Thursday, July 22, 2010

Disneyland Part 1

Thursday, July 22, 2010
A whole two season late as usual in keeping with my late blogging style because I was busy getting straight A's and gaming whatever free time I had away hurhur. Atop of working two jobs.

So I went to Disneyland on my birthday last December because they had this 'free pass on your birthdays' promotion going on which has sadly been discontinued starting this year :C Guess me and 2nd sis were lucky enough to have the opportunity to take advantage of it then. Our birthdays were a week apart so she went to Disneyland twice. First on her birthday with Levin and the second time with me and the family although she had to pay for her second ticket. It rained on her birthday HAHA so she didn't get to see much and was soaking wet the whole time hence the determination to go a second time XD


Disneyland is located in Anaheim which is about an hour drive away from my place. Ha I love Pasadena okay cuz its like only an hour away from every attraction in SoCal :D



To get to the theme park, you have to take a 3 minute (or less) tram ride before reaching the entrance shown in the first pic.

My special Happy Birthday badge so people can yell 'Happy Birthday' to me when they see it haha.


Srsly, they do.

Crappy pic btw cuz I forgot to take one on the actual day and I have no digicam atm except my lousy BB camera T.T

A map of the whole theme park for my own reference.





Pretty pretty buildings along Main Street.



It was around Christmas time then. imo, theme parks are best visited during the winter cuz it has the nicest decor!




















I just realized I never went into any of the buildings :\ Too many things to see and get sidetracked with sigh.

Guess who I saw first!!!!!


PLUTO!!!! 

SO CUTE SO CUTE SO CUTE OMG!!!! Eh, typing his name is so weird okay. It looks and sounds funny when I try saying it a few times and the more I say it the less it looks like a word :|



But anyways! I was actually queing up for a turn to take a pic with him before I saw MICKEY MOUSE and immediately abandoned queue which was total bad foresight cuz barely 2 minutes has passed did MICKEY DECIDE TO LEAVE. And in the process of leaving, TOTALLY SNUBBED ME IN FAVOR FOR SOME KID BEHIND ME. Ok fine, so you'd said your hello to the kid, which I don't mind but then you walked away. Disregarding me.

"......."

"..............."

"..........................."


HELLO ITS MY BIRTHDAY OK DID YOU NOT SEE MY BIRTHDAY BADGE ROAR!!!!

Needless to say, I was very very very sour after that hmph *moody

2nd sis told me that on her birthday, a staff announced that Mickey could not come out because he had just gotten a new tux (he actually did btw, a nice green shiny one but that is beside the point) and couldn't afford to get it wet WTEFF.

The excuses!!!!!!!!!!

I hereby bump Donald up to first place on my fav. list. He is a duck so rain and stuff should be of no problem to him.

Spotted Goofy but he too ran off mumbling about some parade thingy....



Minutes later, we heard trumpets and drums and singing and lo and behold its the opening parade!



The whole classic Disney cast :) And no, that is not Mickey's new tux obviously. 




Alice! 




And the Mad Hatter. The non-Johnny Depp version and slightly less crazier lol. oh, HELLO CHIP!

Of course I shimmied and slinked my way through the crowd (ha, being tall and somewhat skinny has its perks) and took snippets of videos:


I didn't film the whole thing because I believe that if you watch something through your cam, you won't remember them much later. Not to mention its less enjoyable than just kicking back and watching the whole show through your own eyes.



I will not be swayed by the cuteness that is Mickey *determined. I am still not over the whole snubbed affair ok.


Visited Fantasyland next!


Inside that building is the It's a Small World ride.









So many rides here its impossible to ride all so we picked the more popular ones.

Like Storybook Land.


Ok no lah we picked this first simply cuz it was the first ride we saw and daddy was eager to sit on a less heart attack inducing ride haha. The rest of us were personally eager to go on to Space Mountain and Splash Mountain first. But daddy wins :C

Going into Monstro the Whale's mouth!






Its like sailing through a mini village!











Everything is so pretty and relaxing~♪



Aladdin's Palace




idk. Black Pearl? Treasure Island? Peter Pan? Sorry, I am not very good with Disney films besides Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio, Little Mermaid, Cinderella, Lion King and Sleeping Beauty.







Happy :)

So I wanted to visit Space Mountain next but noooo, the sisters insist we ride the Mad Tea Party so spinning tea cups it is.


While waiting or turn, conspired with my sisters to snag the pink teacup no matter what the circumstances. No kid shall take my teacup away from me idc lalalala.



Mission accomplished!

Yes we ran. like mad. jumping over little girls muahahahaha but its worth it *hums merrily



The ride is pretty fun and reminds me of one of my very first amusement park ride in Hawaii where instead of a teacup its a giant strawberry instead. Oh and to make the cup itself spin, you spin the disk in the middle. But I would advise against it cuz it was quite dizzying but maybe its cuz I'm getting old :C



I HATE THIS CAT. When I was young, I found it mad horrifying with its constant creepyass smile. Alice in Wonderland is imo a downright creepy cartoon even until today. Its random and makes no sense whatsoever and is like a meaningless nightmare that has no end in sight, seemingly set to go on forever and ever and ever... *shudders



Finally, a fast ride! :D



Daddy chickened out so that left me, Diane, Rena and mummy. Halfway in the line, she chickened out to and wanted out but HAHA THERE WAS NO EXIT and so she had no choice but to stay. Just right before the ride there was an exit though but by then her resolve has been hardened into steel and she stayed :P

It wasn't really that fast of a ride and would be considered 'tame' compared to others. But the sharp turns are still something to scream about :)

It's A Small World is also here in Fantasyland but we decided to leave that for the night since 2nd sis suggested its prettier then.



