Yes, back up to Anaheim today. But this time, we had a mission – Dinner at Ariel’s Grotto so that Campbell could dine with the princesses!

We planned this to be a shorter day. As the California Advenure park closes at six, the last seating for dinner is at 5pm. Also, this park is smaller than Disneyland Resort, so we figured that a short day would be all we needed to finish it off. First order of the day was to hit some rides. We hadn’t been into the Bug’s Life area yet, so popped in there to check it out. It’s for very young kids. The rides are pretty tame:

• Flick’s Flyers – Sit in a basket, goes up, spins around
• Francis’ Ladybug Boogie – Two people to a ladybug, spins around between two turntables
• Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train – A really slow caterpiller train, as Heimlich goes in search of candy
• Tuck & Roll’s Drive ‘Em Buggies – The slowest dodgem cars on earth
• Princess Dot Puddle Park – Probably the best bit, a few fountains and such for the kids to cool off

The setting is great, all giant plants and bits of litter – you really feel like a tiny little bug in a jungle of a world. It’s just pretty boring for anyone over three.

Back around to the fun rides we’d missed out. Unfortunately, both the California Screaming and Mulholland Madness rollercoasters were out of action. So, we hit the Grizzly River Run for another fun and wet ride, then let Campbell run around in the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail, before heading for Jumpin’ Jellyfish. This is a little kids version of the Maliboomer vertical thrill ride. It’s pretty tame. Campbell wanted to ride by herself, but apparently you have to be over seven for that. Oh well.

Then we managed to convince Bren to go on the Tower of Terror. I still feel bad about that. Enough said.

In between all that, we caught a little street show which turned into an autograph session with Mickey, Hercules and Cinderella, which Campbell loved.

So, no coasters in operation at California Advenure, so we popped on over to Disneyland to try some of theirs. First stop: Space Mountain. Big queue, but it went fairly fast. As did the ride! Nice and fast, in a dark, starfield environment with some pretty cool special effects. Well worth a go!

From there, it was off to Adventure Land, and on to the Jungle Cruise (old classic), Indiana Jones’ Adventure (quite fun) and Tarzan’s Treehouse (lame). A quick stop around the corner to the Pirate of the Caribbean (kinda fun), then it was back to California Adventure for the big dinner.

Campbell loved it. She got some one-on-one time with Ariel, Aurora, Jasmine, Mulan and Mary Poppins. They all stopped by our table to say hi and for a chat. As an added bonus, the food was pretty good too!

Took a drive down to San Diego today, to check out the often hyped San Diego Zoo. Man, what a disappointment.

Once we got into the zoo, and hence had our tickets stamped as used, we were handed a note that said that the zoo was closing slightly early to allow for an annual fund raising function. No big deal, we thought. However, what wasn’t allowed for was:

• The massive crowds of support staff zooming around in golf carts, blocking off pathways and setting up tables in the main streets
• Various shops and food outlets being closed early

The biggest impact was at lunch time. We decided to have a late morning tea, and hence a late lunch, to work around the lunch time crowds. Keep in mind that you’re not allowed to take food into the zoo, so you’re forced to buy everything from their outlets. Lunch time gets pretty busy.

So we mapped out a course through the zoo, winding our way down to the panda exhibit (which we walked past ’cause of the massive, massive queue), and then on to the polar bears. Check out all that, then jumped on the "skyfari" cable car back to the entrance in order to have lunch at "Flamingos", which was one of the few places listed as having anything not deep fried. It’s hard to get good food over here.

We get there… and… it’s closed.

Bugger.

Okay, let’s just go with junk food, and walk over the road to the next place. A zoo official sends us on our way, ’cause they’re closing that down as well to get ready for the party that night.

Bugger.

We end up having to walk ten minutes down to one of the few places still open, and the only one left that we can get a salad from.

There were some cute bits of touristy crap that I was going to buy as prezzies for a few people, but after all that I figured that I’d rather spend my money somewhere else. That decision was made a lot easier by the massive queues in the gift shop, thanks to only having one cashier serving people. It was really quite obvious that (for that day at least) the normal visitors didn’t matter. All they cared about was the people paying a starting price of $80 per head to attend the function. Which is fine, but if that’s the case they should have closed the place for the day and set up properly.

And after all that, was the zoo worth it? I have to say that Melbourne Zoo is better. The enclosures (sorry, "habitats") were pretty ordinary looking. Some looked pretty cramped, especially for some of the large birds of prey. When we eventually got a glimpse of the panda, it just wasn’t worth it. You get to line up for ages for a 15 second glimpse before being ushered along so someone else can feel ripped off.

Without doubt, the San Diego Zoo would have to be the worst part of our holiday so far. It’s the only place we are actually regretting spending a day visiting.

We were after a quiet day today, after being out at Disney yesterday. So we jumped into the car and headed south to Old San Diego. This is supposed to represent the San Diego area back when California was under Mexican control. I guess the architecture and so on is probably fairly authentic, but the amazing number of over-priced tourist traps is probably a little more modern. We did grab lunch in a Mexican restaurant which was quite nice. The margharitas were better than the food though. On the up side, Campbell learned how to order chicken nuggets in Spanish.

