Disneyland Day 1 - by Luke

Here’s the lowdown from my (Luke Willo) perspective of our first day there...

• Got to Disneyland at 9:00am

• Was really cold

• As we walked in everything- the shops, the attractions, even the castle were done up with Christmas decos

• Star Tours was the first ride we went on, and it was brilliant! There’s nothing like being attacked by Darth Vader and Stormtroopers, finding out dad is a rebel spy, jumping into lightspeed, podracing through Tatooine, fighting above Corusant, receiving a distress signal from Princess Leia and then crash landing, all in 4-D!

• Dad, Max, Ethan and I rode Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye, complete with fire, snakes, spears, loud noise, people screaming and of course, the boulder. It was great!

• We then joined Aidan and Mum and we all rode Roger Rabbits Cartoon Spin, and the Alice in Wonderland ride. I’m sure that Mum and Aidan enjoyed them a lot.

• It’s a Small World had a massive line. It also had a massively annoying theme song which alternated between “It’s a Small World” and “Jingle Bells”. The actual ride besides the music was pretty good though.

• The Jungle Cruise (renamed Jingle Cruise for Christmas) was fantastic, with a hilarious host/driver/comedian, animatronic wildlife that looked real, and a really inventive queuing area which had us guessing where it would take us next in the 40min we waited there!

• Did I mention it was cold?

• We then sailed the seas on Pirates of the Caribbean, which definitely lived up to it’s great reputation. We learnt that pirates like to shoot stuff, sing “A pirate’s life for me”, and say, “dead men tell no tales” repeatedly in a spooky voice. Sign me up!

• We went to go on the Haunted Mansion but we didn’t because the line was massive, it was cold, and instead we ate churos, which is like donut batter made into a stick. (yum!)

• We went over to Splash Mountain, which was empty because of the near freezing temperatures. Undeterred, Max, Ethan, Aidan and I all rode on it. Me and Aidan made the fateful decision to sit at the very front... and got soaked. Being completely wet didn’t help the temperature, which was steadily lowering.

• Max, Ethan and Aidan all decided to ride Splash Mountain again, and ended up getting rescued off it by Disney attendants when the ride broke down when they were halfway through and stranded in the middle of a whole lot of singing, dancing, animatronic animals.

• We rode the Winnie the Pooh ride, which was brilliant because it was dry and warm. The actual ride itself however, was so so.

• Max, Ethan and I went over to Space Mountain, which provoked the thought, “how on earth is a mountain in space?” Anyway, the ride was not as slick or as extreme as it’s cousin in Orlando, but it provided a thrill nevertheless. (Rocketing around in the dark usually does.)

• Night had fallen, and we watched a Christmas Parade. In typical Disney spirit, it had fantastic choreography, a REALLY annoying soundtrack which repeated over and over again and the message, “Dreams come true”. I dreamt that we would stop dying of frostbite, but it didn’t happen.

• We went searching for food for dinner and a warm place to stay, and a Mexican restaurant that served big burritos fit the bill pretty well.

• After dinner we all went and rode the Buzz Lightyear Space Ranger Shoot ‘em Up ride, which was terrific! I didn’t really get the storyline behind it, but we all had heaps of fun blasting Zurg and his evil minions a lot with lasers! (Who doesn’t?)

• We went back out to watch the fireworks over the castle, but they had been cancelled due to “unfavourable weather”. Probably too cold.

• Mum and Dad looked in shops while Max, Ethan, Aidan and I all rode Star Tours again. This time, we fought with TIE fighters, jumped to lightspeed, had a wookie jump on our ship on Kashykk, fought in space above Naboo, crash landed in water and went to Ota Gunga, had a giant fish try to eat us and ended up crash landing in a hanger with the back of a Naboo starfighter smashing through the windscreen and almost skewering our heads. It was AMAZING!

• Overall, our first day at Disneyland was brilliant, leaving us with great memories to treasure and numbness in our limbs from the cold!