Day 5 - Behind the Orange Grove

Another 7:00am day and another character breakfast, this time at Goofy's Kitchen in the Disneyland Hotel. An interesting collection of characters again - Goofy (of course), Pluto, Alice, Gippedo and Jasmine. As soon as Goofy was going to sign my shirt, a song started playing so he left. I wasn’t sure what was going on at first, until Quinn informed me that it was time to dance, and that we had to wait for the song to be over, or we could go dance with him. Would Katie and I ever pass up an opportunity to dance, let alone with Disney characters? Of course not. There was a semi circle of kids just watching, so Katie and I busted through and started dancing with Goofy and the gang. We didn’t really care what people though - we had a grand ole time.

The brunch buffet had a variety of food, including peanut butter and jelly pizza which I didn’t get a chance to try and cupcakes with chocoalte Mickey's on them. We got our shirts signed, and many pictures - during which Jasmine showed us the Princess pose.

It was off to California Adventure! We entered through our hotel - it had its very own entrance to the park. Again, we got to go into the park before anyone else. As we were waiting for our next destination to be ready for us, we took a quick restroom break, put on sunscreen etc. During these activities a horrible thing occurred - Quinn broke the sign. I was hoping they would auction it off - Katie and I would have offered big bucks for that sucker. After the shock of the broken sign, it was time to go to our next destination: Soarin Over California.

We split into our two groups and watched the safety video. The other group's door opened and they boarded the ride. I figured once they were done, we could go on, but when the last person in the Mickey group walked through the door, Michelle said "Ok, come with me." Ooo a surprise! We were headed down stairs, around corners and into a door where we were under the screen for the ride. It's a metal mesh so we could see the Mickey group on the ride, but they couldn’t see us. It's mesh so that the sound from underneath can pass through - there were some big speakers. It was really cute to see everyone swinging their legs and react to what was going on. We then go to experience the ride. It was pretty incredible - I even ducked at one point, it felt that real. The ride ends with a Disneyland scene with fireworks, it was pretty awesome.

After Soarin' Over California we walked through the empty park to the Animation building they had where we did Turtle Talk with Crush. It was pretty neat how he could interact with the audience. There was a feud going on amongst some adventurers over which was better - Disneyland or Disney World. I liked both - I haven't been to Disney World in awhile so I couldn’t make a fair judgment, but I had fallen in love with Disneyland. Anyway, one of the Katie's asked Crush which he preferred - he chose not to answer. But it really bothered me when she said "I hate Disneyland." If it hurt me, imagine how Quinn and Michelle felt. She celebrated her birthday while on this trip and was receiving a lot of special treatment. Even if those were your feelings, have some respect - these people have tried to make your experience magical. It just really bothered me, sorry.

After talking with Crush we learned out to draw Mickey. Katie received all the visual artistic genes - I like to think I received more of the performance artistic genes, even though Katie dances as well - so hers looked amazing. But I was quite proud of mine - I named him Math Major Mickey. His left side was appropriately larger than his right - and I didn’t even do that on purpose! We were cut loose after out drawing lesson.

We thought we should head over to the new Toy Story ride, which opened about a week before we got to California, but we were informed the line was already over an hour long - apparently they allowed peopled to get in line before the park opened. So we decided to do Tower of Terror first, a favorite of ours. Afterwards we found a map and walked around embracing California Adventure. We wondered into the Bugs Life town, where Flik was signing autographs - we ran up to him but he was on his way out. This happened about two more times; we never did get that autograph.

We wandered around trying to find the entrance to California Screamin, and ended up walking around the whole park. We rode one of those rides that’s up high with sudden turns (I can't remember the name). I generally freak out to the point where I am screaming so hard that everyone in a ten mile radius can hear it, but I was proud - I controlled myself. We finally found the entrance to California Screamin and enjoyed the ride. We made a quick call to our guides to see if Ariel's Grotto was going to be part of our surprise - it wasn’t, so we headed over there.

