"I'll Do You One Better: Why is Gamora?" (WDW Vets Visit Cali, April/May 2019) Completed 6/23

Sounds like a fun morning! I love all the dark rides in Fantasyland!

Yes, me too!

Space Mountain..."kind of fun" :rotfl:

Yeah, kind of just a little :rotfl:

Mickey's Magical Mix looks cool! Sorry about the fireworks though :(

It was! But the version I saw the video of looked so much cooler because of the fireworks.

Ugh that stinks being stuck on Pirates for so long!

It was not a good time :laughing:

Omg! I was so scared by the creepy looking witch too! My parents actually bought a Snow White globe on one of our trips to Disney and I refused to look at it for the longest time because I was convinced that it had some magic to make the creepy looking Evil Witch appear!

She was so scary! I was like 3 when I saw Snow White, and for the longest while I was really convinced she lived in the bathroom. (In the house we had back then there was a bathroom off of my room), and like I would just stare into it fearfully at night. So one night my dad came in, and grabbed some toilet paper touched the ceiling with it, then flushed it. (Like as if he were killing a bug) And I was like oh he got her it's safe now :rotfl:

I literally watched this SOOOOO many times as a kid! I think I'm most excited to see DL's Haunted Mansion just because of that little video! haha

Yes! I used to watch it like everyday.
 
Pop Up Disney
May 2nd, Part 1

We started this morning by watching some Jerry Springer before we headed to brunch at Goofy's Kitchen :rotfl:

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Goofy's Kitchen Review

After brunch we had made a reservation at the new Pop Up Disney attraction.

Right before we went this had opened in what used to be the ESPN complex in Downtown Disney, and we had booked our tickets before knowing what any of the rooms looked like. It was $30 a person and $38 after a certain time and on weekends which is a bit of a steep price but I was curious to check it out since we’d never been to one. I tried to get at least a picture and some video of everything, but due to photo limits I'll only post some of them here.

So once we checked in, we were handed a color coded card, and led to a waiting room. You're called in, in relatively small groups and get 15 minutes in the first room. However after the first room they didn't really count how long you spent in the room. It never got crowded (since they sell tickets by time slots), but I will say it probably didn't take 15 minutes to go through most rooms. They recommend setting aside 90 minutes for this attraction (and that's how long you can stay in there total), but I don't think we needed even close to that long.

We first entered the Mickey & Minnie's LOVE room, and the very first thing you see is a giant Minnie bow. This was one of the only things that was pictured on the original advertisement, and it's the very first thing you come to:


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There were various love backdrops etc around the room.
If you need to there is a CM in each room that can take photos, but Josh mostly took the pictures and we took some selfies too.

The next room is "It All Started With a Mouse" and is a black and white vintage looking room, with a wall of black and white plush Mickeys:


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There's also early drawings of Mickey on the wall with Walt's notes alongside, and this Steamboat Willie photo op:

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The next room was Mickey's Friendships.
This was Mickey painted by Donald Duck:


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They had different Mickey's made from dog bones, a topiary, and acorns to represent the different characters making them.

Next room was Sorcerer Mickey's Magic:


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The lighting was cool, but a little hard to photograph in.

Next up was Mickey Around the World:


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(Same Mickey, same)

Now entering the Forever Mickey section.

This was one of those kind of Infinity Rooms, but in Disney style. I've heard your time is limited in here, but they didn't really say anything to us. I don't think there was anyone behind us though so that could be why. Still it's only this one little room so it's not like you'd need to spend too long in here.


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Finally the last room is called Mickey at Disneyland:

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And at the very end before leaving you can see this matte black Mickey.

Afterwards there's a shop with some merchandise specific to this pop up like a spirit jersey, and you can use your receipt to to purchase special Mickey pop up snacks in other locations. They also validate parking although we didn't need them to because we weren't going to pick up the car until afterwards.

