Thursday, December 19, 2019:

I had started packing earlier this week. This trip was honestly very last minute, because we had just decided to go to Disneyland the week before. My dad was in India at the time, so it was just me, my mom, and my sister. Packing was a bit chaotic, and I had to leave school early to get home on time. After a bit of last minute packing we closed the house down and called a Lyft. The driver was super friendly, and we had had a friendly driver on our trip to Dallas too. It just happens around my mom. The airport was weirdly quick too. My mom had checked in the night before so we sped through security, which was surprisingly quick, and got to our gate. It literally took us less than 15 minutes to go through security and into the flight. Since this flight was so short, our dad had managed to book us first class seats, which was super cool. We’ve only ever flown first class once before, on the way back from Puerto Vallarta, and that was on accident. This time it was more premeditated, and it was really fun. The seats are way wider and we got drinks for free at the beginning. They also gave some really cool snacks that aren’t available in economy, and everyone was super nice. The one person sitting next to my mom, who was behind us, who is Uber rich. He owns lots of houses in different countries, and used to be a lawyer. After the airport we took this shuttle to a Lyfting site, where we sort of joined a mass exodus into a line of Lyfts that were waiting for us. Our driver was again a really friendly bachelor who was able to tell us a lot about Disneyland. We got lost for a bit because it turned out that we went 3 miles in the wrong direction. In the end we reached the Hilton Garden Inn and checked in. The really cool part was that since this was our first trip without our dad, I would have an entire bed to myself. After settling in we walked to a Subway across the street for dinner. We were tired at this point, and subway was the only store open apart from Pizza hut. After that, sleep took us.

Friday, December 20, 2019:

It was so hard waking up today. We slept at like 11:30 last night and waking up at 7 after that took all my mental energy. Nevertheless I got ready and stuffed my tiny Slytherin backpack with supplies for the day. In hindsight, we probably should have brought bigger backpacks, but my mother was the only one with a big bag. Stuffed with supplies we went down to breakfast. It was honestly really good. They had some sort of deep dish blueberry pancake that was like a package, but thicc, and eggs and bagels and tea. The hotel was offering a shuttle to the park, but after some calculations we realized that it was cheaper to just Lyft there and back rather than take the shuttle. We would save around 20 dollars overall plus some. The Lyft was quick, and we walked into Disneyland. To be honest, we probably should have gotten there sooner. It was already packed for a Friday morning, though we had no doubt this would be one of the lighter days. This trip was harder. Last time when we had gone to universal studios, we had borrowed two books from the library about it and plotted out all the good rides and parts of the park. This time it was last minute and I was bogged down with homework I didn’t have when I was in 6th grade, so we were going in blind. My mom was kind of annoyed about it at first, but she realized that this was last minute and so wasn’t too angry. The park looked super cool at first, with all the Disney themed characters around us.

Our first ride was the Matterhorn, in FantasyLand. It’s an abominable snowman based rollercoaster in water that gets you mildly wet. There are two tracks – go for the left one because the right one is smooth and a lot more boring. It’s mostly in the dark and I honestly enjoyed it, especially the turns and drops. I recommend going early because the line gets really big. It was also super easy to spot because it’s a tall, fake, snowy mountain on the brink between FantasyLand and Tomorrowland. After two rounds on this with my sister, since my mom dropped after the first round, we went to Tomorrowland. Then, in short order, we did Autopia, Nemo’s Underwater Submarine Adventure, Hyperspace Mountain, and Star Tours.

We only did all four before lunch thanks to the MaxPass, which I totally recommend. It’s a pass for around $15 that you can buy and use to reserve spots in line. You have to reserve an hour or two in advance, and you can only reserve one ride at a time. Autopia was an eh ride. You just drive these really slow Honda Cars along a track. It was kinda fun for me as an incumbent driver who will soon get her learner’s permit, but it wasn’t much of a thriller. We had bought a MaxPass ticket to Hyperspace Mountain in the 15 minute line to Autopia, but after Autopia we still had some time to go. I’d heard that the Nemo ride was interesting, and that it was submerged underwater, so we did that. It’s first of all not a water ride. You don’t get wet. We hardly had to wait 5 minutes before we were loaded into these yellow submarines, and the hatch closed on top of our heads. Through windows we got to watch as Nemo’s adventure passed by us. Aided by bubbles, fake coral and starfish, lights, and underwater screens, it really was a fun ride even though we were moving incredibly slow the entire time.