Ariel's Grotto is a character dining place featuring princesses. We found out we had to come back in 30-40 minutes to put our name down. We planned to go watch Muppets in 3D but we got distracted by Stitch along the way. As I was having Stitch sign my shirt, I hear someone asking if they could sign it too. It was Jeremy - a photographer for Disney. As he was asking, Stitch gave him this death stare, it was fantastic. He said he was Jeremy the Jamaican Prince haha, so I said why not and had him sign it along with two other cast members. We made Jeremy's day - he even showed our shirts to Mickey and Minnie saying he signed it, they were very excited for him. So we got pictures with the Jamaican Prince as well. We chatted for awhile, and he told us Ariel's Grotto fills up fast so we headed over there to get our name down ASAP.

We waited about 20 minutes, and luckily we made it in. We headed down the stairs and met Ariel, who was wearing a dress! She asked me if we had left our princes behind, I told her I sadly did not have a prince. She said it was the year of a million dreams, so I might find my prince in Disneyland. She was gorgeous and I loved her hair - it made me miss my full red head.

We were seated outside, with 3 or 4 other groups. It was a nice few of the lake in the middle of the park, along with some of the landmarks in the park. Another huge lunch, but it was delicious. Belle came around first, looking stunning in her yellow dress. I asked her if the Beast was as handsome as he was on TV (seriously, when the Beast transforms into a human, he’s not a bad looking cartoon character). She said he was, but what is on the inside that counts. We talked about Gaston and how I've known a couple Gaston's in my day - Belle and I bonded.

After Belle it was Snow White! She was so honored to meet the Princesses of Baltimore. Yeah, we are princesses; we made crowns for ourselves and everything. I wore it around the rest of the day - it was a good conversation piece. Next was Jasmine, who changed for us. We told her about Adventures by Disney and she said she wanted to join the adventure. I told her we were meeting at the Hyperion theater later if she wanted to join us - she was performing there so I didn’t think she could make it. Saved the best for last: Aurora - my favorite princess. I told her I loved her castle and that she was my favorite - I know I'm a dork, whatever haha.

We enjoyed our relaxing meal since we were burned out from all these long days. We headed over to Muppets in 3D and then back to the hotel because we weren't really feelin California Adventure. We bought some postcards at the gift shop and headed back to the room to relax for a little over an hour until it was time to meet back with the group for our farewell dinner.

We were led backstage into a large room with many nicely decorated tables. I think this is where cast members could get food, but those areas were closed. We had a buffet of a bunch of different food. We all went around the room saying out favorite part of the trip, and this is when it all started to really sink in that it was almost over. My favorite parts were the creature shop, the castle, and getting away from the stresses at home. By this point I had already started to choke up. I was really fighting off this cold from taking complete control (and I was doing a good job) but being ill makes me more emotional.

They showed a slide show containing pictures that they had taken throughout the week, by the end I had shed a tear or two. Then Mickey and Minnie came out so we could take pictures etc. They even danced for us at the end. It was incredible. The feeling that you get at Disney is one you never get elsewhere. I guess it's that Disney Magic. There was also an artist at the dinner who drew a character for each family - we chose Chip for he is crazy but cute (just like us haha).

We stayed and mingled for awhile after the dinner had wrapped up. We talked to Oz and Alex about how we all want to work there, and if we up and move we intend on telling each other so we can all be roommates. We talked to Michelle about how we realized how much happier we are there and how much we love it. She told us how we have to just go for what we want, even if it is scary. It was definitely an emotional evening.

Katie didn't want to go to the fireworks, so she was going to go shopping while I enjoyed the last display in our VIP seats. First we thought about riding Splash Mountain before hand but decided to do California Screamin since it was colder at night and being wet + cold + already kinda sick = not good at all. The ride at night was awesome - we could see the electric light parade, it was just awesome. We caught more of the parade as we tried exiting the park. We had to wait for a break in the parade. I'm running over to Disneyland to make the fireworks, I end up entering where the buses are instead haha. I made it into Disneyland and asked every cast member where my group was. After a phone call and wandering around, I finally found my group. It was quite stressful, but I made it through and enjoyed the show.

I found Katie at World of Disney - it was about 10:00 now. The store was ridiculously packed. I had to get my shopping done, so that’s what we did that night. We spent most of our time in World of Disney but ventured into the other stores of Downtown Disney until eventually making it back to our room where we had to pack up some of our stuff since it was our last night.