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Seeing the sights around LA then down to San Diego

Amy Kline

Today was planned as a much more relaxed day for us. The only thing that was scheduled was our campsite in a county park near San Diego at the end of the day. So we slept in, packed up and basically drove around LA most of the day in our nice air conditioned truck.

We did have to fill a prescription, since our insurance company would not let us fill it early before we left. The Walgreen’s near us in LA did not have it in stock but called and said another one in a different area might. So we called to confirm and they told us that they couldn’t tell us if the prescription was in stock over the phone, hence our first stop was at this Walgreen’s. Once I went in and showed them the actual prescription, they told us that they couldn’t fill it because it was not written by a doctor in California. Sheesh! Good thing it’s not a life-saving one or we would have had to go to an Urgent Care to get a new prescription.

After that wild goose chase, we drove to Beverly Hills to have a look around. None of us wanted to get out of the vehicle because this:

So we happily drove past the Chinese Theater and saw the stars in the sidewalk. Definitely a tourist trap area too. 

We finally saw Mickey Mouse though. We didn’t see him at all in Disneyland (though the boys didn’t seem to mind). 
There were homeless people on many corners, especially the tourist areas. They always sit in the sun. I wonder what their stories are and how they ended up in such desperate situations. So sad.
And then we were in the opposite end of the financial spectrum. Rodeo Drive. I used the Zillow app to look at home prices and they ranged from 15-20 million dollars. The cars on the streets changed too. Jeff was checking out all the people at the stop lights, looking for celebrities,  while I was ogling all the gorgeous houses because I wouldn’t recognize a celebrity if the person came up and told me who they were!

We drove up and down Rodeo Drive where Julia Roberts shopped in Pretty Woman. I’m glad that we didn’t even consider getting out and “shopping”. I wasn’t dressed in nice enough clothes (I don’t even own nice enough clothes) to even walk down this street! 

Before we left LA, we also took some time to drive past locations that were used in shows and movies that we liked.
Jeff watches Sons of Anarchy and this is the gate to Teller-Morrow.
We both were excited to find the Walsh’s from 90210.

Jeff found the Troubadour’s, the place where the Eagle’s got together.
And lastly, the house from It’s a Wonderful Life.
We made our way down to San Diego and set up our campsite just as the last light of day was fading. I grabbed some pictures of the palm trees by our site with the sunset in the background. Did I say that I just love palm trees? They are fascinating!

Before we crashed for the night, the kids played with their light up swords that they chose for their trip souvenir. They got them at Disney but there wasn’t enough room in the hotel room to properly duel with them.

Even though we basically drove around all day, we were exhausted!

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Universal Studios

Amy Kline

Today we headed out to Universal Studios. It was only about 20 miles away from our hotel in Anaheim, but it took about 80 minutes to get there due to LA traffic. You know that SNL skit where they make fun of all the highways in California? Well, it is true. We never stayed on the same highway for more than 10 minutes. Thank goodness for the GPS!

It was a beautiful and very hot day. On the lead up to the park gates, we walked past a bunch of chain stores that looked like a great place for hanging out after the park closed at night. But then we were finally showing our tickets and entering.

The first shop inside the park was the Harry Potter store. The boys and I were so excited and raced around exclaiming, “Look at this!” and “That is so cool!”. The boys wanted everything of course, including the Griffindor Sword, and all the wands.  We promised that we could come back after we were done in the park or we never would have gotten out of there.

The first show that we saw was Waterworld. The boys have never seen this movie at all, but it was still exciting to watch all the stunts. We sat at the very top in the shaded section, so we weren’t in the “Soak Zone”.  We had great seats to see the whole set.

After that, we walked around a bit and saw the future entrance to Hogsmeade and Hogwarts which is supposed to open in 2016. No behind-the-scenes tour  this year though, I asked. 

One of the newer rides is the Minion Mayhem ride. Jeff learned his lesson from Disney’s Star Tours and decided to sit this one out while the boys and I went on this one. This ride is a 3D immersion ride where you sit in seats that jiggle and move as you watch a big screen. This one also blasted air at you too. It was awesome!
Beginning of the line

Our cool 3D glasses

My little Minions

When you come out of the ride, you are in the space that is geared to the younger kids. The kids and I rode on the bugs, which is like the Airplane ride at Bay Beach in Green Bay.

All over the park there are these Cool Zone fans that blast out mist. Since it was literally the hottest day of the year (temp hit 100 degrees), it definitely helped. These mist fans were in most of the lines too. Disney should add these to their lines that are in the sun.
We took the Studio Tram Tour next and waited at least an hour. They did have workers whose primary job was to make standing in line go faster and cool people off by squirting them with squirt guns. The boys thought he was hilarious and as our line snaked closer to the worker each time, the guy made them laugh.
Once we got on the tram, it took us down to the backlots where they actually do film some shows. Many of the sets are generic back grounds that are decorated once a show is scheduled to film there.
A New York City street scene.

This was used in Back to the Future

A street that has a flash flood.

 They were filming two different shows in the park that day. One was an unnamed pilot and another was a show that neither Jeff nor I ever heard of.

Desperate Housewives. 

