After tearfully farewelling the Mays and wending our sombre way down the Santa Ana Freeway, we arrived at Disney California Adventure around late morning.  As mentioned in the Disneyland post, we spent three days flitting between the parks, but I’ve put all the Disney California pics in this one post.  And just saying, Disney California Adventure is FUN FUN FUN.  Another thing we appreciated about the two Disney parks was that their Halloween celebrations were totally dialed down compared with Universal Studios.  In fact, Disney California Adventure didn’t have anything Halloween at all.

Radiator Springs.  Oh happy day. 🙂

It was sincerely cool.  We’d heard people opine that Cars Land wasn’t particularly impressive, but we LOVED it, especially the Radiator Springs Racers.  TOO MUCH FUN.  The lines for the Racers were always super long, so we opted to utilise the the single rider lane.  Radiator Springs Racers are are series of cars each with two rows of four seats.  Single riders are used to fill up the spare seats. It just meant that you weren’t always able to ride as a family.  But after experiencing the first enormous wait in the main line, we felt that cutting the wait time in half (or more) was worth it.  It worked extremely well for us.  So there’s your tip of the day; when visiting any of the Disney parks, try the single rider line.

We had lunch at Flo’s – how fun is that!!

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The boys met up with Lightning at the Cosy Cone Motel.

We spent a goodly amount of time in Radiator Springs.  We’re Cars fans from way back.

But there was more to see and do than just Cars Land!

This is another ride we visited several times.  Such fun.

Not only did we get beautifully saturated on a hot day, but we also got to chat with our fellow adventurers.  These two guys were visiting from Utah.

Nate wasn’t big on the California Screamin’ rollercoaster, so he and I circled many a time on the merry-go-round that sat at the foot of the rollercoaster entrance.

The rest of the kids and John, however, couldn’t get enough of the California Screamin’.  Andy informs me he went on it seven times.

After which they were pretty familiar with where the camera was.

I couldn’t convince Nate that the California Screamin’ would be fun, but I did eventually talk him into Goofy’s Fly School, which is a little smaller.  Just quietly, I think it was worse than California Screamin’ would have been.  (Dad, it was like the Mad Mouse.)

He also got to meet Buzz while he was waiting.  Nathan confided to me that while the hug was great, Buzz’s plastic armor was actually a little uncomfortable. 🙂

Every day, in both parks, there was a parade of all the characters that wound through the main thoroughfares.

Meeting Flick in ‘A Bugs Land’.

In spite of it’s predictable storyline, I like Planes. Consequently, I really enjoyed Condor Flats.  And if you ever get there, the ‘Soaring Over California’ ride is something really unique.  We decided it was one of our favourites.  Just make sure you get a Fastpass early.

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We made sure we got a Fastpass for Disney’s World of Colour, and I’m so glad we did – it was truly spectacular.  We would definitely recommend going if you can.  While we were waiting for the show to start, we downloaded the app to play ‘Simon’ with the ferris wheel.  Who knew you could do that?  And if you won the round, you could choose the next colour pattern for the whole crowd.  We didn’t win, but it was a brilliant way to pass the time.

Okay, Disney’s World of Colour.  It was beautiful.  It was positioned on the lake in front of Paradise Pier, and it was a combination of music, and water, and fireworks, and fire, and colour, and shapes, and sound, and imagination.  Scenes from Disney films were projected onto screens made purely of water mist.  It was a magical effect and so beautiful.  The fountains of the Bellagio in Las Vegas, while still very impressive, had nothing on this.  Highly, highly recommended.  We saw this on our last night at the Disney parks.  We stayed at Disney California Adventure until midnight, and then headed for the Disney Store outside the gate for some late night shopping.  By this stage, John and the two younger boys were dropping on their feet, so they made their way to the car, whereupon they promptly fell asleep.  We eventually headed home at about 1am in the morning.  We totally enjoyed our three days at Disney.