August 2013.
There are no people on Earth who does not dream to visit California at least once.
A lot of American films are created in California, in well-known Hollywood. The most of people are judged by films about the whole country.
But we started our journey from another part of California. The first town where we stayed was called Anaheim. Well-known theme park Disneyland is located there.
We booked a hotel the day before the trip. The only cheap hotel that had available rooms was
Anaheim Executive Inn & Suites. The location of the hotel was very suitable, next to Target store. The room was large enough;
microwave, coffeemaker, iron were inside the room. But I do not want to talk more about this hotel. Everything in the room was old and the room was not clear enough.
Luckily we came at the hotel late for sleeping only.
Disneyland.
The first park we visited was Disneyland. It was impossible to pass all attractions for one day. Too much people, too long queues.
So, I am discribing only a part of attractions that we’ve visited.
If you are going to this place, it’s better to look through the plan and list of attractions in advance and decide what to visit first.
You can find the list of attractions for ex. here.
To visit more attractions, it is better to take by-pass tickets.
While you are standing in the queue at one place, the time to another is coming and you are riding almost without queue the next attraction.
There are several theme zones in the park. The Disneyland railroad sometimes helps to move between them.
The attractions.
Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage.
This is about a small fish Nemo. As in the cartoon the dad was looking for Nemo.
The story was not interesting for adult and our children did not understand English well. But everyone liked the journey inside the real submarine.
Space Mountain.
This is space-themed indoor steel roller coaster. Attraction gives positive emotions, but the children can be scared there.
My five year old son cried all the time – “save me and help me”.
Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.
The attraction “Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters” is interesting for children of any age. This is not just an attraction; this is the game where everything is real.
The rules of the game are simple. You need shoot by your blaster enemies. Points are awarded for it.
Mark Twain Riverboat.
This is an excursion along the river. There are characters from Mark Twain books on the banks.
Autopia.
This is an interesting attraction for children from 8 years to 15. They need to drive almost a real car themselves, but on rails. Although we were not lucky.
The boy in previous car was driving too slowly and constantly stopped too often. “Ride with the wind” did not work for us.
Captain EO.
Captain EO is a fantastic 4D film starring Michael Jackson.
4D film is almost the same as 3D, but with an additional effects in the cinema hall, such as smoke, water splashes and so on. The film is for children.
The plot is very simple and intuitive.But my daughter still does not believe that the captain (Michael Jackson) was a boy, not a girl.
He had very high tenor in songs from the movie.
Mickey’s and Minnie’s Houses.
The kids loved Mickey and Mini houses. We certainly were there. A lot of pictures are from there.
The only thing that we do not like was the policy with photos.
A picture worth is 14-16$. You can download the photos from the Internet for the same price as a paper copy. That’s OK when the photo is made by the professional photographer.
But when the picture is automatically obtained (when the robot clicks at the most “scary” moment of the attraction) it’s not a reasonable price.
Digital copy which was get during riding should be free, or almost free.
All of us were very tired by the evening. Fireworks show began at 21:00, but we wandered into the parking lot where we had left our car.
There was a train to the parking but then it was not easy to find our parking place. Salute was started when we were sitting in our Mazda CX-9.
It was certainly more interesting than on this video, filmed with a cell phone. But if you looked at the firework from the park it probably would be much better.
Soak Sity.
Next we have visited the park named Soak City Water Park. It is located in Buena Park (Knott’s Berry Farm is one more name for this location).
There are many attractions for teenagers. You can read about them here.
The following attractions may be interesting for smaller children.
Gremmie Lagoon.
Gremmie Lagoon is a small play area with slides. This is the only slides in the park that my 5 years old son likes. Playground periodically watered from huge buckets on the roof.
Sunset River (Lazy River).
The river, with slow current, flows around the park area. There are splashes of cold water and water pours over the top sometimes while you go with the stream on rubber rings.
Banzai Falls.
This is a six-lane family water slide. My 7-years old daughter was fond of this attraction.
The beaches accessible from Anaheim.
