We’re up early (not hard to do, we were still on East Coast time) and pack the Jeep to drive up the coast.

The idea was that we were going to stop lots, take pictures, wander, look at things. Which we did and had a great time doing so.

First stop: Huntington Beach to visit the pier and watch some surfers… as one does…

For the first part of the trip, we mostly drove inland to get past the congestion of Los Angeles and surrounding boroughs. Strip malls and mountains, really.

Our first pit stop: Ojai. The birthplace of Steve Austin and Jamie Summers, the bionic couple we all loved during the late 70s.

Location shot from the Bionic Woman pilot episode

Excitedly, SharkBoy ran into the first place that sold postcards. “We’re here to see the place that gave us The Bionic Woman!” SharkBoy cheerfully tells the woman behind the counter. “Erm… Yes! Welcome!” she says, not really understanding, I think. Back into the car.

Our next stop was Santa Barbara. It reminded me of Palm Springs, but more like old money by the sea. The pier was a welcome walk after being in the car. We managed to get a couple more shots for SharkBoy’s City Hall Collection.

Back into the car! After some pretty driving we stop in San Luis Obispo for the night, humourously called “SLO”. Really nice college town, with a ton of great cafes/restaurants and funky shops – there was a modest Apple store so I theorized that it was a college/university town based on the “young” vibe we were getting (I was proven right when we passed most of the schools the next morning). We stopped by the Mission and wandered the main drag for a bit.

After clearing away all the spiderwebs that had formed in our room overnight, we were back in the car at 6am, driving through some thick fog. Our first stop: a “seal lookout” about 45 minutes north of SLO. SEALS!! We were alone on the beach when we pulled up and the first thing we heard over the crashing waves was… farting?

A pod (or Club) of seals

Hello!

Outcast

Fight! To the Death!

After the cold got to us, we were back into the car and onward to Gorda, made famous for it’s whale watching. But as we were to find out for the rest of our trip, the fog really likes to stick around all morning long. The drive up into Ragged Point was raggety and a bit nerve racking, but every so often we would come out above the fog and see sun capped mountains above, clouds below.

Above it

The Cabrillo Highway (#1) is insane. Little rocks pepper the highway, which reminded us that rocks may at any moment fall and crush us. Or make the highway itself slide into the ocean. After a couple hours of 20 mph curves and blind corners in the fog, we started up another mountain. And up. And up. And suddenly… BIG SUR:

Bridge under construction

A lot of this, with hairpin curves, cliffs and maniac Porches coming from the opposite direction.

Arriving in Big Sur was a religious experience for SharkBoy. He literally was in tears coming across the mountain out of the fog. When we stopped for a tea and to take down the roof of the Jeep, we found the people there to be young, athletic (hills!) attractive and friendly – I can understand how some people never leave.

Our brief stop in Carmel, to see where Clint Eastwood was mayor, was brief. We found it to be rich-creepy. Like we were underdressed and poor, just by walking the streets. Back into the car!

The rest of the drive was through built up areas and the occasional state park. If you do the coast drive, I have to say the drive north would be a better option. Less traffic, less curbside cliffs and breathtaking views!

Tadaaa!

We missed the rope drop show because we realized, as we were eating breakfast at 6am (damn west coast time zone differences), that only resort guests could see it due to Magic Hours (the park opening early for those privileged people). Dang! One more reason why you should bite the bullet and stay on property.

Splooge

We hit Magic Kingdom first and grab a tea and a muffin while the crowd surges past us to grab their FastPasses for Star Tours, Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, etc. I found a “secluded” porch with a bench right on the street which provided a great place to people watch. Just the fact that this bench was taking up prime shop window real estate on Main Street USA made me really start to notice the differences between Florida and Anaheim. Even though WDW has the luxury of space, you wouldn’t find a “wasted” storefront like the one we sat in at Disneyland.

Hummingbird. Don't Worry Sylvie... I have more for you!

In fact at one point while wandering through DL, I turned to SharkBoy and said: “I have to confess, I don’t remember this park… at all!” Despite being there less than 5 years prior, I couldn’t remember the layout or attractions as well as I could for WDW. SharkBoy’s eyes widen “ME TOO!” he utters. It’s like we’ve just both discovered we’ve been mind-wiped like some alien abductee, but without the anal probing. Weird.

This unfamiliarity was welcome though. It was like we were visiting the park for the first time, all over again.

Gleeeruuuugh

I’m going to lump in both days and both parks, highlighting on the good stuff, to save you all some time:

• We were singled out again on Mike and Sully’s Monster Inc ride. Roz said in her gravelly voice: “Hey you two in the second row. I like your haircut.” YES! We’re easy targets.
• World of Color? Frakking amazing. Those YouTube videos we scoured over prior to our trip don’t do it justice.
• Ariel’s Undersea Ride? A soon to be classic for little girls (and some boys). Very reminiscent of Peter Pan, but with better robots.
• Speaking of robots… we got to finally see Great Moments with Lincoln and didn’t know what to expect. After all the video and cartoon intro, the curtain closes as if the show was done. SharkBoy and I exchange desperate glances: was that it? SharkBoy was going to tear the theatre apart – “We wants the ROBOT!” But the curtain re-opened to reveal the audio-animatronic. Whew.
• There was a large amount of party people after 10pm. At one point we had frat boys on our Splash Mountain ride, eager to test the boundaries of how far they could get out of the boat without stopping the ride.
• And there was the drunk girl outside Splash Mountain wearing “Get a Tattoo Pussy” tee. How she made it past the draconian front gate security with that is curious.
• Star Tours? We got Admiral Akbar the second time around. The third time, a Wookie got stuck on our windscreen. I may cry tears of Joy. Still haven’t done Bespin or Endor…
• Space Mountain was smoother in CA than FL.
• In fact, SharkBoy has a theory that I sort of agree with: Whichever park has the original ride, it’s better. Pirates, yes; Haunted Mansion, no (I think the new Escher room and final hitchhiking ghosts is better in FL).
• Soarin’ needs a new film. We were treated to a big bug on our lens for the first quarter of the ride. And it’s getting noticeably scratchy in these days of HD.
• elecTRONica should stay longer – if they could figure out how to get the Syd Mead bar fixtures in quickly and not have them lying around all day long in the sun (its pretty jarring in reference to a NYC street set), that would be cool. Flynn’s Arcade could be open all day! Fun retro!

