Last May, Melissa (MY WIFE, say it like Borat) and I headed south to Disneyland to celebrate our anniversary. We were joined by some friends, while we spent 5 days in the parks. Over the next few Saturdays, I’ll be recapping that trip and trying to add a few opinions into the posts, as well. Enjoy! You can find part 1, 2 and 3 on our Trip Reports page.

Following our dinner at Rancho del Zocalo, we headed over for dessert in California Adventure.  We met our friends at Flo’s V8 Cafe and ordered a pie and milkshake to share.  Our friend Darin ate dinner there and, if memory serves, he liked it pretty well.  The star of Flo’s though isn’t the food, but the decorations and theming.  Like the rest of the land, everything is so detailed.  With all that being said, our Strawberry Rhubarb pie and chocolate shake were very good.  Melissa was happy.

After dessert we stuck around Cars Land to see the lighting at sunset.  Melissa has already wrote about this on the blog, but go to the Cars Land lighting.  Every night at sunset (ask a cast-member for an exact time on the day you are there) the neon lights of the land light up in a synchronized order and a ‘Life Could Be A Dream’ plays over the speakers.  It’s such a simple event and I’m pretty convinced a guest could walk right through it without even knowing it’s happening, but it’s beautiful and well done.  The lighting is the type of subtle event that makes Disneyland (and any park) great.

After that, we headed for Radiator Springs Racers.  We wanted to ride it at night before our trip was over and this was the best chance we had.  The single-rider line wasn’t terrible (I believe around 25 minutes) and we passed the time by taking weird pictures of each other with the camera.  For the safety of your computer screens and to try to not make this a family photo album, those will not be posted here.  But, it’s a good way to pass the time in line and be goofy.

Radiator Springs Racers is a different experience at night but just as good, if not better.  The Cadillac Mountain Range is lit up and it makes the attraction all the more magical.

After winning my race (I just assume I did), we walked toward Paradise Pier to catch World of Color.  World of Color is great and I’m very excited for whatever updates Disney is bringing to it for Disneyland’s 60th anniversary.  This may be worth its own post but I highly recommend standing in the splash zone, if it’s pretty warm.  We do this every time and get very close to the show.  Depending on the wind, you could get drizzled on or drenched but, as a person who doesn’t mind walking around wet, I love being as close as possible to the show.  Plus, the fire (spoilers!) warms us up!

I didn’t get any shots of Paradise Pier that I liked.  It’s very photogenic but the crowds, water and my lack of skill all held the pictures back that night.  After World of Color we started to slowly walk out of the park, taking pictures along the way.  If security lets you, walk through the Pacific Wharf bridge and head in through the back entrance of Cars Land.  If not, stop in front of Cars Land.  There are lots of good pictures to be had by doing this.  Plus, it’s quiet and peaceful.

We were one of the last few in the park that night.  Security will typically let you stick around and take pictures for as long as you’d like, unless there’s an event going on.  On this night, it seemed like there may have been an event that was going to start, as we were out of the park about 45 minutes after closing.  After leaving the park, we headed back to where we were staying (with relatives) and called it a night.

The next morning, we didn’t start at the parks. Instead we went to breakfast at the Paradise Pier Hotel.  We ate at a Character Breakfast buffet at the PCH Grill.  I’ll have a full review at some point but we had a lot of fun and ate a ton of food.  The character interactions were really fun.

The down side of coming here for breakfast is that we had to park somewhere else after parking at the hotel for breakfast.  I wish there would have been an easier way but the cast members said this was the most efficient way to go.

It seems like this is a good stopping point.  I have our last day and a half to cover in the last installment of the trip report.  I plan on putting that up next week.  If you have any questions, comments or feedback, we’d love for you to leave them in the comments.  Thank you for reading!

– Andrew