My photo life.: California Day 5

So, to continue updating the details of my California vacation, here is our day spent at California Aventures! I had never been there before and I quite enjoyed myself. It was nice to ride some more classic type roller coasters. It wasn't nearly as crowded as as Disneyland, which was also nice. Pretty much the first order of the day was hopping on the Tower of Terror, or rather, getting our fast passes for it.

While we waited for our time slot we visited this animation type store/attraction. There was a big room where large projections of stills from classic Disney movies were plastered on the walls.

There was also corresponding music playing. After a few minutes the music and images would change. It was a fun room.

Connected to it was a room featuring something called a zoatrope. I can hardly describe it, just know it was awesome.

You can kind of tell from this image that there are still figures and they're moving in one giant circle on a spinning platform. It starts to spin very quickly and then what appeared to be a strobe light turned on. This created the effect of a smooth running animation. So very cool. I wish I had the means to record it while we were there, but I'm guessing it's not as fantastic on video as it is in person.

The buildings in the park were really fun and detailed, kind of old and real. It made me feel like I was on the set of Roger Rabbit, which was nice. I had fun photographing them, more architecture practice, yay! I'd like to visit some old towns, I've really only seen modern places. I like fancy old buildings.

I had a pleasant surprise as we walked toward the Tower of Terror: what at first glance appeared to be the sky was seconds later revealed to be a fake sky painted on the side of a building and setup behind the fake downtown buildings.

This sort of thing wouldn't work very convincingly in Washington I don't think. I felt pretty silly once I realized the sky looked just a little too perfect, and then I looked up a little higher and saw it was fake! heh.

SO! The Tower of Terror. Aptly named. It was absolutely 100% terrifying. I think it's the highlight of the day for me. Very fun though, so definitely worth it. I bought the photo of us on the ride because it's just hilarious. I am screaming with all of my might while visibly squeezing Jake's hand and Andrew's arm. They are both laughing.

We spent the majority of the day on rides. Soarin' Over California was really awesome and I particularly loved the "smellovision" aspect! We also ate in the restaurant nearby, whose name currently escapes me. They had decent enough burgers. After that, it was oh so fabulously delicious amazing ice cream time. Oh gosh I love ice cream.

While eating our ice cream we sat and watched a parade that was going by. Super entertaining! It was hot outside and the ice cream was the perfect relaxing and enjoyment companion. I want this ice cream cone again right now. RIGHT NOW. Other than the ice cream and the tower, a fantastic part of the day was the Monsters Inc. ride. It was like being a part of the movie! Whoever designed the ride is a dream-maker and a genius.

I cranked my camera to ISO 1600 or something so I wouldn't ruin the ambience of the ride with a flash. I took a bunch of great photos like this one, but this is such a cute part of the movie so I chose this one. One part of the ride opened up to the room of doors everywhere. Breathtaking! It was just as fantastic and exciting as the first time I saw the scene in the movie.

Gleeful excitement! So much fun.

As the sun began to set, we mosied (past tense of mosey) over to the Grizzly Water something-or-other ride. We were unable to obtain fast passes earlier in the day, so we were prepared to wait in line for our fun water rafting adventure. A serendipitous thing happened though, a man intercepted us and handed us three fast passes for use at that moment, because he and his party no longer needed them.

There's me howling with pleasure!

Actually that's me imitating the bear in the background and Jake telling Andrew that he won't imitate the bear. What a phooey. Either way, it was awesome to receive those fast passes and hop right on the ride. We had fun co-passengers too, seeing as the rafts are 8 seaters.

We were sufficiently moistened. On the very last bend after the big drop a malicious wave rose up and hit Andrew in the face. It was the perfect end to the ride.

And what a beautiful ride it was. The sun was at the perfect setting time to bring out the really beautiful colors. I love this photo in particular.

We wandered through the rest of the park while the sun continued to set. It was time to explore the boardwalk portion of the park and we were rapidly approaching our fast past time slot for the California Screamin' roller coaster.

More fabulous photo opportunities were presenting themselves as the sun set lower and lower in the sky. I'm so glad that I was able to take advantage of the setting and take as many photos as I wanted. Maybe I don't look for these types of situations in Washington because I'm used to what I'm looking at, or maybe these situations aren't that prevalent here, but either way I felt extremely privileged.

This here is the Mickey Mouse ferris wheel. A fun spin on an old ride: some of the carriages move along track. We, of course, went for a moving carriage and it was kind of frightening. Fun though!

As for the California Screamin', it's probably one of the best roller coasters I've ever been on. It would have been nice to hop on it again but the line was far too long. There's only one loop, which made me happy because I don't like too many loops, and it goes very fast. I mostly like the fast turns and drops. This one had I think three or four drops. It was droptastic!