Disneyland Day 3: Part 2!

After breakfast, we headed over to ride Soarin'.  My Mom couldn't get over the fact that the posted wait was just 10 minutes!  We cut that down even further by doing the single rider line.

Up until now, my Mom still was missing her Birthday Button!  So we decided to head back up to Guest Services and see if they got any in.  They did!  And everyone rejoiced!

Birthday girl

We stopped by Storyteller's and had our picture taken together before heading down towards the Aladdin Stage Show.

We got to the theater about 15 minutes or so before they opened the doors to start seating for the show.  We had great seats on the first level.  I love how the Genie updates the show and that it's never the same show twice.  It's really great and I can see why it has been running for as long as it has.

The show was a little longer than we anticipated though, so we booked it over to Radiator Springs Racers to use our Fastpasses!  We got in line fully prepared to wait a half hour or more, even with the Fastpasses, but it only took about 15 minutes before we were boarding.  

Radiator Springs Racers

The ride is seriously awesome.  It is so well done (considering all my gushing about the area, this shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.)  There are two different areas you go through before you race, we went through Luigis and got fancy tires.  Then it was time to go!  I can say I come by my competitive nature honestly.  We won the race and both my Mom and I raised our arms and cheered.  We're a little ridiculous.

We grabbed lunch at Cocina Cucamonga and made our way back to Paradise Pier for a few more rides.  There's a ferris wheel that has gondolas that are stationary, and ones that swing.  They call it Mickey's "Fun" Wheel.  But those swinging ones are terrifying.  I refused to go on it unless we were stationary!  We also rode Goofy's Sky School (a cute, themed Wild Mouse), and the Jumping Jellyfish.  The Jellyfish my Mom was a little obsessed with.  It's a kid ride, but it takes you up and then you kind of bounce slowly down.  It's gentle and a nice little ride.

We had two more rides to do before we took our afternoon break; Monster's Inc & Tower of Terror!  We grabbed a Fastpass for Tower and then headed over to Monsters Inc.  The Monsters ride is a traditional dark ride that takes you through the story.  It's cute and fun, especially when there's no wait!  We had a few minutes to kill, so I got a pineapple spear and we took a rest on a bench and people watched!  Soon enough, our Fastpasses were good, so we walked on the ride.  We had a great cast member load everyone. She also informed everyone that since it was my Mom's birthday, she would be paying for everyone's stay! Love it.

Monster's Inc

We headed back to the hotel and took a well-needed break.  We had reservations at Napa Rose at 7, so we also freshened up before heading over.  I'll do a separate review of Napa Rose, but spoiler alert! It was fantastic.

After dinner, we took the back entrance into California Adventure so we could check out Cars Land at night.  It was beautiful!

We did a little shopping and then headed back to the hotel and collapsed.  It was such a busy day!