At the end of the tour, there is a cool 3D portion that happens when the tram goes into a garage. Dinosaurs and trucks look like they are crashing into you on both sides. The effect was a little ruined however because the 3D part failed to start, so we had to drive out and around and go back in. 

After that, we were all getting a little exhausted by the heat and sun. We walked down to the Jurassic Park ride, which involved going down 4 steep, really long escalators, but the line for that was more than an hour long. We went to play in a little shaded playground for a bit but the kids didn’t even want to do that for very long. We could have gotten the add-on “Front-of-the-line” VIP passes, but it would have added another $200 to the day, so we decided against it. Would it have been worth it? I’m still not sure.
We were all getting close to being ready to head back to the hotel by this time (4:30). But one of Jeff’s favorite shows, the animal tricks show, was one more stop that we all wanted to make sure we attended. It was definitely not the excellent show that he remembered (and that the old family movies showed). Very cheesy, with a couple dog tricks, one cool bird trick, and a really silly story line. 
We had our promised stop in the Harry Potter store before leaving. The boys got Griffindor bookmarks and I bought my trip souvenier, a huge Marauder’s Map coffee mug. 

Did we get everything out of Universal Studios that we should have? Definitely not. We missed most of the rides like Simpson’s, Transformers, Jurassic Park. But we definitely had a great time. We still got back to our hotel a little before 9 pm due to the drive on the crazy California highways. In all, it was a fun day!

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Disneyland!!!!! What a perfect day!

Amy Kline
It was truly a magical day! We had such a wonderful time and made so many great memories today. I think the kids were at the perfect ages, old enough that we didn’t have to take a stroller or diaper bag, but young enough where everything seemed amazing and real. They loved the rides, loved the shows and parades, and could keep going until after the fireworks.
We started out really early. Since we only had one day in the park, we chose to go to the original Disneyland, not the California Adventure. I wished we could have gone through that park too, but we just didn’t have time this trip.
The boys loved our breakfasts at the hotel, and they filled up with their mini Belgian Waffles. 
We walked the few blocks to Disneyland and got in right when they opened. I had purchased our tickets online and they just had to scan the barcode in the email. We had the paper tickets as back up just in case.

Since we were there right away, we were basically able to hop right on to the Jungle Cruise. 
Our jungle tour guide was hilarious! We were probably his first or second tour of the day so he was fresh, but he made everyone laugh the entire time with lots of groaner puns and wordplay jokes. 
Next we went to the Indiana Jones ride, the Pirates of the Carribbean ride and then the Haunted Mansion. They were all super fun and just scary enough for the boys to be exciting, but not too scary to get tears.
Since we were on a roll, we headed over to Splash Mountain. We waited about 20 minutes for that one and it was a fun one. Disney takes a picture of your face as you go down the “waterfall”. Carson’s face is priceless!
We wandered over to Tomorrowland, so we could go on Star Tours, and attend the Padawan Academy. We got there just as the Padawans were being picked but unfortunately neither boys got picked.  It was fun to watch anyway 🙂
We waited in line for at least an hour for Star Tours. It was an awesome ride, but Jeff got a little motion sick from it, just like he did on our honeymoon. So when we went on the Teacups a little later, he watched and took some pictures of us.
According to the apps that we downloaded, the lines were getting pretty long, so we decided to do some activities that didn’t require waiting in lines. We went to Tom Sawyer’s Island and explored. Jeff has great memories of doing this when he was a kid and I think he still had just as much fun as our own boys did exploring the island. 


We continued to explore the classic rides. We, of course, had to ride the “It’s a Small World” ride. All we needed were a few softballs to chuck at the dolls by the end of the ride and it would have been perfect!
We continued to ride all the old rides like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, the Pinoccio one, and Snow White. 
We didn’t make it on the Peter Pan and the Alice in Wonderland rides though. But we did try to pull the Sword out of the Stone.  Apparently none of the Kline boys are the Once and Future King.

Carson loved the Storybook Land Canal Boats because he thought it was hilarious to be swallowed up by the big blue whale. The boys got chosen to sit on the front of the boat so they got a really good view of all the little storybook scenes during the ride.

The boys were still going strong so we went back to Tomorrowland and rode the submarine ride, and then rode the two rides with the Buzz Light Year theme. 

The sun was starting to go down so we darted back to Adventureland to climb the tree house which used to be the Swiss Family Robinson’s Treehouse but is now called Tarzan’s Treehouse.  Then we went to the Magical Tiki Room (after I had a Dole Whip, yum!).  Those birds are seriously creepy but hilarious! I don’t think the boys were too impressed with them though.

 The parade was just getting ready to start and since we chose not to sit and wait at the curb for hours, we were very lucky to get a spot at the top of a small set of stairs and actually had a great view. The light parade is so amazing and fun! It was a beautiful end to a perfect day.

 We also stayed for the fireworks and got to see them set off with the It’s a Small World as the backdrop. Everyone was standing however, so we had to each hold a kid so they could see the projection on the buildings. No hands for pictures. It was pretty cool how they tied in all the Disney movies, both new and old, and finished off with “snow” falling all around us (in 90 degree weather).

We could have stayed and gone on a couple rides that we missed such as Peter Pan, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and Space Mountain (which was closed most of the day). But we were all super tired and still had to walk back to our hotel room.

It was truly a magical day.