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We spent the day after the half marathon, Monday, relaxing by the pool. Tuesday, we were ready to hit the parks again and we got up early to head to the extra hour that resort guests staying on property get in the mornings. We were determined to ride Radiator Springs racers, and so our plan was to get in right when it opened and head straight back to cars land….like everyone else in line! We grabbed breakfast in the concierge lounge and then headed to the park gates.
We got to the gates with about ten minutes to spare, and as soon as the gates opened, we made it through and power walked to the back, and STILL had a 30 minute wait time for Radiator Springs Racers! Oh well, better than two hours right? As we were going in I managed to drop my camera. I was so angry at myself. It still works, but the zoom is a little rough and I have to turn the lens kind of hard.
We went through the line pretty quickly, and finally up onto the platform area/last area you wait in the couple of minutes before you get on the ride….and it broke down. ug! Well….what do you do? Some people left, but we had already waited thirty minutes. I had to go to the bathroom, so we came up with a plan. I would go to the bathroom and then go get in line for fastpasses. (Even though the park opens an hour early fastpasses don’t start until the park actually opens to everyone.) Then I would get us Radiator Springs fastpasses for later then go back, and hopefully it would be working again, and we could ride twice!
Well it worked like a charm! I had to wait in the fastpass line about ten minutes, but by time I got back the ride came up after about five more minutes. Finally! I was so stoked for this one.
The whole area is so well done, I was very impressed. I know Disney spent a ton of money on the whole Cars Land area, but it came out amazingly well, and this ride did not disappoint. It had a kind of test track feel but was SO much cooler!
So the ride starts out leisurely going along, enjoying the beautiful scenery.
Then you pass by the gorgeous waterfall before going “inside”
You go through the town which looks so, so cool, and then get geared up for the big race. Another vehicle pulls up next to you, and then the race begins, and you immediately head outside.
You go around banked turns, over bumpy hill/drops, and it is so much FUN! Then the is another dip right before you cross the finish line!
We took the following photo of another car after we had gotten off the ride.
Totally worth the wait, and I was so glad we had fastpasses so we could do it again!
We had time to kill before we could come back and ride, so we decided to check out some more attractions.
We hit up Monster’s Inc which was really cute!
We wandered around a bit and decided to stop for some lunch.
After lunch we rode Soarin’, The Little Mermaid, and a couple of other things before heading back to Radiator Springs Racers, where we got to sit in the front.
We went back to the hotel for a rest, and then headed back to the parks (this time Disneyland) for the evening. We loved the convenient hotel entrance from California Adventure, such a short stroll to the room!
It had cooled off a little, for which we were thankful.
We headed to Toowntown for a look around, and it is MUCH more well done than the WDW version was. I absolutely loved it there, everything was adorable.
We checked out the home of the big cheese, and Minnie’s cottage, too.
As we were leaving, the parade happened to be going by and I caught a glimpse of Mickey!
We wandered around a bit more, riding Big Thunder and Pirates again, until it was time for our fastpasses at Grizzly River back at California Adventure. We purposefully waited until right before the park closed, so in case we got wet (even with our ponchos) we could just walk back to the room and it wouldn’t matter because it would be bedtime anyway. Well, things didn’t exactly turn out as planned.
We got on the raft, and started climbing up to the top of the mountain….and got stuck. We were stuck about ten minutes, and got to know the others in our raft really well. 
We finally started going again, and made it through most of the ride, and then we got to the best part, the big drop, and were stopped. There were two other rafts stopped in front of us (we were all being held back from the drop by gates that open and close to let the rafts go down) and then a boat came up behind us. Well, we sat…and we sat… and we sat. Before we knew it, it had been 45 minutes and we were still sitting there! Finally, someone came and told us they were working on it, and then they let the first raft go down. YAY! We were going to get to finish the ride! Not so fast. Another fifteen minutes go by…the park has been long closed by now mind you we can’t see or hear anything, rushing water all around and “mountains”. Again, someone came out and told us the ride was broken worse than they have ever seen and they were going to have to DRAIN THE WHOLE THING and get us out of the rafts and walk down the inside of the mountain and it would take a few minutes to drain….which it did. They waited until it was completely dry and had to bring in a ladder to help us climb out of the rafts! The below photo is of the dry riverbed outside our raft.
Standing on dry ground where there is usually rushing water!
Helping other people off the rafts
Granted, I was annoyed I had been sitting in a raft over an hour AND I didn’t even get to go down the best part, but what can you do? Well, the woman next to us was with her probably 13 year old daughter. she started griping and complaining and saying Disney better give her a giftcard and fastpasses and all this other stuff. She said she was going to tell them they made her miss dinner and they needed to comp her even though it was a lie. I was SO ANGRY she was talking about lying right in front of her daughter. What kind of role model is that?!? So as we were getting out, they gave us all fastpasses for the next day and the lady starts in saying she wants a Disney gift card because she missed her dinner reservations because we were stuck on the raft. I was so shocked. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids. We *thought* about telling the Cast Member’s she was lying but I left it alone.
The below photo is what the inside of the mountain looks like!
After all that hoop la, we walked back into the hotel (which was luckily just outside the entrance to the ride!) and went to bed. It had been quite a day!
On my next Disneyland post, I tell about our last day, and riding Toy Story Mania five times in a row.
QOTD: Have you ever been stuck on a ride somewhere?
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I really wanted to run Radiatior Springs, but each time I’d try it was down 🙁 hopefully next year ill be able to
I’ve been stuck in the Haunted Mansion before. One time was in Madam Leota’s room, and people were taking pictures. I had to close my eyes because of the flash photography, and I kept hoping those pictures would never turn out.
I love these Disney recaps!!! The Cars ride looks awesome…my boys would LOVE it!!! And I sure do miss Toontown at DW. I can’t believe you were stuck on that ride for so long…but pretty cool you got a behind the scenes look at the ride! And yes that lady would have made me so mad too…so not a good role model. Thanks for sharing girl! Look forward to the next DL recap!
The Cars ride looks like so much fun! And the toon town does look better than the WDW one, which might be why they’re redoing/redid it. I haven’t seen it but I think they were changing that area drastically this past year. That sucks you were stuck on a ride, but kind of cool you got to see the inside of a ride. I know Disney probably comped her meal but that sucks that they had to. Some people really take advantage of the system.
Cars Land looks so cool! I can’t wait to get to Disneyland sometime…it’s been years since I’ve been there. My sister and I are hoping to head that way in the next year.
That’s crazy, but kinda cool that you got to see behind the scenes on the ride. And that woman should be ashamed of herself. Honestly.
I can’t wait to read about 5 times on Toy Story Mania that sounds like a dream come true I adore that ride!!!
Cars Land is so amazing!! They did such a good job on whole area and Radiator Springs is awesome!! Way better than Test Track!! 🙂 Sucks that the ride got stuck, but that is pretty cool that you got to see the behind the scenes stuff. And how nice you could just walk over to your hotel!