June 17, 2018 – Dayspring Disciples

Plan A for Father’s Day had included a drive to San Diego to attend services at Dr. David Jeremiah’s church, Shadow Mountain Community Church.

After experiencing driving in Southern California, John was not so sure he wanted to spend Father’s Day that way. Then, after the later-than-expected night last night, he was sure that was not our best plan.

Instead, we let people sleep a little, and we decided to visit San Juan Capistrano. We hoped to visit the mission there and explore the town a little. What we failed to realize was that there was an entrance fee to the mission. Oops. We were feeling a little spent out, so we instead just wandered around the town a bit and did some window shopping.

We stopped at a Walmart and bought a few sand toys and some things we needed for the house and then used a website that we’d found the other two beaches and located one not too far from where we were. Crescent Bay Beach was wonderful.

We parked on a little one-way side street near tiny homes that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Zillow tells me those <1,000 sq. ft. bungalows cost more than $1,000,000.

With a view like theirs, it might not be as overpriced as it sounds.

It had a tiny beach house with essentially no where to change, but we made do.

The waves were FEROCIOUS and the lifeguards on duty were working hard.

The little girls had none of it (which I was happy about) but they enjoyed the sand tremendously.

The waves would knock us down and push us around.

This next video is a must watch!

Now you see them

Now you don’t.

And they’d pop back up eventually.

I had one eat-the-sand moment myself, and every one of us had at least one bucket full of sand in our swim suits when we changed out!

It was the least busy of the beaches we’d visited, but still had maybe 100 people on it. See the homes up the hill?

We headed back to the house where I fed them something (sigh – I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get to blogging…) and got to bed decently early.

Originally our plan was to have another quiet day on Monday and visit Disney again on Tuesday. We looked into it, and adding a fifth day at Disney was only $10 a person. So we decided to go to Disney Monday and decide during the day if we wanted to expand our tickets to Tuesday.

I can’t even express how much I had looked forward to this day. Disney’s California Adventure opened in 2001, and it was the one US Disney Park I had never been too. In 2012 they underwent a major renovation and built Cars Land and I have wanted to visit it since I first heard about it. Two years ago they changed the Tower of Terror into a Guardians of the Galaxy-themed attraction, and as a new Marvel fan, I was super eager to try it out.

It was finally time.

The park opened considerably later today, so we did not have to be up at the break of dawn. Despite that, my kids still treated me to goofball faces as we boarded the tram.

As we entered the park I purchased MaxPass again for the day. We knew we wanted to start and end the day at Disney’s California Adventure (DCA), but expected to visit Disneyland mid-day to ride Indiana Jones (which was closed last week) and see a show called Mickey and the Magical Map.

Entering the park a few minutes before opening, they had groups queue in different sections. These three group were more or less (1) those headed for Radiator Springs Racers, (2) those headed for Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout, and (3) those headed for Soarin’ Over the World.

We were in group 1.

and I grabbed a MaxPass for Guardians (GOTG).

Once they drop the Rope Drop rope, we ~~ran~~ walked with great efficiency to Cars Land and the much sought after Radiator Springs Racers. I took a few photos as we weaved our way to the attraction.

SEE all the people headed to the ride?

As we waited in line I took some screen shots from the app for the times of some of the entertainment we wanted to enjoy.

We were on the ride in 10 minutes, and by the time we were off the standby wait time was an anticipated 60 minutes. It is a seriously popular ride.

We rode once in the morning and once again in the early afternoon. These are photos from both the trips. The ride is often likened to Test Track in EPCOT. While I love Test Track, this ride is somewhat superior. Its theme is far more enthusiastic and immersive, and the ride has more flair.

See how empty the streets are now? Everyone is in line for one of the aforementioned big attractions (more or less).

We rode the other two rides in Radiator Springs

Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree

And Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters.

This one was pretty cool b/c it has an underground magnetic track and the vehicles perform a “dance” over the ground.

