04-10 Disneyland and a Shopping Trip

We are staying at one of the Disney Resort hotels so we get to enter the Park and start riding attractions 2 hours early than the "normal" guests. Not feeling any jet lag effects we got up early and took a 15 minute walk through the Disney Village (think Downtown Disney, those of you from the States.) We probably arrived at Disneyland around 8:30am and headed for Discoveryland (think Tomorrowland) to ride Buzz Lightyear, Space Mountain 2, and Star Tours. Buzz is same ride as all of the other Parks. Space, however, was entirely different. This inside, very dark, roller coaster ride has a launch system that uses linear induction to shoot you to the top of the ride before you wind your way around in the dark going who knows where. The ride even features a loop. Our first ride was very confusing and minorly unpleasant. After becoming familiar with the twists and turns on our first ride, our second ride was much more comfortable and enjoyable.

We journeyed over to Adventureland to ride another same/unusual ride, Big Thunder Mountain...THE WILDEST RIDE IN THE WILDERNESS. The ride starts on the main grounds of the Park but goes under the Rivers of America on it's way to and from an island where it goes all over the place. To get back to the station we go carreening back under the water in the dark at break-neck speed. It is a thrill for sure. We went on a few other rides while exploring other areas of the Park before heading off around 4pm for a shopping trip that was in a mall one train stop away from the Resort.

I DID plan for all things electrical before we left. Really I did. I had adapters for adapting and I had a converter for converting. If the AC adapter at home said 120V/240V then all I needed was an adapter and I could plug the US two prong plug into the European two prong round adapter and I'd have electricity to my device. If the device only said 120V then I would need a converter to convert the 240V of European voltage to the 120V voltage that my device needed. Evidently curling irons are an exception to this rule since the current in Europe is 50Hz and in America it is 60Hz. Karen's curling iron occasional got a light when plugged in but it definitely did not heat.

So, we took off from the Park and made a side trip to the Outlet Mall. This turned out to be a great adventure because we got to learn how to use the train ticketing system and how to find which train to get on and which level to go to.

You can buy the ticket from the lady or if you know where you want to get off (which we didn't) you can buy it from a vending machine. We had to watch a few people go through the turnstiles to get the hang of what they were doing. The problem was that some people "palmed" their train passes and it looked like they were magically waving their hand over the top of the turnstile. We tried that. Fail! We stood back and watched a few more and realized they had credit card-sized passes. Those that didn't took their little train tickets and shoved them in the front of the machine, picked them up out of the top of the machine, and THEN plunged through the turnstiles. We found great success in this method.

Our stop was about 2 minutes away, we found the shops, and after about an hour of trying we failed to find a curling iron. So we decided to eat instead and then look some more on a full stomache. Evidently that was the key because within short order we found a huge store selling just about everything (think Walmart) and we found an abundance of curling irons. I guess this was the curling iron storage facility for the whole Mall!

After the short train ride back to the Resort, we registered for our Disney event and then we met up with Annie and Joanne and John and Ann, our Disney friends from California. We talked for hours and then retired for the evening.