California Adventure and Yankees Baseball
We spent our final day at the park in California adventure with Blake, Debbie, and Skylee. We had a plan for the morning so Alison and I were up and out the door at 7:15am. We arrived at the park and Alison immediately noticed it looked like a really slow morning. Sure enough, she double-checked the Disneyland app and found that she had read the app wrong the day before. Disneyland opened at 8am, but California adventure did not open until 9am. We were way too early. The silver lining was that we were first in line to enter the gates.
Meanwhile back at the hotel Blake and Debbie were waiting for Skylee to wake up. It ended up being a wise decision since we were in line more than 90 minutes before the park even opened. Skylee woke up and they headed over to meet us, and just narrowly missed the gates opening. We went through and immediately got into line for Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout. They have the line start in the Hollywood section of the park, which is a way out from the ride, so Skylee and Debbie were able to join us in line. When the park did open we were practically first in line to ride Guardians. It was awesome - easily one of our best rope drop successes.
Skylee loves Guardians of the Galaxy. She has told us many times that it is her favorite ride. When we got into the Collector's office she had me hold her up so that she could see Rocket Raccoon. She giggled the whole time he was talking to us. On the ride, she was just as cute. She held onto Alison and me and laughed the whole time.
We rode a few other rides and then decided it was time to grab some breakfast. Alison and I ate cheese dogs - one of our favorite meals in California Adventure, while Blake, Debbie, and Skylee went over to Flo's Café. When we met up with them Skylee was excited to show us her giant chocolate milk (it was quite large.) While they were eating I disappeared. While I was gone Blake and Alison were joking that I better bring back something good to eat or they would be disappointed. Little did they know that I was in line at the Cozy Cone getting chocolate-dipped ice cream covered in crushed Oreos - they were not disappointed.
Throughout the day we rode all of our favorite rides - Soarin', Toy Story Midway Mania, Radiator Springs Racers, and many others. We also took some time to explore the Challenge Trail. Skylee loves this area of the park. She is quite the climber. She was particularly excited to climb on the rock while. However, the cast member thwarted her. First, he thought she wasn't tall enough, but she in fact was tall enough, then he objected to her open-toed shoes. When he wouldn't let her climb on the rock wall she rebelled and climbed on everything else. We also ran into Chip or Dale - we don't really know which one, but we got a picture with Skylee (this is a character she hadn't met previously). Blake also got a hug from Chip or Dale.
We went to Clarabelle's to get hand-scooped ice cream. Skylee knew just what she wanted and marched right up and ordered vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate with rainbow sprinkles. They were happy to oblige. When she got the ice cream she was a little upset because it was messy and lots of the sprinkles fell right off the hand-dipped ice cream bar. We broke it up for her into bite-sized chunks and she devoured the whole thing.
After ice cream, Skylee got pretty sleepy. She actually fell asleep on the way to our next ride. Since she only had a few hours left in the park and we had a bunch of really good fast passes we decided to wake her up. We headed down to the pier to ride Midway Mania. They made us park the stroller over by the cove bar. So I picked Skylee up and carried her into the line. We had a fast pass so the line went pretty quickly. I let Skylee sleep until we got to the point in the line where they handed us 3d glasses. At that point, I gently woke her up and asked her to hold the glasses. She was awake and happy by the time we got onto the ride. She sat next to me and did a really good job at the game. She scored somewhere around 28K, which seems remarkable for a 5-year-old kid. She however was disappointed with her performance. She got ranked as a beaver at the end of the game and was fairly distraught because she wanted to be ranked as a cat. She also told me that her mom always wins and now I also won. She has a competitive streak.
We rode a couple more rides and then bought Skylee the dancing Groot toy. We were going to head over to Soarin' when Debbie decided to take Skylee to the bathroom. Alison also needed to go. What we didn't realize is that Alison and Debbie headed toward different bathrooms. I went and found Alison and we met up with Blake, but Debbie and Skylee were nowhere to be found, and Debbie didn't have her phone. We waited in line for a picture (since we thought Debbie might be in the bathroom near the Hollywood section of the park). Debbie still did not show up. The photo pass person was way into getting funny pictures and we got some good ones with Blake. Then Debbie found someone who would let her use their phone and she called us. She told us that she went to the bathrooms in a Bug's land. We met up and went over to Soarin'. Our fast pass was for 4:40, and we had hoped to arrive at 4:35. We knew this was the last ride of the day for Blake, Debbie, and Skylee because they needed to catch a flight. We ended up getting in line closer to 5 and did not get off the ride until nearly 5:30.
We all walked out of the park together. Blake, Debbie, and Skylee headed to the airport to catch their flight, while Alison and I caught a cab to the baseball game. The Yankees were playing a series against the Angels in Anaheim. Somehow we didn't realize this ahead of time. I knew these teams were matching up at some point around the same time we would be in LA, but I didn't put it together that it would be over the same weekend. We followed the game on Friday and talked about extending our trip to Sunday so that we would be able to attend the Sunday game. Then we realized the game on Sunday was a night game, and decided we wouldn't want to extend our trip that much. We then bounced around the idea of going to the game on Saturday, especially because that was also a night game and was starting around the same time Blake and Debbie were heading to the airport. We had done everything we wanted to at the parks so we decided to go to the game. We exited from Soarin' and I bought tickets to the game on my phone. We were set and ready to go.
We left the park at 5:30 and we were in our seats at the game by 6pm. It was so fast. We were glad we made it in time for the first pitch too because the Yankees exploded for 5 runs in the first inning and 5 runs in the second inning. The Yankees batted all the way around in both innings. It was great fun. Tanaka cruised for most of the game giving up only 2 hits to the Angel batters (one of which was the obligatory home run). We wandered down during the 3rd inning and bought some nachos in a batting helmet from Chronic taco. This is a great meal to share at the ballpark. We stayed until the top of the 9th inning to see Judge get his last at-bat. He ended up striking out, but he had a pretty good day overall going 3 for 5. We headed out of the stadium and back to Disneyland. We took an Uber back. They have a great operation considering that Angel's stadium is surrounded by a giant parking lot. There is a designated Uber area with a dedicated entrance and exit for Uber drivers. We left around 9:30 and we were back in the park by 10.
We got a fast pass for Guardians earlier in the day. So we headed right over for a final ride. Then we got a few pictures because there was a photo pass person with no line. Then we headed over to buy Skylee an additional stuffed animal (Alison had promised her earlier in the day that if she was happy we would get her two gifts) and some Mickey Mouse-shaped lollipops for our neighbor kids. Then we called it. We headed back to the hotel to get a couple of hours of sleep before heading to the airport Sunday morning to head home.
This was a really fun Disneyland trip. We had more fun with Aleene, Debbie, Blake, and Skylee than we would have had on our own. It was one of our favorite trips. We can't wait to do it all again sometime soon.
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