In a departure from our usual trips to Orlando we decided to go to California instead and stay in Anaheim in order to visit the Disneyland complex of Disneyland and California Adventure parks.
We are staying at the Sheraton Park, Anaheim, which is about 15 minutes walk from the parks and is a nice hotel with a good pool, pool bar and restaurant. They are refurbing the shop at the moment, but it looks like it will be quite big when it opens - serving up snacks, souvenirs and basics (toiletries, etc).
The California parks are mainly filled with locals, unlike Florida that seems to be filled with Brazilian tour groups and loads of Brits and visiting Americans. This means the parks are relatively quiet during the week. These parks are also much smaller than the Florida ones as they are essentially plonked on the middle of Anaheim (a busy suburb of LA).
We started our first day by visiting Disneyland. We had a bit of a wait to get through security, but once through we were quickly into the park and heading to Indiana Jones Adventure along with everyone else it seemed! The aim was to try and do all the rides over the next few days that were either not available in Florida, or would be shutting down imminently. The queue was only about 10 minutes. We knew it would be busy today as it's a weekend, but this was OK. The ride itself is in a jeep around a track and you view various cut scenes of Indy's adventure long with the obligatory bumping and hard braking all narrated by Salah. It's good fun and was enjoyed by all.
We did quite a bit of wandering today. We went to Tom Sawyer's Island which has more of a pirate theme than Orlando.
Big Thunder Mountain was preferred by the rollercoaster fans in our family - more slow inside scenes with atmosphere and exploding dynamite rather than a short intense coaster that is in Florida.
We then rode The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh which was OK, nothing too amazing, good for the little ones and pretty tame. There are some dark moments, as in the stories, but it was done quite well.
We then headed to "its a small world" which is a proper classic Disney ride. Mrs B has heard this was better than the Florida version and it absolutely was. The facade is amazing to look at, with loads of intricate details and a clock that chimes on the quarter hours and has small world figures emerge to play a little song. The ride itself is longer and more detailed, so more of that song! Wasn't even spoilt by a girl throwing up over the side at the end of the ride. It's a bit trippy in there, but hardly terrifying. Perhaps she'd had a bad Churro... Churros, BTW, seem to be the state dish of California and look revolting. No idea what they are made of, but they are a stick of something wrapped in sugar and god knows what else... Will probably have to try one before the holiday is out - just to say I'd tried on...
Then it was on to Mickey's Toon Town where we had a spot of lunch. This is a crazy place of cartoon houses and a mini coaster.
We then wandered round some of the other bits of the park, but the queues were building so we decided to call it a day.
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