Tinkerblue

Monday December 13th

Last couple of hours at Disney before we board our flight to Australia.

Holiday Traditions at Disneyland

 

Sunday was our Disneyland day. Our day for the big rides, Matterhorn, Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, Thunder Mountain, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean and Splash Mountain, plus a few of the not so big rides.  

 

The highlight of the day for me was seeing all the Christmas decorations and overlays.  It’s a Small World and the Haunted Mansion; both shut down for a month or so before US Thanksgiving and are given a complete makeover for the holidays. I really like the Haunted Mansion Holiday theming based on The Nightmare Before Christmas.

 

It's a Small World is far from my favourite ride. It has got to be one of the most annoying.  But...I do like all the Christmas additions and the lights. The lights are stunning.  

 

 

 

Normally Hubby and I don't watch the parades, we take advantage of the shorter queues on the rides, but we did watch the Christmas Fantasy Parade.  Mainly because I had been given some premium viewing vouchers. Which meant we didn't have to stake out a spot on the curb hours in advance.  

 

 Santa's Reindeer Roundup. Yep all the reindeer are hanging out at Disneyland, having a rest before the big night.

 

Disney's World of Color

 photo by C Kim Miles

That is not a typing error, in the US they don't use the u in colour.  The World of Color is a new attraction at California Adventure.  It's not even a year old and it's very popular. While we were at Disney, there were two showings a night.  It was quite the palaver to get tickets.  

 

 photo by C Kim Miles

• join the line up to get into California Adventure.  
• once they let you into the park, head over to join the fast pass queue
• give the cast member your park passes and they will give you the equal number of fast passes
• make sure they give you back your park passes as well as the fast passes.  Make sure you don't lose the either as they can't be replaced.
• about an hour before the show, join the queue at your viewing area.

 

 

 photo by C Kim Miles

We were late getting to our viewing area, so we were in the best of spots. We missed some of the low stuff, and we were slightly off to one side.  Even so, it was awesome.  Well worth seeing.  

 

 photo by C Kim Miles

Disney's official description is:  The World of Color nighttime water spectacular weaves water, color, fire and light into a kaleidoscope of fantasy and imagination. More than 1,000 jets of water form incredible shapes in time to the music as Disney characters come to life on a shimmering veil of mist.

I didn't get many/any photos, my camera battery died, and I don't have a spare.  All 4 photos above were taken by C Kim Miles.

World's Best Fries

or pretty close to it. Although we spent the day in California Adventure we hopped over to Disneyland to have dinner at New Orleans Cafe. It was so good. We all ate too much and had to be rolled down main street afterwards.

 

 excuse the photo, we just discovered a finger print on my camera lens, so everything is out of focus!

Pommes Frites - Traditional French-fried potatoes tossed with Parmesan cheese, garlic and parsley, served with a Cajun spice remoulade. Seriously the best fries I can remember eating.  Can we make these at home? Probably but I bet they don't taste as good.  Hubby and I shared a basket, Kim and Joanna shared a basket.  We could have skipped everything else and just had a basket of Pommes Frites each. Although that wouldn't have been very healthy.  Who am I kidding? Not one part of this meal was remotely healthy.  

We did other dishes besides the Pommes Frites.  Hubby and I split a bowl of Gumbo - A rich, flavorful stew with chicken, andouille sausage and tasso ham, served with Cajun-style "dirty rice":

 

 

And a blackened chicken caeser salad - Romaine Hearts tossed in a traditional Caesar Dressing topped with Blackened Chicken and shaved Grana Padano Cheese:

 

 

And to finish it all off?  Mickey shaped Beignets - Topped with Powdered Sugar served with Raspberry Coulis and vanilla Bean Creme Anglaise.  

 

 

And this photo just makes me laugh. Hubby looks guilty about something. Or maybe it's just embarrassment at his rather girly purse.

 

California Adventure or Joanna Thinks We're Going to Die!

We did not have a plan for the day. We walked down to the parks and saw the long line up at Disneyland, so headed into California Adventure instead.  Kim, Joanna and Deka had never been to California Adventure, and it's been a few years since Hubby and I were there.

 

The big rides/shows at CA are the World of Colour and Toy Story Mania. We've seen neither.  At Disney World the queues for Toy Story Mania have always been to long.  So we headed right to Toy Story Mania at rope drop and we still ended up in a 45 minute lineup.  It was worth it.  We like interactive games, even if hubby always beats me. My accuracy is better, but his score is higher, how does that work?

 

 

Our day at our California Adventure consisted mostly of Joanna yelling OMG, We're going to die, Is thing going to flip or just plain screaming.  She wasn't very keen on the ferris wheel with moving baskets or on the Tower of Terror (a random, dropping elevator ride).  I don't know what was more fun. The rides or listening to Joanna.

 

 

 

I particularly like the above photo. Hubby, Kim and I look like we're just hanging out, Deka is making sure her hair is perfect and Joanna is hanging on for dear life!

 

I won't bore you with all the details but we managed to get round most of the rides in CA - Toy Story Mania, Mickey's Fun Wheel, Silly Symphony Swings, Golden Zephyr, Soarin', Monsters Inc, Tower of Terror and we managed to fit in the Aladdin show, lunch and some shopping.  We skipped Grizzly River Rapids 'cause it was too bloody cold for a water ride.    Oh and hubby and Kim met a famous (?) pilot.  I'm not sure we ever knew Minnie Mouse is a pilot.