We went over to the Monster’s Inc. ride to see if we could get onto that before our Guardian’s MaxPass slot was over, but the ride was shut down and we had to skip that for now.

We stopped off in the Avenger’s zone where characters would meet later in the day. We did not meet a few that we would have really liked to, but we met others.

It was finally time to help the Guardian’s break out. I’ve never been a fan of Hollywood Tower of Terror, but I wanted to give this a go because I like the intellectual property.

Nan took Katriel to the bathroom and for a snack as the rest of us headed into the ride.

We had MaxPasses for each of our rides, which is awesome, BUT it did keep us from experiencing a lot of the details that they load the line area with.

We enjoyed the details we did see.

I will joyfully report that I not only enjoyed this ride, but I loved it so much I rode it a total of 5 times in our two days there.

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Frankly – I would still be on that ride if I had the option.

You may see that John and Johanna only rode it once.

After the ride we hung around to watch the Dance Off. We didn’t get to meet Groot, but we watched him a while.

Who doesn’t like a cotton candy bigger than your head?

We met Loki.

And I confess that I didn’t have a strong touring plan for this place.

I made the mistake of settling us all in for FROZEN! Live at the Hyperion! not realizing it was a 60 minute show. We watched 20 minutes of it but then left to do other rides.

We quickly met Thor who was very much in character.

Then we headed over to Soarin’ which I had not ridden since 2011 because in 2016 it was closed for refurb when we were in EPCOT. It has been updated for the world, as opposed to just California. We all loved it.

We had lunch at Flo’s V8 Cafe, deciding to eat indoors because it was so chilly. We had to break into smaller tables.

We went and found where Judy and Nick would be meeting, and queued up to meet them. Then we went to ride the Little Mermaid ride.

I am sad that my camera was on “Stewart” manual setting and not “Mommy” automatic, so our fancy camera only took blurry shots.

I love Zootopia, so this is lame.

I don’t know where the boys were… they split up from us a bit more today.

We regrouped and headed over to DL for the Mickey and the Magical Map show. Our timing was hideous as we had to fight (and I mean FIGHT) the parade crowds to get where we needed to be. It was more than worth it as the show was spectacular. One thing that I loved about it was that a lot of the focus is on Pixar right now as it is currently Pixar Fest. This show was all about classic Disney and princesses. It was a mixed media presentation that was sometimes digital projection and sometimes live acted, and occasionally you would be so drawn into it you weren’t paying attention to which mode it was at that moment!

The older kids then went to ride Indiana Jones as Nan and I took the little girls to Toontown to see what we could see. We ended up meeting Goofy and Max.

I honestly don’t know all that we did for the next bit of time. I know it was chilly and we enjoyed another run on the most excellent Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

We got the girls some ice cream despite the chill in the air.

We headed back to DCA and rode Guardians

and had major family member communication meltdown that resulted in us –
Not eating dinner before the night time entertainment
Not getting our preferred location for night time entertainment
Not leaving as early as we had hoped to

But I digress.

We passed our our Dollar Tree head gear for the Paint the Night Parade.

Katriel is her own person.

And this parade so seriously rocked. While I was getting a wee bit tired of Pixar during this Pixar Fest summer promotion, it was a really fun parade.

and not all Pixar…

The theme song, “When Can We Do This Again,” is actually sung by a Christian band, Owl City. Fun fact!

After the parade we scooted over to SmokeJumpers Barbeque for dinner. It was delicious – and very spicy. Not everyone could finish their meals.

And we did another run on Soarin’ because I had grabbed some MaxPasses at some point.

I did not take as many photos as I wish I would have, but I think that was because we were doing so much.

I’m sad that it has taken me so long to blog (I am not over a month behind) and some details are lost to history.

We headed home to bed, much later than we should have left if we had hoped to keep our Father’s Day plans. But it was a fun, full day that made dreams come true.