All in all it was a fun time, it was cute and it was interesting to try something different when they have it, but I'm not sure it's worth the price tag especially for most people. I think locals and Instagrammers were their main draw. I did see some Instagrammers that went for the media event, and had brought several different outfits to change into throughout it. I guess that's how you get some different pictures, but that seems like a lot of work, and I'm doubtful most people will be doing that. We'll be doing another pop up in the next post and I'll tell you which one was our favorite afterwards. But I can answer what my favorite room was right now and I'd say even though it was the smallest the Mickey Forever room was definitely my favorite.

Next Up

I Like Scary Movies pop up!


 
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Back in the Hollywood area we saw Iron Man’s meet. It was over 2 hours and I think it was like that the whole time since he doesn't meet during the day :eek: We were okay with skipping that so I got some Captain Marvel nachos and settled with this weirdly lit picture with a giant Iron Man head.
I also think it was the first time he's met in the US. He meets in Shanghai, but that's the only place.
I wanted to make sure and ride it asap because I'd heard it goes down a lot. It was a fun ride, and there was a lot to see on it. Josh loved it, and when I told him WDW had a similar ride he told me not to tell him which one it was and he'd guess afterwards. Well he couldn't guess, and when I said Dinosaur, he said this ride was so good he forgot all about that one :rotfl:
I can't enjoy Dinosaur because I know the track at Indy so well that I'm always expecting one thing to happen and it doesn't!
I was trying to do a pose where it looked like the Mickey wall was pulling me in, but I don't know if that really comes across :rotfl:

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I think it looks like that! Definitely worked well with your shirt that day!
 


I love the Fantasyland dark rides because they have utterly terrifying parts like when Mr. Toad goes to Hell. No, seriously, why aren't rides this terrifying anymore?
:rotfl: I have no idea?!

(Although I wish we had the pretty newly painted castle instead of the fake scrim castle :rotfl:)
Omg I was just thinking to myself "what the heck is that?!" Oh... the castle :sad2:

I did a lot better than usual (which still wasn't great) but enough to know my gun wasn't broken.
What a relief. I have yet to ride "our" Buzz and not leave utterly confused.

I wrote "kind of fun" in my notes so I guess I had a good time :lmao:
:rotfl2:

I've always loved the Aristocats!
Me too! I named my cat after Marie :laughing:

Sometimes I get emotional just thinking of all Walt did, and how inspiring he was, and everything he created for us. And I love the idea that the light is always on to show he's always still there. So this was definitely an emotional moment for me, that I feel like all fellow Disney fans will understand.
I couldn't agree more :goodvibes
 


I Like Scary Movies Experience Pt. 1
May 2nd, Part 2

I’m taking a short trip with @xlsm over the next few days, and I wanted to get the rest of the posts about our LA day up before I go! :cheer2:

After the Disney pop up we went to get our rental car from Alamo. This was the weirdest experience I’ve ever had at an Alamo. The guy tried to sell me extras (even though I had almost all the extra insurance), insisted on taking a deposit of $485 (which seemed like way more than we've ever been charged before), and kept referencing a reservation I know I canceled (that was for an extra day). Our one day rental was about $70, yet even with the old reservation misunderstanding cleared up he still charged me the over $400 deposit.

Since Josh drives the rentals I put them under his name, but since he didn’t make the reservation, and the guy seemed like he was trying to scam us, I went to the desk to clear it up. Since I talked to him, he insisted on putting me as the main driver even though I said I wouldn’t be driving, and the reservation wasn’t under my name. He didn’t seem to believe I wouldn’t be driving, or think it mattered that the main driver match the name on the reservation, but in the end it doesn’t matter I guess as long as you are both authorized to drive it so I dropped it.



Afterwards we went to get our car from the top of the Paradise Pier parking garage. Then we stopped back at our room for about two hours before leaving for LA.

We stopped at Sauced Up on the way there:

Sauced Up/Milk Jar Cookies Review

The traffic wasn’t too bad, and kept moving the whole way even in the spots our map said were more congested. And we found a parking garage near the pop up quicker than I thought we would.

So a little backstory about the I Like Scary Movies Experience:

A couple weeks before our trip we heard about a pop up place opening that was horror movie themed. It had rooms for The Shining, IT, Nightmare on Elm St, Beetlejuice, and Lost Boys. From pictures I saw it was very elaborate and well done with a lot of photo ops, so we bought tickets. I had wanted to do another pop up, and had been looking for something in LA that had a horror movie theme so this was perfect.

