The Lane's next BIG trip: Day 31. Disneyland. Sunday 19th January

One of the perks with staying at our hotel, and the other 2 within Disneyland (DL), is being able to get into either Disneyland or California Adventure Park (CAP) an hour before the gates open to the public a couple of times during the stay. Today the CAP opened at 8am and there were hundreds of other hotel guests lined up to also get in early. The park, as expected, is huge with lots of rides for all ages. Our first stop was Radiator Springs to go on the new Cars ride. Apparently this is the most popular attraction, and when the gates opened that's where everyone headed to. It's a new ride and has only been opened for about 6 months. We were told to get there early because sometimes the wait can be a minimum of 2 hours. Luckily for us and our early entry pass we only had to wait for about 15 minutes. The ride was great fun. We all sat in in a car that was similar to the race cars in the movie Cars; The ride starts with 'driving' around Radiator Springs past all the Cars characters like Lightening McQueen, Doc and Mater before we went into a garage to prepare for a race. The track then doubles and we were joined by another car with people in it next to us and suddenly the ride becomes a roller coaster style race. After the 6 minute ride we did it again. We thought we would get the second ride in before the park opened and the line got to long. Similar to Disneyland, CAP is divided up into themes and the Cars theme had many other rides, attractions and shops. We spent a while playing on other more sedate rides before heading to Paradise Pier and going on the roller coaster. Cameron decided he'd prefer the carousel than going upside down and round and round really fast. We couldn't decide whether it was better that the one at New York New York or not. The area also had a Ferris Wheel where the cages were on rollers and would glide and swing to the middle of the ferris wheel and back out again. This ride made Christine feel a little bit unwell and she was glad to get off it. We played on a 3D Toy Story ride, which was fantastic. You sat in a seat that wheeled you through about 5 different arcade games that you got to play and collected points on the way. We also watched a 3D Muppet movie, went on a smaller roller coaster called Goofys Sky School (Cam did that one), got wet on a river rapids boat ride, visited the Haunted Hollywood Hotel (aka The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror) where the lift plummeted and then shot up high before falling again several times. We watched a parade with many Disney/Pixar characters and went on a really cool glider flight simulator to soar over California. After tea we went over to DL to watch the fireworks with Chelsea and Jake (Cameron returned to the room very tired) and then went back to CAP to watch the magnificent World of Colour water show where fountains of water and lights became a movie screen. It was very pretty and much much better than what the Bellagio has to offer. We returned to our room at 10pm after a very full day. During the day we met and spoke to many people who had done the Tinkerbell Half marathon that morning. The race started at 5am and they ran through both parks before going into the nearby roads. All the pretty lights were on in the parks and the characters were out waving and greeting the runners. You could even stop and have your photo taken with some of then if you wanted. Maybe something to put on Andrews bucket list. Christine's favourite ride for the day was Toy Story, Andrew and Chelsea's was the Roller Coaster, Jacob's was Ariel's Underwater Grotto ride and Cameron's was Goofy's Sky School