USA Trip (12th Sep - 8th Oct) - Day 18 - Disneyland

 Today we headed out to Disneyland park.

The Disneyland park is split into nine themed areas:

Main Street USA - The main street filled with stores

Adventureland - Exotic themed with jungles

Frontierland - Wild West themed

Fantasyland - Disney magical rides like Snow White, Peter Pan etc

New Orleans Square - Themed on 19th Century New Orleans

Mickey's Toontown - Kids play area based on Toontown from Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge - A Star Wars themed area

Tomorrowland - Future Themed

Bayou County - Bayou themed, formerly Bear County.

The boys and I were super keen to see the Star Wars world and the Rise of the Resistance ride, but we'd noticed that the Space Mountain line had been terrible for most of the previous day, so we headed to TomorrowLand and got managed to get on Space Mountain after only a short line:

Astro Orbiter on the way to Space Mountain

 

After Space Mountain, we headed to Autopia, an original ride from 1955, where we drove cars through an old village:

The next ride was Finding Nemo, Submarine Voyage, where the kids had to listen to me point over every inconsistency in the submarine design:

At this point we decided to split up. Alana, Brett and Tara headed off to see a few different areas and Cam, Tom, Kris and I headed to Star Wars: Galaxy Edge and took way too many photos.

I'll follow Tara, Brett and Alana first and then detail our day.

Brett, Tara and Alana started in Toontown with the Chip 'n' Dale GADGETcoaster:

and the Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh:

They then took the Jungle Cruise ride:

This took them through to lunch where they ate at the Hungry Bear Barbeque Jamboree in Bayou Countty:

After lunch they walked back to the middle of the park and then on to Fantasyland where they rode the Storybook Land Canal Boats:

It's A Small World Ride (everyone avoided this one)

King Arthur Carrousel

Took a photo of a building that looked cool - it was a toilet..

Disneyland Castle

A parade float

After that, they took Mr Toad's Wild Ride and Tara made sure she got the Ratty car:

Their next stop was Big Thunder Mountain:

We'd kept in touch with them throughout the day and when they finished the ride they found that we were in line for Pirates of the Caribbean, they came to join us and once we'd finished they met us at the end so Alana could get her phone charger. 

We then split up again, with their group going to Haunted Mansion, which was themed for Jack Skellington and A Nightmare Before Christmas:

Once they had finished up, it was getting dark. We'd chosen to do Disneyland today as California Adventure had been closing around 6pm for a Halloween special ticketed event. We figured that most people would be going to that and the park would empty out, but it was the opposite. As soon as California Adventure closed, people flooded into Disneyland, the ride times shot through the roof and the crowds got crazy.  The day was a Tier 0 (low crowds expected) Tuesday, so we really hadn't expected it to be so busy. 

Alana, Brett and Tara headed out of the park and down to Downtown Disney to get some Starbucks and then met up with us to head back to our house in LA.

Downtown Disney

So, while that group had been roaming the park and riding most of the rides, what had Cam, Tom, Kris and I been doing? Mostly Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge.

Galaxy's Edge is based upon a fictional planet Baatu at Black Spire Outpost. There were two main rides - Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run, Rise of the Resistance, but the coolest part was the theming.

The area was immersive, even the toilets followed the Star Wars theme, there was Star Wars background music and some awesome ships

Walking in through the entrance

Before we spent too much time exploring, we jumped on the Smugglers Run ride.  I would have been happy to queue just for the scenery as we walked through a smugglers base, around the Millennium Falcon and had an intro scene with Hondo Ohnaka. The ride has room for 6 people, with 2 being pilots (one controlling up and down and the other controlling side-to-side), two engineers (who press buttons to repair damage and tractor-beams to pick up cargo) and two gunners (who shoot the enemies). Cam took the side-to-side pilot, I had up-down, Tom and Kris were gunners and Alana was the engineer. We crashed into a lot of stuff and didn't really shoot much..

Gunners screen for Tom

We then walked around the area some more, exploring a few of the shops.

Our next ride was the Rise of the Rebellion, which is a multi-part ride, with walkthrough areas, motion simulators and a track ride:

Entrance

Once we got through the line we had a scene with BB8 and Rey, where Rey informed us that we were resistance recruits and were going to be departing from Baatu for a rendezvous with the resistance:

Once the scene finished, we walked out and into an Intersystem Transport Shuttle piloted by Nien Nunb and Lieutenant Bek.

