Disneyland & California Adventure

After Easter Sunday's baseball game and dinner, we took off for Southern California and Disneyland. We planned a two day visit before departing for the American Southwest. This would give us one day at Disneyland and another day at California Adventure.

We had initially planned to drive as far south as possible Easter night and stay at a motel off of I-5. This changed when we crossed the Grapevine into the Los Angeles basin at around midnight. We decided it would be better to spend a little extra time getting to tomorrow's destination rather than fight the Monday morning infamous commute traffic. We pressed on and, fortunately, the hotel that we had reservations at for tomorrow, had a space for us tonight.

Our son was thrilled with the bunk beds. We slept in (for us) and didn't even miss the opening of the park. Our hotel came with a complimentary breakfast, which was about as bad as could be. Still frozen sausages just don't do it for me. I didn't eat breakfast that morning. Our hotel was right across the street from Disneyland, so all we had to do was walk to the entrance. This was much more convenient than having to drive, then park, then take a shuttle.

We spent the rest of Monday walking all over Disneyland. We rode Space Mountain (several times), Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blaster, Autopia, and even managed to get on the Matterhorn Bobsleds before the line got ridiculous. Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Railroad and Indiana Jones were exciting, but my favorites are still It's a Small World, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Enchanted Tiki Room. The Swiss Family Robinson's treehouse has been transformed into Tarzan's treehouse, but even so, it was fun to walk up. We also went to Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, which I had not seen in over 20 years. It had just been redone and the animatronics is even better than before.

Again, this is not a conditioning hike, but it's still a lot of walking! We met up with some friends who have children in the same school as our son and had a nice dinner at the Blue Bayou with them. We were fortunate in that we were able to get the last available space at 7:15 pm! After dinner, we went to the Haunted House together and then our friends went to see World of Color, the water show that is currently playing at California Adventure. Our tickets were for Tuesday evening so we stayed at Disneyland for the rest of the day and watched the fireworks before going back to our hotel for the evening. It was nice not to have the explosions happening right overhead, as happened the last time we were at Disneyland!

The following day, Tuesday, we went to California Adventure. Our favorite ride there is California Screamin', a huge boardwalk style roller coaster. It's really my second favorite after the Giant Dipper at Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk. California Soarin' is also a wonderful ride which simulates flying over California. Our son likes Toy Story Mania which, like Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blaster, is a moving shoot-the-target ride. We also went on the Monsters Inc. ride, saw a parade near the Aladdin theatre, and then went on the Hollywood Tower Hotel ride. I had completely forgotten that this was a freefall style ride. Had I remembered I would have passed. I white knuckled it during all three freefalls, which probably was a good thing since our son was so concerned about me that he forgot to be scared.

The height of the evening came with World of Color, but also the most annoyance. This water show is a medley of all of the great Disney animated movies. The show is absolutely stupendous BUT you have to watch it standing. In fact, you pay extra to watch it standing. There is no where to sit down, not even a park bench. The show lasts about an hour and it's another hour before the show starts, so that's a total of two hours of standing. Whoever planned this out obviously did not think this through.

It was a wonderful two days and we all managed not to get too sunburned! We headed back to the hotel for a good night's sleep. Tomorrow will be a long drive to Williams, Arizona - our jumping off point for the Grand Canyon.

And Now For Some Real Hiking...

Great news! My husband, who lost his job just before we all got the flu last February, will be reemployed again as of May 2nd. Our trip to the Southwest and Disneyland that we canceled on account of the flu, we can now do over our son's Easter break! We plan to go to Disneyland, then drive east to visit the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, and then swing by Antelope Canyon, Zion National Park on our way home. It's a lot of driving, but I think we can manage this inside of a week and get some really awesome hikes in!

Half Dome FastPass

Hiking to Half Dome has become increasingly popular in recent years, and that has led to increasing congestion at the bottom of the cables on the most popular days. The long waits and pressure to pile on actually makes the cable slower for everyone and less safe, much like an overcrowded freeway. So experienced visitors schedule the day and time of their hike to avoid these peak periods.

After last June's fatal and non-fatal accidents, some people have again argued for instituting a permit system to limit the total hikers on peak days. The National Park Service has such permits in place for strictly rationing all overnight use of backcountry trails and also all day trips to the top of Mount Whitney. Some hikers vehemently hate the idea of adding any new rules onto Half Dome day hikes. If a permit system is instituted, here is how I suggest it could be done in a minimally-burdensome way.

