I Don't Mean to Alarm You...

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, or you wouldn’t have come here.”  -Lewis Carroll

 

Denizens of Disneyland, I must sadly bring to your attention that something appears to be wrong with your castle.  As Scott said, "Did someone wash that with my red t-shirt and shrink it?"

We've been to Disney World so often that Disneyland just felt weird to us.  It was familiar, but not.  Similar, but not at all the same.  Don't get me wrong, it's a nice place, but Disneyland will never have the magic for us that Disney World does.  I know it's supposed to be Walt's park, but hey, if he thought it was perfect, why did he do it over? Still, we had a very fun day at Disneyland and enjoyed many of the new-to-us attractions and rides. 

If the pictures look like all we did was run from ride to ride all day, that's more or less accurate.  One thing that frustrated us about Disneyland (and maybe we've just been lucky in our many trips to WDW) is that attractions and rides seemed to break down constantly.  We had to walk away from 5 rides and come back later over a two day period due to "technical difficulties".  Indiana Jones seemed the worst of the lot in that regard, as it broke twice as we walked up with fastpasses.  Fortunately, it makes up for it by being a really great ride - entertaining, exciting, and full of great effects.  We all thought it was our favorite in the park.   The Matterhorn was fun (but no Everest, or even Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which was closed for refurbishment - didn't count that in the broken total above), Winnie the Pooh was just weird (you need some bouncing honeypots in that ride, seriously), and Roger Rabbit was just okay (the spinning function didn't seem to work well on our car).  We all thought Mr. Toad was a bit surreal, but fun.  The other dark rides that don't exist in Disney World were pretty cute - Alice, Pinnochio, and the somewhat different Snow White (which doesn't exist any more).  We preferred the Disney World version of Buzz Lightyear, but have to give the edge to Disneyland's Pirates and Small World, and the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage is much better than The Seas with Nemo and Friends.  Most of the other overlapping rides were split decisions between family members or so close as to be indistinguishable.  We rode on about 20 rides, saw Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, did the very sweet Sleeping Beauty castle walkthrough, and visited the Stark Industries Iron Man tech exhibit at Innoventions.  By that time we were again too exhausted to stay for the evening fireworks or Fantasmic! so we bailed and headed back to the hotel.

We did do one other thing, though - Monte Cristo Sandwiches and Mickey-Shaped Beignets at Café Orleans in New Orleans Square.  YUM!!!   

We are supposed to be going to the California Science Center right about now, followed by a trip to the touristy parts of Hollywood.  However, after the schedule we've been keeping, we are too exhausted to get an early start, so everyone is sleeping in while I post this entry.  I'll post later whether we got up the energy to do more than laundry!