Several months ago, Dor and I flew into LAX for the first time in my life. (This was for the honeymoon, not this trip.) I thought LAX was a dump. It turns out that this was just the terminal we were in as we switched planes to get to/from Australia. I had not taken a vacation day since the honeymoon and was really starting to twitch for our trip to LA. Our trip to LA was booked for one of Dor’s best friend’s wedding. We decided to stretch it into a longer weekend because we are essentially tapping out of vacations for the rest of the year. How I’m getting through July – December without any trips … I have no idea. Let’s not think about that right now. Let’s move onward to the highs and lows of the trip.
We decided to use the same car service for our trip to JFK as we had for the honeymoon. Any car service that shows up before the time you ask them to, it has my full support. As always, the car service was set up hours in advance of our flight. However, it was way too early and the bars weren’t open at the airport. Given this, Dor actually went and got a facial massage. I ate a baguette. Were we in JFK airport or Paris? I have no idea.
The airline of “choice” this time around was Virgin America. I say “choice” because there really wasn’t one. We tracked flights for a number of months and prices never really dropped. Not good times. When we boarded the plane, it felt like you were entering some seedy strip joint. The aisle is lit via overhead, fluorescent purple lights. After getting over this, everything else on VA was good. Each seat has its own TV in front of it. You order food and drinks on the TV and can keep a tab open with your credit card. Brilliant! The security procedures video was pretty funny and the staff was all very friendly. Kudos to VA!
Upon getting to LA and our rental car, “we” decided to take a trip to Hollywood Park (horse racing site of more recent Breeders Cups) given that it is only a few minutes from the airport. Hollywood Park is in the middle of Inglewood, so it is interesting to see how you go from Inglewood to palm trees, a pond, and a beautiful distant view that you see when looking out towards the track. Yes, I’m speaking in code. We left after two races. I bet the wrong race and we decided we would try to beat traffic. Ha …
We booked our first two nights at the Hilton Anaheim and planned for a trip to Disneyland. Traffic from the track to Anaheim = pretty bad. Not as bad as I had envisioned, but bad nonetheless. We got to the hotel around 6pm and our room wasn’t ready. This wasn’t a problem at all as we A. got breakfast buffet coupons for this inconvenience and B. went straight to the pool bar after checking our bags with the concierge.
After checking into the room (well done again Hilton Honors!) we made our way to Downtown Disney to meet up with Molly, Jonathan, and Molly’s family. We ate at Tortilla Joe’s and I quickly found the ‘moderate’ section of the menu. Check. After the meal, the soon to be newlyweds and family went on their way and Dor and I went over to the House of Blues. In case you were wondering what Leann Rimes is doing with her life, aside from stealing husbands, she’s playing in places like Disney’s House of Blues on random Friday’s. Within ten minutes of us hearing her concert from the outside, she went into the song from Coyote Ugly. She probably could have ended there too. There was a scalper on the patio by where we were sitting. Depending on how big or what the family looked like (clothes, tourist apparel, etc.) he would offer tickets for $3-$5 a pop. No one obliged and I’m relatively positive this crook lost money for the evening.
Buzz kill alert: Don’t drink a 12 pack and then think it is a good idea to go shopping in a Disney store. Kids running amok, parents not paying any attention to them whatsoever, and constant noise in your ears; not good times.
The next day we went to Disneyland and bought the two park pass; Disneyland + California Adventures. Disneyland has vastly similar rides to Disneyworld but there is a lot less space, so it felt like we could (and did) get to everything we wanted to. Here are a few highlights from the day:
1. DL has a ‘Fast Pass’ where you punch your ticket into a ride and they give you a window of time to come back later in the day. We got Fast Pass tickets for 3 or 4 rides, and never went back to them to use.
a. You should be able to pay extra money to cut in line all day at every theme park in America. Yes, I’m that stubborn.
2. I felt like Space Mountain in DL was better than the one in DW. I also came to the realization that it is probably just due to the fact that I’m older and turning into a ninny.
3. DL brought back Captain EO after Michael Jackson’s death. Is this what Michael Moore had in mind for “Capitalism: A Love Story”? At the end of this film/ride, I realized that I think I owned a few of the action toys from the movie when I was a baby. Let’s just move on …
4. I really enjoy the “It’s a Small World” ride. I really don’t enjoy having the song in my head for those 20 minutes on the ride and the next 60 minutes afterward.
5. Was pleasantly surprised to see “New Orleans Square” on the DL map and that is where we wound up eating (of course).
6. Dorothy wanted to go on the canoes where you paddle with a group of others around the lake in the middle of the park. Within minutes, she complained of getting wet. I’m not sure how you can want to go on canoes but not want to get wet.
a. You’ll quickly see our threshold of pain for people deteriorate from this point forward …
b. In actuality, there was definitely some blame for the people paddling in front of her. They weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.
7. On the Indiana Jones ride, I wound up in the ‘driver’s seat’ of the car. The ride broke down towards the end and we were bounced around in idle for about 5-7 minutes in the pitch black. You can always blame a Jersey driver for something …
8. Our last ride (for the afternoon) in DL was a kid’s ride; Finding Nemo. The two kids in front of us, probably somewhere in the range of 2.5 – 4 years old, couldn’t have misbehaved more. Running around in circles and stepping all over us, playing in the garbage cans, getting in and out of the line. Naturally, the two mothers on line with them did close to nothing for the first 45 minutes. Then, one of them handed the kid her IPhone to play with. Parenting 101 in the US these days. Awesome.
a. When we finally (and thankfully) got to the end of the wait, said family was at the front of the line and the attendant pointed all of us to the same boat. I gracefully asked him if it was OK if we went to the complete opposite side of the line and on another boat “to get away from this train wreck”. They may have heard this and I couldn’t care less.
