Once I heard about Disney’s new addition to its California Adventure park, I started to get jealous of all the people who were going to be traveling to Anaheim this Summer. Cars Land was just another new thing to add to the list of Disney things that I hadn’t seen yet: Star Tours reboot, World of Color, Mulholland Madness replacement ride, The Little Mermaid ride. It’s no surprise that I was really excited about our back-up plan for our annual vacation. As disappointed as I was to not get to go to Europe, I was thrilled to share in the excitement of the new Land that little kids thought was the real Radiator Springs when they got to visit the opening day. I mean, how fun is that?
I had no idea just HOW exciting Cars Land would be for visitors. Our first day at Disney was a Sunday. Lines weren’t that bad, so we made our way to Toy Story Midway Mania (always a long line) and California Screamin’, then headed over to Cars Land. Uh, apparently, this should be your first stop. At 8:30 the FASTPASS machine was out and the line for Radiator Springs Racers was 120 minutes. Mind you, this is 30 minutes after the park opened. Yikes! We decided to put it off until early the next day and did other things. We enjoyed walking around the rest of Cars Land and riding the super-fun Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree and Luigi’s Flying Tires.
Since the lines for things seemed ridiculously long, we chose to eat at Flo’s V8 Café for breakfast. Eric had the chicken tamale breakfast and I thought bananas fosters French toast sounded like something I would enjoy. It was much like eating bread pudding covered in caramel sauce. Not bad, but not really a great breakfast meal. Soooo…if you want to not eat dessert for breakfast, I would suggest choosing something else. I kinda wish we had gone back for lunch to try different food, but we didn’t.
Eric thought the best part of Luigi’s was the line, which was not a total overstatement, especially when the line was 30-40 minutes long many times. Listening to Luigi tell you about the ride and send people on their way was pretty fun, as well as all the reproduction tires and race memorabilia. Guido loves to photobomb all the great pictures taken when Lightning McQueen wins a race. The ride itself is a unique twist on bumper cars. You don’t get to steer. Instead, you lean to move your tire on a giant floor that blows air to keep the tires afloat.
If you love the teacups, but hate having to do all the work to make them spin, then you may love Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree. You sit in baby tractors while they “dance” to 8 original songs sung by Mater – THE greatest part of waiting in line, too. The tractors drag you behind and spin you in an arc, so you slide from one side to the other instead of a circle. It helps if you REALLY like the person you’re riding with on this one. The concept is that you are at a square dance and the tractors dance in a figure 8 in a really genius dance floor construction.
After getting our fill of all that is Cars Land, with the exception of Radiator Springs Racers (curses!), we explored the rest of California Adventure and checked back every so often to see if the line for the Racers had gotten any shorter. It didn’t. We did, however, come back to grab a snack at the Cozy Cone. I was determined to get churro bites (no trip to Disney is complete without a churro in my opinion) and then we saw some fancy frozen apple drink at one of the other cones, so Eric went to get one while I stood in line for our treat. You are going to wait in line for a looong time at some of these stands, because there is one person inside taking money and also making your snack/beverage. Worth it? I think it was, just for the experience – and I also got my churro.
Did I ever get to ride Radiator Springs Racers? I did! Guess how long we waited in line in the comments and then find out the answer in my special Monday post.
