We are indeed back from California and this is indeed mega. We drove the whole way. On the way there we saw scenic Blythe and on the way back we enjoyed the lovely town of Yuma. Okay, so the drive is nothing compared to Flagstaff, Logan, or Billings, but we still had fun.

My wife lined us up with a hotel right across the street from Disneyland, which was awesome. All we had to do each night was escape Main Street and the bleeping turnstiles (not an expletive – the turnstiles do bleep) and totally skip the Happiest Traffic Jam on Earth. I also know that I have what it takes to make the trek into Mordor. I was able to carry 30 pounds worth of lembas in my backpack while hefting an exhausted hobbit over my shoulder (substitute the One Ring for pink princess Minnie ears).

So, the moment Mike has been waiting for: the new Star Tours.

It was awesome.

Okay, moving on.

Just kidding. The ride was great, although not as random as I thought. The beginning and end set up a storyline that a Rebel spy has stowed away on the Starspeeder 1000. The middle is random. Driving to California, I told my wife that the one storyline that I didn’t want to see was our ship being involved in a podrace in the Boonta Eve Classic.

You guessed it. My first time riding Star Tours, our 40-passenger ship traded paint with Sebulba and his podracing rivals, throwing all sense of scale out the window. But our last night in Disneyland we rode it again and made our way to Kashyyyk where stormtroopers spiraled into trees and a Wookiee faceplanted onto our windshield in a vaguely Garfield-esque manner.

The way that the ride incorporates members of the audience into the story is great and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. The storyline is protecting a spy. It’s not blowing up the Death Star. Fans of the Rogue Squadron novels will like the “not everyone in the galaxy is a Jedi, folks” aspect. Waiting in line has been updated, too. The repair bay droids now scan luggage instead and have a cool thermal effect on a big screen TV that uses current video from the line. I also found out that the REX droid from the original ride must have had a jacked vocabulator, because the REX in the pre-boarding video sounds like a leading man from a 1930s space serial. Ralraa, you’re not alone in your Star Wars speech impediments. Most of the line was indoors and, at the very least, involved listening to Star Wars music while chatting with friends. Not a bad way to spend my time.

My oldest got to be a part of the Jedi Academy (thanks, in part, to Auntie Tina jumping up and down yelling, “Pick her! Pick her!”) and my wife was savvy enough to stick around after the Princess Faire to give my youngest a chance to hang out with Cinderella and Snow White.


It’s a weird thing to pray for as a dad, that your oldest would get chosen to go on stage and swing a flashlight around, but if you know my daughter’s heart, you’d understand. And check out my youngest’s face in the Cinderella photo. Yep, she’s excited.

Another really cool ride is the Toy Story Mania ride. Now, this may not be new to you, but it’s been almost a decade since my wife and I had been to Disneyland/California Adventure. I thought I got a pretty good score. My wife beat it by 30,000 points.

131,200 was the high score for everyone on the ride to see (my youngest got 18,700). I shall now sulk with Hamm the sarcastic bank.

My oldest and I do look pretty cool in 3D glasses, though.

World of Color
When I heard this “attraction” advertised to me, I pictured the old Sparklett’s water display that was a bunch of high-powered drinking fountains and some gel lights. World of Color sounded like something my grandma would enjoy, like how she always stopped for an hour to take pictures of the flowers at the Disneyland entrance.
I was pleasantly surprised with World of Color. It’s definitely something that you have to see at least once in your lifetime. Colors of the Wind was not predictably included in the soundtrack medley, which was pleasantly surprising.

We did get to meet a lot of characters. Any other place on Earth and they would just be twenty-somethings trying to pay off their student loans, but in Disneyland we ask for their autographs.

Sea World and the San Diego Zoo were perfectly timed in that the weather started getting warmer, so we were able to choose more of where to go without standing in line too much. Sea World and the San Diego Zoo also have different approaches to conservation. At Sea World, we were told multiple times that we (an inclusive “we” that clumps in whales, otters, sea gulls) are all part of the same family. The zoo told us that humans are the only species with the ability to enjoy and protect every other species on the planet. The zoo is definitely more my approach and didn’t leave me wondering why dolphins never attend our family reunions. [insert your own "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" joke here]

Sea World and the San Diego Zoo are best recalled in photos, so here comes the blast (from Sea World, since the only picture from the zoo that you can’t see in Phoenix is yesterday’s panda):

I swear that beluga was smiling at me. I put my hand up to the glass and knew that he would swim to it. It was a weird connection.

I’m a storyline person, especially when it comes to rides. I tried really, really hard to follow the story on Sea World’s Atlantis ride. From what I can tell, Neptune is peeved that humans are polluting and he throws us around a lot. As we’re put in an aquarium and shot into the air, a humpback whale, an orca, and a blue whale realize that we have kindness in our hearts and break the glass in the aquarium in the sky and send us splashing to the ground.

That’s my best guess. I’m now going to Google it.

The ride cobbles together a disjointed “story” through several ride element “scenes.” Ride narrative played on speakers mounted throughout the ride provides prelude to the next ride element. While the audio was clear, the distraction of the ride and the music made it hard to understand everything that was said; nor could this reviewer find any cohesive story arc after several rides.

Yep. That about sums it up. At least with Splash Mountain I could figure out that Brer Fox was trying to catch Brer Rabbit – and that there’s bees!!! Tons of fun, though. If the desired outcome was wetness, that was accomplished. It made for a great night of showering up and having dinner in the hotel lobby, which is next to a beach and we didn’t have to drive anywhere.

We had a great time as a family, both immediate and extended. The Netflix Project helped. It also has me eyeing Disney Universe…