After this our time to ride Hyperspace Mountain had come. I really loved this ride. It’s under the guise of fighting the enemies, shooting at them, and escaping their blasts. It’s an awesome star wars themed ride and with the MaxPass the line was really short. There are lots of twists and turns that thrilled me and lots of lights to mimic blasts from the enemy ships. It probably needs an epilepsy warning because of all the flashing lights during the ride, but it was definitely worth it. I had a lot of fun on it, and would have gone again if I could. Our last ride before lunch was Star Tours, another star wars themed ride. It’s one of those stationary rides where the platform moves a lot, and requires 3D glasses. We had again used our MaxPass to skip most of the line, which was around an hours wait time. It’s centered around C3PO and R2D2 giving a tour of the Galaxy and accidentally going off course without the captain, putting them in a number of sticky situations. I again really liked the ride. Lunch was at the Tomorrowland terrace. As a vegetarian I wasn’t expecting for there to be too many options for me, but they sold a delicious veggie wrap that came nut free was well. Paired with fries and some of my sister’s chocolate milk, and it was a great meal. It was in the sun, of course, so we could soak up the warmth. Compared to North California SoCal is a lot warmer, there are a lot more blonde haired blue eyed people, and there are no Tesla’s. My sister, who was tired and hungry before this, got her hunger fulfilled, though she still complained a bit. While eating we plotted out a course for the afternoon and bought what we could on the MaxPass through the Disneyland App. Our new path took us to Frontierland and Adventureland. In Frontierland we first went to the Big Thunder Mountain, which is a wooden roller coaster that’s kind of wild west based. It was fun, but it wasn’t as great as it was hyped up to be. There were no real drops or stops, but the turns were fun. Next after that was Splash Mountain, which we also had gotten the MaxPass timing for..honestly, we used the MaxPass very well over the trip. It was really funny to see some of the looks we got as we passed everyone in line to the front. I really enjoyed Splash Mountain – this is a water ride where we do get wet. There are really fun drops into the water that I liked a lot, and we wanted to do it a second time, though we couldn’t. There were some creepy animatronic geese inside the tunnels that were kinda weird, but they were singing a catchy tune and it was really fun. After the ride we took pictures with Mrs. Claus, who was right outside, and my sister got some pink cotton candy because she was being a grump. We also had to take our jackets off – we had put them on before the ride so that even if the jackets got wet we could take them off and stay mostly dry. In the end it was my legs that got wet, so it didn’t help me much, but my sister, who was in the very front of the entire carriage, would have been soaked otherwise. Thank God she had on a waterproof jacket.

We did the pirates of the Caribbean ride next, which was pretty fun. It’s a relatively low-key ride with some really good special effects, but nothing especially thrilling. The ride was recently long too, but around the time we got in line they opened up a new gate inside, and we got to speed by most of the line and people. The ride itself was fun, but not something I would repeat. The Gift Shop for the ride was a nice one though. My family and I had just watched the Pirates of the Carribean movies together and we’re super hyped about it, so we ended up getting a small necklace with a pirate medallion charm – the same one Elizabeth has in the first movie. At this point it was afternoon and we were tired from a full day of walking and exploring, even though we were staying until the evening. We decided to take a small break by going on a low-key Mark Twain themed boat ride. It was around a small lake and we sat down the entire time looking around. I thought it was really peaceful, especially with the popcorn we had bought to munch on. I had a small scare where I thought I lost my lip balm, but it turned out to be in the wrong pocket of my backpack the entire time.

