California Adventure (Disney's, that is)

We spent parts of our second and third park hopper pass at Disney's California Adventure! It was fun to realize just how much the boys remembered from our trip 2 years ago! We made sure to do some of the things that we missed last time. For example, we never went to Redwood Creek Challenge Trail last time....and boy, were we missing out! The boys had a great time there, especially Sam. He was climbing all over the nets and exploring the trails without any fear! However whenever we would see a "character" coming our way, (like Kenai, from Brother Bear, in the picture above), he would get super nervous and want to run away. There were only a few picture opportunities with characters at Cali Adventure that I really tried to get him in....and trust me, the characters were all over the place!

The characters were in full force down by the Hollywood Backlot area. Tyler would squeal in delight whenever he would see one. I think he's only seen "Handy Manny" a handful of times, but we wanted his picture taken with him anyway!

The Bug's Life Land was perfect for the boys. Everything there was geared towards the smaller kiddos. They really liked the bumper cars, the choo-choo train, and the ladybug spinny ride. We were brave this time and went to the "It's Tough To Be A Bug" show. It was intense for me, but then again I'm not a big bug lover. The boys didn't seem to mind too much, but I definitely held on tight to Sam during the most scary parts (like when the seats move like there are bugs crawling through them...nasty!)

Our family's most favorite ride, by far!, is Toy Story Mania. There was a whole new excitement about it because of Toy Story 3 early this year, which my children are obsessed about! They even had a toy box, like Barbie's, that you could pose in for pictures! It's a little hard to see what we're doing but Sam and I struck a "little tea pot" pose and Tyler was showing off his rippling muscles! :)

Because of our special needs pass, THANK YOU DISNEY!!!!, we were able to bypass the extremely long line to the Toy Story ride. I think we rode it a total of 4 or 5 times! The boys and I would have friendly competitions with Dad to see who could rack up the most points. If Tyler and I were together on the ride we would add up our points, and if they were more than Dad's then he owed us a treat. And vice versa with Sam. I'm proud to say that we beat Matt every time! He was a good sport though....but boy were our arms and shoulders sore afterward from pulling the little trigger ball so fast!!!

Another family favorite, in the movies department, is of course "Cars." We were thrilled to find out that Cali Adventure is building an entire Cars land and it will be open in 2012!!! We'll be sure to make another trip down there in 2012 just for that!!! We went and looked at a display of their plans for the new "land" and all the rides and places to eat that it includes! It's going to be fabulous!

Sam was brave to go on the carousel with me, even though I could tell he REALLY didn't want to! Instead of going on one of the animals, we stayed on the nice-and-safe bench and had a snuggle....while Tyler and Matt rode on some random sea creatures.

Another ride that we visited MANY times was the Monsters Inc. ride. We were lucky enough to run into Sully on one of our last visits to the ride. That claw/paw of his was HEAVY!

We were very excited about the new water show - "World of Color" - that Cali Adventure just put out this year. Some of our family members that went in August had to wait in line for 2.5 hours just to get tickets!!!! Luckily, the line for tickets in October was only 10 minutes long, but we did make sure to show up for seats 30 minutes early. We were able to use our pass to sit in a designated area and snagged a bench for our family to sit on while we waited and while we watched the show. Saahhh-weet. But let me tell you....this show was AMAZING!!!! Seriously, I've never seen anything so cool in my life. It's hard to explain, but basically it's a water show, music show, and movie show all in one. The water fountains make a "screen" for clips of popular Disney and/or Pixar movies. (The picture below doesn't even do it justice, but you might be able to make out Buzz and Woody). It's all put to music and the sound system they use made Matty drool!

Just in case you haven't seen it yet, here are a few stats about the show that might impress you:

- There are 1,200 fountains used

- Some of the fountains shoot water up to 200 feet in the air

- 28 HD projectors are used to show the movies

I have to admit, I totally got emotional watching this show! I'm not sure why...but part of it was because I was sitting with Sam (as he CLUNG to me with excitement and awe!) and just knowing how much these movies mean to him and realizing how absolutely magical that show must have been to him...it totally made me cry. I'm not really sure how to explain it...but it really was amazing. We loved it so much, we made sure to go again our last night at the parks.

Some other highlights of Cali Adventure included: "Turtle Talk with Crush" about 4 times (one time Matt got to talk to him, and one time Sam was chosen to talk to him but got too shy so Tyler took over for him!), the spinny Toy Story animation thing, the voice-over activity at the Sorcerer's Workshop, the Animation Academy where we learned to draw Pluto, the 3-D Muppet show, the Pixar Play Parade, and yummy food galore!

Thank you to California Adventure for another trip of fantastic memories.