Chapter 60
It’s a World of Laughter (and Color)

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(Originally posted September 3, 2013)

March 1-4, 2013

Okay, everyone. I hope you’re prepared to kick this thing into high gear a little. So as not to keep getting constantly further behind, I really need to stop listing out our trips ride by ride and focus more on the big picture a little (not that I won’t still occasionally talk about things on a per-ride/per-meal basis, especially on important days of note). I also know some of you have been wondering if I’ll ever get back to reporting about what has gone on in our non-Disney lives, to which the answer is a resounding yes. These first few days of having our passes, Disney was pretty much all we thought about 24/7, but as time went on, real life crept back in, and I will definitely be sharing that with you all as well.

Anyway, here we were in the first week of March.

That Friday, we arrived at Disneyland after work, and I wasn’t feeling too great, so we decided to ride the Monorail to allow me to sit for a while. I like these pictures I got from the station at dusk.

We didn’t get to ride up front this time, but we still enjoyed the ride.

Feeling revived after going through the highway in the sky, we walked through Tomorrowland and found ourselves face to face with the parade.

By this point, the parade was starting to get on our nerves a little. I still like Soundsational as well as I like any other parade, but it just seemed like we ALWAYS arrived while it was going on and spent the next half-hour trying to avoid it!

We were actually trying to get to the back of Fantasyland so we could take our first ride on “it’s a small world.” This attraction had still been closed when we got our passes so as to take down the Christmas decorations. Now, it had just opened, and we were very excited to sail through its waters.

We felt a newfound kinship with the Rolly Crump clock after we had seen him in person at that Barnes and Noble.

The ride itself was lovely as always.

I know some people HATE Small World, but I’ve always had an affinity for it. I think it’s just classic and has such a “Walt” flair to it. We also love the Disneyland version with all the characters.

Unfortunately, as a result of the refurb probably not being quite as long as the Imagineers may have hoped, several of the animatronics were either missing or “dead.”

One animatronic we wished hadn’t been tuned up during the refurb was our favorite hippo. While he usually winks, they fixed both of his eyes so he blinks now…

Still, we loved it nonetheless, and I was very proud of myself for finding this Hidden Mickey on the ceiling of the White Room.

As we exited “it’s a small world,” we saw that the train was just pulling into the Mickey’s Toontown station. I love how many attractions the Disneyland Railroad passes through.

I’m not 100% sure, but I think we may have waited for the next train and ridden over to New Orleans Square. I DO know for sure that we rode Winnie the Pooh next, however.

Continuing with our Pooh theme, we went into one of the best stores in all of Disneyland—Pooh Corner!

Once inside, we got in line and checked out the delicious goodies behind the counter.

We noticed these pictures for the first time, which are homages to the Country Bears (who were evicted by Pooh to build his ride).

I can’t believe we made it this long with our passes before getting the best sweet treat in the whole Disneyland Resort: a Tigger Tail!

Tigger Tails are just absolutely delicious. They combine almost all of my favorite candy elements into one perfect package. Chocolate, caramel, marshmallows—it’s just heaven on a stick.

We took our snack over to the lower level of the Hungry Bear Restaurant seating area to munch on it. We were actually over there to look for Disneyland Cats, but we didn’t find any. Instead, there were a few very friendly ducks walking around by us begging for food. We didn’t have anything to feed them, but they didn’t give up. While we were sitting there, we also realized that this is the place where cast members show up to be shuttled over to Tom Sawyer Island in preparation for Fantasmic! We saw plenty of people who looked to be on the crew and others who we thought might have been friends of characters not yet it costume. They boarded rafts at Hungry Bear and got dropped off over on the island.

Finishing up at Disneyland for now, we hopped over to DCA. We noticed that there is a handicapped section of seating for World of Color and wondered if we could sit there with the GAC—World of Color is a show that I basically can’t experience otherwise because it just involves standing still for SO long. I asked a cast member and she told me that the benches go to people with Fastpasses first but if they don’t fill up, then anyone with a GAC can sit there. Since the first show is always very full, there weren’t any spots left now, but she advised that we check back for the second show.

Since World of Color wasn’t going to happen for us for now, we just rode The Little Mermaid instead and then walked over to Paradise Pier. Suddenly, the fireworks started going off in Disneyland, and we could actually see them pretty well across the bay.

We rode Toy Story Mania next, and I improved a little upon my score. Tracy hovered around the 100k mark, but both of us were determined to start figuring out how to get better.

We were interested to find out what we were supposed to do to ride Radiator Springs Racers with the GAC (since we weren’t about to be making the mistake of doing rope drop again any time soon). We inquired with the cast members there, and they wrote us a Fastpass that would be good after we had waited out the length of the standby line (about 60 minutes at this point in time). This suited us just fine, so while we waited to be able to ride through Radiator Springs, we went back to check what was happening over at World of Color.

As it turned out, almost no one had stuck around for the second show of the night, so we were able to get a spot on one of the benches. We got to sit, therefore, and actually ENJOY World of Color. What a spectacular show it always is! I just love the music they chose as well as the movies it features. We had a blast, and it was so nice not having to worry about getting dizzy from standing still for that long.

The one thing we did start to feel was a little cold. It had been pretty warm today, so we hadn’t grabbed our heavy jackets (opting instead for sweatshirts). Luckily, we really only started shivering right before the fire section of the show, at which point we wished the flames would last a little longer. We successfully made it through without freezing our butts off, and by the time World of Color was over, it was time for our Radiator Springs Fastpasses.

The moon was giant tonight, and it was hovering beautifully over Cars Land as we made our way over.

I don’t have any notes about which side of the ride we got this evening or even whether we won or lost, but it looks like we had fun!

Okay, I realize now that this update wasn’t really any better at keeping things more brief than all the other ones, but I promise to move things along as best I can in the near future.

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