The tickets were on the pricy side like most other pop ups. I can’t remember how much, but probably between $30-40 a person. I think they were worth every penny in this case though. It takes place on Wilshire Blvd in what appeared to be an old office building they had converted, and right now it runs through mid-July. Closer to the trip we had cut the LA portion down to one day so we ended up deciding to just do this and then go to the Comedy Store for a show which is something Josh really wanted to do.

*Here’s my typical warning that this post includes pictures that are horror themed or have horror props and if that’s not something you like feel free to skip it. Nothing is any worse than what you’d see at HHN, but I figured I'd put in a little disclaimer anyway*.

So without further ado here’s a million pictures (and this isn’t even all of them) from I Like Scary Movies! This is the first photo op before you go in:



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They told us to take as long as we wanted, and there were people in every room that could take pictures or help with poses if we needed.

First is The Shining:
I kind of love the bathroom. I love the color of the walls:


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The next room was kind of the inside and outside of the Overlook Hotel.

The only thing that was kind of annoying was in the first couple rooms we had a group of girls that were acting like the place was theirs alone to have a photoshoot in, and seemed to be getting special treatment from the staff (they gave her a prop for her pictures but told us no one else could use it). We were confused but another employee pulled Josh aside and seemed apologetic. She said the girl was a famous WWE wrestler, and was having a VIP tour or something. We honestly had no idea who she was (Josh’s brother knew instantly who it was), and I don’t really care if she was famous or not; it was still rude and annoying to have her and her friends running around like they were the only people there. Luckily, we waited a bit and let them get ahead and didn’t see them again. We didn’t actually run into very many people while we went through which was nice.
Room 237:


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Next up we walked through one of those spinning tunnels, and we were in the IT section:

This was so elaborate!


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Popping out of the IT mouths was fun:

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One of my favorite things was this paper boat streamer section:

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Josh kept telling me to "take a picture of him with all the layers of boats" ::laughing:

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I love this picture of Josh, he looks so adorable:

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:rotfl:

I was a little grossed out about the rain slicker everyone wears. (Much like the way I feel about wearable props at Madame Tussaud’s), but I rolled with it, and I do like how it turned out.
We watched the movie semi recently, and this was an idea I got from watching it. I thought it would look kind of like how Pennywise crawled around. I don’t think it came out that way because I couldn’t touch the ground from that position because the coffin was on the smallish side, but I do look like a body that popped out of the coffin so that works too:


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Continued in next post
 
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I Like Scary Movies Experience Pt. 2
May 2nd, Part 3

The next section was the one I was the most excited for...

Nightmare on Elm Street!

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So the Nightmare on Elm Street movies are some of my favorite horror films. I've seen them all even the ridiculous ones about doing karate to defeat Freddy. But my absolute favorite (if you haven't guessed from my shirt) is the third movie: Dream Warriors.

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(I found that shirt online at Urban Outfitters and I was very excited).

I really wanted to do a "dragged away by Freddy" position. I tried to explain my idea to Josh and this is how he interpreted it:


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:rotfl:

Also each individual part of the claw was on a spring and moved so that was pretty cool.



Now onto the Beetlejuice portion!


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We had a lot of fun in this foam pit. I jumped/fell right in so we could take a Boomerang of it, and then I got stuck in the foam pit and couldn't find anything to grab onto to get out :rotfl: but once that happened I started laughing too hard to try to get out and eventually Josh had to pull me out and even the lady in the room was laughing.
The next room looked like the inside of the miniature village Beetlejuice lives in.


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Josh didn't want to climb down into the grave so I did :rotfl:

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The final section was the Lost Boys. So here we are in the vampire lair:

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We also got to hang from the bridge, but let me tell you this was actually really hard :laughing: here's the best one we got:

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(I don't know why it looks like Josh was kicking me though :laughing: ).

And finally the end!


