Tag Archives: disney

Dapper Day Fall 2014 at Disneyland

Saturday I went to the Fall 2014 Dapper Day Expo at Disneyland! I didn’t actually go into the park, but I went to the expo in the Grand Californian Hotel and hunt out at Downtown Disney.

gem went with me. High five!

Besides gathering together many dapper people, the expo mostly consisted of retro and vintage clothing for sale.

One woman was selling ties for a dollar each. There were a few ties I was considering, and when I learned they were a dollar, I had to grab a few. I ended up with three ties and a bow tie.

Once I was done with the expo, I spent time wandering Downtown Disney. I even got to pretend to be Woody! Wearing the hat makes me think of the line from Toy Story when Mr. Shark wears Woody’s hat in the toy box and says, “Look, I’m Woody! Howdy, howdy, howdy!”

Roar! Who wouldn’t want to be Sulley from Monsters, Inc.? I know I would!

And that’s pretty much Dapper Day.

Fun day for Labor Day

Homies help homies. Always.

Okay, I’ll get to that in a minute. This Labor Day I hung out with gem and Anela. We met at gem’s house and went to the Starplex Cinemas in Woodbridge for Maleficent. It was a fun movie with a different spin on Sleeping Beauty. I also really like to see the backstory of villains; it’s interesting to see how they became bad.

Because Anela forgot her swimwear and gem wanted exchange something at the Outlets at Orange, we headed that way to take care of those things. That’s where gem and I saw this sweet Adventure Time billboard and had to take a photo!

When we got back to gem’s, we started working on lunch. I made more of my salami roll snacks and made more salad. It was sort of like yesterday’s picnic part 2. While the main course was cooking, the three of us headed to the pool. It was busy with lots of people, but that didn’t make swimming any less fun.

We came home to take the ribs out of the oven. They were looking pretty delicious.

No, Anela! Don’t eat all the ribs!

So very much food. I ate about 3000 calories. Whoops.

We look good surrounded by food.

While we ate dinner, we also watched Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

Sumo and Angel will be in for a treat too. We had a nice pile of bones to bring home to them.

After dinner we watched an episode of Too Cute about adorable kittens. For dessert, we had pastries and homemade ice cream. It was really good! Anela took the rest of my salami rolls with cream cheese and cucumber, and I left a bunch of the salami rolls with cream cheese and pepperoncinis with gem. I’m happy they like them!

Labor Day was celebrated successfully! Now I just need to eat less the rest of the week.

World of Color

After having talked about Disneyland earlier today, I realized that I never mentioned World of Color! Obviously I’ve seen them preparing it a long time ago. Having a big, empty, concrete reservoir in the middle of Disney’s California Adventure was quite obvious. However, I never went to see it. I’m not really sure why.

A week ago we finally got around to watching it. It was amazing, although that shouldn’t surprise me. We were right in the front but a bit to the right, giving us a great view. The only problem was the temperature. It was freezing. It was freezing in the car with the heat. It was freezing at home. I sort of felt like I couldn’t even heat up the next day!

Rather than showing a cohesive story like Fantasmic, World of Color shows various scenes from different Disney properties. It’s a water show featuring fountains, lights, lasers, fire, screens of mist, and video projections. It’s very well done, but I felt like it was missing the classic Disney characters. I love Mickey, and I love seeing him dressed as various personas. I like Goofy, Pluto, and Donald. I want to see more of them, Disney!

I’m glad I got to see it before my pass expired!

No more Disneyland

Our Disneyland Annual Passports are expiring, and thanks to the holiday weekend, Friday was the last day we could go that wasn’t a blockout day. We managed to go the Matterhorn Bobsleds for the first time since it reopened, which was a relief. gem really wanted to go on it last time we were at Disneyland, but they kept closing it temporarily.

We also went on Star Tours a number of times. Since it reopened as Star Tours: The Adventures Continue, we always get the same second scene, Naboo. We’d seen both introductions, two of the three first scenes (never having seen Kashyyyk, two of three transmissions (never having seen Yoda), and only Naboo for the final scene. We decided to spend our final time at Disneyland going on Star Tours again and again in an attempt to see the rest. We got to see Kashyyyk, which was cool, and finally, on our last ride, we saw the Death Star in the final scene. No, we never did manage to travel to Coruscant, but this will give me something to do in the future!

The fireworks show was cancelled, so we didn’t get to watch that unfortunately. We did, however, get an apple pie caramel apple. Then, on our way out of the park, we stopped at the front to get our picture in front of the “True Love” sign!

I miss my annual passport already. I don’t want to spend the money on it right now, but I doubt I can stay away for too long.

My fun Sunday: Aladdin, Social Distortion, and more

Last night was the rescheduled Social Distortion concert at the House of Blues in Downtown Disney, so we decided to spend the day at the parks. We went to California Adventure, checking out some of the shows between a few rides.

First, we caught the Red Car News Boys, a little song-dance show set in the 20s about Mickey wanting to move to Hollywood to make it big. These mini-shoes that Disney does really helps set the mood and magic, I think. Next we headed to Paradise Bay to watch Instant Concert! …Just Add Water. This was a show featuring recorded music, the fountains, and Goofy conducting. It was fun but nothing too special. We caught Operation: Playtime! – Featuring the Green Army Men as well, which is a percussion show (for the most part) featuring the green army men from Toy Story. It was mostly for kids, but it was enough.

