Friday April 19 (Day 7)
Chapter 20: We Only Had Ice Cream Once...For Breakfast
We had no Magic Morning or Rope Drop plans for our final day at the parks, so woke up casually and went down to take advantage of the free breakfast at our hotel. Neither of us was feeling particularly hungry, so we ended up just grabbing some fruit to go. My daughter was excited because this would be the first (and only) day of our trip where we would be starting the day at DCA. Although we had no specific agenda for the day, she had really fallen in love with California Adventure and was looking forward to spending a few hours there in the morning and then again in the afternoon/evening.
Now is probably as good a time as any to reflect on how fortunate we were throughout this trip in two major respects: crowds and weather. We came into the trip warned by crowd calendars and Disneyland veterans alike to expect massive crowds, long lines for security and waits for rides, and general congestion everywhere we went. With going the week before Easter, heart of Spring Break season, Dapper Day, Food & Wine at DCA, etc., all of the websites showed our days as red, "packed", "forget about it", and 9 or 10 out of 10 crowds. So we came in expecting to fight through crowds and be subjected to long standby lines, and tried to work this into our planning with RDs, MP strategy, touring plans, etc. As it turned out, while the planning was still valuable, we had nothing to worry about. To our pleasant surprise each day the crowds were completely manageable, and sometimes almost non-existent. Especially on Monday, when we were expecting to get crushed, we looked around several times during the day and asked "where is everyone?". While TP had predicted mostly 9s and 10s for each day of the week, looking back now at their "historical crowds" page all of our days turned out to be 2s, 3s, and 4s. Between the light crowds, MP, our planning and touring strategies, and the close proximity of our hotel to the parks, our time at DLR was both really productive and relatively hassle-free.
The weather was also gorgeous every day of our trip. This was less surprising given that it is SoCal, but we still considered ourselves lucky that every single day was sunny, but not too hot or humid. We even had a perfectly pleasant day at Magic Mountain, which is notorious for having brutal weather on occasion. Our final day at DLR would be no exception, as we made our way to DCA under sunshine and beautiful blue skies.
My daughter chose Monsters Inc. Mike & Sulley to the Rescue as our first ride of the day. On the way there, she insisted we get a photo of her outside of Award Wieners. She never once expressed any interest in eating there; she just liked the name.
Kids are funny. Anyway, we had only a short wait for Mike & Sulley (probably 5 minutes at most) and my daughter enjoyed our third ride on it just as much as our first. After that we starting using MP and booked an immediate FP over at Toy Story Midway Mania, so headed over to Pixar Pier next.
Yet again, I had the much higher score, but her accuracy was significantly higher. I kept telling her that she needs to shoot more. As we got off TSMM, I saw Ron Livingston with his family. I thought about making an "Office Space" reference, but decided to leave the guy alone and let him enjoy the day with his kids without some random guy asking him about his TPS reports
Our next ride, also via MP, was a return to my daughter's favorite: Incredicoaster.
Especially with FP, there was basically no line to speak of and we chose to wait one extra cycle so that we could have the front row.
We had a great ride, and my daughter's infectious enthusiasm for Incredicoaster continued.
From there, we decided to go to Cars Land via Pacific Wharf. On our walk my daughter pointed out that (1) Ghirardelli was open, (2) I had promised her a sundae at some point on the trip, and (3) she was feeling hungry for a snack. I told her that it was too early for ice cream and that we would come back later, but her idea did sound tempting. Once in Cars Land, we walked around and explored a bit since it was not crowded, which gave us a chance to really look around and check out all the nooks, crannies, and details. Then we jumped into the short line at Mater's Junkyard Jamboree and enjoyed that for the third time on the trip.
After we finished that ride, I decided to cave and take her to Ghirardelli even though it was only like 10 AM (and let's be honest, I wanted ice cream too). So we basically had sundaes for breakfast.
It was our last day of vacation. May as well live our best lives, right?
After that we decided to leave DCA and park hop over to Disneyland. I got a nice photo of Caroline near the fountain on Buena Vista Street before we exited.
Stay tuned for Chapter 21, where we make our way around to some Disneyland favorites and eat lunch at Ballast Point.