but also how they had set the ride up. I was never fond of the Twilight Zone. Too creepy and disturbing--kept me up nights as a kid.

So imagine entering the building into the lobby of a 1930s hotel that had been quickly abandoned: old, dusty, with cobwebs all over.

And if that's not creepy enough, the bellboy takes you to the library where he closes the doors and turns off the lights so you can watch this video:

So I'm in a dark library, surrounded by people and yet all by myself, and I've just been told that I'm diving head first into the Twilight Zone. Wonderful. It's my childhood fears realized

.

After you watch the video, the back doors to the library open and you follow a winding path to the boiler room, where the service elevators are.

There you wait your turn to board the service elevator.

To see what happens during the ride, you can play this video I found on YouTube (you'll probably need to wait a minute or so before it gets to that part though).

Did I know the girl next to me? No. Did that stop me from grabbing her hand throughout the ride? Absolutely not :-).

When I told Steve about the ride afterwards, he said that even if he COULD get on it, he wouldn't. He's too phobic about the idea of elevators malfunctioning and causing you to fall to your death :-).

I learned later that in 2002, an improvement that the Disney Imagineers made to the ride was to make the lifts and drops completely random. You'll be dropped and lifted 6-8 times--but the exact number, the heights, and the sequence of those drops will be generated by the computer. Every ride will be different. That's pretty cool :-).

Let's see, the next thing we did after that was to head back to the big roller coaster to see if it was up and running. It was, WOO HOO :-)!

Steve was able to get a short video of me on the coaster just as it was about to take off. You'll see me raise my arms as I whoosh by him :-). And then you'll hear what Steve thinks of me getting on all those thrill rides :-).

That was pretty much all we did in California Adventure. Oh wait, no, we also went on the Monsters, Inc. ride ("Mike and Sully to the Rescue!") which was a short animatronic version of the movie :-).

Since it was only about 4:30 when we were done, Steve and I headed back to Disneyland to do a little shopping. And then at around 6 or so we decided we'd head back to the hotel :-).

Steve's impression after his first visit to Disneyland?

"Disneyland rocks."

I couldn't agree with him more :-). We can't wait to go back someday--maybe for our 5th or 7th anniversary :-).

Labels: Travel

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