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We had an amazing time at I Like Scary Movies, and would absolutely recommend it. We definitely enjoyed it more than the Disney one. I would almost describe it as like a kid's play place for adults. Because for some of the photo ops we were running around and playing with things/climbing on things. It was also a little more physically demanding than I expected, but in a fun way :lmao:

Also if you follow the link in my other post you'll see I got cookies and milk afterwards at a really delicious cookie shop too.

After that we went over to see the show at The Comedy Store. You can't really take pictures in there.

To be honest stand up comedy is not my thing. Josh on the other hand is really into stand up comics and their podcasts so he really wanted to go here because it's famous among comedians. The line ups are random and not announced too far in advance and we only had this day so we didn't have much of a choice in who it was. Josh was really hoping for Bobby Lee and of course he was there on the night before, I think. The bigger act our night was Joe Rogan who is the only comedian I really didn't want to see, but since they each do 15 minute sets at least it wasn't for long. I honestly don't remember who was in our line up except for Jeff Ross (who I'm familiar with from the Comedy Central roasts), and a guy named Marc Maron who I thought was pretty funny. There was a lady in the beginning who's name I don't remember who's set was also pretty funny, but nothing else sticks out really. (To me, I'm sure Josh knew who most of them were).

We didn't stay the whole time because it goes until like 2 am, but Josh had a good time.


The ride back was pretty uneventful, and obviously much quicker than the way there. Soon we were back at our hotel in Anaheim.

Next up
Our final day!
 
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The pop up looked like a lot of fun for you guys! The pics are great!

I'm sorry you didn't love the comedy club; I probably would have felt the same way as you!
 
It looked so bad :confused3 It looks great now, but I wish we got to see it during our trip.
Ugh, I bet! Timing is everything, isn't it? :headache:

They told us to take as long as we wanted, and there were people in every room that could take pictures or help with poses if we needed.
That's super cool! Although I think I understood the context/props in like one of these photos :rotfl2:Anything horror is NOT my thing (I have nightmares for like weeks after! :laughing:) But all your photos were super cool! It's awesome it was so detailed and well-done.

it was still rude and annoying to have her and her friends running around like they were the only people there.
:rolleyes2 Ugh. I would have been incredibly annoyed.

Your pose!!!!! Amazing :thumbsup2:thumbsup2

It was also a little more physically demanding than I expected, but in a fun way :lmao:
:rotfl2::rotfl2:

Hey, so the only picture you took outside in LA was of a Vinny and Pauly D billboard?

Yepp

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Totally nailed it. Meanwhile, how have I not heard of that show?! :confused3
 
The pop up looked like a lot of fun for you guys! The pics are great!

It was! Thank you!

I'm sorry you didn't love the comedy club; I probably would have felt the same way as you!

Eh, I knew when I bought tickets that it wasn't my thing, but Josh really likes them so I didn't mind.

Oh my gosh...those foxes are absolutely adorable! What a cool organization.

Yes! It was amazing!

Ugh, I bet! Timing is everything, isn't it? :headache:

Yeah, one of the reasons tickets were cheaper this time of year was because of all the refurbs, I just didn't realize it would be quite so many things. The castle was the one I was most upset about.

That's super cool! Although I think I understood the context/props in like one of these photos :rotfl2:Anything horror is NOT my thing (I have nightmares for like weeks after! :laughing:) But all your photos were super cool! It's awesome it was so detailed and well-done.

:rotfl:

Your pose!!!!! Amazing :thumbsup2:thumbsup2

:laughing: thank you!

Totally nailed it. Meanwhile, how have I not heard of that show?! :confused3

Idk that's the only place I've really seen advertising for it. Come to think of it I have no idea if it aired already or not because I don't have cable but now you know it exists :lmao:
 
I know what you mean now when you said "see video" about what food you had on your plate :thumbsup2 :laughing:

Meanwhile, Goofy had some pretty amazing dance moves!
 
