Disneyland Day 3 – Happiness Redux

The last day of our trip started as almost all the past 41 had – warm and dry. We avoided eating the free breakfast again, checked out of our “suite”, left our luggage with the hotel and moseyed back to Disneyland.

Each person could choose one thing they wanted to do and we started with the Finding Nemo submarine tour. Nicely done underwater adventure but sadly no real fish. I think a missed opportunity, but I guess it means that they never have to worry about too much chlorine in the pool leading to  a school of Nemos all belly-up at the top of the pool.

Next up was another turn on the excellent Buzz Lightyear ride

followed by more pin trading

on the way to the very cool Bugs Life area complete with 3-D (maybe even 5-D) theatre

and life-size insects

(if you live on a planet or in a time where the grasshoppers are as big as humans)

We ducked back across to Soarin’ over California and popped into an adventure area. his is where it dawned on Thomas that today was the last day – he needed some consoling.

We made our way back to the hotel to pick up our gear via the obligatory photo opportunities.

and I couldn’t resist these Mickey benches.

When we got back to the hotel, we collected our luggage and waited …

… and waited …

… and waited …

Sam was getting worried that the shuttle we’d booked wouldn’t come, but I was quietly confident.

Turns out my confidence was misplaced, and by the time we’d organised an alternative ride, the buffer we’d allocated ourselves had worn pretty thin. To top it all off, the (surly and unresponsive) driver insisted that 20% was the “compulsory tip” on top of the $100-odd fare to the airport. Grr.

At least checking in was stress-free and the biggest surprise of all was being greeted by the TSA checking passports guy in a very friendly manner. Each person coming through was greeted in their own language (so, of course, ours was “‘ow ya goin’ mate – allright?”).

What’s more, we were all allowed into the lounge with no dramas at all and the most was made of the facilities by all of us.

A long and uneventful flight home was followed by a short and uneventful taxi-ride and within an hour of touching down we were home, showered and had the washing on. Very cool.

To sum up, this was a wonderful, unforgettable, magical time with our family, one which I know I’ll treasure always and that I hope the kids will remember with fondness. My sincere wish is that it plants a seed of curiosity in them that will bloom when their kids are old enough to do something similar if not much sooner.

We’re already planning the next one and I can’t wait.

Disneyland Day 2 – The happiest place on earth (most of the time)

Disneyland day 2 dawned much like the previous day (I assume – we didn’t get up until about 8:30) and I headed straight down to the coffee shop for coffee and bagels for Sam and me while she and the kids went upstairs to the “breakfast” area.

We marvelled at the people swilling from the troughs and went back downstairs to our room to get ready to make our next assault on the parks.

First up today was to be California Adventure (CA) – the sister part of Disneyland and included in our three day park-hopper pass. Before we went in there though, we stopped in Disneyland and bought Courtney a pin-trading starter kit.

The pin trading phenomenon at Disneyland is very cool. The kids (and some adults) can trade with cast members and there’s a set of rules stipulating who can trade what with whom.

We got into pins because Courtney was very disappointed that we hadn’t let her buy a cheap electric fan with water squirter. I told her that I’d be much happier if she bought something that would last and would provide her with some memories and something to do. Little did I know how successful that would be.

After buying (and trading a couple of) pins, we made our way across to CA and under the fake Golden Gate Bridge (not to scale).

We picked up FastPass tickets for Soarin’ over California and the World of Color show and wandered around a bit, but we weren’t hugely inspired or impressed with the park so while Sam went back to the hotel to rotate the washing, we made our way back to Disneyland for another Kodak moment.

We waited patiently for Sam in the shade, just near where we said we’d meet her and just as I was starting to think she had mis-heard where we’d arranged to meet her, she appeared and told us a great story about how she found us. The wonders of the modern age.