Part of getting a MaxPass is that we get a complimentary lanyard and pin along with it. We picked that up at the Westward Ho Trading Co near the entrance to Frontierland. They were star wars themed, as was our pin, and my sister and I quickly slipped open our packets and donned the lanyards. After some rest on a park bench we realized that we still had a lot of time to go until our booking at the Haunted Holiday Mansion, and we needed to do something to fill the time. We ended up boarding the Disney railroad that goes around the park at the New Orleans all the way around. It was peaceful and a good rest. I texted some friends for a bit and looked at the scenery. A parade passed us and there was a tunnel with dinosaur animatronics in it. I was honestly apathetic about the entire thing, but after that we finally reached the Haunted Holiday Mansion. Nightmare before Christmas is one of my favorite holiday movies even as a teenager, so I had so much fun inside the mansion. It wasn’t super complicated or fast, but the effects were the best I had seen so far. A lot of the moving parts and ghosts looked genuinely real. I was a lot more pumped when we came out, and hungry. There was a Royal Veranda that was close by that sold soup in bread bowls, and we got a bowl of really good Vegan Gumbo in a sourdough bread bowl. It was a delicious snack, though I’ve never liked how bread bowls.make my hands dirty. I’d also never had gumbo before, and I enjoyed it. After this our next MaxPass reservation was for the Small World ride at 6, and then the Indiana Jones ride at 7. We had some time, so we decided that going on the Jungle Cruise would be fun. It wasn’t. The line was crazy long even though the sign said it would only take five minutes and my feet were aching by that point in time. It was already dark out when we got in the ride, and my body ached from when I fell down while leaning on one of the ropes during the wait. The ride wasn’t worth it either, in my opinion. It was slow and all we saw were some fake animatronic animals that didn’t even do much. The saving grace was our skipper, or person who leads the boat. She was a woman named Victoria and she didn’t go a single sentence without making some sort of pun related to what was around us at the time, or the animals, or the boat, or even the dock. She was really good. From there, because the wait took like an hour, we had to make our way to the Small world ride. We stopped really quick on the Tarzan climb but it wasn’t even a ride, just a climb, which wasn’t worth it.

Even crazier, there was one of the holiday parades happening so we weren’t able to take an easy path from Adventureland into FantasyLand. We had to wait and go around through Tomorrowland, which took a while with the parade passing, and from there, walk around and into FantasyLand. Even worse, we took a wrong turn in Fantasyland and bad to retrace our steps back in order to find the small world ride. This made us pass the parade yet again. The glimpses we caught of the parade were really pretty, and we planned on going there the next day. We were tired at this point, and thankful that the MaxPass let us skip the line and get directly into the small world ride. It was an experience and a half, one that I enjoyed. The animatronics were well done and there was enough going on that even with the slow pace I was never bored. It was better than the Pirates of the Caribbean ride – both were slow, but small world had enough going on to be fun. We went straight from there to the Indiana jones ride back in Adventureland. We were going to take the train, but there was a long wait, so we walked instead to be quicker. The funny part was that even the MaxPass had a line; it just went way quicker than the regular line. Those poor unfortunate souls stuck in line for an hour or more. We managed to get through relatively quick and into the main rooms. The decorations were off the rails and they kept playing videos of Sala giving a content warning. There were warning about the Eye of Ra and snake statues everywhere, including the main room where we boarded the cart. Bags hooked in we set off. It’s definitely one of the more thrilling rides in that section of the park. I’ve heard that the California Adventure has the more thrilling rides, but for the Disney part of the park it was a thriller. There were lots of jolts and great effects, and my favorite part was one where I thought a boulder was going to crush us and it barely missed. Ride complete and tired yet jubilant, we Lyfted back to the hotel to get dinner. Unfortunately, the Marriot Garden Inn didn’t have good food at all – most of it is pre-ordered and warmed up, meaning they couldn’t tell us ingredients. As a vegetarian, allergic person, that’s terrible. In the end we left the restaurant and walked to the Bucca di Beppo that was right next to the hotel. The wait time was 10 minutes, which still sucked for our aching feet, but wasn’t terrible. This Bucca di Beppo was way different from the ones at home – it was built specifically for big parties. Their smallest dishes were built for 3 people, and their larges were for 5. It was kinda insane, and they even had themed rooms for different parties. We were only a group of three, and not a party at all, so one dish was enough for us. We ordered an unnecessary appetizer, because the dishes were so big we weren’t able to finish either of them. They were also crazy expensive – two dishes were $50! The food was delicious, though. Really cheesy and full of carbs that we needed after walking around for 13 hours straight. My sister was a picky eater like usual, so it took a while, but by the end we were ready for sleep. The walk back to the hotel was short, and I quickly got into the shower while my mom and sister changed their clothes, my mom having showered in the morning and my sister not wanting to.

