Disneyland

Thursday June 30th- Nate, Kathryn, Sarah and I woke up early and headed to DISNEYLAND!!!!  Sarah and Kathryn were our tour guides around Disneyland and Disney California Adventure theme parks and we had a blast!  With the 4th of July holiday weekend still a few days away, the crowds didn't show up until the afternoon.  Therefore, we only waited in line for 15-45 minutes for all of the rides in the morning.  According to our tour guides, they normally wait about 2 hours for each ride so we were very lucky.

In the morning we toured through Disneyland and enjoyed Splash Mountain, the Indiana Jones Adventure ride and Pirates of the Caribbean.  We then had fabulous corn dogs on the main street for lunch and continued our adventure.  The afternoon was spent touring Mickey's house in Toontown, snagging fast-passes to Space Mountain, as well as running the Matterhorn!

With most of the big Disneyland rides out of the way, we used our awesome park hopper passes to cross over to Disney's California Adventure park for the rest of the afternoon.  We loved the Grizzly River Rafting ride to get all wet and escape the heat of the day.  They also have a fake Hollywood backlot where we saw an incredibly funny Aladdin musical and screamed at the Tower of Terror.

Grizzly River Rafting with Kathryn and Sarah

In the evening, after a few more rides in California Adventure, including the phenomenal Little Mermaid and Monster's INC rides (no we're not 10 years old, but those were pretty sweet), we got in line to wait for The World of Color show.  At this point in the day, we were exhausted and seriously contemplating leaving before the show.  Boy were we glad we stayed.  The World of Color blew any of the Las Vegas shows out of the water!  It was an incredible show with colored fountains in every direction, a Disney movie montage projected on the spray from the fountains, a great sing along soundtrack and jaw dropping special effects.  I think we would have paid the Disney Theme Parks entry fee simply to see the show.  It was seriously that good.

Awaiting The World of Color Show

Already beats the Bellagio Fountains in the first minute!

And they had fire too!

Yup that's a slightly blurry 40 foot tall Buzz and Woody projected on mist.  It was crystal clear in person.  But moving water is kind of hard to photograph.  Sorry. 

After the show, Sarah was awesome and stayed awake to drive us back to the Cali Schroeder's house, where we were all glad to get to bed.  An excellent day in California, to say the least.