By this time, Thomas had decided that he wanted to get in on the pin trading caper as well, so Courtney took him off to the shop where she bought her pins to help him choose a starter pack. We were pretty impressed that she found her way there because it was kind of tucked away through a couple of alley ways and through another shop. When Sam and I got there, we couldn’t see them and i assumed they’d lost their way, but they were just squatting down behind the display so we couldn’t see them until we were right there. Soon, Thomas was just as well equipped as Courtney.

Earlier, the kids and I had waited while Sam went to get a FastPass for Splash Mountain. We’d had one for the night before but by the time the fireworks were finished, we decided we didn’t want to go and queue up for another ride. I’m glad we didn’t.

By now our FastPass time for today had come around and we set off for it. As we got closer to the ride the kids, particularly Courtney, began to get less and less enthusiastic about going on it. We brushed their concerns aside with phrases like “if Daddy can go on it, surely you can” and “if you go on it and hate it, I promise I’ll never make you go on another ride”. Courtney still wasn’t convinced.

As we progressed up the queue we passed a sign saying something like “this is your last chance to back out” and it was all we could do to convince her to stay with us. We eventually got to the front of the queue and we got on the ride. The seats are all in a line, one behind the other, so there was no way to sit next to her and give her support that way. She was behind me so I stuck my hand back and let her squeeze it as we clanked off up the first rise.

The ride was pretty cool, with a couple of unexpected drops (including one in the dark) and a few splashes. Courtney was NOT HAPPY. Then came the last drop which is preceded by a nerve-wracking climb that goes on just a little too long for comfort. You feel like you’re going up a long way and all you can see at the top of the climb is an edge that looks like it’s going to be a sheer drop. You slowly tip over the edge and fall rapidly down the slide to the water at the bottom. A huge plume of water is thrown up and we got pretty much wet through.

Courtney was even less happy. By the time we got off the ride she was pretty much crying uncontrollably and it took some time for her to calm down enough just to get to this state.

I guess we’re never making her go on a ride against her will ever again.

As we got off the ride, we ended up at Pooh Corner and we saw the characters in action. They have the procedure down pat. The character emerges from a hidden doorway and makes his or her way smartly to the place they’re going to be hugging, greeting and having photos taken. The don’t look left or right on the way to the place, and they certainly don’t stop (they’ll do a high five on the way past if it doesn’t mean they have to slow down). They have a minder with them to make sure they’re not waylaid. Very slick.

The kids wanted a hot dog for lunch, so we started off for the other side of the park where there was junk food. When we got there, we found Pluto.

We had fun hanging around the cartoon world for lunch.

Next it was time to go back across to CA to go on the Soarin’ over California ride. On the way there were many stops to trade pins and to look at things in shops. Somewhere in here we decided that the kids needed another set of pins to trade and that the least expensive way to do this was to buy a pack of seven pins. We also discovered that Courtney had lost her Minnie Mouse pin – the first one she’d ever traded. She was pretty good about it though.

When we (finally) got to Soarin’, we looked at the ride description and the kids opted out. I stayed with them and Sam went on her own. She came back raving and convinced the kids to come back on it with her again. I waited outside and was pleased to see that they came back all smiles.

Back over to Disneyland, this time to see the All-American College Band who were performing in Main Street. While we waited, Sam went back to the washing again and Courtney met her favourite Disney character.

The band were pretty good and, of course, Courtney was picked out from the crowd to be serenaded by the lower brass while they played “isn’t she lovely”. I’m not sure why she was so shy.

Immediately after the band finished, Sam modelled the versatility of her hiking pants.

Now you see ’em:

Now you don’t

It was getting dark, which meant we should go across to CA to get ready to see the World of Color.

This was a truly spectacular show, worth the day’s admission price on its own. One of the most impressive things though was how they managed to clear the audience from the previous show and get us into place (about 6000 of us) in less than 15 minutes. The really do have the logistics thing down pat.

We wandered home at the end of this magnificent 45 minute spectacle well pleased with our day.

Disneyland Day 1 – Let the magic begin

It started to dawn on me that our trip was nearly finished as we prepared to head off to Disneyland for our first day in the Magical Kingdom. We went up to the “breakfast” area which Sam has so ably described. Suffice it to say that I went and found coffee and a bagel elsewhere the next two mornings.

