530am is not a human hour to get out of bed. Neither is 630 and I do that every day. I’m an idiot. Waking up in a hotel is no fun either. There is no kitchen or microwave so it’s a cold camp. The hotel does have “coffee” in room. I am sure you have experienced the little pot with a couple Skoal Bandits of coffee to brew. Lousy. But hot and darkish. So I made coffee. Wow, awful coffee.
We got moving so quickly we were first in line for the shuttle to Disneyland. Surprising. Driver was really unfriendly. That makes any ride fun.
Getting ahead of myself, we are are lunch. It’s 1145. I’m not due for a meal till 1230. And the food here is really not very good but it is extremely expensive. The kids all got gigantic turkey legs for lunch. Only $11.50 each. Yeah, might be overpriced. A little. Emily wandered off to find a corn dog. That will also be pricey. I brought some food. I will eat that.
Back to earlier, we arrived at the park at 645. Wow are we early. Unfortunately the Calif Adventure does not have early entry which was where we were waiting. Carly swore it did. So we missed early entry by 5 minutes. No big.
For the next 4 1/2 hours we rode rides. There is a new ticket enhancement, $15, that gets you to the front of ride lines much faster. So we chain-rode the rides. The pace was crazy fast. Rode more rides than I ever have in four hours. That’s fun.
That brings us to lunch. Emily is still not back from the corn dog search. We are sitting and kids are eating their giant dead bird legs. I am watching and it’s a little gross. Barbaric even. Just like every other day.
Emily found us. She brought a very pretty corn dog with her. I am not much of a corn dog person. Or turkey leg person. Neither appeal to me. And I don’t like blowing so much on mediocre food. I am already paying $4.25 for a bottle of water. $42.50 so far today.
More rides. Sadly, Michael decided we should go on Splash Mountain. Bad idea. Someone always gets soaked. I think they engineer the ride to deliver the random soaking or two. Maybe if you are wet you feel more satisfied that you got your money’s worth. It gives you a story to tell and stories are priceless. So we went to Splashy Mountain. Good news, hel it’s great news, this go around I was not “the one”. I stayed mostly dry. Marika, on the other hand was soaked head to toe. Too bad, so sad it’s not me. She had to buy a dry shirt. It is still winter time.
After that and a couple more rides, the kids decided it was time for a drink. They also made the very poor decision we should get said drink in California Adventure. There are a couple places. One has cocktails but is a very poor excuse for an actual bar. It feels like a Disney snack bar. Drinks are fine, ambiance is a zero. But, they did not choose that. We went to a “margarita” stand. I sincerely apologize to the original creator of the drink and it’s namesake. The stand serves the single worst margarita I ever tasted. I identified liquor from margarita machines. God are they shit. And only $12 each. Btw, being as experienced as I am, I can identify bad cocktails before they arrive. I did not order one. Besides my first rule of margaritas is no machine drinks. Unfortunately Emily paid for this shit. How are these children to learn a lesson unless they pay for their shitty cocktail judgment. We could have gone to an actual bar in Downtown Disney where I can actually have what I want. And if bad remade for me. By an actual bartender and not some pimply faced loser in a stupid costume. Disney has a long history of not serving booze. So they have no practice. And it really shows here. They need a few more years to get this right. The bar in our hotel last night beat this crap out using very cheap well liquor at the same price. In a comfortable lounge. See, practice. Real bartender. Who knew? Oh, wait, I did. I will need to go to a real bar later. For my own sanity.
Well, not much changing. More rides, more lines. A little quiet conversation, lots of complaining about how other park visitors walk or act in line or dress. People dress like freaks and go out in public. Interesting choices were made by others. Our next stop will be Star Tours. One of many Star Wars themed attractions. Disney buys up franchises and squeezes the hell out of them for every dime. Only a little bit annoying. Or maybe more. Not sure yet. I have only been run into or “strollered” 20 times today. So I am still not over the edge as of yet.
I am trying to figure out the dinner thing tonight. I can’t figure out where to go. I prefer walking to dinner so I don’t have to get the car out. There should be several places close to the park. Problem is they tend to be like the margarita stand. Bad and overpriced. I will dive deeper.
We left the park and walked into downtown Disney looking for nourishment and libation. We did find a bar and restaurant that we stopped at for cocktails and appetizers. Turned out to be not very good in both counts but still far ahead of the margarita stand. We sent back one of our dishes since it was of very low quality. The manager did not argue the refund. I had a couple drinks $38, true, and first of the two was awful. The second one, with a little instruction was very good. It was a $100 throw away.
Back to the park for more rides. And all the while I was searching Yelp for a dinner spot for the kid. I did finally find a spot so after the next ride we took off for the main gate and an Uber ride. The place I found, a Mexican restaurant, was excellent and their Chile verde was to die for. Marika had some too and she was ensnared by it as well. We were stuffed at the end of the meal.
Uber took us back to our hotel after. We are all quite tired and ready for bed. I was nodding off on the ride back. I hope straight to bed. The kids are downstairs in the bar. I am too tired for that shit. It’s bedtime.