California, Day 4: California Adventure

We woke up on April 8th to a forecast of rain showers and children who were a bit antsy during breakfast. The hotel had a great breakfast buffet in their restaurant. We stashed two boxes of the travel sized cereal into the backpack for later snacking.


We entered California Adventure and the boys had a great time walking through the crowds in Downtown Disney. Nolan has a current obsession with balloons, and would stop and cry "baboon!" whenever we passed a vendor.



We headed straight for the Redwood Creek Challenge Trail, a huge playground and obstacle course designed for children. We played here for about 45 minutes, and both boys had the time of their lives. We decided to leave when Matt was starting to tire his father out and Nolan was getting irritated because we wouldn't let him climb on the rope bridges (his feet were too little and would pop right through the netting).

Nolan climbs through a tunnel


Rock slides are fun!

Nolan in a log on the playground

The boys play chase on the playground

We headed over to Midway Mania after this, and everyone loved it. The ride has 3-D effects as you shoot at targets. Matthew was in seventh heaven, though a bit reluctant to give up his 3-D glasses at the end of the ride. Nolan signed "more" at the end of the ride, so he liked it as well.

We met a dear friend of Dennis's for lunch, while my parents went to sort out an annual pass issue for my sister. She was meeting us in the parks that day and there was some issue regarding black-out dates. We had a decent lunch and a great time catching up with James, though finding a place to sit was difficult. We ate at the Test Pilot's Grill in the Condor Flats area of the park, and there was no seating to be had. Luckily, Dennis scored a table before we gave in and had a picnic on the ground.

Matt visits Lightning McQueen

The whole family meeting "Cars" characters

After lunch, a visit to Bug's Land was in order. Everything is themed quite nicely in this section. We gave my parents a call to meet up with us in this area, and rode a few kiddie rides. Both boys loved all the rides, though Nolan was too short for the bumper-cars.

My parents found us while we were riding Heimlich's Chew Chew Train (totally lame for us, but Nolan absolutely LOVED it).

Matt taking a rest in Bug's Land

The boys on Flik's Flyers

Matt and Aunt Kristy on the Bumper Buggies

My mom and I ride the Bumper Buggies

Heimlich's Chew Chew Train- Nolan's favorite!

Surprised at how quickly the day was passing us by, we jogged over to the Hollywood Backlot area to try the Monster's Inc. attraction. Unfortunately, the line was 50 minutes long, so we bypassed that ride to see the other attractions in this area. We lined up for the Muppet Vision 4-D movie, and Matt was excited to find more 3-D glasses in his possession. He loved this movie, though Nolan found it to be a bit loud.

Turtle Talk with Crush is also in this area, and we watched the amazing interaction between the animated Crush and audience members. This show is a lot of fun, and Matt was seated on the floor with his Aunt Kristy, excitedly holding his hand in the air. He wasn't selected for a question, but enjoyed the show nonetheless. Nolan was a tad oblivious and was kept happy with a secret stash of raisins.

We headed out of the park and decided to get dinner at the Rainforest Cafe to avoid rush-hour traffic. Both boys fell asleep upon exiting the park, and awoke once we left the restaurant. We saved their children's meal for the ride home, though they ended up preferring the boxes of cereal we had taken from the breakfast buffet that morning.

We got home at around 8:30pm, and both boys were fast asleep. Prior to falling asleep, I asked Matt what his favorite ride was. His answer?

"The Yellow Ride."

It took quite a lot of guessing, but we finally figured out that he was talking about Midway Mania. The yellow was in reference to the yellow 3-D glasses. The brains of three year old boys work in funny ways!