This was the first time either of us had visited "California Adventure"... and we were disapointed. There were only a couple of 'big' rides (such as the Tower of Terror & Soaring) though there were two more I would like to have tried. There was a rafting ride, "Grizzly River" that looked like fun, but we passed on this when we saw visitors exiting the ride soaking wet. It was just too cool to get that wet ! Another fun looking ride was a huge rollercoaster. We simply ran out of time to catch the rollercoaster, plus, Kathleen still had a bit of a woozy stomach. Soaring over California was quite enough for her.

The very last ride of our day was also the longest wait. We stood in line for just over an hour to see Disney's newest ride, Finding Nemo: Submarine Voyage. This was a simulated submarine voyage, similar to the old Disney ride 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You sat in a small submarine and looked out port holes at passing coral & fish. It was interesting to see how they worked animated characters from the Finding Nemo movie into a real life environment by rear projecting the images under water... hadn't seen anything like this before. As we were climbing out of the submarine, Disney's famous fireworks were just starting. We watched for a bit and then started heading for the car. Even though we were leaving along with a huge wave of people, the crowds and traffic were handled quite well.... Disney does plan their parks well ! Still, it was late before we got back to the Poduska's, and later still before we hit the bed.

I mentioned using Ridemax to plan our trip. For the most part, it worked well, but there were some unexpected snags along the way. The first was when I used a Ridemax schedule or a Wednesday on a Thursday. The entire schedule was thrown off by the 'early entry', since the doors had opened an hour early, there were already thousands of visitors in the park before the 'official' opening time of 8:00. Many of the first rides we had hoped to see early in the morning had long lines before we could get to them.

Secondly, our schedule was affected when rides broke down. The Indiana Jones ride (one of my favorites), broke down three times during the day. This greatly affected our schedule.