We visited the second set of Disney parks on our Round the World trip.  And it was good.

Okay, technically this is the first set of Disney parks we've visited as part of our actual 72-day around-the-world trip. But we just visited Walt Disney World last month, so we're counting it. Artistic license and all that. Anyway...

We got an early start from our hotel in Rancho Santa Fe, north of San Diego, because we knew it was going to be a long drive, made worse by the fact that we’d be hitting rush hour traffic in Orange County. We made a quick stop in Oceanside to pick up a friend and then hit the road again. Totally unexpectedly, we had no issues with traffic in Orange County or anywhere else.

So we made it to Disneyland just a scoosh after the 10:00 am opening (scoosh is a technical term used by engineers indicating a bit more then a tad and less then a bunch). We could tell from the lines that it wasn’t going to be an especially busy day. And it wasn’t - crowds were moderate all day. We purchased our park hoppers and made our way inside. And promptly detoured to a rest room, which I’m pretty sure was on Mary’s schedule.

Disneyland - well, what can one say. Overall, I prefer this park to the Magic Kingdom in Disney World. There’s something about the grounds and the ambiance that seems richer than its cousin in Orlando. Plus, in Anaheim there usually isn’t the oppressive heat one associates with Florida. No pounding heat and humidity makes Mike a pretty happy boy. And there are lots of little nooks and crannies, just like Thomas’ English muffins, in the park where there’s a little something to see or experience that just doesn’t seem to be to be present elsewhere.

So we enjoyed the park. The Castle still had the ice effects on it, which had not yet been removed from Christmas, and some holiday decorations were still up here and there throughout the park, particularly in New Orleans Square, so it was all very festive.

We hit some of our favorite rides like Pirates of the Caribbean, the Jungle Cruise and the Matterhorn. Several attractions were down for refurbishment or other reasons. Both Haunted Mansion and “it’s a small world“ were closed for removal of the holiday overlays, for instance.

Several other rides had periodic maintenance issues, including Indiana Jones (which to this date I’ve still not experienced, since it’s been down for maintenance every single time I’ve been in the park since they introduced it), and for a while the Buzz Lightyear ride. (Though we checked later in the day and Buzz was back up, so I was able to continue my unbroken string of victories over Mary, scoring a personal best of 129,500 points.)

Ride maintenance does seem to be a recurring issue at Disneyland, and the last several trips we’ve made to the park have been marred with ride issues. However, we realized that some rides would be out for the count. This time of year is the best opportunity for Disney to close rides for  refurbishment, because attendance is at its lowest ebb.

We caught lunch in the Café Orleans in the French Quarter. We had planned originally on the Blue Bayou because of the atmosphere, but then we realized we hadn’t tried Café Orleans since it was transformed from a counter service location, into a full service restaurant. And the food was not too shabby. I started with a really healthy basket of fries covered with Parmesan cheese and herbs, followed with some crepes filled with a gumbo mixture. That pretty much covered my fried food allowance for the rest of the trip. Mary had gumbo and seafood crepes. Our friend, a vegetarian, pronounced the meat free offerings (salad and ratatouille) acceptable.

After lunch we decided to go and stand in line for the new Nemo submarine ride which replaces or I should say creatively piggybacks on the old submarine ride. Yep, the subs are back and they look pretty good for their age. Disney included new elements from the Finding Nemo Pixar film, with clever incorporation of video into the underwater environment that was fairly close to seamless. Apparently there was also an underwater volcano scene which I seem to have missed, possibly due to a gumbo induced mini-nap. Mary said it was pretty neat.

Later in the afternoon we bounced over to California Adventure. It had been maybe five years or more since I last visited this park. Not a whole lot has changed, unfortunately. There is a new Tower of Terror but apparently they cheaped out and it’s not quite as good as the one in Orlando. We did do a couple of things I’d not done before, like the West Coast version of It’s a Bug’s Life, which was as far as I could tell very, very similar to the one in Florida. We saw California Dreams, which I’m not sure I even realized was there previously. It was pretty kitschy but not actively horrible.

And of course, since we were in California Adventure we had to go to Mary’s favorite food stand in all the Disney parks (even including the gyoza sausage stand in Tokyo DisneySea): the Corn Dog Castle. See the photo.

We did make it to Soarin’ Over California and that is still the highlight of the park. Other than Grizzly River Rapids (which we found it too cold to ride) and the California Screamin’ roller coaster there really wasn’t anything much else we wanted to ride in California Adventure. Seems to me that the park has potential, but they still haven’t found a way to capture that potential. Hopefully after the construction of Cars land and the updating of the Backlot area, the park will be better.

So Disneyland, still three or four thumbs up. California Adventure - well, it’s something to kill a couple of hours but still not worth the price of a separate admission.

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