Vacation Part II: California Adventure

Ok, so California Adventure is amazing!

We LOVED it!  

The park is split up into 7 different areas:

Hollywood Blvd.

A Bugs World

Carsland

Pacific Wharf

Paradise Pier

Grizzly Peak

and

Condor Flats

When you first enter the park, you step into a 1920s era Main Street-type square.  SO darling.  

At times a trolley carrying a Newsies-type musical act stopped in the square and performed a 3-part musical.  Mickey even joined them in an act!  And an old-fashioned car carrying a jazzy singer and her crew road through doing their thing, too.  Here are the "Newsies" singers:

Before I get crazy talking about Carsland (our favorite spot), I'll show you around the other parts. 

Here's Hollywood Land:

There's a screen at the end of this road that was very Truman Show-like

We didn't eat here, but I thought that was clever!

Monsters University!  

This place was such a cool (read: awesome and air-conditioned) break from the rides. It was a large indoor courtyard with these huge screens all the way around, playing scenes from tons of Disney movies.  Each screen would be a different part of the scene, and some of the screens would show the cartoon actually being drawn or something like that.  We jut sat in here for a good thirty minutes one day, watching the movies.  A good place to take a load off!

Tower of Terror...

 

Tower of Terror!  

Nervous to get on the elevator!

They capture the moment right before the first drop--hilarious!

 Pacific Wharf is set up like the San Francisco Bay area.
They have a Ghiradelli shop and some other restaurants.  No rides there.  There was a bakery that made this huge Sourdough bread loafs shaped like a Mickey Mouse head.  You could take a tour of the bakery, but we didn't get around to it.  Bummer!
But the smells were fabulous.  

The only pics we got from this area were these silly ones...

I'm a catch!  ;-)

We didn't get any pictures of A Bug's Land or Condor Flats. A Bug's Land was so cute!  You really do feel like you're as small as a little bug by the way they built the structures really tall.  There was a walk through tunnel that looked like it was built out of a big cereal box deconstructed.  There was a ferris wheel type ride, and the cars you sit in were things like, an animal crackers box and a box of raisins, etc. Pretty clever!  

Here's a picture from the Disney website

 Condor Flats is like an airplane/flight kind of area.  This is where you can ride Soarin' Over California, which was great!  It's a simulated parasailing ride in front of an Imax screen.
It really feels like you're riding over the state of California. 

You smell the pine when you go over the forest and oranges when you fly over the groves!

Cool.

Paradise Pier was awesome.  It has a boardwalk-style feel.  There's a roller coaster called Screamin' California that Andy loved.  I liked it... to a point.  You'll see in the pics that I definitely got a little nauseas towards the end.  Ha!

ok, this is fun but I'm ready for it to be over...

This is so embarrassing that I can't help but laugh at myself!
#nauseas

 In the evening, there is an amazing water and light show called World of Color.  The water and colorful lights were set to music and just so beautiful.  Here's a scene from Brave being displayed ONTO water!  Crazy!

I love the Mickey ears in the foreground.

Grizzly Peak had an outdoor hiking challenge thing based upon the little boy from Up and his Wilderness Explorer camp and a water ride we went on that was like white water rafting...

 

 

On the Grizzly River Run

Andy got soaked!

 And now onto Carsland!
Disney did such an awesome job recreating Radiator Springs... at one point we questioned whether or not Cars was a real movie or Pixar!  The road that you walk on is painted like Route 66, like you're walking on the highway, and every single shop that's in Radiator Springs is at the park and has something interactive.  Here are some pictures...

 
 

 Everything looked so real!


  Mater!  Always the gentleman.

 This fun sign is at the entrance of Carsland.  Throughout Disney and California Adventure, they have "castmembers" (what Disney calls their employees) staged at different Kodak moment places to take professional pictures.  All the pictures you take during your stay are scanned onto a card that you can then go online and plug in the card number and see all your pics!  Obviously, the prices are high for prints, but it's still fun!  The awesome thing is, though, you can hand your iPhone to the photographer, and they also kindly snap a pic with that, too!

And there you have our great day at California Adventure!  Thanks for reading.  I have one more post to go with more pictures.