Los Angeles Day 1 – A long flight – Two Minds Travel Alike

“Air Travel is nature’s way of making you look like your passport photo” – Al Gore

Wow, what a day! The day started off with our flight from SYD to AKL. This was a good flight, approximately 3 hours and completely smooth. Ronnie watched Star Wars: Rogue One for the first time, unreal film, really very good. Then we boarded from AKL to LAX . It was pretty smooth but it was just so long and so uncomfortable! 12 hours and not a single wink of sleep. A lot of tossing and turning. The food was terrible, as it is on all flights. Air New Zealand didn’t even have any hobbits! Disappointed. Ronnie watched Moonlight, La La Land, Assassins Creed, fantastic beasts and where to find them and the entire season 20 of South Park. All of the entertainment was alright. We do enjoy watching movies on flights. Ronnie tried to read, but he finds it makes him nauseous.

We finally made it to LAX and wow, it really is a different world here. Everything looks familiar but different. It is hard to describe. Our airport transfer was half an hour late which was annoying as it is hot here and having had no sleep, we found ourselves irritated, hot and uncomfortable. We were really craving some comfort. Aimee was clever and booked us a room directly across the road from Disneyland Resort. Of course, instead of being sensible and sleeping we made the possibly unwise decision to visit Disney California Adventure for the afternoon. Disney California Adventure is adjacent to Disneyland LA and is just wonderful.

As we got to DCA late, fast passes were already taken for everything and it was like being at a concert, there were an incredible number of people. A lot of lazy people too. It seemed that there were lots of obese people who hired mobility scooters to get around the park and it was prams galore! Walking around was difficult. But it was such a fun place.

We spent about 5 hours walking around the park and taking in all the sights and sounds. We had a quick lunch at Cars Land from a place called Crazy Cone motel. It was a little food court where the food booths looked like giant witches hats. We got pastry cones filled with mac and cheese topped with bacon – yum!

Then we jumped in line for Ariel’s undersea adventure which was pretty cool. It was our first “Dark Ride” The animatronics were awesome, particularly Ursula. It was a really pretty way to re-tell the classic story. The line (like all lines here) was unbelievably long but it moved quickly. The ride we wanted to go on most at DCA and what we have heard is the greatest was Radiator Springs Racers.. which broke down. We waited outside the ride for like 5 minutes and it started back up and we were at the front of the line! What went from a 3 hour line turned into 10mins. Score! It was the sickest ride too. Incredibly cool. You race another car through the radiator springs from the Cars movie. It was so immersive and super fun. The whole vibe of the park is just really fun and the theming is meticulous.

We were going to stay for world of colour which is a lights show that happens at night but we were so incredibly exhausted that we decided to go back to hotel early and get a decent sleep for tomorrow. For dinner we grabbed our first US pizza from a place called Pizzaterian. It was pepperoni and damn it was good. Got our first Dr pepper with this too, delicious!

Tomorrow we are heading for a full day at Disneyland. We have a full itinerary and Ronnie has planned the day out meticulously to get the most out of the park. We hope it goes to plan! We were struggling with our patience in such big crowds after not sleep for so long today, but we expect a good sleep tonight to get ready to go tomorrow.

Much love

Ronnie & Aimee