Saturday, December 21, 2019:

This morning we had planned to use the Magic Morning Pass, which lets us enter Disneyland an hour early. Unfortunately, we woke up really late and my sister wasn’t feeling the greatest, so by the time we were ready to go it was already 7:15. The magic morning pass lets us in at 7. So we had some breakfast packed to go from the hotel and called a Lyft, but by the time we got past park security and into the park it didn’t matter – it was already 7:50. Our plan was to do the new star wars ride Millennium falcon: Smugglers Run first, before the line got to its usual 80 minute wait. Unfortunately, it seemed like everyone, their grandma, and their pet chinchilla had the same idea as us. We followed the mob as quickly as we could into the Galaxy’s Edge part of the park, and the line had quickly grown unstable. It went from a 5 minute wait to a 75 minute wait in like 10 minutes, and no MaxPass existed for us to book and use. We got into the line at 8:05. Am hour later and we were still in line. They kept the crowd moving, of course, looping around and around without purpose so it felt like we were going somewhere, but we weren’t. It was just walking. The only upside was that the decorations are spectacular. It’s really accurate to the star wars world, which I’m not even a huge fan of but I still enjoyed. Eventually, by like 9:30, we had reached the actual ride. It’s an interactive one with three positions – pilot, Gunner, and engineer. Pilot was the best, easily. All the other people do is smash buttons, which really isn’t worth it. None of us got pilot, unfortunately, and we thought that even though the line was worth it, I would not do that again. The world itself is really well made – even the bathrooms followed the alien aesthetic to a T. Chewbacca was roaming around and we got some pictures of him. He was even holding a contest to see which bearded male could be the best wookie with Rey!

After this we meandered into Frontierland, past Pirates of the Carribean and back into the main entrance, where we moved to Tomorrowland. We had used our MaxPass to again book Hyperspace, but this time the lines were huge. Standby was 100 minutes, and even MaxPass had a line so long that it took us 30-40 minutes to get through, if you can believe it. It was honestly terrible now that the hordes had descended upon Disneyland, and I was glad that we had done most of the rides yesterday. We had a couple of MaxPass attractions booked, the most important of them being Fantasmic! This is a show you absolutely need the MaxPass for, and we had to buy it early in the morning because by 9 all the shows were sold out until the 10:30 show, which is really late. It was around 11 by this time and we had only done two rides. Yesterday we managed like 5 rides before lunch because it was a Friday and less people were at the park. The ride itself was actually better than yesterday. It was going way faster than we remembered. I put it down to timing – before, we were only comparing the ride to Universal Studios, but this time, in comparison to the other Disney rides, it really was a thriller. We were also incredibly tired and my sister was falling sick, so we decided to rest at the Alien Pizza Planet and have some lunch. I’m not a huge fan of cheese pizza but their pizza was solid, especially the crust. After that I used the Disneyland App to find us the First Aid and we got my sister some Zyrtec there, which helped her a bit. We pretty much realized at this point that all of us wanted a more low-key day. Yesterday had been wild day and seeing as how we didn’t have the park hopper pass and couldn’t go to the California Adventure Park, we decided to take a cool down day. We took a ride on one of the horse carriages that goes around main Street and the central plaza, which was calming, and got pictures taken by photographers in front of the statue of Walt Disney and in front of the Christmas Tree. The horses had left poop or urine at random places, and I found that there was actually a code for it by the workers so that they could be cleaned up. We walked to the main plaza and watched the band perform some songs from the star wars theme, all of which I recognized. It was fun to watch, and some of them looked like they were really into it. The parade was right in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, so the moment the parade finished we entered the castle. The annoying part about the rides in there is that none of them take fastpass, and some of them have a really long line. We ended up only doing the Sleeping beauty castle tour, which was still nice, before settling down for some more food at the Rose Tavern. This place had good food. Their flatbread was well made and my hungry sister and I chomped through the fries easily, our family demolishing the flatbread as well and finishing off a cup of hot chocolate.

