4/5 - Doing Two Parks

This was our third and final of 3 days at Disneyland. We'd initially intended to go Wednesday, Friday, Saturday; but due to advice about how busy the parks become on the weekend, we chose to go 3 days straight. This was a good decision because even Friday - this last day - was so much busier than the previous two. It meant that we didn't have as many rides on the top attractions as we'd intended - as the day went on shifting to lesser attractions - but we still had a very good time.

In order to determine what we'd do with our last day we each "voted" for our favourite rides in the 2 parks. Everyone was guaranteed to have at least one go on their favourite ride from each park; with 2nd and 3rd favourites also highly likely to receive a visit. This system worked pretty well. It became clear that with a couple of exceptions everyone's favoured rides were in California Adventure Park (CAP). As such we chose to go to Disneyland first; then transfer across to CAP after doing our favoured Disneyland rides.

Starting in Disneyland we visited that family favourite Indiana Jones first, before moving onto Pirates, and Haunted, perhaps a couple more that I no longer recall. We then shifted over to CAP, and as noted earlier found the crowds much larger than on previous ocassions. For this reason we made much use of the "Fast Pass" system moving between one major attraction and the next. Said attractions include California Screamin' (the favourite ride of the family), Grizzly Mountain, and the Tower of Terror.

As lines grew longer and longer we started shifting our attention to other attractions. We visited Crush (Finding Nemo's surfer turtle) in his tank; and Grant, Zoe, and Maria all got to speak to him. Grant took part in a sidewalk song-and-dance show dedicated to animators. We also watched the Aladdin stageshow, which was of very high quality and particularly enjoyed by the kids.

With dusk descending we said goodbye to Paradise Pier - turning our backs on the lights of the large ferris wheel and rollercoaster, as well as the attenuated high-pitched screams of those doing the loop on California Screamin'. We then made our way down to take in the "Electric Parade" (floats bedecked with hundreds of lights and very striking at night). With that finished and (fortunately) dinner already eaten, we joined the crush of others leaving the park. It was with a feeling of wistfulness over what a great time we had had together and that it would be a long time, if ever, before we 4 returned together, that we said goodbye to the park. The last act for the day was to watch the fireworks from the balcony of our hotel.