Vegas Baby: part 6

Disneyland in 6 hours.

Once landed in LA, we crammed about 100 suitcases into a bus (we can no longer fit in anything smaller) and really there was probably 12 suitcases, 6 carry ons and a hat can between 6 people.  Off to Anaheim.  Now i was responsible for selecting the hotel and had stressed about this from the time I booked it.  Thankfully it was quite nice, Residence Inn Maingate. The reason it was stressful is because Anaheim has about 1000 hotels and 3 of them are called Residence Inn (with some other word after it), we needed to be close to Disneyland and a bar of some description.  We were both.  Now because it is close to everything Disney there is of course a million kids...everywhere ( I am really exagerating with my numbers today), and all the bars which were right next door, stacks of them had happy hour all night from about 5pm.  Happy hour on food and drinks, happy hours.  It really is the happiest place on earth (next to Vegas). Disappointment and probably relief to our livers is that everything closed at midnight during the week nights and thats when we arrived. We did choose to do Anaheim last to detox a little.

Anywho, like i said we did Disney in 6 hours.  This included purchasing tickets and waiting for PP to collect her first timer badges as the window she chose had run out, but she was not leaving without a badge, fair enough, i would feel the same except Elvis and I had them already.

The place was all dressed up for Halloween (yes early), a bit like the Aussies selling xmas trees in September.  Perhaps we need to start really celebrating Halloween to delay the xmas stock reaching the shelves around fathers day.

It is so beautiful.  We decided that seeing as we only had 6 hours, we needed to hit all the rides which had height restrictions on them, might be a little scarier.  We did do the haunted house (for littles, obviously no danger here as you get onto the ride while it is moving), and it was beautiful.The room with the snow was actually cold and the ginger bread room smelt like ginger bread, awesome effort Disney.

The first 'restricted' ride was one like the flume at seaworld, we waited and hour and a half to get on and then were evacuated just before the first drop because the ride broke (the kids behind us were not ours but some other Aussie family, who winged as much as we did when they kicked us off).

We were offered a one of front of line pass for our troubles: 1 ride = front of line.  We ran to the front of the next ride and held onto the pass for the next 3 or 4.  We used all kinds of diversions to hang onto this pass, i felt sorry for the people who had to wait while we pushed into the front (just a little).  The rides were great, we screamed and laughed like little kids. Yes i have an abominable snowman hat on.

On our final ride our front of line pass was confiscated, i think word got around that a group of Australians were bullshitting their way through the park.  The night parade started and every disney character with theme music marched down the main street, we got to follow it out to the front gate singing Supercalafragalisticexpealadocious...um diddle diddle diddle um diddle ly (my all time favourite song), the time it took us to get to the gate behind the crowd we had heard the chorus at least 30 times (not so favourite by this time). I mainly like it because i can spell it backwards if asked to.

After the grand exit, we headed to Bubba Gumps Shrimp Factory for shrimp (obviously) and happy hour mojitos/daiquiris/bacardis. We met up with our fellow travellers after their busy day in San Fran, headed off to bed when they kicked us out of Bubba Gumps.

Breakfast at our hotel was ordinary and shut at 9am, coffee was still crap.  Load the tour bus to go sightseeing.  Our bus driver was also a comedian (he thought) and after 10 minutes i told him to shut the fark up and drive (i said this in my head).  He continued to talk the entire day.  First stop Venice Beach.  Even though we were a large group with large men included, i was still nervous here.  It looks just like it does on TV and the men in muscle gym do their workout while checking consistantly that someone is watching.  The sell medicinal marijuana from a stall on the sidewalk, but you cant take photos, souveneirs are cheap and the beach is wide.  Stephan stopped for a toilet break, which was interrupted by a man carrying a saw...yes a saw, and i think Stephan may have gotten stage fright for fear of getting a piece of him sawn off (understandable).  I gave some money to a beggar for being honest in saying he only needed money to get drunk (i can relate to this).  We were forced into buying cd's of a group of men who claimed to be playing at the big day out next year, it seems every guy selling cd's is playing there as this was the third time i had heard it, i still said "awesome" for fear of being mugged, Elvis paid $2 for his, Freemont St Dancer paid about $40, still havent listened to them to see if there is any music on them.  Quick walk around and safely back to the comedian/driver.  Over to Santa Monica Pier, big beach, loads of smog and the greatest chilli dogs on earth....no they were not hot.  I had a panic attack on the ferris wheel and was held hostage until it finished, I paid $5 for this privalege.

 Bel Air and Beverly Hills....big houses, took loads of pics and cannot remember one of the famous people who allegedly live in them (comedian could have made it all up) so we continue to tell our friends and relatives the same crap...who would ever know??  Saw the Hollywood sign, walked over some stars (the ones on the sidewalk), not overly impressed with the place but at least we saw it (not like the Grand Canyon: see below for fake pictures, we thought we could fool someone).

Back to our hotel, and off to an Ice Hockey game; the Mighty Ducks and more nachos, and off to Bubba Gumps for drinks again.

Next day we had planned to go to Universal Studios, half the team went, we were so tired i could not face another long drive, apparently it was awesome.  We headed to Knottsberry Farm for the day.  OMG you have never seen so many roller coasters in one place, 12 i think and another heap of rides which looked equally as scary.  Between us we pretty much did them all and all felt pretty sick at the end of the day...it may have been the giant nachos i had for lunch, or the drinks i had the night before?  We went on a roller coaster called the Ghost rider.  2 mnutes of hell. I would imagine if there was a hell and i happened to visit it, you would be made to ride this roller coaster over and over. I wish i could find the pic of Mr and Mrs S&C, it is priceless, Mr S&C looks like he might have done a bit of poo in his pants.....seriously i didnt know whether to laugh or cry.

 Found it, there had to be some poo.

After a big day at Knottsberry, we stopped at some happy hour bar, had a couple of cocktails and headed off to get ready for the big flight home.  Load ourselves into 2 buses (we had loads of bags) and off to the airport for some serious duty free shopping (grog and smokes).  Really how good is duty free, smokes for $3.50 per pack.  No tax.  Did you know that the govt spends 6 billion dollars more on obesity related illness, than smoking related?  Just thought i would add that, read it in the paper yesterday.

With a tear in my eye our plane left the tarmac and was headed for the land down under.  I had missed my kids terribly, although when we arrived home they stayed long enough to get their presents and then went on with their lives.  My dogs were happier to see TT#1 (who house sat for us) than they were to see me and the cats were all pissed off, Taz because TT#1 had left her and Stu because he always gets the shits when i go away (dont worry we are talking again). 

I had a fantastic time on my first grown up overseas holiday and now just need an excuse to get back to Vegas.....Miffy was getting married again there, but her husband to be (second time around) is the party police and wont go along with it.  Anyone want to go to Vegas?????

I have the travel bug.