Sleeping Beauty's Castle

Of course, taking pictures in front of this iconic castle is a must!


Rena, Me and Diane




The parents :D




Mummy and I

As for 2nd sis, she was currently with the boyfriend in the other themepark (Disney's California Adventure Park) as they bought the park hopper tickets so they could join us for the fireworks later. Yes, they are two theme parks. The one we are in is the original Disneyland and the other is mainly filled with rides, rides and more rides. Oh and shows. The magic however, is in this theme park here :)


And now we're off to Adventureland!


Here you'll find attractions such as Indiana Jones Adventure, Jungle Cruise and Tarzan's Treehouse.



Apart from those are also random shows like The Enchanted Tiki Room, Aladdin etc.



Obviously, the Indiana Jones Adventure is the ride you do not want to miss out here. Unfortunately, that also means its the ride in the most demand which means super long queues. Which brings me to the topic of Fast Pass. If I'm not mistaken, all rides have fast passes where you get a ticket stating the time frame you're supposed to come back and thus needn't stand in line but get to happily skip past the long line of people like some VIP *glee

But! Sometimes there are also lines for Fast Passes :C I like what Cartman from South Park said about Fast Passes: "So you stand in line to get a ticket to stand in line later" wteff so ironically true. However, its still worth it because the waiting time does get cut down considerably.


In case you're wondering how its possible if everyone were to get fast passes, the catch is you can only hold onto one fast pass at a time. Only after you've returned your fast pass to the machine (hence, don't throw your fast pass away like what I almost did ah) can you get another fast pass for another ride. Plus there are different time frames on it so lets say its 1pm now and your pass says '2-3pm', it means you can only come back between that time and the hour from now you are free to do whatever you like.

Like queuing in line for a less popular ride lol.

Which is exactly what we did. We decided to go for the Jungle Cruise since it was still early in the morning and the line was pretty short still :)


So yeah its another boat ride along an artificial but very realistic looking jungle.











I actually love cruises like this. I have a soft spot for the wild and anything remotely adventurous. Yes I know you cannot tell that seeing me on a regular day where I look like I spend my days in nail parlors or doing some equally vapid activities but I am NOT okay!

I love love love jungle trekking, mountain climbing, fishing, hiking and all those 'boring' sweat inducing activities hor but sadly none of my friends seem to share the same interests as me. Except one. But he is all the way in Russia atm T.T






Lion King. I swear every time I see a lion the first thought is Lion King which goes to show just how much influence Disney has.



HAHAHAHA sucks to be them.

Anyways, remember what I said about liking the wild? What I like even better is the 'fake' wild like this where it looks damn real but still oh so safe so I would never find myself in a situation like the above.

Or below:


idk but it looks like the natives are cooking some innocent helpless adventurer in a pot near their huts.



But I still wouldn't mind doing the real thing 'kay. I mean taking a real jungle cruise, not getting kidnapped and cooked by natives wteff.

Next up was Tarzan's Treehouse:


So many steps till can die but I once conquered the Great Wall of China, so this should be nothing really.



View from above. And this is only like the first or second level.



Once upon a time....



Deep in the jungle there lived a man called Tarzan and his girlfriend Jane.



Tarzan's mother was this uhm orang utan? Gorilla? Should be Orang Utan leh seeing the fur color...

One day....


A cheetah broke into their treehouse (although how could he leap all the way up into the trees is beyond me but I digress..) ROAR! RAWR!

And....

Ok I shut up obviously I have no idea how the story goes at all (failing memory *gasp) and all I remembered is Tarzan is like Mowgli only raised by gorillas orang utans instead of wolves and Jane is this proper British lady who falls in love with him goodness knows why. Fairy tales never makes sense.

In the real world, love doesn't always conquer all nor bridges all kinds of gaps and this is Jane irl days after meeting Tarzan....


*cackles*

Anyways, I read somewhere that Disney changed the original story (like what they did for all their films) and in the original story, Jane married the other guy because of money issue and somehow by miracles of all miracles Tarzan is in actual fact a long lost super rich heir who owns a friggin mansion and Jane. YES, you heard me, HE OWNS JANE TOO. Because apparently she comes as a bonus with the inheritance wth. So he found out all these in the end but chose to ignore it because he thought Jane really loved the other guy and thus he went back to living in the jungle alone again.

And here you thought Disney is kua zhang enough already.







That is me screaming into a megaphone like apparatus. I forgot what it does already. This is why I shouldn't put off blogging until half a year later D:








Beside them is a small cooking pit where you can step on a pedal to activate a flurry of cooking movements like banging pots and rising steam and glowing fires.

Aih, best explained with video I guess:


Haha daddy looks super amused by it lol. He kept pressing and showing it to each one of us as we passed him hahaha.



Asian pose ftw.

After this, it was time for our Indiana Jones Adventure ride.



Some pics of the interior leading up to the ride itself:







Or you could end up like this fellow. I didn't step on them btw. Don't want to try ah who knows later something happen. I am one of those better safe than sorry people hurhur.











Lost relic!



No pics of the ride itself cuz its dark and bumpy I didn't want to lose my camera ^^ There was one super scary part where there's a hologram wall or was it an incoming boulder and you're sent hurtling into it at high speed to which I immediately closed my eyes to when the wall/boulder refuse to disappear even at the very last few seconds!!!

Yeah, my illogical solution to all fears: if you close your eyes, things somehow would not happen wteff. I must have been an ostrich in my past life hahahaha.

Since this was also our last attraction for this place, I shall end this post here and continue the rest in another post another day :)

1 comment:

A and W said...

Nice pictures. It make us more eager to go in Disneyland. /:)