Since my sister was still exhausted and sick I took my own detour, making my way on my own to the Indiana Jones ride. Our original MaxPass booking had occurred at the same time that the ride shut down, most likely for crowd control, so I had three MaxPass tickets to use on whatever I wanted for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, the ride shut down again while I was in the MaxPass line, which was just as crazy long as the hyperspace mountain MaxPass line, so I decided to go to Toontown and try out the Roger Rabbits Car Toon Spin. It’s honestly a pretty good ride. You soon around in a car and there are decent effects as you go through a series of doors, though not the best special effects. I’m not sure what the background for the ride is, but it was still enjoyable. After that, when walking back, I found a theater that was putting on a musical about Mickey’s Magical Map. It was ok. The singing and dancing was good, especially the dancing, but the actual plot was really sketchy and it bored me. I ended up leaving to try they Alice in wonderland ride out but the line was too long so I left to meet my mom and sister instead. They were sitting on benches near the path into FantasyLand, and on the way there I got to see Peter Pan, Captain Hook, and Cruella de Vil. It was really nice, to be honest, to see all the characters. I sat with them and had a banana while we watched the afternoon parade. We were going to see it again in the evening because it’s better in the dark, but we had the time. A woman who was sitting next to us worked at Disney world and told us about it in case we ever visited. It seemed really interesting, but I still think that I like universal studios more.

Finally, the parade started. It was decent in the daytime. Lots of Christmas music and score going down the line. They had Mickey and his entire gang, along with most of the main princesses though not the really new ones like Merida and Moana, and the Clauses. We saw gingerbread men and elves and Pluto and it was all a good time. My mother decided after the parade that my sister, who was still sick, had to consume really spicy food in order to expunge her congestion. This we went through a bag of hot Cheetos bought at a stand and watched her cry and blow her nose through an entire stack of napkins, all this on the walk to Roger Toontown so I could do it again with my family. They also enjoyed it, my sister and I spinning around our cart with Glee and even doing the ride a third time without our mother. The effects are really well done and it really is the only thing worth doing in Toontown. My mom was feeling like splash mountain after that, so we hiked our way over to Frontierland and got on the ride using a Maxpass we bought. We were excited. We were prepared to get a bit wet as we went up the hill and down the smaller bumps, all tucked in. And the ride broke down. Because of course it did. It was.. kinda disappointing. We had to wait for the attendants to climb up there and help us off the rafts, which my mom had been egging me into doing anyway despite the numerous warnings not to from the loudspeaker, and climb down. It was interesting to get a behind the scenes view of the ride however, and at night too. The inside of the fake mountain looked so cool, with wire holding up the fake rock. I was hungry again now, and we were going to watch the 6:00 parade. We went to the same veranda as yesterday and my sister and I each bought a bread bowl of veggie gumbo, which we brought with us to the parade. We didn’t get very good seats like last time, but we were still able to see everything that happened in the parade. It was identical to the one from before, but much prettier with all the lit up floats that glowed in the nighttime in a way they couldn’t in the daytime. Throughout the parade we ate our soup, so that by the end we were ready to wander. Our wandering and rest continued as we rested at the entrance of Frontierland, my sister taking another nap while my mom and I took turns shopping. I got a set of earrings and necklace, and my mom got a pirates of the Caribbean backpack. I figured that I’d give the necklace to someone as a Christmas present and keep the earrings. After around an hour and a half of waiting we used the restroom and got in line for the Fantasmic show, which we had MaxPass tickets for. Those tickets provided us better standing room than others, because we ended up near the front. It was honestly magical. The show brought up so much nostalgia for me and was so well made. The effects were stunning, the noise great, and we got to see do many Disney characters on the boat. There were water effects and pyrotechnics, and even a Pirates of the Caribbean part. It was amazing, to put it lightly. I couldn’t take the smile off of my face. And to top it off, we got to watch the fireworks right after. Our view wasn’t the best but we could still see nearly everything. The fireworks shone in the air and trailed their golden dust behind them, enrapturing us. It was all totally awesome. After the two shows we left the park and went back to the hotel. We picked my sister up some DayQuil for her cold and some milk for me, showered, and slept.