We had bought tickets online while we were in Seattle and I used the GMail account to print them at the hotel’s only public computer and printer in an area labelled “business centre” where I had to wait for a 14 year-old to finish with his Facebook reading.

Having a GMail account just for the trip was great as it meant that I was comfortable going onto public computers to print things out. I assume that all public computers have a keylogger installed and anything you type on them (user names, passwords, etc) will be recorded for someone to see and use later. The trip-specific account meant that I didn’t care.

Armed with our newly printed tickets, we walked the 15 minutes from the hotel to the main entrance.

The queues were pretty reasonable and we were soon inside. We’d read some advice on maximising your time at Disneyland with a FastPass strategy, but in the end we took the less optimised, but much more serene route. We started with the Buzz Lightyear  Astroblasters

Thomas and I queued while Sam and Courtney went off to get a FastPass for Splash Mountain (which we didn’t end up using – a good thing – see tomorrow’s post). While we were waiting, some princesses wandered by, on their way to Pixie Grove.

Once inside, we were briefed by the man himself.

and then went on a very neat (very sedate) ride where we had to blast targets with lasers. It’s a very cleverly set up ride and typifies all that we saw in the park with regards to marshalling huge numbers of people through the rides with a minimum of wait and, more importantly, a minimum of frustration. You often feel like you’re “nearly there” and there’s usually something static to keep you amused along the way.

There are also lots of characters just wandering around the park.

We continued our trek around the area, our next stop being Sam’s choice It’s a Small World. It doesn’t get much more Disney than this ride – sickly sweet and completely fake, but for some reason it’s all ok. I guess if that’s what you’re expecting you can just go with it and have the happy music pumped into you.

There are a few places around the place marked “Kodak Moment Place” with a little picture showing you what you should take a picture of. For example, the Matterhorn ride.

Courtney used some of her nice points money to buy some cotton candy, which matched he shirt quite well.

We went over near the French Quarter where a reasonable jazz quartet was playing next to a cool statue made up of almost as many instruments as you could think of.

and then queued for some time to get on the Disneyland Rail Road for a lap around the grounds.

Thomas really wanted to go on the monorail so after the steam train we queued again above the Finding Nemo submarines for a chance to go round the park again, thins time in a more modern conveyance.

Coates luck (and some Sam initiative) held and we managed to score seats in the drivers cabin. Thomas was pretty pleased although I’m not sure he saw anything outside the monorail, he was so busy watching the driver do his thing.

Another Kodak moment on the way to our next ride

which was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Even with our FastPass we had to wait for some time which was exacerbated by the ride breaking down while we were in the queue. Once again though, there were things to look at and we didn’t feel too put out.

The ride itself was pretty cool with some neat effects both real and projected. The kids coped pretty well which I thought boded well for some of the more full-on rides we were to try later (boy, was I wrong).

Thomas and I popped back for a siesta after this and Sam and Courtney watched the parade and tried to go on Astroblasters again.

Sam had quizzed most of the cast she came across about the best vantage point for the fireworks and we found ourselves in a little enclave in front of the castle waiting for them to begin.

They were appropriately spectacular.

but for me the highlight was the light show on the castle and the characters flying above it which were wearing fluorescent colours and were lit by UV light.

After the fireworks we moved over to the riverfront to watch another show “Fantasmic!”, a light and music show on the water based on Fantasia and a fairly dark-themed dream for Micky Mouse. This is a spectacular show and worth waiting for. It didn’t finish until about 10:30, but the kids didn’t seem to wilt.

As we walked back home I reflected that I’d enjoyed day 1 at Disneyland far more than I’d expected to.

Seattle Day 2 – Underground and Up in the Air

For our last day in Seattle we organised a late checkout so we could leave our gear at the hotel while we went on Seattle’s famous Underground Tour. We got up early(ish) and walked down to Pike Place Market. The market was pretty quiet at 8:30 am and after a walk up and down via a brass pig,

some delicious-looking berries,

and an uncanny resemblance

we ended up in a diner at the back of the markets overlooking the harbour.