Once inside the shuttle we had a motion simulator ride where the shuttle was attacked by tie fighters with the X-Wing escort fighting them off. Eventually we were caught in a tractor beam and pulled aboard the Finalizer as prisoners of the First Order.

We then had a walkthrough as prisoners of the First Order who escorted us to a jail for interrogation:

We were interrogated by General Hux and Kylo Ren who threatened us with the force but were called away to the bridge. After they left the door was cut open by resistance troops and we boarded Prisoner Transport Units to escape.

This part of the ride was a rail ride as we tried to escape with Lieutenant Bek, while weaving through AT-ATs, avoiding Kylo Ren, a probe droid and stormtroopers.

After the ride we picked up some drinks. They were themed as thermal detonators with Aurebesh writing on them:

We still wanted to spend more time in Baatu, but I had a mission. A friend had asked me to collect some coins from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, so we headed there next. As we walked through the park we saw the meet and greet with Jack Skellington, but it had a huge line so we skipped it. As we passed he was kneeling down playing with toys with a toddler, which was pretty cute:

The Pirates of the Caribbean ride had a massive line, so we picked up the coins and headed back to Baatu for lunch:

Docking Bay 7 Food and Cargo - Bounty Bun with Spiced Beef and Pork (and blue onion)

Adelphi Cheesy Noodles with Fried Chicken Tip-Yip 

Fried Chicken Baos

We had booked for the two boys to create a lightsaber at 5pm, but there was no line at the Savi's Lightsaber Workshop, so we swapped our time and the boys made their sabers.

There were a number of styles they could choose:
Peace & Justice - Old Style Jedi

Power & Control - Dark Side Sith Style
Elemental Nature - Living materials like bark, bones and teeth

Protection & Defence - Jedi Guardian Style

Cameron chose Protection & Defence and Tomas chose Power & Control. They were issued a card with their selection and when it was time they were ushered into a room where they could pick the pieces to make their lightsaber and a kyber crystal to power it:

Reads "Savis Workshop"  - the symbol is Protection and Defence.

Reads "Savis Workshop" and "Group G"

They started by picking a work desk and placing their cards on it. A worker then explained the lightsabers and the story behind them, before the boys were asked to choose a coloured kyber crystal and then presented with a tray of components to make their saber from:

Tom's workspace

Showing the lightsaber hilt

Showing off the kyber crystals

Crystal selection

Cam's selection

Cam's selection of parts for Protection & Defence

Tom's selection of parts for Power & Control

Once they completed the hilts, they were checked - they would make a short circuit noise when powered on - and then inserted into a tube at the desk to power them on (In reality it was to connect the blade piece).

Ready to go

Once the boys had their blades we headed over to the droid workshop. Kris and Cam wanted to make a droid and the workshop also offered holding for the lightsabers until we were ready to leave the park.

We also saw Rey

The two types of droid

A conveyer of legs

How to build an R-Series Droid

How to build a BB-Series

Kris chose a BB series and Cameron chose an R series. Next they selected the pieces from a conveyer belt and took them to a work desk where they assembled them:

One option for heads

Another option

and done!

Kristine's BB droid getting powered up

Cam's R-type droid getting powered up

Once we'd finished with the droids we left them and the lightsabers, because we had unfinished business!

The line for Pirates of the Caribbean had shrunk enough that we headed over and rode it, before meeting with Tara, Alana and Brett afterwards.

One interesting piece of trivia, is that while most of the rides are based on movies, in this case the movie Pirates of the Caribbean is based on the ride. The ride first opened in 1967 and was the last ride that Walt Disney designed. The Californian version is a longer one that the one in Florida. When the movie was made, the rides were modified so that Jack Sparrow would resemble Johnny Depp's character.

After meeting with Tara, we headed off to do Big Thunder Mountain:

We then rode the Matterhorn ride:

After finishing there, we walked through Fantasyland to get back to Tomorrowland. The crowds were starting to get huge at this point:

Our goal was the Star Tours - The Journey Continues ride, but we did pass the Astro Orbiter again. The Star Tours ride was a motion simulator that ran through a space flight with C3P0 and R2D2:

Astro Orbiter

When we finished on the ride the park was getting really crowded, so we headed back to main street and took some photos of the castle, as well as checking the shops:

We then picked up our droids and lightsabers and headed outside and met up with the others in Downtown Disney:

By this point we were all exhausted so we called it a day and drove back to our apartment in LA.