We spent one day exploring the beaches near Anaheim. It took 20-30 minutes to reach the shore. We drove along the coast from Long Beach to Seal Beach.
The air and water was cool. It’s quite cold for swimming, but the local Americans enjoyed the beach activities and felt as on resort. Looking at them, we also swam.
Los Angeles.
Then we moved to a hotel closer to Los Angeles. The hotel was called
Motel 6
in the town of Thousand Oaks. The hotel looked much better than the first one in Anaheim, although there was no fridge, iron and microwave in the room.
The room was clean enough and equipped with new furniture and bath. The hotel located quite far to the coast.
It took a half an hour by car to reach the shore and 45 minutes to reach Los Angeles.
The beaches.
We chose the road through the mountains to see the beautiful scenery while drove the beaches of Santa Barbara, Malibu and Santa Monica.
The beach in Santa Monica is the best. There are bicycles available for rent, children playgrounds and even park with carousels.
There is a Zoo in Santa Barbara not far from the beach. 1,5-2 hour is enough to see all animals there.
Getty is an oil billionaire and he was the richest man in the world in the middle of the latest center.
He was a collector of art and antiquities; his collection formed the basis of the J. Paul Getty Museum.
Currently the collection located in 2 campuses: Getty Villa and Getty Center. However, Italy wants back the part of the expositions as “illegally exported cultural heritage”.
Getty Сenter resides on the hill above Los Angeles, it is very beautiful and a visit is free (parking is not free).
There is a beautiful garden inside the center. A special creek in the garden gurgles differently on the way, and if you listen, you can hear the wonderful music.
Also in the garden there are a couple of modern art outdoor installations.
The center itself consists of several pavilions built from Italian stone. Unfortunately, we did not visit all the pavilions.
I guess, you had to spend an entire day to see all exhibitions inside.
The observatory is located in Los Angeles. There are various exhibits inside that simulate the rotation of the Earth, present planets and constellations.
The most interesting attraction is a real telescope. You can watch the stars waiting your turn in the evening. Also there is a planetarium inside.
Visiting the observatory is free. Planetarium’s shows are paid.
Universal Studios Theme Park.
House of Horrors. First we went into House of Horrors. It scared children but was funny for adults.
You have to pass through the dark maze with all sorts of scary characters and objects from horror films.
Also there were nasty bloody bodies without heads in some rooms.
Sometimes actors dressed in zombies and other evil characters were trying to drag away visitors.
But once visitors stretch their hand to say hello, the actors ran back and looked so frightened.
To amuse our children after such a horror, we decided to watch the movie about Shrek 4D. While we were standing in the queue, they found a playground and the room named “Curious George”.
We had to lose a lot of time there as kids were ready to play all the day there.
Next, “A Live Sea War Spectacular” was a show with stuntmen; the show took place on the stage of “Waterworld”.
The queue was very tiring, but we liked the show. There were many interesting effects with fire and explosions on water.
On the way to another part of the park we stopped by to look at “Universal’s Animal Actors Show”.
It was a funny show with trained pets for children.
Transformers: The Ride. There was a longest queue in the park. I think we were awaiting for about 2 hours. The ride in 3D reality took for about 5 minutes.
At the “Revenge of the Mummy” the queue was long enough too.
We decided to miss this queue because our children were not tall enough for this attraction.
Jurassic Park: The Ride.
This is quite interesting slides over the water. At first it seems that it is just a walk along the river in the park with dinosaurs.
But then further we rode then more dangerous the representatives of this species became and the raft(train) faced stumbled often
and the stream became faster. At one point the raft went directly into the jaws of a huge pangolin.
Those who sit in the first row of the raft were unlucky. All clothes were too wet after this ride and the weather is quite cool at the evening in California.
On the way back we wanted to stop in a visit to King Kong. But, unfortunately, we were there too late. Instead we had to go on Simpsons 4D Ride.
Children had a lot of fun there.
And finally we’ve walked along the Walk of Fame to see the stars.
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