This particular method below assumes no ranger on post at Sub Dome and none at lower trail junctions, and no government mandate to strictly limit access to Half Dome. The weakest element is social; whether frustrated hikers with no pass will ignore all fancy rules and just cut in front anyhow. They now stay in their place in the waiting line largely because there are no visible exceptions; no one is passing others.

The new cable reservation system would be modeled after Disneyland's FastPass, and called CablePass. It would be a voluntary online reservation to have first priority for going up the cable with minimal waiting during your selected hour of your selected day. Outside of that hour, hikers would have second priority access up the cable for the rest of the day, ahead of hikers without any CablePass.

Any hiker could continue to use the cables at any day or time without a pass, waiting in the usual first-come first-up order, except they would now be expected to allow all pass holders to go ahead of them. (On peak afternoons, they might then wait so long that they don't get up before their personal deadline to turn back.) There would be no ranger on site to manage this. The waiting hikers would just work this out by comparing their passes. (I hope!)

The total bookable reservations for any particular hour would be set to 80% or so of the cable system's highest flow rate in uncrowded conditions. There would be no reservations for late-afternoon hours in mid summer when thunderstorm activity is common, since the park should not appear to guarantee that those hours are a smart bet. There would be no reservations for low-demand hours like night time. (Otherwise, I could buy an always-available dummy 2:00 am pass just to get around all non ticket holders that day.)

Seventy-five percent of the reservation slots would go on sale online 60 days in advance for $20 per person. These could be switched (just once) to another available time and date without additional cost. You would re-confirm your intention and print a physical ticket by checking into the online website again in the week prior to the hike date. Two days before the hike date, any reservations still unreconfirmed are cancelled without refund and re-sold to someone else. The price is set to discourage wasteful speculative booking without adding much to the total costs of a hike visit (travel, lodging, food, gear). All profits would go to some non-profit related to Yosemite or Half Dome, e.g., YOSAR.

Twenty-five percent of the total reservation slots would be held back until two days before the hike date. They would sell for $5 per person and not need further re-confirmation.

No visit to any park office is necessary; planners would be able to do all this from home. People could also do this at the park at many existing ranger-staffed help desks.

The reservation software would remind hikers of the additional basic safety needs for this hike: non-slip shoes, water, gloves, and watching out for weather. The site could also require viewing of a safety video.

The software would remind hikers of the park's recommendation that they sleep locally before they begin the hike. (A permit system could enforce this by requiring all hikers to pick up their physical ticket in Yosemite itself during office hours in the days before the hike. However, this office visit would inconvenience lots of people and cause more car trips within in the valley.)

This system would not strictly cap the traffic during peak periods. But everyone would soon learn that hiking up there at peak times without a pass would usually result in multi-hour waits (significantly longer than now) and sometimes not summiting at all. Knowing that, most people would then choose a better time or day if they can, or plan some other Yosemite hike instead if their date is inflexible. But no one would ever be told "No, you can't go there today", including our foreign guests.

In practice, none of this ticket stuff will matter during non-peak periods. During peak periods, nearly everyone will have a ticket. People will stagger their starting times so they arrive a bit before the time on their ticket, so there will no longer be a single rush of everyone racing to the cables at dawn. Average waiting times should go way down. If a few hikers do not get to the cables by the time they targeted , they still have a very good prospect of going up within one hour.

This system would not aim to reduce total visits to Half Dome or satisfy some government-imposed strict cap requirement. This non-strict capping of popular non-work days will deter some visits and reduce the total visits somewhat. That (plus lowered waiting times) could lower the cumulative environmental impact on the trail and summit.

The setup costs and maintenance costs for this reservation system would be very low, and those costs would be covered by the fees. The main barrier is political, getting it approved and backed by the various interest groups of Yosemite.

California Screamin': The Adventure Continues

After yesterday's long adventure at Disneyland, we slept in and we needed it! All of this park hopping has got us pretty tired and worn out. After getting dressed and having a quick breakfast, we headed out of the motel, arriving at California Adventure by about 10:00 am.


We took it fairly easy, though our first task was to get a Fast Pass for California Screamin' the park's enormous roller coaster. We walked around Hollywood area, visiting the Monsters, Inc. and some of the other rides.

The lagoon was all torn up for construction of a new exhibit, so there was no water in it. Some of the major rides, such as the ferris wheel, were also being updated and were thus unavailable. At last it was time to go on our roller coaster ride and California Screamin' did not disappoint. It was totally awesome! I went on it three times, one of them sitting next to a Roman Catholic priest! Be not afraid!