SharkBoy's New Hat

Even though we had 2.5 days and were travelling light, we still managed not to do everything. I guess we’ll have to go back.

The Back End of C3P0

More park pics here

Ramada Main Gate Hotel Pool

Our flight with Virgin was pretty cool. The plane had ability to order snacks (free or paid) via your entertainment pod which was also stocked with all sorts of video/music. You could also buy a flight’s worth of WiFi, so we were well occupied.

Why the frak is the rental agencies so far from LAX terminal? At the agency, something SNAFU’d with our reservation (paid in full for a bigger discount online) and the clerk could not clear whatever needed to be cleared. He went and got the key for the Jeep we ordered so that no one else could take it but since it was still in the system and not accounted for, someone next to us snagged it in the computer (I guess they overbooked that day by one Jeep!). After our clerk tried in vain to reset our account, we wound up having a meltdown moment at the car wrangler’s desk. Some fat dude had his luggage in our Jeep already and since the wrangler couldn’t find the key, let alone speak in cohesive English, tempers flared a bit by the time we arrived at the garage. The fat dude settled for an “upgrade” to a convertible Mustang and we got our booked-in-January Jeep we wanted. All was happy!

LOST VW Van

The Ramada Main Gate Hotel is not particularly a Ramada-esque kind of place. When you say Ramada I think of standard, brick shaped building out by the airport with better than average quality rooms. The Main Gate was a converted motor inn right outside Disney’s main entrance (duh). They’d fixed it up nicely with a fully reno-ed pool in the middle courtyard and nice landscaping, but at the end of the day, it was still looked like a 4 story motor inn with cars parked in the middle. It didn’t look very Disney. However, the room we got was pretty frikkin’ sweet: King bed  in the newly renovated section. A massive yet weirdly shaped room with the door hidden under the stairs to the rest of the hotel. Slightly noisy AC but we rarely had it running long. Nice enough front desk staff. Clean. Literally 10 min walk and you’re in line at either Disneyland or California Adventure. In all, I’d stay again without question.

Disney's Limo

We dump our luggage and make our way over to the Convention centre to pick up our D23 tickets. The rest of the day was spent wandering Downtown Disney, scoping out potential souvenirs. Then into the park to get Star Tours out of the way – we waited an almost solid hour and we’re luckily we did because during the day, the lineup was running 75 minutes and FastPasses ran out within the first hour after opening. We got to visit Tatooine Pod Races and Naboo (we got the Naboo ending most of the time). I seem to remember that WDW’s Star Tour showed three planets, while Disneyland only shows two? They might have changed that for ride capacity or I was drunk with excitement.

Back to the hotel. Out like a light in the King bed.

Original Tron Costume

The D23 convention was amazeballs. it opened at 9am and when we arrived at 8:20 or so, the lineup had already snaked for what looked like a mile. It was overcast and cool so it wasn’t that much of a horrid wait. We were both surprised at how calm and polite the line was (we’re all Disney fans!). I do have to say the quality of ultra-cool tee-shirts was much higher than your average convention. For some reason, Disney fans seem to find the best graphics.

SharkBoy as Godzilla

Inside the convention was incredible, with very little crap. We had one day so we didn’t wait in line for any presentations but we did manage to get to see the archive room, where we saw a ton of props from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Rocketeer (awesome!), the original Tron costumes (awesome!!), Lost (I was confused by this until I remembered the ABC connection) and artwork from Sleeping Beauty. I might have been tired but I totally started to sob when I saw the faux jewel encrusted storybook they used at the beginning of the movie. Right in front of me was one of the first childhood memory props I could ever recall. Buh.

We also go to meet Destini! He’s the latest in Disney Audio-animatronics and is totally autonomous with no predetermined guest experience loops or human assistance, just a huge library of question/response/statements to choose from depending on his sensory input: cameras track your face (are you smiling? are you sad? just how much can Destini joke around with you?), cameras see the crowd behind you (to judge how long to spend with you), and finally a camera to take a snap of your face to put on a sticker, for your fortune. When we stood in front of Destini, he seemed to get confused at which of us to talk to… his “face” was turned to SharkBoy but he took my picture. His conversation seemed to hint that there was only one of us (the prior couples visiting Destini all were singled out with jokes and casual remarks). We stumped a robot! Still, the whole concept was mind blowingly cool.

The Great Destini at the D23 Expo 2011 from WDWNTube on Vimeo.

We shopped some and chatted up some distributors and eventually went back to the hotel for a disco nap and then into the park. Purely by accident, while jockeying for space at the beginning of the fireworks, we met up with CoryBlank and his adorable husbands, Jeff and Tim. YAY! These guys were utterly charming, fun and full of energy (while ours was waning pretty fast). We rode Pirates and Haunted together and called it a night. It was great meeting them!

Oh and on the way out, we saw the wait times for Indiana Jones was 5 minutes and we did the mile long walk (why is the ride so bloody far from the entrance?!) and quickly rode that. I was fully zoned by that time, though and could only croak my squeals of glee.

Back to the room, out like a light.

More Pics here!