Los Angeles - California Adventure

Our second day of the LA trip we had planned to go to California Adventure.  Because we were only staying in Anaheim one night before moving to our free Jeopardy hotel, we opted to stay at the Disney property in the Grand Californian Hotel.  The hotel itself was kind of meh- a three star hotel at five star prices, but it gives an important perk of being allowed access to the theme parks one hour before they are open.  The bad news meant we had to be up to line up at the gate at 6.30 am, but in that first hour of limited admission, we were able to get in a whole day's worth of rides.  The most popular ride there right now is Radiator Springs Racers, a Cars themed roller coaster, and during the day the lineups were between 90 and 120 minutes long, but we were able to ride it 3 times before the park opened.  As painful as it was to get that early start, it was well worth it in terms of being able to cram as many rides in as possible.

California Adventure- as the first ones in.

Moments later, the theme park crush resumes.

Declan was never really a huge Cars fan, but he sure enjoyed Radiator Springs, the Disney version.  They've done a really good job with it and it feels like an old dusty town. 

It was fun to see the life-size versions of the Cars characters driving around.  Mater even stopped by to wish Declan a happy birthday, which blew his mind.

Luigi's Tires Selfie

We packed it in and headed off to the airport to pick up Shane, and move into our Jeopardy Hotel which was the Hilton Universal Studios. Weird aside about the Hilton Universal Studios, it is a 3 star hotel with 5 star room service.  I've had worse room service in all kinds of luxury hotels than they are inexplicably dishing up the Universal Hilton.  On the down side, or the not-down side I should say, hotel elevators would not pick up at our floor- the 8th.  We would have to walk up one floor to catch an elevator.  But hey, it was free.

We had a little tiny Easter Egg hunt in our room, as it was Easter Monday.  It is really easy to hide tiny eggs very, very well, and it took a good hour of "warmer colder" hints before he found all the eggs again. The real challenge was for me to remember where I had hid them.   I think there is one still in that hotel room.