Sunday, December 22, 2019:

Today was going to be the day. We were going to explore the California adventure Park. I woke up at 6, ready to use the Magic morning. I got ready, my sister still asleep, and my mom showered. We had to be at magic morning hour by 7 for our extra time in the park, and I was ready to go. And of course, the hotel didn’t offer breakfast until 7, and my sister was so sick that we would leave her in the hotel room with food and medicine and one of our phones. This long chaotic process meant that we left at 7:30 in the end, and even though we were able to enter the park early it didn’t matter because our magic morning pass was only valid in the Disney park, not the California adventure Park. Honestly, we are pretty terrible at the whole magic morning thing. Nevertheless, we got into the park at 8 and to our pleasure, it was virtually empty in comparison to the hordes that were descending upon the Disney park. We had also done some research last night and this morning, so we knew what to do. Even before 8:00, while I was eating my breakfast in a takeout box and waiting for the gates to California Adventure to be opened, we booked a MaxPass for Radiator Springs, which is the most popular ride in the entire California Adventure Park. When I was monitoring it throughout the day, lines got all the way to 140 minutes, and MaxPass sold out by noon. I was really glad we had bought these tickets early. Knowing that the Incredicoaster was one of the more popular rides too, we went there first. The smiles on our faces when we stepped off were blinding. My mom and I love the thrill, and compared to some of the other rides at Disneyland, this ride hit the mark. It was a thrilling coaster with excellent Incredibles themed decor that we ended up doing 4 times in the span of one hour. It was that good. After our first time it quickly elevated to the position of my favorite ride in the entire LA Disneyland, and it stayed there for the rest of the day. And the best part was that this early in the morning, we managed to ride the coaster, whose lines can get up to 80 minutes, 4 times in an hour without MaxPass.

Once we were finally done with the coaster we headed over to the Radiator Springs Car ride. It is the most popular ride in the park and I have to say, I probably can’t give it the same appreciation as others because I’m not a big fan of Cars. Nevertheless, the decor was amazing. I went to Death Valley a few years ago and the decorations looked so realistic they reminded me of the red stone walls and dunes of Death Valley. The line was kinda wild, even that early in the morning, kind of like the Millenium Falcon. This time however we had a Maxpass, and we used it to do the ride twice. I enjoyed it. It was definitely a fun ride and we hit decent speeds, racing against other cars to get to the finish line first. In my opinion though, the best parts were the decor and not the ride – even the area outside was carefully designed along the same theme. In the line for Radiator Springs, we had booked Maxpasses for Soaring Round the World and Goofy’s Flight School – two more rides in the park. Soaring Round the world was amazing, and a top recommendation. You quite literally soar around the world as the screen takes you to places like the Pyramids of Giza and the Taj Mahal. My mom and I were especially impressed because even the smells of the different places were wafted towards us. It was kinda hard to fine, but we had lots of time and were able to.meander there, stopping to take pictures in front of a waterfall and consume a box of dibs ice cream we bought at inflated prices. Our next stop was Goofys flight school. It’s advertised as a mini coaster and the only thing I can say is that it is meant for kids. It was tiny and kinda jolty, and my mom and I didn’t really like it. The kid in the seat behind us was having the time of his life, however. It’s definitely a ride for children. From there, things got complicated. I was trying to book a Maxpass for the Guardians of the Galaxy Breakout ride, but everything was sold out until 5 in the afternoon. So, I booked that and then kept a close watch. People constantly cancel their bookings and if i kept a close watch, I could take someone’s earlier booking. Using my mom’s fastpass, I managed to snag an earlier booking from 2-3, so now I could ride it twice. I was lucky I grabbed it when I did too – Maxpasses sold out by 2. My mom and I still had a lot of time, and after calling my sister we found she had eaten breakfast and then gone back to bed. We decided to watch the Frozen show. It’s performed at the Hyperion theater and is basically a 1 hour live, musical summary of the original movie. Now I’m not a huge fan of Frozen in general, but the play was done amazingly. They sing most of the key songs live, and the acting was good. My favorite parts were the effects of snow and ice and the like, and Elsas costume change during Let it go was astoundingly realistic. The show was very fun to watch, overall, and I finished the waffles from my breakfast while I watched it. After this we had yet more time, so we decided to do two more rides – the little mermaid dark ride, and the grizzly waterfall. The little mermaid ride is hurt a low key, slow ride that takes you through the plot of the little mermaid, accompanied by singing animatronics. I enjoyed it, mostly due to the fact that I acted in the Little Mermaid in my school musical when I was in 6th grade, So I had a more personal connection.

