Day 3 – First day at California Adventure

The last time we were here, this park didn’t even exist so it was completely new to everyone. It is smaller than Disneyland but still a lot of fun.

My favorite ride was Soaring over California. It was interesting to see different areas of California that those of us who come for the attractions don’t see. It also gave me the idea of having Margaret look-up Amelia Earhart for one of her assignments. For Mommy and Philip it was the California Screamin roller coaster.

One of the cool thing that happened was the Phineus and Ferb Dance Party. It was the costumed characters plus 4 teenage girls dressed as Fireside Girls doing a dance party with music from the show. The kids loved it and got to go out and dance with the characters.

The momentarily scary part of the day was when we lost Philip. We were walking to another part of the park when Margaret saw a ride she wanted to go on. We agreed but Ian and I had been on it while they were on the coaster. So I decided to wait on a bench and they went to ride. Unfortunately Philip didn’t here this conversation and kept on walking. When they got off the ride we discovered that we were one child short. Knowing were we had been heading to I said I was going to fast walk ahead while she came along with Ian. Unfortunately/Fortunately the Phineus and Ferb Dance party was on and with the crowd I missed the entrance to the area we had been headed to. I realized that I was now lost and pulled out a map. In trying to find a building that I could find on the map I spotted child services and decided that was a better plan. Going in she quickly took the basic information and called security. Philip in the meantime had realized we were missing and had doubled back to look for us. He soon realized that we couldn’t be this far back and found an employee. So when she called security they already had him. My wife’s experience wasn’t quite as positive as it was 45 minutes before we reconnected and she was not aware that I now had Philip. The bottom line is we shouldn’t have separated and instead gone straight to an employee. We also made the decision to use our cellphones earlier and take the roaming charge in those sort of situations. The good thing was that we had gone over that exact scenario with the kids that morning. It was mostly meant for Ian but it was a good reminder for Philip.

After our eat wherever we happened to be experience yesterday I spent sometime back in the hotel room looking up food places in the park. I came across this AllEars.net and that had a great listing of price levels and ratings. From that I picked Lucky Fortune Cookery. Danielle, Philip and myself liked the food. Everyone had the Teriyaki except Philip who had the Spicy Korean. Ian and Margaret found the Teriyaki too spicy. I think the chicken had some spice on it start with. With Philip it made no difference. I had beef but trying to chicken it did seem spicier. Margaret and Ian’s spice avoidance is why we avoided Mexican even tho the rest of us were keen to try some.

After lunch we were headed over to a ride that turned out to down for maintenance and we came across Goofy about to do a water show. It was a cool show and very much in the early classical style.

We also went on the Grizzly River Run. Given that it was later in the afternoon and not a particularly warm day for California there were not lines. As a result we went on it a couple of times. I grabbed shots of people splashing down and of Ian standing in what was clearly a spash zone.

Danielle managed to get a picture of me just after splash down.

Two other rides that we found cool were the Monster’s Inc ride and the Toy Story Midway Mania. We also got to watch the Monster’s Inc movie later in the trip. The ride made the kids want to watch the movie again so that worked out perfectly. The Toy Story ride was an interactive shooter with a number of games as you rode through the ride.

This was also the first day we took the bus back to the hotel. They have shuttles running to the parking and our hotel was next to the parking so we used that one as it ran far more often than the one that would take us directly to our hotel.

I will be posting more on our trip on a mostly daily basis so come back tomorrow to hear more.

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