 

 

 

Disneyland Holiday Treats

When we originally booked our flights home we had a 6 hour layover in LA.  We asked the airline to change our Vancouver to LA flight to the first flight of the day.  Our plane would land in LA at 9am and our flight out to Sydney was at 11pm.  We planned to get the shuttle bus out to and spend the day at Disneyland. Then we'd be exhausted and sleep on the flight.  

 

Then friends decided to come with us, and we all thought why go for the day, why not go for the weekend.  Changing our Vancouver to LA flight was a pain, we're flying on points. There are only limited points seats available.  At one stage hubby was on one flight and I was on another. But eventually we managed to get the same flight on Friday morning.  

 

Our friends changed their plans to go Thursday after work.  Neither hubby or I wanted to deal with changing our flights again, so we stayed with the Friday morning flight.  After arriving in LA around midday, and doing some hubby style shopping we had dinner at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney.  I had a $25.00 gift certificate that I'd bought at restuarants.com for $2.00.  Afterwards we wandered around Downtown Disney oohing and aahing at the holiday treats. We didn't try any, I don't think either of us could handle the sugar coma, but we take lots of photos.  

Disney's Tangled

Yep it's a fairy tale, yes it's a Disney movie, yes it's animated, yes it's a family movie.  Yes I went to see it. Tangled is Disney's reinterpretation of Rapunzel.

 

I admit I couldn't remember much of the story other than, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your golden hair." Obviously there was more to it than that, or the movie wouldn't be very long. So I googled it. The original Brothers Grimm fairy tale is quite a bit different from Disney's Tangled. But I don't care. Tangled was so worth it. It was hilarious.  

 

I'm not telling you about the movie, you can see it yourself or read about it here. I will tell you my favourite character was not Rapunzel or Flynn or any of the "human" characters. It was Pascal, the chameleon, even if I initially thought he was a frog. 

 

Thanks for inviting me Andrea (and Noah, Logan and Sean), it was a good night out.

 

Pretty as a Princess

Now, I'm on a roll.  Playing catch up but still on a roll. Initially this was supposed to be a February birthday present, but it wasn't finished in time.  So it became my March project for Christmas in Progress.  It wasn't done for March either.  But it's done now. So one Christmas present is done.

Christmas 2007 my in laws, sister in law, neice, hubby and I went to Disneyworld for Christmas.  It was, then, 3 year old Taylor's first trip to Disneyworld.  It's an album of a selection of photos and memories to commemorate her first trip.

(yep, that's hubby wearing the princess tiara and wand.  He was a good sport!)

The album I got with a coupon at Michaels, and I had a lot of the papers and stickers already.  Not entirely sure why I have so many princess stickers and papers.  I put it together in about 3 hours while catching up on some Ellen episodes.  The pages are very simple, but hopefully it will help Miss T remember her first Disney trip.

Excuse the crappy photos, I couldn't get any good light.

Remember Me?

A easy, fun read by Sophie Kinsella.  I read it in two days.  Not annoying like the Shopaholic series.

I took a break!  Unintended and far too long. So a quick catch up might be in order.

Hubby and I went home to Australia.  For three very short but fulfilling weeks.  Hubby's parents came with us.  We did quite a bit in the 3 weeks, starting with a day at Disneyland.

Flights from LA to Australia and the South Pacific normally leave late, around 10pm.  Because of customs etc the airlines always have us layover in LA for 4-5 hours.  There is nothing worse than spending 5 hours in LA airport. So we always fly to LA the first flight of the day (or the night before), spend the day at Disneyland, then hopefully sleep on the 18 hour flight home.  Chris and Andrea, friends from Vancouver, were able to join us as well.  We had an really fun time.  Who says adults without kids can't go to Disneyland?

The small animal with us is Miga.  She is one of the Vancouver 2010 mascots, and she had quite the travels with us.

Can you enjoy Disneyland when you're only there one day?  Sure you can.  We spent the morning at California Adventure - We all enjoyed Soarin', I loved Tower of Terror - not sure about everyone else, we got soaked on Grizzly River Rapids, and had a good laugh at the 3D movie, It's a Bugs Life. I took a time out to do some shopping (I needed Princess Tater, Luke Frywalker and Yam Solo potato heads for my brother), while everyone else continued with the rides).

We headed over to Disneyland around 1pm.  We'd all been to Disneyland before at various times in our lives, so we set out for some favourites.  Space Mountain, Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain, It's a Small World, Buzz Lightyear...

We also managed to squeeze in lunch at Blue Bayou.  It's the restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.  It's a little on the expensive side, the food was okay to good, the atmosphere was good, and it's definately worth one visit.

 

Yes, My Christmas Decorations are still up.

And they will stay up until this weekend.  Christmas is my favourite time of year, and I like to make it last as long as possible.   Saturday night, January 5th is the  12th night, and Sunday, January 6th is Epiphany or 3 Kings Day.  The day the 3 wise men arrived bringing gifts for the Baby Jesus.

So some time this weekend, I'll give in and take the decorations down, and box them up for another year.  This year because we went away for Christmas, I did limit the number of decorations I dug out of the crawl space.  Hubby didn't want to put any decorations up at all. Bah Humbug!

Our little 2 foot tree:

One of the 1500 Christmas trees at Disney World:

My collection of Nativities.

I added a new one this year, from Equador, courtesy of Risa.  It's the tiniest one I have.  Don't worry Mary is not missing, she is having a wee nap, she had a splitting headache.  She is recoverying nicely with the help of some glue, and should be back soon.

The Nativity at Disney World:

Our Christmas lights, LED of course

Lights on the castle at Disney World.  Hubby told me not to get any ideas.

When do you take your decorations down?