After that the last main ride of the park was the Grizzly Waterfall. We had wanted to do the Midway Mania ride too, but MaxPass booked out crazy quick and the lines were too long to justify going. The first thing to know about the Grizzly is that it is a water ride. Not a small one like splash mountain, but one where you get properly soaking wet. They even give out ponchos outside the ride in a corner so you get less wet. We didn’t know that unfortunately, went in, and got soaked. Luckily it was really hot at the time, though not as hot as days before. We dried off and then I called my mom a Lyft. She left to get my sister from the hotel, and feed her and take care of her. Now, I had some free time on my own. I wandered for a bit around the area before going to the Guardians of the Galaxy ride for my first booking. I am a huge Marvel nerd, as much as I am a Harry Potter fan. The decorations inside were amazing, for starters. They were really Marvel accurate, especially to the Collector. There was even a piece of accurate Asgardian armor. The plot was interesting too, of the actual ride. I also found out that there are six different paths that can be taken on the path, and each one is slightly different because they view different screens. I had time until my next booking, so I spent some time watching the screens in the Animation Studio, which was really cool, and I bought a small statue from a stand that was selling glass ornaments and statues. After this was my second booking—just as fun as the first, and some different screens. The MaxPass honestly made things way easier, because the line was around 80 minutes at its shortest moment. My mom and sister arrived after this: I had called them a Lyft before my last Guardians booking so they could reach. I had also booked us some MaxPasses for the Soaring around the World ride again because it was one of the only rides left with a MaxPass available, the rest being sold out. From here we had some time: we stood in line for the Monsters Inc Ride, which was similar to the Little Mermaid ride in that it takes the viewer through the plot of Monsters Inc on a slow ride with animatronics. I enjoyed it. My favorite effect in that was one where we saw Randall Bogs fade into invisibility. After this we got some Hot Chocolate to warm us up and watched the Mickey’s Philharmagic show. I wasn’t expecting much, seeing as how it was advertised as an opera of sorts, and we just needed to pass time until our MaxPass booking, but it turned out to be really fun. Donald takes Mickey’s Sorcerer hat and causes a lot of chaos, all of which is fun to watch. We exited the theater and when I checked my phone, I found that the Soaring Around the World ride had been shut down. Because of this, we were given MaxPasses to use at any ride of our choice. Obviously, we decided to do the Guardians ride again, and this time I did it with my family. They also loved it. My mom isn’t a fan of drop towers—I love them, having done the one at California’s Great America multiple times, but she really isn’t. Fortunately, the drop tower is low key enough that she was able to enjoy it. I highly recommend it. I think after the Incredicoaster, it was my favorite ride. It also says a lot, because I overall liked the rides in the California Adventure Park more than the Disney Park. There is a small Marvel area next to the drop tower. We took pictures in front of Captain America’s shield, and with Spiderman. He was really friendly, to be honest. In a corner, one could also take pictures with Captain America. After this we had some time until the World of Colors: Season of Light show. We decided to have dinner at a nice Mexican place on the Pixar Pier. Their food was delicious—I absolutely consumed my tacos and finished off my mom’s rice and beans on top of that. Dinner complete, we quickly got our spots on the pier for the show. I would recommend being in the middle of the pier, and somewhere high. Being near the front is no use if you can’t see everything, so perching higher up is better. The show itself had astounding pyrotechnics and hydrotechnics. There was a giant mushroom cloud of fire at one point that sent smoke billowing into the air, and the water was used to create a screen that played clips from different disney shows, aligned with the songs. The water sent so high that we all got sprayed. I really liked it, but not as much as the Fantasmic show. Show done, we managed to catch the tail end of the fireworks show in Disneyland, and then went to bed.

