September Trip Day 3.2

Have you ever been to a shooting gallery? Well, I have. That is only if you could the Shootin' Exposition in Frontierland. I don't have any photos to share from that, but it was one of the things on our mental to-do list as added by Andrea that we actually remembered to do. Will I ever do it again? Probably not! But it turned out to be the last thing we did together in Disneyland for the rest of the afternoon. After a couple of hours in the Park since opening we were going to take full advantage of our Park Hoppers and actually park hop so next up was Disney's (although it is now officially Disney) California Adventure. One big draw over there is the Aladdin Musical Spectacular that takes stage at the Hyperion Theatre. It truly is spectacular as anyone who has ever seen it could tell you.

So we made that long trek across the esplanade and we're back in DCA for the second time this trip with a couple of hours to kill until Aladdin was set to start. It probably wasn't even noon yet and I could see that Andrea didn't look so well to put it mildly and it seemed pretty obvious to me that she needed to head back to the hotel. I tried to talk her into it or into taking a resting break but she kept on insisting that she'd be fine and she kept pushing on. So we did a photo op in the Sunshine Plaza with everyone's favorite Mouse.
It didn't take long, but right after we finished getting our photos with a vacationing Mickey Mouse Andrea finally decided she needed to step into one of the air conditioned shops to cool off and rest and I just took my time taking photos around the Hollywood Pictures Backlot.


After my little photo spree I checked back in with Andrea to see how she was doing and she finally made the call to head back to the hotel for a little while. I knew it was bound to happen eventually. After having some alcohol out by the hot tub the night before, barely getting any sleep, the heat, and not having enough water what else was bound to happen? It was nice to finally have an answer however, and I was able to go off on my own for a while. I do just fine at Disneyland all by myself, birthday or no birthday. I don't know why anyone would ever think a solo trip couldn't be fun. You get to call all of the shots without having to conference over what to do next. And to top it all off, I get around a lot faster on my own and I guarantee you I was hauling you-know-what. I'm not usually a leisurely walker. I know what I want and I'll barrel towards it, full-steam ahead. So the first thing my speed-walking-demon self did was take a full but brief self-tour through DCA stopping to visit a few friends along the way.

I even stopped by for a walk through the Mission Tortilla Factory and got some free tortillas for my birthday. Nothing satisfies a grazer like me like food to munch on!

I didn't end up staying in DCA for too long. The one ride that I was interested in, Toy Story Midway mania, was shut down and I wasn't going to sit around waiting for it for to be back up and running for forever. I also had a date with the Lilly Belle at 3 so I needed to make sure I was back at Disneyland before then. I thought about riding Indiana Jones until it was time to head back to Main Street but by the time I got there that was closed down too! It was funny listening to people waiting around. They actually had turned the lights on inside the ride and the people who got stuck on it were able to walk through all the different scenes. I think that would have been a pretty neat experience!
Rides go down, it's to be expected. So I just made the decision to got to Main Street regardless of how early it was. I figured I could get some photos and shopping done, and of course watch some candy being made!

September Trip Day 2.3

It's really, really hard to say which Land of Disneyland is my absolute favorite. I've mentioned before how much I simply love the atmosphere of New Orleans Square, but Fantasyland is right up there at the top for what I hope are obvious reasons: I am a Princess! I didn't spend any time in Fantasyland on our first day, but I did get the chance on our second. It's hard for me to ride hop in Fantasyland during the day because it gets so crowded. Fantasyland is best saved for first thing in the morning and on Magic Mornings. Luckily for me, however, my favorite Princess has her own ride which tends to stay uncrowded through the day.



We were doing a little browsing in one of the shops in Fantasyland only to realize someone (as in not me) didn't have any cash on her. Which meant a quick stroll back to the ATM at the end of Main Street where I spotted some old pals of mine, hehe. In my old Disneyland days I hardly ever saw Mickey or Minnie Mouse. Now in my new Disneyland days I seem to run into them just about everywhere!
It turns out we went off on our own a lot on day two. Andrea was gung-ho for getting on Space Mountain but if you know anything about me at all it probably wouldn't surprise you that I went off in search of other things to do and at Disneyland I'll always find things something, even if it's in Tomorrowland, my least favorite Land in Disneyland. I've just never found much that appeals to me there. That is until I discovered the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters! They aren't horrible to do on your lonesome.



After more than doubling my previous score on the Astro Blasters I was making my way over to Frontierland when I got side-tracked by quite literally my favorite character to spy on at Disneyland: Peter Pan (and I promise, by the end of this September report you'll understand why). For some reason we kept forgetting to ask at City Hall when and where peter Pan would be out during the day and there he was at the Carnation Plaza Gardens, which are semi out of the way if you normally stick to the Hub and the main Land entrances, along with Captain Hook and barely any other people just messing around. Between scaling fences, climbing trees, endless fascination with spider webs, and a never-ending contest to see who was taller this was definitely a highlight of the day for me. And while I tried to call Andrea over because I knew how badly she wanted to find Peter Pan I never could get a hold of her.



By the time all of that fun was done I didn't get the chance to explore Frontierland as I had originally planned. I may have forgotten to check with City Hall earlier in the day to find out exactly when Peter Pan would be out, but I did remember to find out about one character we wanted to find: Br'er Fox! There had been a minor debacle at a character breakfast we had on a previous trip where I accidentally deleted some photos of us and Br'er Fox so I needed to make up for it. As it turned out Dre was nowhere in sight by the time I got over there but Br'er Fox and Br'er Bear were so I gave her another call so she could make her way over. Luckily she made it in time, I don't think I would have lived to see my birthday if she missed Br'er Fox, Br'er Bear, Captain Hook and Peter Pan while I got to see all four. Nope, pretty sure I wouldn't have.


We hadn't been to Pirate's Lair at Tom Sawyer's Island so that was our next destination. We never made that hard journey across the River's of America when we were at Disneyland back in March and before then the last time I had been there was before the Pirate invasion had happened. I think ... Anyways! It was really a spur of the moment decision. We were walking back towards New Orleans Square and noticed that another raft was just moments away from departure so it was perfect timing really. I spent a lot of time over there simply photographing things since there was so much to see and it's not nearly as crowded as the rest of the Park. I didn't realize that the bone cage from Pirates 2 was back in the Smugler's Cove area ready for photo ops. But I had a lot of fun with that one, although it was reminding me just how tired and worn out I was. How I was lead to that thought I'm not quite sure, but it did. We took the raft back across the Rivers of America not long after that. But we did go play in the Crows Nest, although I believe Andrea has those photos as it appears that I have none!












Since we were in the vicinity as we left the Pirates Lair we hit up Pirates of the Caribbean before using Fast Passes that we collected earlier in the morning for Indiana Jones for where waited for quite literally the longest time of any of our Indy rides: a whole 22 minutes!
I have never been much of a night person to be honest so as the sky started to get darker I made my plans to say goodbye to Andrea and make my way back to the hotel. So I took myself along Main Street, stopping for a quick bite to eat and something to drink. I have never had a cream cheese filled pretzel before, and honestly I had never even though about using cream cheese as a filling but it was so delicious that it wasn't the only one I ended up eating during the week. I had to wait about 5 minutes because they didn't have any ready, but that was alright. I was zoning out as it was. On the way out I did stop and do a quick PhotoPass pose since there was no line.

And that was the end of my second day at Disneyland! Normally day three might have been the end of all the fun, but I still had another three days to go!!