Well, yesterday was kind of rediculously fun.
Anaheim is kind of an odd place in that even if you sleep in until 7am, you still can’t really do anything for another two to three hours… The place really doesn’t ‘open’ until 10am.
Having been to Disney before, I knew pretty much how things were going to work when the ropes dropped, so I entered the park at about 9:30 then piddled around the stores along Main Street USA for about 20 minutes, before casually making my way over to the Tomorrowland entrance. They dropped the rope, the Voice Of God on the P.A. opened the park, and I strolled over to Space Mountain to get a SpeedPass first, then waited about ten minutes for the first run of the day.
When the ride finished, everyone who was there took off for the rest of the park because the speedpass wouldn’t ‘activate’ for another 10 mintues – so I got back into the line and walked pretty much right back onto to loading area for ride number two. And when ride two completed the slowpokes were arriving and making the line quite long – but the speedpass kicked in and I walked back into the loading area for round three.
I pondered going for a fourth ride, but my breakfast was threatening to come back to haunt me if I didn’t stop being stupid. 🙂
From there I wandered over to The Matterhorn, which is right next door and did a quick run on that.
I need to mention here that September first and second are like the best time of the year to visit Disney – because school just went back into session pretty much everywhere. So the park is nothing but strollers – which presents its own challenge – but the lines for the bigger attractions are 10-15 minutes long at worst. 🙂
So continuing my counter-clockwise run of the park I walked past the castle, took a photo of Small World sign (and the sign is exactly the same as the first time I was here – probably on purpose), and walked though toontown real quick (still not impressed with it) before ending up in Frontierland and getting in line for Big Thunder Mountain.
Once satisfied with Big Thunder, it was break time – so I got the customary frozen Lemonade and hopped ontop the Mark Twain riverboat for a sit down and unwind around the lake.
Once onboard I got to talking to the throttleman about his boat, and he seemed really happy to have someone take an interest in his rather gorgeous machine. I love the ‘living’ nature of steam engines as they look and sound like living creatures, and this one was no different.
Break time over, it was back to the rides – next up on my route was Pirates of the Carribean…
My timing was perfect, by the way. See, I have this routine that gets me to this part of the park just as it is starting to get stupidly hot becuse the next few rides are all indoors, dark, air conditioned, and slower paced. So after hearing about how dead men tell no tales – repeatedly – it was around the corner to The Haunted Mansion!
Which was closed. 🙁
From here it is on to the last ride in my loop which is the infamous Indiana Jones ride.
I love this ride for its high-tech wizardry of motion controlled cars, projection, and sound. This is also the last ride on my loop, and from here I headed back to the hotel to rest, get some dinner, and then come back for the evening shows! Which I will detail in the next post.