Last Day In Disneyland
May 3rd & 4th

We had reached our last day in Disneyland/our last real day of the trip :sad: We slept in a little bit since we didn't get to do that a lot on this trip, and got to the park around 11 am. This was actually the least crowded of all the days we went, and we had much better luck with Maxpass. We were able to get quite a few (and probably would've been able to get even more if we were coming back at night). However my opinion is that I still prefer the FP system, but Maxpass seems to work best in the DL park than in DCA.

We rode the monorail in from Downtown Disney, and headed to our first FP which was Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin.

Although I made Josh do the minimal amount of spinning, I did let him play with some cartoon dynamite afterwards :rotfl:


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The ride was cute and fun, I think it was actually one of my favorite dark rides we went on.
Next I grabbed a FP for Small World although the wait was probably only around 15-20 minutes.


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I loved all the little characters throughout it!
I liked this a lot better than WDW's Small World, it was amazing!
Also here's sassy gator:


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(As Josh called it :rotfl:)


Before heading anywhere else we stopped for lunch:

Little Red Wagon/Jolly Holiday Bakery (Disneyland)


We got a FP for BTRRM next, and I got a red card while waiting in line:


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It was fun, but I remember seeing certain special effects in videos people had that didn't look like they were working when we went on it. Maybe it was because those were older videos. Either way we enjoyed BTRRM but I didn't feel like it was too different from the one at WDW although I thought it was a little smoother. (I haven't been on the one in WDW in awhile though).

After that we decided to wait out the 40 minute line at Alice in Wonderland since that would be our only chance to ride it. I guess I didn't get any pictures, but it was a cute little ride. Not worth the 40 minute wait though.


Next up we boarded the Mark Twain. We've never actually done the boat ride at MK, but this was a nice little ride.


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Afterwards we rode the railroad around the park to New Orleans Square. I didn't take any pictures, but the dinosaur part surprised me a bit :rotfl:

When we got off the railroad we poked around New Orleans Square for a bit. I really liked the theming, and it's cool because it's something they don't have in MK. I'd love to visit the real New Orleans someday.
While we were in New Orleans Square I bought this shirt:


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Then we snagged a FP to ride Haunted Mansion again.

To my surprise after getting stuck the last time, Josh still wanted to ride POTC again, which I was happy about because I loved this version of it. Luckily, we didn't get stuck this time.

It was starting to get a little more crowded in the park and we had accomplished pretty much everything we had set out to do so we decided to leave soon. The last snack I grabbed was a DL pickle (in the review above).
And our last ride was Winnie the Pooh, which said 5-10 minutes but was actually a walk on.

Goodbye, Walt :wave2:


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We stopped for some PP pictures outside because I don't think we'd taken any that day and they seemed like they were doing a lot of cool poses with most the people, but they only took a few of us.

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Josh wanted to stop for some Starbucks, and then we entered the music video for "Take On Me" somehow.

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Josh also found a Stance rack in the Billabong store and got these socks:



Later that night we headed back to the Disneyland Resort to go to Steakhouse 55:


Steakhouse 55 Review
It was a delicious meal, but the drop off was our worst experience with the Lyft drop off point yet. The driver accidentally took us to Paradise Pier, refused to turn around or bring us to the actual resort and insisted we walk from there.
And that's pretty much it for our trip!

I don't have much to add from our very last day because we spent pretty much the whole day just getting home. We got only a couple hours of sleep before we had to be up at about 4 am to get ready for our flight. We flew out of the Ontario airport which was about a half hour away. This was a good choice because it was a small airport and easy to navigate.

Leaving in my new Guardians hoodie:


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I've never been able to sleep on a flight before because of all the noise and limited space, but we must've been pretty tired because we both slept most of the first flight. After a short layover in Chicago we were onto the second flight where I watched more of Channel Zero: Butcher's Block before we landed around 4:30 pm. We never really adjusted to the time when we were in Cali so I have to say we didn't really have any jet lag or feel the time difference, but I do hate spending longer than a few hours on a plane and switching flights.

All in all we had a great time in Cali, and I'm sure we'll be back sometime because there's still so much to see and do!

Next up

I'm going to do a wrap up post,
and give you a link to my next TR which is for a short WDW trip I just got back from last week!


:jumping1:
 
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