UPDATED February 4, 2022
This is part of a series of trip reports from a 2008 southern California trip. Changes since then are noted with "NOW".
This is the 3rd of 11 posts (10 travel days plus final thoughts) adapted from e-mails I sent to friends and family. This was my 3rd trip there, the previous two being in the early 1980s and 1996. My dad came with me this trip.
I didn’t record much of the meal info for this day unfortunately. This day was spent at Disney's California Adventure (which was a parking lot the last time I was down here, so all the rides were new to me). Rides and shows in the order I went to them:
* Soarin' Over California: A better than IMAX screen plus a few other effects creates the illusion that you're gliding over various spots in the state. Great ride, though sometimes the scents from one section carry linger into another section, disrupting the illusion a little.
[NOW: This has been replaced with Soarin' Around the World.]
* Twilight Zone Tower of Terror: This is a fairly quick ride in which you have a few visual illusions before a drop, then shooting up 13 stories, then a few more ups and downs. The lurch up is the scariest part, especially if sitting at the front (Dad skipped)
[NOW: This ride has closed.]
* Monsters Inc: This is kind of like the minor Fantasyland rides, but nicer visual effects. Unlike Finding Nemo, I was able to get the gist of the story from the ride despite not having seen the movie
* Grizzly River Rapids: Circular raft goes down rapids. Leaky pipes etc guarantee you'll get wet but the drops will likely do the trick anyway. Fun because the ride spins so it's never the same twice (Dad skipped)
* California Screamin': A very long, huge roller coaster. The scariest part is a 360 degree loop around a Mickey Mouse head. Very smooth ride if you like roller coasts (Dad skipped)
[NOW: This ride has closed.]
* Maliboomer: This ride basically simulates the effect of a hammer causing a ball to hit a bell above, only with you substituting for the ball (Dad skipped)
[NOW: This ride has closed.]
* Mulholland Madness: Strictly speaking, this is a milder roller coaster than California Screamin' but messes your head more because the first part creates the illusuion that the car is about to fall off the track (Dad skipped)
[NOW: This is now Goofy's Sky School.]
* Toy Story: This was the newest ride at the time, having opened May 2008. A "4D" shoot 'em up (Dad scored higher than me). It was initially closed the first few times we tried to go on it due to breakdowns, took a while before the shooting seemed to start, and broke down again at the end. Popular but overrated at least at the time. Assuming the glitches have been worked out over the years, I might like it more if I tried it now.
* It's Tough to Be a Bug: This is a cute 3-D movie about the hazards that can befall a bug. * Muppets 3-D: This is a funny 3-D show based on the characters from the 1970s show.
[NOW: This ride has closed.]
'Then we went for a quick buffet lunch and I returned to the park as my dad returned to the hotel. After that I revisited some favourites but didn’t try anything new. In order:
* Monsters Inc, Soaring, Grizzly River twice, Mulholland twice, Maliboomer, California Screamin' twice, Grizzly River twice more, Twilight Zone, Monsters Inc twice. I had a bit of a different scare just before/after the final California Screamin' ride: I couldn't find my park ticket. I finally took out my map to find the lost and found and happily located the ticket there (perhaps mercifully my mind has blanked out that incident and I only know of it from the e-mail I sent to friends). My final go at Monsters Inc. was just as it was being closed for the day, a minute before park closure. Disneyland Park was still open two more hours after California Adventure closed for the day, so I revisited the following in order:
* Indiana Jones Adventure, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad twice, Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones Adventures.
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