Saturday, August 3, 2013
Dad recently celebrated his birthday, and when I asked him what he wanted to do to celebrate he suggested we go to Disneyland. After determining our best option for obtaining the lowest-priced tickets on short notice, we purchased at the AAA closest to Disneyland. Mom didn't want to go, so it was just me and Dad. She drove us there and picked us up when we were done. Today we visited California Adventure. Upon entering the park we paid $7 for a locker. You get a code to unlock it, and you keep the same locker all day. You can open and close it as many times as you want for the day—very nice. We rode Soarin' Over California, Tower of Terror, saw the Aladdin performance, watched part of a parade, ate lunch: chicken burger and cole slaw and sprite for dad, veggie burger and fries and unsweetened iced tea for me, visited Cars Land, rode Radiator Springs Racers, sat in on Turtle Talk, rafted the Grizzly River Run, shared a car on Mickey's Fun Wheel with some other people, ate Mexican food for dinner at Cocina Cucamonga Mexican Grill. I returned to our locker and in the nearby restroom I changed from shorts to long pants. I stashed sun items in the locker and pulled jackets out. We rode The Little Mermaid - Ariel's Undersea Adventure, then rested. We watched a 3-D movie called It's Tough to be a Bug. We used fastpasses to get in to the 10 PM World of Color water and lights show. We were forced to stand for over an hour. The first part was just holding our place, and the second part was the duration of the show. The show was technically a marvelous achievement, but I was very disappointed with the content. Yes, there were many colors, and yes, there was a song which included the phrase "world of color," but it wasn't about color. We didn't learn about color, and they didn't explain what they meant by "a world of color." It was basically short clips of many Disney films—a giant commercial. Near the end, it gets a little cheesy-romancey and then sequentially three Disney animation couples kiss. For me, it was a stark reminder that there are no Disney cartoons with gay men or lesbians, a bit of a slap in the face. At least Fantasmic! made an attempt at telling a story (even if it was a silly one). However, after the show ended from the comments I overheard people around me seemed to love it. Throughout the day and the park I saw signs for Karl Strauss beer, and I kept wondering, "Who is Karl Strauss?" and "Why haven't I heard about him until now?" Later I found a wikipedia entry for him and found that he's a real person with a real history in brewing. The new Cars Land is clearly for young boys similar to how A Bug's Land is clearly for toddlers. The eating options at California Adventure were very disappointing. Almost every eatery is now of the style where you order from a menu board, pay a cashier, wait (sometimes a pretty long time), then pick up your food from a window, seat yourself, then eat. The food is prepared along an assembly line, often with rubber-gloved cast members grabbing fistfuls of food (e.g., french fries) and dropping them in a paper tray. The cast member manual must say something like, "At Cocina Cucamonga, there's no need to be civilized with utensils; just grab and drop!" There were a few restaurants with full table service, but one that we happened upon included wine in the prix fixe menu and Dad didn't want or need the wine, so we skipped it. It's weird to me to see alcohol inside a Disney park. I find it ironic that California Adventure originally was about bringing all the best things about California together, but California dining is usually much better than the dining in the park. There are a few places where you can buy healthy foods, but it's mostly fruit or vegetable snacks, not meals. Ending the day with World of Color was unfortunate. I think I'd rather not do that again. And aside from the eating experiences the rest of the day was pretty good.