After sitting down with the boys and the Mrs. to watch the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade, I very much am in the Disneyania mood at the moment. I felt inspired to look through our photos, and again realized what a monumental amount of data I still have from our trip to Disneyland and Hawaii over the summer.
Spending a day at Disney’s California Adventure means for our family heading straight towards the Toy Story Mania ride on the boardwalk. Even getting to the ride at the rope drop can still mean a half hour plus wait for the very busy Toy Story themed 3D shooter attraction. The other major factor is DCA does not offer FastPasses for Toy Story Mania, which means early arrival is the best chance of getting to ride with minimal wait times.
Did you know Mr. Potato Head, shown as the barker of the carnival, can remove and replace his own ear, and is the first audio-animatronic to do so? Check out the first picture in this thread on Theme Park Review for an Imagineer behind-the-scenes photo of Mr. Potato Head.
Disney does a spectacular job of enthralling you in the storyline during the often long, and dreaded queue. I took the moment to capture not only our boys as they tried dashing away, but also of the whimsical Toy Story Mania posters gracing the walls of the line queue.
To this day, my wife and I have still never managed to ride the Toy Story Mania ride at Hollywood Studios in Florida because the line is either over an hour long, or the FastPasses have always been gone by the time we have gotten to the park. Fortunately, early days at Disney’s California Adventure mean we have gotten to experience the ride over both of our visits.
My wife and I each split up on this ride, where she got to ride with Lan-Shark (1) and I was lucky to ride with the spectacular Bug (3). It was great fun getting to see our boys in their 3D glasses along with their favorite Toy Story characters.
Did you know there is a whole, secret strategy to being able to score “To Infinity and Beyond” scores? Here is some insider tips to being able to rack up a high score, and I will leave it up to you whether you want to share the information with your partner. I am beginning to wonder if Bug knew about the Buzz Lightyear’s Flying Tossers secrets.
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We’ve only been on this ride once despite having a Disneyland Annual Pass because the lines never let up. Glad your family got to experience it. I should have paid more attention or I would have noticed those cool posters too. Thanks for the scoring tips. I will need to try this next time and surprise my husband by beating him at these shooting games. 🙂 Happy New Year to you and your family! Wishing you a lot more travel and adventures!
@Mary: Happy New Year to you and your family as well! I loved reading through your 2012 recap.