Afterwards we walked over to California Adventures, with the goal of getting on a few rides. We walked immediately to the Twilight Zone’s Tower of Terror, which is essentially a Free Fall (Great Adventure, NJ) but done multiple times rather than just one drop. Good stuff.
As we walked to the rollercoaster California Screamin’, we realized that there was a lot of construction going on in the park and it felt like they may have been better off just closing the park and getting that done vs. the limited options and overall nuisance of having to walk around all of it. In any case, as we got to the roller coaster they shut down the ride due to the forthcoming light show in the park. Fail. After debating our options (beer, wine, leave) we decided to head back to DL.
On the way out, two things occurred:
1. Dor, “I feel like there are a lot of bugs around” … we were walking through the “A Bug’s Life” section of the park and they pump fake bug noises all around you. Draw your own conclusions for my reaction …
2. We walked smack into a rave on the other end of the park. There was a rave / dance party with kids, teenagers, moms … just disturbing. We couldn’t get out of California Adventures fast enough.
We walked back to DL to ride Splash Mountain and caught the tail end of the character’s show on the water. Afterwards, we desperately made our way to Downtown Disney and eventually the hotel bar for drinks as I/we were at our quota for tolerating people. The highlight of the hotel bar was watching a 50 year old female escort/prostitute parade around the entire area looking for employment. After about 30 minutes, I watched a man walk out the front of the hotel and bang … a hard right. Seconds later, she walked out and took a left. There is no doubt in my mind that they met in the middle.
Net/net, DL is a lot of fun – despite the lack of Disney characters we saw as we paraded the park. It is however, much smaller (or at least feels this way) vs. Disney World. I wouldn’t recommend California Adventures at all, but I have no idea what the construction plans entail and maybe that includes serious upgrades. For their sake, hopefully it does.
It was off to LA the next morning. Again, traffic was pretty bad but nothing like I envisioned. I really thought the traffic throughout the weekend was going to be awful, but it wasn’t any worse than rush hour here in NJ. We checked into the Hilton Checkers and made a mad dash to Hollywood. The GPS took us to the wrong address and we wound up losing a good 45 minutes to an hour. After getting there, we quickly realized we had to make it back to the hotel to get ready for the rehearsal dinner.
We couldn’t have flown through the highlights of Hollywood any faster. We took a few pictures of certain stars on the sidewalk, walked to the house where all of the lunatics stand in costumes, took a picture with the Hollywood sign on the mountains in the background, and basically shuffled back to downtown LA. It didn’t help that we were doing this right after a 16 hour day in Disney. Our (… my? …) tolerance for crowds and people couldn’t have been any lower, so I was a-ok with getting out of there. (This was one of my big takeaways from the weekend; don’t do Disney/Hollywood back to back, give a day in between to sit by a pool or something similar.)
Congratulations are in order to Molly and Jonathan for a great ceremony and reception! Purposefully, here’s a quick summary of the wedding events from the next two days. I don’t want to look like I’m writing about a wedding. I could go on and on about how much fun we had but simply put, I just don’t think it is appropriate to write much of anything about someone else’s wedding, have it read the wrong way, etc.:
1. The rehearsal dinner was at the ESPN Zone in downtown LA (#winning). Beverages were cold and a good time was had by all. Surprisingly, ESPN Zone doesn’t order/get UFC PPV’s. I guess if they don’t have a vested interest in the sport, it gets downplayed. (I haven’t mentioned how much hate ESPN and what they have done to sports over the past handful of years in a while …) After the rehearsal dinner we wound up staying at the Zone for a few more hours. Sadly, before midnight they kicked us out as we were the last people there. Midnight?! Really?!
2. The wedding reception was the following day at the Marvimon House in LA. It was a beautiful day for a wedding with the ceremony being held outside. LA weather is amazing. A prolonged workout of 12 ounce curls was on the menu for the evening and sufficiently met.
Sadly, that brought us to the end of our last vacation in 2011 and it was time for our flight home. The open tab couldn’t have been punched into the monitor in front of me fast enough on the plane. Glenfiddich shooters were cheaper than a beer, so that was the direction I headed. There was a flight attendant on our plane from Australia. (Virgin just launched Virgin Australia – or something similar to that – and this was clearly a pre-planned plug for this and many other flights in the near future I’m sure.) We talked to her for a few minutes and she bought us a round of drinks; once again proving that Australians are awesome and Americans have some work to do. Unfortunately, while we were speaking to her, the guy sitting next to Dor huffed and puffed the entire time like this was some tragedy of epic proportions. Of course, 30 minutes later, this same guy grabbed a Hasidic Jewish man from 10 rows behind us and had him perform prayers with a Tefillin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tefillin) in the middle of the flight.
So to summarize, talking to a stewardess is frowned upon, but performing religious rituals in the middle of a flight should be considered completely normal. Have I mentioned how scared I get thinking about bringing a baby into this ass-backwards world that we live in? (By the way, that isn’t a hint and there isn’t really a plan for this. So no follow up questions on it please. Thanks)
No amount of scotch could help and thankfully we landed EARLY. Flying from LAX to JFK and landing early; we must have done something right to someone in the days or weeks prior to the trip.
Hope you enjoyed the recap! Let me know if you have any questions or comments on what we did or what we did/did not accomplish.
