Chapter 53
Evening Hopping

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(Originally posted August 6, 2013)

When we got to the edge of Cars Land, we asked the Photopass photographer to take a picture of us through the actual “tunnel.”

While he was photographing us, however, Lightning McQueen drove out from backstage to go to his meet and greet location. The photographer still had our camera, so he took some good pictures of Lightning.

Even leaving Cars Land behind us, it still looked beautiful just beckoning for us to come back whenever we pleased.

Now, as I am thinking back on this day, I realized there was a chunk of time I forgot to ever mention. After we had first come back to DCA, we saw that the DCA Today Twitter account had tweeted that they would have a surprise for the first people to find them once they had their message retweeted 200 times. It took forever (I think 5 or more hours) before this finally happened, but once it was getting close to 200 retweets, Tracy and I were watching like hawks for when the moment would finally come. When they did get to 200+, they immediately tweeted that they would be waiting with Fastpasses and DCA Today buttons outside Goofy’s Sky School. We BOOKED IT over there (getting very close to breaking the “no running” rule), and we were the first ones to show up. The Fastpasses were good for any Fastpass ride in the park EXCEPT Radiator Springs Racers, so we had to decide what we wanted to ride. There are only a couple attractions we like to go on in DCA that have Fastpass, so it was a relatively easy decision for us to head to Soarin’ Over California.

If you will recall from our previous reports, Soarin’ is one of my favorite rides on both coasts, and it was one of the attractions I was most excited about being able to ride whenever we wanted now that we had our APs.

We just love Patrick’s safety video, and at one point I happened to snap a picture that was the PERFECT example of him making the Frumps’ “deer face,” which they always talk about on their trip reports. I had to post it to Instagram and mention them in the post!

When we got onboard, Soarin’ Over California was everything I was hoping for! We did, however, notice almost immediately the bad condition of the film as it’s starting to age. I’ve read on some forums that the DCA version is supposedly digital projection while the WDW version is still analog, but honestly, they both could use some work! Still, the music, the smells, and the sights were all there to welcome me home, and I got to hear my favorite “Disney” sound of all the seatbelts being unbuckled at once. It really is the little things…

Going out onto Buena Vista Street, we decided to climb aboard the Red Car Trolley.

We didn’t go too far—just one stop—but it was great trying out this new attraction. I love that these exist to shuttle guests through the front of DCA in style.

After getting off the Trolley, we decided to hop back over to Disneyland. We wanted to enjoy Main Street during the evening from one of our favorite places.

At the end of our last trip to Disneyland, we had spent the evening sitting on the porch on Main Street doing everything we could to not think about going home. It began to feel like “our place” and we were glad to find it just how we left it a year and a half later.

I took a picture looking up from our porch, and the building is apparently the Palm Parlor.

After sitting for a while, we decided to go into Fantasyland. We got in line for Dumbo because it seemed to have a pretty manageable wait. It also looks so pretty all lit up at night.

Suddenly, however, we realized the fireworks were about to start. Since the ride was going to shut down during Remember, we could have decided to leave and come back after they were done, but instead we just sat down in the queue area and enjoyed the fireworks from right there. It wasn’t the view we had enjoyed the previous night, but it was still quite pretty. Plus, we were actually much closer to where the fireworks are set off, so they looked even grander.

We could even still see Tink fly by.

I’ve taken a lot of very poor pictures of Disney fireworks in my time—my camera just isn’t really fancy enough to capture them, but some of mine actually turned out pretty good this time around.

This one is, in fact, easily the best fireworks shot I have EVER taken.

The show over, we were able to board our elephant after just one more round of Dumbo and take a grand flight.

We didn’t realize that almost all the attractions in Fantasyland shut down for the fireworks, so we were confused when we hit the rope that was blocking off the entrance to the castle.

Luckily, it had almost been long enough that they were about to reopen everything. We joined the line right as the rope came down, and we decided this would be the perfect time to try to ride Peter Pan’s Flight since the queue was just beginning to form again.

It still probably took at least 10 minutes to make it to the front, but that was much better than the usual posted waits, so we were psyched when we got to the front and found our pirate ship.

Flying through the Darling nursery, we waved at our best friend Nana (she is depicted thrice in this scene, we realized, between her animatronic, her portrait on the wall, and the plush designed after her). We then had a lovely flight over London and through Neverland. This attraction will always be one of my favorites. It’s so simple and yet so perfect all at once.

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