Monday, December 23, 2019:

Today was a lazy day for us, because our three day pass to the Disney parks was gone. We slept in, going down for breakfast at around 9:30 and lounging in the cafe for an hour. We ate slowly, told jokes, and overall rested after three hectic days of travel. It had been raining heavily in LA since the morning too, which made me glad that we had finished the parks before. We would be leaving for the airport in the afternoon, so the first call to order was to get ready to leave. My sister and then my mom showered while I changed into my clothes for the day, knowing that I would shower when we got home in the evening. It was our last day in LA after all—by evening we would be home. The Lyft to Downtown Disney was longer than the ride to regular Disney, but the entrance was much easier. We didn’t arrive until around noon because it had taken us a while to get ready and pack all of our stuff into suitcases. Conveniently, it was pretty empty because it had been raining the entire morning and had just stopped. We took pictures in front of some decorations before wandering into the HOME store. It’s basically for home supplies: ornaments, mugs, sheets, and other types of home decorations. Our family collects a few things as souveneirs: mugs, ornaments, and magnets. While we didn’t walk out of this trip with a good magnet, the HOME store provided us with both ornaments and mugs. For ornaments, my sister and I picked up a pretty case of four ornaments that were Mickey Mouse based. For the mug, we all decided to gift my dad a Mr. Incredidad mug based on Mr. Incredible. The funniest part is that in the end when we gifted it to him, he had gotten two more mugs from his trip to India, leaving him with three mugs. It fit him though, and was an instant buy. Our flight was at 4:30, so we didn’t have much time before we had to leave for the hotel, get our bags, and go to the airport. Our last store ended up being the World of Disney, which was also the most productive. We basically went wild. They had everything: shirts, jewelry, mugs, ornaments, and more. It had half of HOME’s stock plus a lot more. I really enjoyed browing: everything is crazily overpriced, and they don’t have any coupons that I know of, but we walked out with some solid merchandise. The store itself has some really amazing decorations, and it really puts you in the mood to buy things that you might not even need. I walked out with a t-shirt to go with the shirt my sister bought in the Marvel Gift Store, though mine isn’t Marvel based at all. She walked out with a pretty pair of small earrings in Mickey’s shape. I had been eyeing up some other pairs of earrings: a mismatched Miss Potts and Chip set, and a Nightmare Before Christmas set. As it turned out, my mom schemed with my sister to buy the Nightmare before Christmas earring set behind my back to gift to me for Christmas while my sister and I checked out an ice cream store called Salt and Straw. It’s really unique—they’re famous for having some unique ice cream flavors. I have to say: a goat cheese based ice cream would never have occurred to me. It was odd. Not bad tasting, but odd. My sister and I ended up getting a chocolate brownie based flavor for ourselves. My mom had really liked and apple brandy and pecan flavor, but seeing as how she had no one to share it with, it was alcoholic, and I couldn’t eat nuts, she had to stick to sampling it. From here we had to get to the airport—we Lyfted back, picked up our luggage, and went to the airport. Our driver was incredibly friendly again, and he talked out us about some racist experiences driving for people in rural Tennessee as an immigrant from Palestine. He was a very nice person, to be honest. The plane flight home from here was quiet and before we knew it, we were home.

I really enjoyed this trip overall. I think that Disneyland was a really fun experience and it reminded me of the Disney Cruise we took some summers ago. I’m not crazily into Disney, but being in Disneyland just put me in the mood like the Disney Cruise did. Disney isn’t just for kids—my mom loved it and she’s an adult. I think that overall I liked Universal Studios more, but it was still an incredible experience.