California,  Disney,  Disneyland,  Tourin' Over California - Sept 2018,  Travel,  Videos

Tourin’ Over California – Day 8

Sorry for the influx of California posts lately – just trying to get them all done before the end of the year 😉 but honestly I’m not sorry to share another beautiful day at Disneyland with you!! Today we visited Disney California Adventure basically all day before enjoying a very special dinner at Disney’s Grand Californian Resort!

DAY 8 – SEPTEMBER 19, 2018


Today started off bright and early again and it was time to get back into the park! Extra Magic Hours today were at DCA instead of Disneyland, so that was our destination. And we had one ride in mind – Guardians!!

And we loved it so much that we did it a second time right away! It was so much fun to just get off and walk right back on again – it’s such an amazing ride.

We had another super successful Extra Magic Hours, knocking out a lot of rides – Monsters Inc, Luigi’s Rollickin Roadsters, and Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree.

While in line for Mater’s we also mobile-ordered our breakfast from Flo’s!

For as much as we dislike Cars, we were spending a lot of time in Carsland…!! For breakfast Ana had Cars waffles and Sarah and I split some brioche French toast. It was amazing!

AND if you’ll remember from yesterday I had a hankering for ice cream or a milkshake the night before – well I finally got it! Sarah and I also enjoyed some delicious breakfast milkshakes which were downright heavenly.

After breakfast it was time to hit the rest of the attractions – Incredicoaster, Silly Symphony Swings, Golden Zephyr, and Goofy’s Sky School. We were getting SO much done – getting to the park early had really paid off!!

Of course, in typical fashion for our group, we made some time for a photoshoot at Pixar Paradise Pier too.

PS: Isn’t my Hamilton/Disney crossover shirt amazing? I got it from Etsy!!

Satisfied with our photos, we headed back toward the front of the park to decide what to do next. We happened to stumble upon the Red Car Trolley News Boys show and I am SO happy we did!! It was seriously amazing and so much fun. I love how many of the performers in Disneyland sing live – it just adds a really special touch to the performances and makes them more heartfelt in my opinion. It’s a fun change from the shows in Walt Disney World. This show was SO cute, featuring newsboy Mickey and a fun medley of songs including Newsies, which I love!! I was so happy we had stopped. I didn’t take any photos but a lot of it is in the vlog starting at 7:07.

Next up we popped into the Animation Building for a quick break and enjoyed the scenery for a while. If you’ve never been, the building is dedicated to the animation of the various Disney movies, and inside is a bunch of huge screens showing in-progress and detail shots from the films. It’s incredible. It just makes you want to watch all your favorite movies again and we could have sat in there for ages! You can see a little bit of it in the vlog starting at 9:37. It was another great stop. Here’s Sarah enjoying her favorite, Mulan!

Next up we had another show on the itinerary we were hoping to catch – the Guardians of the Galaxy Awesome Dance Off. It took place right in front of Guardians the ride, which we had a fastpass for and some time to kill:

If I remember correctly, this was actually the only day we didn’t buy Maxpass, so this was the only paper fastpass we got the whole trip! It’s not even REALLY a fastpass, just a reminder to come back at that time. It’s crazy how much we got done even without using fastpasses. Soon it was time for the Guardians show to start, which we really loved! Starlord and Gamora were so much fun and everybody in the crowd obviously loved it too. You can see bits in the vlog starting at 11:48.

After Guardians it was time for yet another show, Frozen Live at the Hyperion! We were all super excited to see this one as we had heard great things (even though we aren’t the biggest Frozen fans). It was so nice to be able to take our time and do all these shows and things that took up a lot of time. Normally we rush around a lot to get as much done as possible, and there are even some shows at WDW that the three of us have never done together – so it was great to get the chance to see and do everything in Disneyland!!

Anyway – you can see a little tiny bit of the Frozen show at 14:21 in the video!! After that we ran over to use our Guardians fastpass, and from there it was time to head over to Disneyland for our lunch reservation. We snapped a few more pics on the way out:

And for lunch we were going to probably my all-time favorite restaurant at Disneyland – Cafe Orleans:

I had a few things on my mind for lunch and NONE of them disappointed! First of all we shared the parmesan garlic fries:

These were seriously amazing. It was the kind of food where I can be so full that I’ll explode if you eat another bite but I would be willing to take that risk to eat another bite. I haven’t stopped thinking about them since we got back. They are life-changing.

We also enjoyed another Halloween special, the crab and corn chowder:

It’s been made apparent how much I love soup already and this one was *chefs kiss* FANTASTIC. I mean – what’s not to love… crab AND corn AND chowder? It’s meant for me.

Finally for our main course we all enjoyed the classic Monte Cristo:

I’m obsessed with this. I think about it all the time. It’s a ham and cheese sandwich dipped in dough and deep fried, then topped with powdered sugar. I had it on our first trip and it was a must-have for me this time. It’s just…seriously so good. And I love the grapes paired with it, the lightness really helps balance out the monstrous sandwich. The dipping sauce was so good too!

Obviously we hated everything.

Once we were sufficiently stuffed from lunch, we hopped aboard the nearby Disneyland Railroad to go over to a new place – Toontown! I had never really been to Toontown other than to ride Roger Rabbit before, so this was pretty uncharted territory. We checked out Mickey and Minnie’s houses, Donald’s boat, and the rest of the area. I have to be honest – I’m not really a huge fan of Toontown – but it’s pretty cute and fun with some nice photo spots.

We were going to ride Gadget’s Go-Coaster but decided to skip it, as it was a 20 minute wait and none of us were really itching to ride anyway. We did end up doing Roger Rabbit though! It’s definitely different than anything we have in WDW – not my favorite, but I’m glad we did it anyway.

Toontown was about to close early due to the Halloween Party taking place in Disneyland that night, and it was time for our midday nap anyway – so we started to head back toward the front of the park to leave. On the way we did the Sleeping Beauty Castle Walkthrough, one of my favorite things in Disneyland. It’s so quaint and charming, just like the park!

That’s ⬆ where all my enemies live.

#MakeItPink

We made our way out of the park and back to the hotel, where we all enjoyed a glorious naptime. And that’s all for this vlog…..because our dinner was so special that it has its own video and post!!! And that post will be up tomorrow 🙂

We ate at the very special and exclusive Napa Rose Chef’s Counter and it was absolutely INCREDIBLE. I wanted to write a separate post about it because it truly deserved to be singled out as a highlight. It was one of the best experiences of our trip and you will not believe how great it was – which you can check out tomorrow when it all goes live here and on my youtube channel!! That’s all for our day 8 for now – make sure you are subscribed to my channel and following my blog, especially if you want to catch that Napa Rose review! I hope you enjoyed this post and thanks for reading/watching as always!!

xo,

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