The Terrible Catsafterme

Brad's Musings and Meanderings

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"Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" - Bluto, "Animal House"

dis19Any day at one of the Disney parks is bound to be a good one and my visit to Disneyland on Wednesday, October 8, 2008 was no exception. Trying to shed the bad memory of the night before when I missed meeting David Garrison at the Pantages Theatre, I dove headlong into another great day with my friends at the Happiest Place on Earth. Not only were we getting set to visit both California Adventure and Disneyland, I was getting ready to actually enter the doors of the infamous Club 33!

Big Jimmy & Kris and Jimmy’s girlfriend Ellen came over to Jimmy’s house to meet us and we left from there, with just enough time to get to the gates of California Adventure at 10am. There we met up with my friends David Rodriguez and Rick Greene. Rick was holding the complimentary entrance passes that came along with our reservations for Club 33. Rick had also brought me a batch of CDs that he had burned for me. Obviously the visit to this restaurant was going to be the highlight of the day,  but we still had the rest of the day to enjoy the park.

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Jimmy and Ellen at California Adventure

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Kris, David, Big Jimmy, and Rick ready for our day of excitement

Cassidy was meeting us as well, but had gotten stuck in traffic and was running a bit behind schedule, so the seven of us entered the California Adventure park first and headed back to the newest ride of the park, the Toy Story Midway Mania!. This is one of the coolest new rides to come along in a while. Your car moves from room to room and places you in front of a screen where you see 3-D images of various ‘midway’ games (smash the plate, pop the balloon, etc.). You toss you weapon (darts, rings, pies, whatever…) by pulling a string attached to the shooter in your car. The 3-D effects are amazing as whatever you are shooting makes contact with your target. It’s difficult to explain, but I loved it. I did fairly well too, scoring 108,000 to Rick’s 118,000 – but he was a more experienced shooter.

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Rick, Mr. Potato Head, and me (in that specific order) in line for Midway Mania

After we got out of this ride, Cassidy called and said she had arrived, so I went out front to meet her and give her the ticket to get in. We went back and the two of us got in line for California Screamin’, the rollercoaster that some of the others had gotten in line for already.

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Cassidy and me ready to board California Screamin’

We headed up to the front of the park to get on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror as the final ride at California Adventure.  Bob showed up, having had to work for a bit that morning, while we were on the ride. I immediately made my plea that he take me back to scout for David Garrison at the Pantages after Disneyland, but he politely (well…sort-of politely) declined. By this time it was 1:00, so we headed over to the Disneyland park, which is just a brief walk from California Adventure.

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Ominous under the tower…once again

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Droppin’ on the Tower of Terror. David is particularly mortified.

Upon entering the park, I did something that I don’t think I had ever done before: took the horse-drawn trolley from the entrance, up Main Street, to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.  Unfortunately, this made me miss out on holding Jimmy’s hand in front of the Walt and Mickey statues…as tradition usually dictates. We didn’t have a whole lot of time to spare before our 1:45 reservation at Club 33, but we had just enough time to get a ride-through of one of my favorite classic standards The Pirates of the Caribbean. I naturally grabbed my traditional shot of the jailed pirates.

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Bob shows up and we’re ready to enter Disneyland

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Trolley to the Castle

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The Wileys celebrate on Main Street

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My favorite Pirates

From 1:45 to 4pm, we spent the afternoon within the walls of Club 33. As this is a ‘dream come true’ of its own, my full coverage of this event can be found here.

While we were in the New Orleans Square area, we caught the Haunted Mansion, which was dressed up for the Halloween/Christmas season as Haunted Mansion Holiday. I hadn’t seen this version of the ride since I had been there in October 2005. After we finished up here, we grabbed a Fastpass for Splash Mountain and then headed over to Tomorrowland for a ride on Space Mountain.

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Outside Haunted Mansion Holiday…the first time of the day

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I wonder what Bob did to get these beads in New Orleans Square

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Space Mountain thrills. Cas struggles to get comfortable with careening through space.

Cassidy took off after our Space Mountain ride and the rest of us lined up for the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. This is the ride that opened nine years after the closing of the original Submarine Voyage in 1998 (akin to what I remember as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage at Walt Disney World). Although the wait was about an hour and I was never really all that impressed by any of the Submarine rides, I’m glad I got to see this and it brought back memories from my early visits to Disney World.

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In Nemo’s yellow submarine…and our friends are all aboard

Rick took off after we got off this ride, passing off the CDs that he had brought for me to Kris to carry in her backpack. Those of us who remained wandered into Fantasyland to ride the Matterhorn Bobsleds. It was important that I got to ride this attraction and get a picture in front of it since we had seen the real Matterhorn mountain in Switzerland earlier that year.

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The other Matterhorn

After the ride, we went to Splash Mountain to exercise our Fastpass entry, but unfortunately after getting all the way through the line, ready to get on the ride, it broke down and we had to exit. We grabbed one more ride-through of the Haunted Mansion Holiday and called it a night. I snapped a couple photos inside, and of course got yelled at over the loudspeaker. It just wouldn’t be a day if I didn’t get yelled at at Disney for taking pictures somewhere.

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David and me stuck in Pooh’s honey

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The coffin dressed up for Christmas

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Jack Skellington and Zero replace the caretaker and his pooch outside the Haunted Mansion graveyard

We did just a bit of shopping where I picked up the obligatory magnet and we headed back to the parking garage. I transferred my luggage from Jimmy’s car to Bob’s. It had been a long exhausting day. Fortunately, traffic wasn’t too horrendous for once and we made in back to Bob’s place in San Bernardino in about an hour, arriving at 10pm. This time he decided to open the gate himself…recalling the events of our last gate incident.

My California trip will continue…

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