Disney’s California Adventure

A few days ago we bought a copy of the RideMax software that organizes your trip to “The Disney Resort” here in California. The software allows you to use it for 90 days and generate as many ride lists as you wish until you find one that works to your liking. I generated these on Saturday night to make sure if had all the info it needed and that it was as up to date as if could be (it takes into account of broken rides and some parade info).

Sunday morning we headed out around 9:15am and arrived at “the park” around 9:45. After parking and heading to the tram we entered the park at 10:00 on the dot. Our list told us to hit Monsters Inc at 10:05am expecting to wait 8 minutes and riding the ride for 3 minutes with 4 minutes to spend walking to the next ride on the list. We were sceptical at how well that would work but we got in LONG line which moved pretty fast. Well, it moved fast UNTIL we heard over the loud speaker that the ride was broken. 30 or so minutes later the ride was fixed and the line started moving again. In line I noticed that disney took the time to make up some funny signage for the ride. Click the 2 pictures to see them, you may have to zoom in and pan around to see exactly what was written on them:

3 minutes later the ride ride was done and we headed to get the Sorin’ over california fastpass which took 2 minutes, then 4 minutes to walk to get our Grizzly River Run fastpass. “Wait… you just got 2 fastpasses one right after the other? How can that be?” Simple, RideMax takes into concideration that not all of the fast pass rides are connected to one another. With that said, you can sometimes have up to 3 fast passes if you work the system in your favor. After that we headed over to Redwood Creek which was 4 minutes away with 0 wait time and 40 minutes to mess around there.

We walked another 4 minutes to see “It’s Tough to be a Bug!” waited 9 minutes and the show was 8 minutes long. As you can see RideMax organizes the rides so you dont have to walk across the whole whole stinkin park just to ride a ride. Sometimes it has you walk across the park to get a FastPass but then it works you back by rides some rides on the way. The Bugs Life show was awesome, very in your face and made you feel like you were there.

We walked over to Animation and saw the Talk to Crush show. The wait was WAY longer than the paper said and we ended up only doing 1 of the attractions in the “Animation” area. After that we went to Tower of Terror and got our Fast Pass (See, we had 2 different fast passes in hand since the system knew we had to wait 2 hours or so until we could get another fast pass, so it maximized the fast pass idea to the fullest taking time into concideration).

Then we went to Grizzly River Run, Jen stayed behind since she didn’t want to get wet. The kids and I walked over to there while Jen waiting the 5 minutes or so for the fast pass. The water ride was fun, we all got soaked and Caitlin got the worst of it tho.

We passed on seeing the Golden Dreams show and just had lunch instead. Then we went to california Screamin’ to get another fast pass. Then rode the Sun Wheel (we rode the stationary gondolas since I’m a big wuss).

After that we went to Soarin’ over California at which point we had 3 fast passes on us. RideMax knew that some of the rides arnt connect to one another and slipped us through the cracks. The fast pass for tower of Terror was connected but RideMax knew that and had us wait about 5 minutes until the 2 hour window was exceeded so we could get the new fast pass. While waiting on the line for Soarin’ I showed another Dad how the RideMax system worked, he said it was a cool idea but he doubted his wife would have liked it or used it. Soarin’ was an awesome ride and we had a lot of fun on it. We went and saw the Muppets Vision 3D, as good as it was, I (and Jen) thought that the Bugs life one was a bit better.

After Muppets we went to Tower Of Terror. If you havent been on this ride, you havent lived. This ride was amazing. Caitlin chickened out but Chris was all Gung Ho on going on it which made it all the more fun.

After that ride we went to Redwood Creek again and let the kids (and me) run around. Before getting there they were doing the Disney Block Party parade, we caught the last part of it.

After that we walked around and asked someone to take our picture:

Then we went to California Screamin’. Again Chris was Gung Ho about it and Caitlin made it perfectly clear she didnt want anything to do with it. Once we got to the line reality set in and Chris told us he didnt want to go. Jen and I had them step through and wait for us as we rode the ride. Man is that ride smooth and WAY fun. Since were ghetto, we didn’t buy the picture, I just snapped off a few with my digital camera.

After that I chickened out and Jen and the kids went on the Sun Wheel again. I opted out and did some windows shopping.

We brought the night to a close and headed back, but we stopped and checked out the Tortilla Factory and got us a free tortilla. Jen called her mom to check on Jess and to tell her were heading home. I had a great time, and I’m looking forward to the trip to Disneyland on April 1st. California Adventure pictures