Courtney was taken with the presentation of the food (if not the taste)

The food was ok, the view was good and the coffee was an abomination.

We finished up and walked along 1st to Pioneer Square where the Underground Tour begins. Because Seattle was built pretty much on a beach, the water table was very close to the surface which made things like plumbing (especially sewerage) problematic. The town fathers took a very similar approach to Nero and when a fire swept through Seattle they decided that they’d take advantage of the devastation and regrade the entire place, raising the roads by five metres or so! Of course, this took time but in the interim, the shopkeepers needed to rebuild their businesses.

The solution was to design all the buildings to have their main floor be the second (or what we’d call the first) so when the roads were raised the ground floor became the basement. The tour takes you along the old sidewalks, now fifteen feet below the street. At street level you see a number of skylights

which provide a surprising amount of light below ground

There are entire saloons underground. In fact, after many years of neglect and disrepair, owners of the underground areas are starting to renovate and use them commercially.

This was the second time I’d done the tour and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it each time. Highly recommended if you’re ever in Seattle.

After the tour (and the obligatory visit to the gift shop) we walked back up (way up) to our hotel to check out. We jumped in the car and drove the 10 or so blocks to the most famous landmark in Seattle.

The Space Needle’s cool, but it’s not that far up really. It was nice to look out on the water though and to be able to see where we’d had dinner the night before. Thomas had fun watching a seaplane landing on Lake Union, something he’d done himself in Flight Simulator.

We did a couple of laps of the tower before we decided that we’d pretty much wrung it dry.

Next stop was the Microsoft campus in Redmond on the other side of Lake Washington. We drove across the floating bridge that carries the 520 across the lake and then parked in the huge car park under the commons. The kids had fun signing in as visitors.

We had lunch in one of the many eateries in what’s essentially the main shopping precinct of a town of 50,000 people, complete with banks, a bike shop, phone stores and heap of other things.

After lunch we ducked down to the company museum where we met my old mate Chuck Sterling and (to our very pleasant surprise) his lovely wife Pilar. Chuck and I spent some quality time catching up and the kids got engrossed again in Kinect and Surface.

We popped across the way to the Company Store, just to say we’d been there.

At this stage, we were running out of things to do. We went for a drive around campus and then decided that we’d go and check out WalMart and some other mall things.

I think this photo sums up our WalMart experience pretty well.

We left after trying on some truly awful clothes. As we were making our way towards the airport we spotted a Westfield so I cut across about 5 lanes of traffic to get to the exit and we spent a much more pleasant hour wandering around some nicer shops.

Finally we got back in he car and drove the remaining 10 minutes to the airport, resigning ourselves to being there very early. It’s a good thing we did.

After returning the car we went up to one of the self-checkin consoles and tried to check in. No luck (I don’t think I’ve ever had this work for me in the US) so we went upstairs and queued in the “Service Assistance” line.

When we finally got to the front of the line it turned out that our tickets for the Seattle – Los Angeles leg hadn’t been issued, even though we’d booked them in October! It took 20 minutes on the phone (and the reminder of my pre-paid credit) to Qantas in Australia to get the tickets issued.

In the end we only just had time to grab some food and go up to our gate.

Two and a half hours later we were in LA waiting for a SuperShuttle.

I do love it that we only travelled with carry-on luggage, it made the transition from air to ground transport so seamless. No waiting for luggage to come off the plane. I highly recommend this to anyone going on a big trip. It did help that the kids were both big enough to be responsible for a full-sized carry-on bag with a backpack as well.

We arrived at the Disneyland hotel at about 1am and pretty much collapsed into bed.

