TR: Utah/California Trip Pt. 9; Anaheim Odds and Ends (9/6/2013-9/9/2013)

With the format I used for this trip report, I left out long passages about my hotel or meals I ate outside the theme parks, and I always include that stuff, so this final part of the trip report concludes with my thoughts on that and some closing thoughts about the trip as a whole.

Our aspiration for this trip was to stay at the Grand Californian. At $465/nt, that wasn’t rational or realistic for us. Instead, for $149/nt, we stayed at the Fairfield Inn Anaheim across the street and collected the points. Marriott is our secondary choice for hotels now when Starwood either doesn’t have something or their something isn’t as good/convenient for us, and so this, a hotel about 7 minutes walk away from the gates, was a really solid option. The room online states it is 225 square feet: Uh, what? It seemed much bigger than that to me inside. It was clean, quiet, and comfortable. And ten points per dollar spent. Another nice bonus was having middling ‘ol Silver status with them still got me a chance to spin a prize wheel. Seriously! A prize wheel! I won a free night of parking which I thought was really choice.

TR: Utah/California Trip Pt. 8; Disneyland (9/6/2013-9/8/2013)

Walt’s first foray into the world of theme parks, Disneyland opened in 1955 and effectively re-wrote all the rules as to amusement park design from that point forward. Today, Disneyland is still massively popular and influential across the globe. The tendrils of the empire started here have firm grips into the European and Asian continents, as well as at sea and in standalone resorts on some of America’s beaches. Then when talking about Disneyland at any length, it isn’t about what one can say so much as what they can say but about how it is said. Disneyland has been analyzed to death. Super fans and harsh critics have both made their position known. They’re not budging, and their analysis is the stuff volumes of academia has been written of. A college may pay my bills, but I don’t consider myself a professional intellectual. Or an intellectual at all.

TR: Utah/California Trip Pt. 7; Disney’s California Adventure (9/6/2013-9/8/2013)

Parts 7 and 8 of these series will be for a simultaneous time frame where we split effort between the two California Disney parks.  It isn’t narrative so much as analysis of the parks and whatever. Sorry if that’s boring to you but I guess it is what I feel like writing right now and, given how we go to parks like this, probably the best way to write about it without spending the whole time telling you about how we left one and walked to the other and then walked back to the hotel and then…yeah.

TR: Utah/California Trip Pt. 6; Knott’s Berry Farm (9/6/2013)

It seems hard for me to believe, but this is the 5th trip I’ve made to Knott’s Berry Farm. I’ve been to plenty of the parks on the West Coast, but a combination of events and circumstance has led this to be the one park I’ve visited more times than any other. I’ve seen it before Cedar Fair’s purchase, I’ve seen it after the Ghost Town was radically altered and a bunch of coasters were installed. I’ve posted opinions before and will probably post opinions again 3-4-5 years from now. There’s lots of analysis that goes on, sure, but man, sometimes I just want to go enjoy the rides.

TR: Utah/California Trip Pt. 5; Impromptu Credit Whoring; Universal, SeaWorld, Belmont (9/5/2013)

We had no plans when we woke up on the morning of September 5th except doing what we had always anticipating doing: Going to Universal Studios Hollywood. USH is home to one of my very favoritest attractions on the whole of god’s green earth: The Studio Tour. Except, unlike other studio tours at other amusement parks, this is a real studio, with real movies, TV, and films being recorded there. And other stuff, like animatronic sharks and so on. But I love this attraction so, and it is super long, and yes, we are going to Universal Hollywood. But in doing so, we made the choice to save a couple bucks off other ticket options by buying a Southern California CityPass. It meant we had admission to SeaWorld San Diego we never were gonna use, but hey, we saved like $10 and this was our penance to the roller coaster enthusiast gods of cheapness.

TR: Pacific Duality Pt. 3: Disneyland/Six Flags Magic Mountain (8/28/11)

No morning had ever come with as much fear for me on a trip. Not since being an adolescent and having crazy blow ups with my dad or something on some of our illfated journeys had I ever gotten up in the morning and been so quick to think about things that weren’t fun. There were plenty of stressors already in my life: I had a cat in vet boarding due to some sort of unexplained illness at home, work is generally pretty crazy due to fluctuations in staffing, etc. etc. other white people problems, as Louis CK would say. Meredith though was glad to inform me that she didn’t have any back pain or stomach issues and the nausea was gone. Phew. I was always going to be worried that she was understating it, but she was gonna get tested pretty hard with the plan we had in motion.