Then went looking for the San Diego tourist information centre in the hope they could tell us somewhere good to go. Got badly let down by our in-car GPS navigation. No sign of any tourist info at either of the addresses it sent us to. Mind you, it got us to those addresses correctly, just not to the place we wanted to be.

So, we went off to Balboa park for a while, so Campbell could run around a park and get some play time in. Also got to see our first ever squirrels; quite a few of them running around from tree to tree. Balboa park is huge, we saw but a tiny fraction of it. It’s home to the zoo, the science centre, and a stack of museums. Hope to get back down there to the zoo in the next few days.

After that, cruised by Mission Bay. Quite a nice area, and another playground for Campbell to check out.

From what little I have seen, I think San Diego would be one of the better places to be if you had to live here. Seems a lot like Melbourne, with a slightly nicer climate. Mind you, it may cop the edge of Hurricane Rita, which kind of kills the nice climate angle. Still haven’t found a decent coffee anywhere though.

Back to Disneyland today, this time to the California Adventure park. Quite a different feel to the Disneyland Resort; much more modern, and for the most part much less Disney. The only two bits that are real hardcore Disney themed are the Hollywood Backlot and the "It’s a Bugs Land" kids area (which we really didn’t bother with!).

Ventured first into the Hollywood backlot. The Muppet FX movie is pretty cool, with neat use of 3D movies and animatronics. Also checked out the Aladdin show, which is a live stage production of the movie. Runs for about an hour, and very well put together. I think the real "Wow!" factor in this area is the "Turtle Talk with Crush" show. This is pretty amazing. A huge screen is set up like a view into the Pacific. An animated Crush (from Finding Nemo) swims in, and interacts with the audience; he picks people out to talk to, asks questions, answers the audience. Really amazing stuff to watch.

That was about it for shows for us, from then on in it was rides. The Grizzly Rapids are a good way to cool off (you will get wet on this ride – in some cases very wet!). Soaring Over California was quite good, and means we don’t have to travel all over the place now, as we’ve seen it all.

Campbell was a little upset that she didn’t make the height requirements for the Mali Boomer. This is a huge triangular tower with four seats on each side. You’re strapped in, and then zoom to the top of the tower and some amazing speed, before plummeting back down again. The guys controlling the ride love having a bit of fun with the people waiting to go on it, trying to get all the screams they can out of the riders. It was actually quite smooth, and felt like you hang at the top for ages in this weightless state. Watching someone else have a go, and that is certainly not the case! Bren was trying to take some photos, and couldn’t pan the camera fast enough to keep pace with the ride.

Campbell was tall enough for the Tower of Terror, which is a Twilight Zone themed ride. The set-up is actually quite spooky, lots of good effects. The ride itself is amazing; really great presentation and effects, and then it just goes wild. Do not go on this if you have a fear of being in the dark. Or falling. Or heights.

California Adventure closes at 6, so we popped back into Disneyland so Bren could check out the shops in Main Street, and Campbell was dying to go on the Matterhorn again. Also checked out the last half of the parade. These guys really have honed all this down to a fine art over the last fifty years.

Once again, a great day for all. Even better in that we didn’t get rained on this time around!

Just got back from a big day out at Disneyland – 10.30pm! It’s been a long day….

You know how people say you need to spend a few days at Disney? Well, they’re right. Mainly because you spend all your time in queues.

We got to the park before it opened at 10am so we could join our first queue for the day and collect our pre-ordered tickets. Good start to the day – their bookings system was unavailable and they couldn’t process our order. Got us into the park no problems, we just couldn’t get our SoCol City Passes we’d ordered. Oh well.

Walked in, and who did we see, but Princess Jasmine and Aladdin. Campbell was rapt, and joined our second queue for an autograph and photo shoot. Today she managed to get autographs and photos from them, plus Snow White, Ariel, Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Pluto.

Campbell looks like she’s going to be a thrill seeker: loved the Matterhorn and some of the roller coasters. We even managed to drag Bren onto the Matterhorn.

Still converting the photos to jpeg, I’ll try and get the best uploaded tonight. They’ll be online athttp://photos.stocksfamily.org/Theme%20Parks/538320.

Just a quickie to let everyone know that the photos from California are being uploaded to http://photos.stocksfamily.org/Travel. I’m going to try and upload them on a daily basis. I’m also trying to post news on a daily basis, and we can see how well that’s working!

Well, we made it. After a fourteen hour flight on Friday morning, then an hour driving south, we arrived at Worldmark Oceanside in southern California.

First mission yesterday was to find out way to a local supermarket and stock up on food. We managed to get slightly lost on the way back and ended up at a Marine base. The guards at the entrance had a good laugh at us and pointed us in the right direction.

The Oceanside Harbour Days is on this weekend, so we’ll probably just hang around here and settle in and check it out, and then venture forth on Monday.