State of Adventure

Our Disneyland visit continued on Tuesday with California Adventure, which is right next to the main park. I'm not sure whether a theme park should count as an adventure, since that word implies a sense of danger to me, but I've been to one in New Jersey called Great Adventure many times. I still always think of the 2003 Simpsons episode "My Mother the Carjacker" where Homer, trying to find a place for his mother to hide, says, "I'm gonna hide you where there's no one around for miles. Disney's California Adventure!" The show also took a shot at EuroDisney nine years before that, and I think both have become much more successful since then. It's sort of the equivalent of Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World, and there's even a section called Hollywood Land. The California theme is fairly loose. One part is based on the Cars franchise and another on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Radiator Springs is in Arizona, and most of the Avengers are based in New York. I guess it would be very appropriate for an appearance by the Norse god Anaheimdall, however.

The first thing we rode at this park was Ariel's Undersea Adventure, another ride-through of an animated film.

The ride stopped a few times and gave a good look at the animatronics, and as impressive as they were, the eyes looked bizarre close up.

The description near the entrance describes what you ride as a "slow-moving clam shell." It was pretty similar to the Finding Nemo ride at Epcot in that respect. Then we rode the Golden Zephyr, Goofy's Sky School, and the Silly Symphony Swings, all of which were in Paradise Gardens Park. The Sky School ride is a Crazy Mouse, yet not themed around any of Disney's mouse characters. Instead, it has a narrative based on Goofy teaching the riders to fly a plane, with the track running in relevant ways.

I remember when I worked at a toy store back in 2000, and they sold a game called Barn Buzzin' Goofy, so I guess someone thinks Goofy flying planes is inherently funny. The swings were the typical sort of amusement park ride, but based on the short "The Band Concert."

I didn't actually time things to compare, but it at least felt that these rides were shorter than their equivalents other places. In Pixar Pier, we rode the Inside Out Emotional Whirlwind, Jessie's Critter Carousel, and the Incredicoaster. I'm getting a bit out of order here, but I guess that's okay. Beth was amused by the backwards skunks on the carousel.

Also around that time, we went on Guardians of the Galaxy Mission: BREAKOUT! I'm not sure why the capital letters, but this was originally a Tower of Terror, but was changed to have a Guardians theme. While I'm kind of cynical about such changes, I have to say it was fun, and I appreciated how the characters were incoporated into it. The elevator had been changed to something called a gantry lift that eventually took the passengers out of the Collector's fortress and to the Guardians' ship. I guess the lift was a reference to a gantry crane, which is on legs and portable. I noticed that the gift shop had a lot of Baby Groot, and while that's not at all surprising, I didn't see any Adult Groot. I liked the one T-shirt they had that was somewhat based on the Atari game Breakout, although that has a ball instead of a spaceship with a laser, so I suppose it was more like that combined with Galaga.

Speaking of video games, I received a few compliments on my Donkey Kong shirt, which I bought at the Nintendo store in Rockefeller Center.

We didn't ride anything else for a while after that, instead seeing Mickey's PhilharMagic and Turtle Talk with Crush.

PhilharMagic was the same as the one we saw at Disney World in 2020, although I can't remember if the Coco part was in there back then. There's a cool store near there called Off the Page with original drawings and figurines, none of which I could reasonably afford.

We ate at Boardwalk Pizza & Pasta, where I had pizza and Beth pesto ravioli, so I guess we covered the whole name. The breadsticks were pretty dull, though. And there wasn't that much ravioli in a serving, so Beth also had a corn dog from Corn Dog Castle.

I did appreciate some of the names of dining locations at the park. There's a hot dog place called Award Wieners, and other places named after Mortimer Mouse and Clarabelle Cow. What's kind of disturbing is that a cafe named after the Three Little Pigs sells sandwiches with bacon and sausage.

And it's not a restaurant, but Oswald the Lucky Rabbit has a garage (actually a gift shop) right inside the gates.

The World of Color fireworks show started soon after we had dinner, but we couldn't get a spot for it, so we saw the later one instead.

They closed several of the rides in the area during the show, including the Pixar Pal-A-Round Ferris Wheel, so we never got to ride it. Considering how highly visible it is, I feel like that was something significant we missed. I also would have liked to go on the Spider-Man ride, but that doesn't seem like quite as much of a loss. The last thing we went on was Toy Story Midway Mania, a combination ride and virtual arcade that periodically stopped to let the passengers play games. I think I ended up with 36,000-some points, and I don't know whether that's good or bad, but it was my first time. Someone on our car apparently got over 90,000. There's a talking Mr. Potato Head right outside the ride, and I wondered how it worked, since he'd occasionally say something relevant to the people around him. Apparently all his phrases are pre-recorded, but someone monitors the crowd to play relevant ones.


Next time, our last day at Disney, and proof that I have no clue how to time transportation.