The last show we saw was the most amazing. Disney’s Aladdin – A Musical Spectacular was a incredibly entertaining, albeit short, musical of Aladdin. The effects were great with clever use of smoke, trap doors, lighting, and character doubles. I also really enjoyed the genie’s use of current events in jokes. When Aladdin lamented that Princess Jasmine didn’t love him, Genie replied something like, “there are plenty of other princesses out there. I heard Disney just bought Star Wars. Maybe you could try Princess Leia!” If you haven’t seen it, I’d really recommend it. I’ll make sure to watch it again in the future.

Among the attractions we rode, of course we had to hit up Toy Story Mania. I love this ride! I was wearing my new Evil Dr. Porkchop shirt that day, so I pretty much had to go on the ride. The game seems screwed up to me! If I beat gem, why do I get the stupid cat while she gets that super awesome beaver? I know, I know. It’s because she’s super awesome, I suppose.

The concert itself was a lot of fun. The first opening band was The Interrupters, from LA. They’re a ska/punk band comprised of a singer, guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, and drummer. The three instrument-players are brothers, and they actually brought their dad on stage for one song during which he played trombone. I love brass, so it wasn’t unexpected that that song became my favorite. I’ll definitely need to keep my ears alert for them in the future.

The second opening band was Eddie Spaghetti on guitar and vocals with an accompanying guitar player. Eddie’s one member of the Supersuckers. Make note of this so you can avoid them, because I thought Eddie Spaghetti was pretty terrible. Wikipedia describes the Supersuckers as garage punk, grunge, cowpunk, and southern rock. I had to look up cowpunk, but I could guess at what it meant. Cowpunk is a genre fusing punk and country, and that pretty accurately summed him up. At first it just seemed okay. He wasn’t much of a live entertainer, and the music was only so-so, but so-so can be okay sometimes. When all his songs became about drugs (and not just marijuana), I started to lose interest. I realize this was a punk concert, but trying to use as many cuss words as possible isn’t cool, and getting the crowd to all flip you off at the same time isn’t some amazing feat. When he was done, the woman behind me said, “well, that was painful,” and I heard a lot of agreement. Some people clearly clapped and cheered just to be respectful, but I don’t believe it was warranted. Half way through his act, I pulled out my phone to continue reading my novel.

Eventually Social Distortion came on the stage. I don’t actually know many of their songs – maybe three, and of those, they only played one song. The lead singer did bring his adult son out to play with them for a little bit. I think one of the best parts of live music is having guests play with the band, so I always enjoy that. Social D was a lot of fun, but there was more than just music; watching the mosh pit was entertainment itself. From the large dude with the huge beard who seemed very friendly while slamming people, even offering onlookers the chance to shove him, to the absolutely crazy girl who would go nuts for thirty seconds before disappearing for five minutes again, it was very entertaining.

At 11:30, four and a half hours after the doors open, I left. I don’t know how much longer they played, but it was time for bed for me.

Day 2 – Black Friday

We started the day with an interesting twist; the Hurst fridge died, so we had to wait for it to be replaced. During that time, I shopped on the Toshiba site, taking advantage of a Black Friday sale to purchase TVs! That made me happy. After the fridge was installed, we decided to do some hiking.

We headed to Manana trail after picking up some new board shorts for me that actually fit this time. The trail was great – very scenic with some challenging parts. We eventually hiked to Waimano Falls, which was a great little waterhole for some refreshing swimming and a sweet rope to swing out over the water. We had to climb up some rocks with the help of a rope to reach a place from which we could jump. Surprisingly, I found that my week doing in-door rock climbing at Rockreation helped prepare me for climbing this rock! Anyways, jumping in was a lot of fun, and the swimming itself was invigorating.

While we were swimming, a full thunderstorm rolled into the area. It was really sweet honestly, and I guess we were technically hiking in a rainforest. There was a rock overhang, so we moved our stuff out of the rainfall, sat down on the rocks, and enjoyed our lunch. We had packed leftover Thanksgiving dinner sandwiches, which were quite delicious. The whole afternoon was pretty magical in my opinion!

After the storm subsided, we hiked for a bit more before heading to Aulani to see Darnell. I’m glad we got to see her at work! We walked around a bit, taking into the sights, and even swam in an infinity jacuzzi and saw a music and dance performance! Aulani had great architecture and design. The Disney magic can be found here as well. I enjoyed seeing the Menehune sculptures, the legendary people of Hawaii who are craftsman and build many things when no one is looking. We had some fruity drinks before heading to Just Tacos for Mexican food. It was a fun evening.

Wreck-It Ralph

Disney did it again with Wreck-It Ralph. I watched it this morning and was thoroughly impressed. Parts of it were definitely predictable, but even if I knew where it would lead, the journey is what’s important after being infused with the Disney magic. And that’s not to say I saw every twist.

There were more to the game references than just character cameos. Seeing gaming culture in the movie was fun as it followed the change in popular games and the culture as a whole; although, it was odd that people were even in an arcade. That seems a little old-fashioned, but I do wish I had an arcade like that near me.

In addition to the main feature, there was an animated short at the beginning called the Paperman. While Wreck-It Ralph was great because I’m a gamer, the Paperman is a true masterpiece. You should definitely watch both!