The first part of that plan was to go use the third day of our Disney tickets for early entry at Disneyland. Early entry is 7AM. Now, not everything is open at 7AM, but enough things that we had skipped were open that we were able to clean up most of the things left as mandatory stops on Meredith’s docket and mine quickly and easily. Small World, Mr. Toad, Pinocchio, Alice In Wonderland (which I missed in 2009 due to rehab), Mansion, and Peter Pan fell in about 90 minutes, as did a couple of muffins at the bakery on Main Street USA. We were out the door and back to the hotel for checkout before 9AM, and on the road within minutes of that headed to Valencia. We looked to be arriving just before opening at Six Flags until an overturned vehicle on I-5 caused a bunch of backup and forced our arrival time back to just shortly after opening.

TR: Pacific Duality Pt. 2: Disneyland and Bonus Parkdom (8/27/11)

Another day dawns and it is another day to be spent with the Mouse. Prior to the trip, my wife had specifically requested that I bring Cedar Fair season passes along with us in case we got some spare time to go to Knott’s. On some level, I really wanted to go ride Windseeker, their new for 2011 attraction, because I hadn’t been on Cedar Point’s yet nearest to me. I won’t lie. In the back of my head, the idea was percolating to go there. So when we woke up early and decided to just hit Disneyland 8AM opening rather than wait for DCA at 10AM, the window seemed to be somewhat open. Meredith was very clear though: No Knott’s on this day. Just not to happen. We tasked ourselves with breakfast at Mimi’s and proceeded with action.

We were off to Disneyland and went about collecting visits to many of the key e-ticket attractions. We rode Indiana Jones (which is still fantastic), Big Thunder (ditto), and Splash Mountain (ditto, even with my fear of a wet and damaged camera at times) in fairly short order. I love being able to do that. We had started the day by grabbing a Star Tours fastpass and then circled back after a quick tour of the park’s western side back into Tomorrowland. I demanded a brief stop at the good Buzz Lightyear before boarding the redone Star Tours as well. Hey, you can pick up the gun! How novel!

TR: Pacific Duality Pt. 1: Disney’s California Adventure (8/25-26/11)

Over the last 7 months, my wife and I have embarked on scheduling a trip that, was for us at least, the most exotic and difficult we’ve yet put together. The idea was hatched on an otherwise boring January Saturday earlier in 2011 thanks to a trip report on a general purpose message board my wife lurks on (the name of which I do not remember and is frankly unimportant). The exotic and strange nature of the trip will be revealed later on when we actually get around to arriving there – this was a multi-stage trip, I suppose you could say.

The first stage of this trip was to get to where we needed to go for the second stage – that being the enormity of LA’s greater metro area. In doing so, a large part of our plan was to visit a long-time favorite amusement area of ours in the Disneyland Resort area. We unabashedly love Disneyland. In fact, we like it more than Disney World. For example, the Downtown Disney in Anaheim serves an actual need for guests and is thusly not abandoned and pathetic. The off site hotels are more convenient than 2/3 of the onsite facilities and generally don’t suck. The rides are generally better than their Disney World counterparts, cramming in a sort of greatest hits and then upping the ante in other ways. I refuse to get into a “The way Walt wanted things!” sort of discussion because that always ends badly and with lots of fanboyism, so I don’t include that, and I don’t need to either. The rides speak for me.

TR: Disney/KBF & Arce/Darchinyan (2/7-10/2009)

A couple weeks ago happened and wifey and I had decided to make a run to the West Coast to get away from lousy weather here in the midwest. Naturally, it followed us west while Michigan warmed up and melted down, but hey, you can’t win every battle, right? The boxing section gets the usual separation by “######” symbols too.

PARKS:

-DISNEYLAND-

Last time I was here, I think I forgot to write a TR. Which is fine, I suppose, because there’s not much I can add to what’s already been written about the park and its attractions. Here’s what I can add right now:

TR: Knotts Berry Farm/Universal Studios Hollywood (2/8/2008)

It was an innocent enough start to trip planning. Skybus announced $20 each way fares for virtually every route it flew in January, and a phone call placed to Sean Flaharty quickly got me a response. 10 minutes later, the flights were booked. Just one problem: There was no itinerary. That we could fix. Over the next 4 weeks, a plan was banged out and I was on my way to Columbus. The flight in was late Thursday the 7th after work, and with a 6AM flight the next morning, I knew sleep was an impossibility. Only 3 hours worth were gained in the overnight, but it was enough to get us to the airport once more and prepare us to take care of business.

The opening portion of the trip was fairly uneventful. Sleep on the plane was nearly impossible, given the lack of legroom. The plane was an hour late to takeoff due to some issue with the cargo netting and then deicing. Once landing in Burbank, the plane slowed to taxi speed, turned right, and then stopped. It was like pulling into a driveway. Probably the shortest taxi time I’ve ever had in my life. The rental car was a bargain at $140 for the week (compared to $310 as the lowest price we could find), but it was made sweeter with the $30 upgrade for the week to a beautiful red Ford Mustang. No, it wasn’t a GT. Yes, it looked bitchin’. Fuck your Malibu rental. Anyhow, after some video was taken at our joy, we loaded up the GPS and were on our way to the first park of the trip.