Our son's favorite ride in this park, however, was the Toy Story shooting gallery - target practice with a laser gun while moving on a ride. I have to say that for all of the rides of this kind that we have been on at Legoland and Disneyland, this was the best of the bunch. We also visited the Bug's Life area, where we saw a 4-D movie, complete with water spray, stinkbug stink and "bugs" crawling under our seats! Yuck! Cute, but a little bit scary for the little guy.

The other ride that we really like in this park is California Soarin'. This is a simulated plane flight over various areas in California. We got Fast Passes for 7:45 pm, then we headed out of the park for an early dinner and a rest at the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney, walking all the way. After a good meal (at least this one was on my diet!), we hopped on the monorail which took us into Disneyland's Tomorrowland. We still had a couple of hours to kill, so we grabbed a ride on the submarines before taking the train to the Disneyland entrance and walking back across the mall to California Adventure. Our little one loved California Soarin' and, although he had some trepidation (is this a roller coaster???!!!??? No!), afterwards he decided that this was easy, just like riding an airplane and he could do it again.

Being pretty pooped out, we headed out of the park after California Soarin', deciding to get an ice cream cone at Downtown Disney and catch the tram back to the parking lot. We did a little minor window shopping, got the cones and listened to world class violinist Drew Tretick playing there. Wow!

Back to the motel and it didn't take long for us to be sound asleep! Lots of walking today, even if not up hills.

First Day at Disneyland

Today was our son's first visit to Disneyland, so we made the most of it. Our 3-day tickets allowed us one early entry day, so this was our day! After a quick night's sleep, we left the hotel at 7:15 am so that we could enter Disneyland by 8:00 am. Only two areas of the park were officially open, Tomorrowland and Fantasyland. We were bummed out about that since it meant we had to wait until 9:00 am to enter Adventureland for the Indiana Jones adventure. So we stopped at Main Street to get our son's first visit badge. He wouldn't wear it, so I ended up wearing it all day. Hmfph! We also had breakfast in Tomorrowland and did some of the rides, including It's a Small World.


Immediately it was 9:00 am and we headed back for Adventureland and were among the first in line for the Indiana Jones ride. We've been singing the song for weeks and our son was very excited though the ride was a bit faster and scarier than he liked. He still says its his favority ride though, so it couldn't have been all bad.


Immediately after that we ran to the Tiki Room, one of our favorites. Our son was fascinated by the music, the singing birds and flowers, and the tikis in the pre-show outside. And afterwards we added the Tiki Room song to our repertoire.


We went on a variety of rides, including the Pirates of the Carribean and the Haunted Mansion. We also went on the newly refurbished sailing ship Columbia, a full scale replica of the first American tall ship to sailed around the world. Autopia was also a lot of fun, though by that time the line was quite long.


A nice feature that Disneyland has added to make the park more family friendly is that families with small children only have to wait in line once for roller coaster and other more adult rides. When the entire family gets to the front of the line, one parent goes on the ride and the other one stays with the children. Then the parents switch off without having to wait in line again. This was a life saver and really added to our enjoyment of the park since it meant that Duane and I got to go on some roller coasters too. Space Mountain is still a blast and Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is also fun. Neither of us really wanted to wait the three hours to go on the Matterhorn, however, since there is no Fast Pass for that ride.

Toon Town has been added outside the original bounds of the park and is new since our last visit. This is a great area for toddlers and smaller children where they can get a taste of a roller coaster without actually being scared out of their minds.


One thing that I had not done at Disneyland was to eat at the Blue Bayou Restaurant. So this time, I made reservations for dinner for the three of us ahead of time. Yippee! We arrived at 7:45 pm for a dinner as good as you might find in any decent restaurant. The jamabalaya and gumbo were excellent!

After dinner, we had time for one more ride before seeing the fireworks show just before park closing. We gave our son the option of any ride in the park and he chose It's a Small World. So we headed back to Fantasyland for our final ride. Always a fun ride, I found it interesting that our son picked the same "favorite" ride that my mother loves!

We then headed over to Adventureland, closer to the park exit, to watch the final fireworks show. I was glad to be further away from the concussions than I was last night. Our son still doesn't like fireworks - they're too loud for him - but he managed. He fell asleep in our arms on the way out of the park and didn't wake up until the next morning. We took turns carrying him from the park to the tram and back to the motel. He had a big 14 hour day for his first day at Disneyland!

Best of all, we got lots of walking in during the day in preparation for our Half Dome hike!