Seattle Day 1 – Geek Toys and More Planes

We’d arranged to meet the Clarkes one last time in Seattle for a trip to the Museum of Flight, somewhere I’ve been meaning to go in Seattle for some time but have never got around to. We’d arranged to meet at the Microsoft Store in Bellevue (in fact, we’d arranged to meet on campus at Redmond at the Microsoft company store and museum, but it was closed on Sundays). We drove to Bellevue just fine and then orbited around the town centre until we finally got close enough to dock, I mean park.

We got there in plenty of time so we could have breakfast (which ended up being from Starbucks as everywhere else was closed) and Lauren and the family (less the three youngest) arrived at about 10. Courtney, particularly, was pleased that Kate had come with the two older girls.

The Microsoft Store is one of about 10 around the US designed to showcase Microsoft consumer technology. The kids had a great time playing on the Kinect and Surface and Thomas and Josh joined me and Lauren in satisfying our geek urges by checking out some of the cool PCs on display.

Sam and Mary Ann got accosted by a producer shooting a promotional video in the store (apparently for an internal Microsoft audience) and were almost convinced to be Microsoft shills but they though better of it at the last moment. To be fair, I think Mary Ann was just being polite all along and was never comfortable with the shilling.

After the Microsoft Store, some of us went across the way to the Lego store which turned out to be much smaller and less interesting than what I remembered from last time I was there six or seven years ago.

By this time it was time to have some lunch. We went on a bit of a trek guided by Lauren’s GPS to a sandwich shop a couple of blocks away. Of course, being Sunday, the shop was closed so we came back to a very nice deli where we got an assortment of lovely food to share.

We all piled into the Clarkemobile and headed down the 405 to the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field. They have some great planes including an Airforce One (707)

one of the first 737s

a Concorde

The first ever 747

and this super-cool SR-71 Blackbird (which is, in fact, not black but midnight blue)

There’s also an excellent exhibit about Air Traffic Control, with a mock tower set up looking out over Boeing Field. They have the loudspeakers in the exhibit tuned to the the actual ATC tower frequency, so you can hear what’s going on with the traffic large and small.

That’s a 747-8F on the runway, I guess they were doing test flights in it. The little biplane in the middle ground was doing joyrides and the contrast between the old and the new, the large and the small was pretty extreme.

The families continued our bonding

We visited the excellent WWI and WWII exhibitions too with some great old planes like the B17 (this one’s outside, all the fighters are in a big 2-storey building)

All too soon it was closing time and we piled back into the van to go back to Bellevue where we’d left our car. We had a most unromantic location for our final goodbyes, but they were heartfelt nonetheless. This time was one of the highlights of the trip for me. I have been lucky to spend time with the Clarkes almost every time I’ve gone to Seattle and being able to have Sam and the kids meet my some of my favourite people (and for them to get on so well) was very special.

After saying goodbye, we made our way back downtown and dropped the car back at the hotel. We walked down to the waterfront – the part of Seattle that reminds me so much of Sydney. This is a working harbour and combines beautiful water with the interest of commercial shipping and ferries.

On the way along the piers the kids found some large stuffed animals.

and a sweets shop – I think maybe we’ve found a new logo and name for the podcast we do at work.

Eventually I found the restaurant I was looking for (having walked past it twice). It’s right on the water at the end of a wharf and the food’s very pleasant. The sun was setting and the light is amazing at this time of day.

The kids were keen to model their new T-shirts which they’d made the day before at the Future of Flight.

Everyone was pretty relaxed.

We walked home and enjoyed the perfect end to a fantastic day.

Tour Guide Courtney in Disneyland

Tour Guide Courtney explores the mysteries of Pixie Hollow in Disneyland

Tour Guide Courtney on the London Eye

Tour Guide Courtney reveals a little-understood tradition on the River Thames and debunks a common misconception about the naming of the houses of parliament.

Tour Guide Courtney in Barcelona

Tour Guide Courtney explains the origin of circular antennae and the construction of one of Barcelona’s telecommunications towers.

Tour Guide Courtney on the Seine

Tour Guide Courtney explains why there are so many bridges across the Seine and what they all mean.

It’s good to be home

Ahhhhh …