california dreaming...

so i got back from my week in california last night. we got to anaheim on sunday afternoon and went to my uncle's giant house in anaheim hills. there is an amazing chinese restaraunt down the street from their house that we went to. holy crap it was so delicious. they have some kind of honey coated shrimp that i ate like 7 pieces of, lol.
long story short, we stayed at their house until wednesday.

on monday morning we saw my cousins that i hadn't seen in 9 years, so that was nice. after that we went to laguna beach for the afternoon. i love it there so much and took tons of pictures. the tide was out so we were able to walk all over the rocks and stuff. it was cloudy and kind of cold so none of us went into the water.
on tuesday we went to downtown disney and walked around for a while with my cousin melinda. we had lunch at the jazz kitchen (meh) and shopped. i almost broke my finger in the bathroom of the restaraunt. i was trying to open the stall door and it was completely stuck. i couldn't budge it so i decided to just ram it down with my shoulder. it worked but when i was walking back to the table i noticed my finger hurt and was starting to bruise and swell up. it still hurts. that night the rest of my cousins came over, along with two older ones that drove in from arizona, and we had a baking fest. we made like 4 apple pies from scratch, 3 pumpkin pies from scratch, homemade pumpkin ice cream/ice cream cakes, some kind of orange cheese rolls, and an enchilada breakfast casserole. it was extremely fun and delicious. i could feel my jeans getting smaller and i hadn't even eaten anything yet.

wednesday started our 3 days at the disneyland resort. we checked into the disneyland hotel (which is not worth the money they charge you) and i was forced by the parentals to go into california adventure for the day. honestly, that park is a waste of time. there really isn't anything good. it's really not even disney-themed. it's like an old beach carnival with rides and corn dogs. we did get stuck on the water ride, though. and my sunglasses broke. and there was a damn high school musical 3 parade thing that i was forced to listen to for a while... i could have killed. the best part of that place was the toy story ride. it was like a giant arcade room and each character had their own game for you to play. i don't know if it was worth a 45-50 minute wait, but whatever.
we had gotten soaked on the water ride and it was cold outside, so we eventually went back to the room and put on dry clothes. we went into disneyland that night and did a couple rides and watched the fireworks show (also not worth it compared to other disney fireworks shows i've seen). you would think that we learned from going on a water ride in california adventure, but apparently not. we went on splash mountain and got soaked all over again and froze again.
BUT... i did finally see the haunted mansion holiday. they deck out the mansion in a nightmare before christmas theme. both times i went on the ride i didn't wait in line. it was great. the decorations were amazing, it went slow enough for you to look at everything, and it was one of the only rides that didn't have rude, snippy, overly flamboyant workers. the only bad part about no line is there was no time to stand and take pictures, so a lot of mine turned out kind of fuzzy because i had to keep moving.

thursday we went into disneyland again. rode rides, waited in lines, ate overpriced food, shopped, etc. the reason we took the disney vacation over thanksgiving is because my uncle told us it was the least busiest day of the year... wrong. it was so crowded and it wasn't even funny. we got into the park an hour early (7am and not 8am) because we were hotel guests, but that didn't do much good because the only parts of the park open that early are tomorrowland and fantasyland. everything else was roped off and still closed. we weren't even able to eat breakfast until like 10:00 because the food places weren't open yet. we left the park around 2 and went back to my uncle's to eat dinner with the family, stayed long enough to eat the pies i slaved over, and went back to the park for the night. we saw fantasmic (best show in the park) and the fireworks again.

by friday we were so tired that we didn't stay in the park that long or ride much because we had already done everything. we mainly walked around main street and did stuff that we never get to do because we're never there for more than one day. i got a silhouette done of myself with jack skellington and had peppermint ice cream. it made my sore legs and feet feel better. we left around 2 or 3 again and met with 3 cousins in downtown disney. we waited 2 hours to get into the rainforest cafe. it's a neat place but it was ridiculous to wait that long. we had 6 people and there were parties of 15 and 20 getting called over the intercom. how do you gather that many people for dinner or for a vacation? i was surprised. my parents went back into the park after dinner but i didn't. i was too tired so i went back to the room and slept.

saturday morning we argued over breakfast (i ended up eating at the ESPN zone with my dad), argued about which route to take home, and left. because we didn't leave until 11am we barely got through vegas before it got dark. we stopped in richfield, utah for the night and headed back out at 7:30am on sunday.
it was smooth sailing until we hit vail, colorado. it was a damn blizzard. we moved a top speed of 20mph the entire time through the pass. they ended up closing the vail pass about 20 minutes after we got through the pass. i had a friend going back to school in grand junction and hadn't gotten through when they closed the pass, so he got stuck in breckenridge. we hit an extreme traffic jam on the way to the eisenhower tunnel. we moved a grand total of 1 mile in a little over an hour. it was blowing snow, it was icy, it was freezing... it sucked.
we stopped in copper mountain to get gas and drinks and when we got back on the interstate they were shoving people off the road into the town of silverthorne. they closed I-70 completely. we slowly cruised around to try and find a hotel but every single one was full so we were sent to the local rec center for a shelter. i found a coffee table with an electrical outlet so i could charge my phone and talked to a guy from telluride for a while. we were there for maybe 2 hours when they opened the interstate back up and told people they could go. we went through the pass and tunnel at like 20-25mph and didn't reach normal speed until we got into denver because it wasn't snowing in denver.

the drive back sucked face, but we got home. i love california, but it feels good to finally be home.



here's all or most the stuff i did...

california adventure:
soarin' over california
grizzly river run
mulholland madness
toy story mania
muppet-vision 3D
bakery tour (not a ride, but i got free bread)

i would have done the tower of terror, but i would have gotten sick. didn't do the big rollercoaster either.

disneyland:
pirates of the caribbean (2x)
the haunted mansion holiday (2x)
matterhorn bobsleds
big thunder mountain railroad
indiana jones adventure
space mountain
star tours
splash mountain
jungle cruise
enchanted tiki room
finding nemo submarines
gadget's go coaster
autopia
snow white's scary adventures
pinocchio's daring journey
it's a small world
alice in wonderland
roger rabbit's car toon spin
sailing on the columbia (pirate ship ride)
monorail (main transport from the hotel to the park)

we didn't get to do mr. toad's wild ride or the peter pan ride. toad kept breaking down and broke when we were in line and peter pan had over an hour wait on all 3 days, so we said screw it. didn't do the buzz lightyear thing either.