Celebrating Disneyland Style Day 2

Can you believe it?? I finally wrote a recap of day 2, and it only took me a little over 2 weeks to do it!!
On day 2 we decided we were going to do the parks in the opposite order so we hit California Adventure a little after opening and headed straight back to Radiator Springs Racer!! It was closed the day before, and the fast pass return time was already up to 5:00pm so we were hoping the stand-by line wouldn’t be too bad.

It said 75 minutes, which for newer rides isn’t all that bad so we decided to brave the line. This was by far the longest line of the whole trip, but the kids did rather well. “The Boy” did want to be held a lot, but at least he wasn’t whiney about it.

We all rode it and there was a mixed reaction among us. My mom and I have ridden it before and both really like it, but this was the first time for the kids. #1 & #2 both loved it and wanted to ride it again, while #3 hated every minute of it and will never go on it again. The boy seemed to enjoy most of it, until the dips when we were race. Since he is a bit of a little guy those negative G’s were a bit much for him, but he didn’t complain! 

After the ride we stuck around Cars Land for a bit and rode the other rides they have to offer and enjoyed Radiator Springs in all it’s Christmas glory! They have a lot of trees there and they are all so unique. Here are a few of my favorites.


Up next the kids wanted to hit Bug’s Land so that is what we did. Amazingly “The Boy” insists that “the caterpillar” is his favorite ride, although I’m not sure I agree with him. We hit a few of the rides there and then it was on to my absolute favorite ride, Toy Story Mania!!


I am so bummed that TSM does not have fast passes at California Adventure, but thankfully the wait was only about 30 minutes, because this is a must do ride for me!

I had “The Boy” next to me and he had such a blast it made it that much better for me. Every time we moved to the next game he would do a fist pump and declare that he won that round! He was rather disappointed when we got to the end and he found out that I actually had the high score for the whole car!!

By now it was about 2 o’clock so we decided we better get some lunch. I’ll be honest here, I am not as impressed with the food choices at the Disneyland Resort as I am at Disney World, but I do like what I have tried at the Pacific Warf area of California Adventure. I was really hoping to try some of the clam chowder at Pacific Warf Cafe, but the line was really long the whole time we were there so that didn’t happen. Instead we ate at Cocina Cucamonga Mexican Grill, which is really good.

After lunch we headed over to the Animation Academy, as this is one of “Artsy Girl’s” favorite things at Hollywood Studios. Here we all tried our hands at drawing Agent P. I don’t think we did too bad. Can you guess who’s is who’s? I’ll give you a hint none of them are “The Boy’s” since he only scribbled all over his paper. ;)

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After playing around in Beast’s library, and getting our voices stolen by Ursula we decided it would be a good time to go to Disneyland and ride a few of the rides, like It’s a Small World, that we didn’t do on the first day. The girls also wanted to take another spin in the teacups. We spent most of the evening in Fantasyland riding my ‘classic’ favorites like Snow White and Pinocchio. When coming out of Pinocchio we spotted this guy! I <3 him!!



We were in line for Peter Pan when the boy decided he had to go to the bathroom. My mom took the girls and Peter Pan, while “The Boy” and I went to use the restroom an then rode on Dumbo . . . again. The Christmas Parade was going on at this time so the line was really short! We ended up waiting just about 10 minutes to get on the ride, and those of you out there with Dumbo lovers know how rare that is! 

After we rode everything there was in Fantasyland we decided we wanted to head back to California Adventure to end our evening with a hot cocoa from the Ghirardelli Chocolate Shop. Unfortunately, our timing was not as good as the day before and we got caught in the end of the parade mess. That always scares me, but alas we did make it out of the park safely and did not lose a single kid, so I call it a success.

We made our way over to Ghirardelli’s and was greeted by a CM handing out samples of peppermint bark. I had actually tried it before at the Ghirardelli Shop in Monetary last year and was surprised by how much I liked it since I am not a huge peppermint fan.

The 3 girls all got small hot cocoas, while I found myself intrigued by the salted caramel hot cocoa, and got a medium. We sat outside the shop for a bit enjoying the best hot cocoa we have had in a long time and then decided to make a loop around Paradise Pier while World Of Color was going on, before heading back to the car and home for the night.

I have to say it was a very nice ending to a wonderful trip. How can you not be happy when you get to see something like this on your way out of the park??