{"id":387,"date":"2008-10-30T20:11:56","date_gmt":"2008-10-31T00:11:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/wordpress\/notes_on_disneyland"},"modified":"2013-11-17T22:33:20","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T22:33:20","slug":"notes_on_disneyland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/2008\/10\/notes_on_disneyland.html","title":{"rendered":"Notes on Disneyland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last weekend Sarah and I zipped down to LA to spend two days at Disneyland. Last time I was there, the Indiana Jones ride was brand new. My, how time flies&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People complain about the ticket prices, but honestly, they&#8217;re not bad. A single day ticket is $69, which is comparable to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pgathrills.com\/\">Great America<\/a> at $55, and I think we can all stipulate that Disneyland is easily more than 25.4% cooler than Great America.<\/li>\n<li>On the other hand, the food isn&#8217;t very good. And the Blue Bayou is up to $30 at lunch, and $50 at dinner, which is insane.<\/li>\n<li>The best time of year to go to Disneyland is probably October. The weather&#8217;s cooler (but still warm), rain is still pretty unlikely, and the crowds are smaller.<\/li>\n<li>The best time of day to be at Disneyland is 11pm-midnight.<\/li>\n<li>Sign #1 that I&#8217;m no longer a teenager: It is now impossible to do Disneyland without taking a nap in the early afternoon.<\/li>\n<li>Somehow in all my previous visits, I had missed the Tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki-tiki Room. I&#8217;ll have to ask my folks whether this was intentional.<\/li>\n<li>Sarah: &#8220;This is how Buzz Lightyear works. First, you sit down in the car. Then, you try to shoot all the targets. Then, I kick your ass.&#8221; Final score: Evan &#8211; 14,000, Sarah, 450,000.<\/li>\n<li>Little kids at Disneyland are even cuter than you would think they would be.<\/li>\n<li>The &#8220;wildlife&#8221; that you see during the Mark Twain riverboat ride are looking a little dilapidated. Also, if you want to force the nap issue, there&#8217;s nothing like sitting on the front deck of the riverboat in full sun.<\/li>\n<li>Space Mountain is nearly the same, but the beginning part (the space warp) is a little more 21st century. Well done.<\/li>\n<li>I totally did <em>not<\/em> look at the Eye in the Indiana Jones ride, but we ended up flying through the cursed temple anyway. Man, I hate when people do that.<\/li>\n<li>While we&#8217;re on the subject of Indiana Jones, a Public Service Announcement. Tickling the back of your boyfriend&#8217;s neck when the car is going through the tunnel of creepy-crawlies: NOT FUNNY.<\/li>\n<li>The Haunted Mansion is all tricked out with Nightmare Before Christmas decorations. I like Nightmare Before Christmas, but the Haunted Mansion is definitely less scary.<\/li>\n<li>Pirates of the Caribbean is not improved with multiple Johnny Depps.<\/li>\n<li>Park employee: &#8220;So what ride did you all just come from?&#8221; Sarah: &#8220;The bathroom ride.&#8221; Park employee: &#8220;Ah, that&#8217;s one of our most popular rides.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>California Adventure is&#8230; actually pretty good!<\/li>\n<li>But the main entrance is all decked out with candy corn and &#8230; there was no candy corn for sale. I don&#8217;t get it.<\/li>\n<li>Sign #2 that I&#8217;m no longer a teenager: The California Screamin&#8217; roller coaster looked too damn big and fast to ride. I haven&#8217;t actually been afraid of any roller coaster in over twenty years. This was a sad epiphany for me.<\/li>\n<li>Nonetheless, one can admire California Screamin&#8217; from afar &#8212; it&#8217;s pretty impressive how it can launch people almost immediately up to 55 mph. I hear it&#8217;s some kind of super-advanced maglev system. No word on whether the super-advanced brain-upload + clone backup facilities are up and running too, which frankly is the only way I&#8217;m ever getting on this thing.<\/li>\n<li>Toy Story is better than Buzz Lightyear, and not just because I almost beat Sarah.<\/li>\n<li>You&#8217;re much better off buying wine in Real California than Fake California.<\/li>\n<li>Hidden gem of the park: Turtle Talk with Crush the Turtle.<\/li>\n<li>Characters seen: not too many. Aladdin, Harvest Goofy, and Harvest Minnie (cute). But the best was saved for last: the <a href=\"http:\/\/disney.go.com\/vault\/archives\/villains\/queen\/queen.html\">Wicked Queen<\/a> from Snow White! She&#8217;s no <a href=\"http:\/\/disney.go.com\/vault\/archives\/villains\/maleficent\/maleficent.html\">Maleficent<\/a>, but she&#8217;ll do.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Park employee: &#8220;So what ride did you all just come from?&#8221; Sarah: &#8220;The bathroom ride.&#8221; Park employee: &#8220;Ah, that&#8217;s one of our most popular rides.&#8221; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":764,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions\/764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goer.org\/Journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}