Disney California Adventure

By Kiran Jayasinghe and Simran Jayasinghe

The cold can be ignored when having tons of fun. That’s exactly what we did at Disney’s California Adventure a few months ago. As cold as it was, it didn’t matter to us if we had our jackets on or not! Disney’s California Adventure was simply too entertaining! After we parked in the Mickey and Friends Parking Structure at 7:00 A.M., we took two escalators down to the tram, which took us to Downtown Disney.

If you’ve never seen Downtown Disney, you’re missing out on something big. Your mom or dad will never get bored strolling through the shops and looking at all of Disney’s merchandise. You yourself will be fascinated.

At the entrance was an area where we got our bags checked, and although Disney has added much more security since we last went, the bag check didn’t take much time. We walked over to the California Adventure entrance. We got our tickets scanned, picked up three maps, and off we went on our California Adventure!

First, we walked to Cars Land. It was still 7:30, and you wouldn’t imagine how crowded it was already! We waited for about 45 minutes in a line for the ride, “Radiator Springs.” The ride was completely engaging as we rolled along in our six-seater car. After seeing some of “Ornament Valley,” we raced against another car at full speed. We rolled over hills, performed sharp turns, and zoomed along to the finish line! The race felt a little like being on a roller coaster, but we can’t really say that because we’ve never been on a roller coaster!

After that fabulous ride, we walked to the other end of Disney’s California Adventure, to arrive at our mom’s favorite ride, “Soarin’ Over California!” We waited in line for about 25 minutes. We were taken to a huge room with rows and rows of seats. We sat in these seats and watched a movie while our chairs were suspended in the air, so that it looked like we were actually soaring over California! If you ever go on this ride, you will smell the scent of oranges as you ‘soar’ over groves of orange trees! We also flew over the Golden Gate Bridge, Los Angles, Orange County, and San Diego, and also a golf course. But be warned, if you’re afraid of heights, this would not be a very good choice for you!

Next, we made our way over to the ride, “Jumping Jellyfish”.  On our way, we saw a sign saying, “Redwood Creek Challenge Trail.” It looked interesting, so we spoke to a Disney employee dressed as a park ranger. He gave us a map, and we saw that beyond the sign, were a series of trails with six challenges for us to complete. The challenges included animal tracking, bravery, rock climbing, howling like a wolf, finding your animal spirit, and puzzle solving. We had lots of fun doing this, and highly recommend stopping here!

We continued on our way to the “Jumping Jellyfish” ride but had to stop again to have a snack; we were quite hungry after all the challenges we had done at Redwood Creek. We,(Kiran, Simran, and Svara) each had a moist, delicious chocolate croissant, while sharing a hot chocolate. Our mom and dad had tea and a plain croissant. Aunty Lisa, our mom’s friend, had a gingerbread cookie and a mocha. When we were finished licking the crumbs off our fingers, and drinking the last drops of hot chocolate, we entered the line for the Little Mermaid ride, another stop before the “Jumping Jellyfish” ride! We sat in a slow-moving clam shell and listened to the story of Ariel, while watching beautiful toys acting out the tale. It was mesmerizing!

After that relaxing “Little Mermaid” ride, we finally walked over  to the “Jumping Jellyfish” ride.  The ride takes you high up on a tower while seated in a contraption that looks like a jellyfish.  With two of us to a jellyfish, we rose up and down three times. We rose pretty high up!

Up next was King Triton’s carousel. King Triton’s carousel didn’t have horses. Instead, it had sea creatures. One of us picked a dolphin, and the other two picked a fish with purple scales.  Along the way to the carousel, we stopped at a shop, admiring the keychains, Elsa and Anna pens, and other trinkets and souvenirs.

We had been having so much fun, we had forgotten the time! Amazingly, it was already four o’clock, and since our stomachs were growling, we went to eat lunch at the Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta resteraunt. We (Kiran, Simran, and Svara) had ravioli and chocolate milk.  While we were eating lunch, we caught a glimpse of the Disney Viva Navidad parade. The parade is supposed to show Mexican traditions, including dancing and singing.
There were many dancers, and they all wore colorful and bright costumes, which really made the show very interesting.

We let our lunch digest a little and went to the Frozen (movie) Sing-Along Celebration. At the Sing-Along Celebration, we sang many songs from the movie Frozen, with Anna and Elsa-including Let It Go! As we sang, fake snow fell from the ceiling. Then, we headed to Olaf’s snow fest, where we met Olaf, tobogganed, and played with artificial snow.

After playing in the snow we made our way to the Aladdin show at the  Hyperion theater.  We were a little late to the show, and we were assigned balcony seating. Oops!  Our favorite character in the Aladdin show was the Genie. The Genie is a comical character and his script included many jokes about recent events. The rest of the cast is great too, but the Genie was, to us at least, the funniest character.

Although the show was very enjoyable, we wanted to get back on some rides. We made our way to “A Bugs Land” and went on a ride called Flik’s Flyers. On this ride, we went in a hot air balloon who’s top was made of leaves, rising up and down.  Then we went to Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train ride where we ride in a caterpillar car through foods. The caterpillar pretended to eat it.  We wanted to see the the 3D movie called “It’s Tough To Be A Bug”.  Unfortunately, Disney had temporarily replace it with the trailer to a new movie called “The Good Dinosaur”. This new Disney movie was going to be released the following weekend. Though we were disappointed at the change, we watched the trailer anyway.

It was time to leave.  On our way out of the park we stopped at “The Fidler, Fifer, & Practical Cafe” and had a large gingerbread man cookie each. We also caught the last part of the night parade. Our mom spent some time looking through a couple of shops, and then we left for the tram.

Our visit to California Adventure was memorable. We managed to go on a lot of rides, including a couple that we had never done before. We had so much fun that we didn’t feel tired until we came back home. We are sure that you will enjoy your visit as much as we did too!