And I have but one photo of the outside of PHH at this point.
The line isn't as cool as the line I remember at WDW (no interactive walls of honey), but there are giant pages from a book that tells the story leading into the ride. There's also a very cute little room just as you enter that is supposed to be Christopher Robin's room. I'm not sure if I got a shot of that - there is such a demand for this ride, that as soon as you enter the FP queue, there's this sense of have-to-get-on-as-quickly-as-possible that I just rushed past most of it.
Each time I rode, I was lucky enough to be put in the front of the honey pot (each honey pot has two rows big enough for about two adults). And on this particular ride I got blasted in the face during 'that' sequence hehehehe
Once I was done at PHH, I think I was looking to just cruise around the park. The line at It's a Small World might give you a clue as to why:
And it looks like I crossed the park again, down into Adventurelando
Love this shot (and yay, the lighting was actually ok!)
And then back down to the New Orleans style corner (does it have a name? I can't remember). I do remember that this was my favourite area of the park. I'm guessing this is the same for the other Disney parks, but I don't have much experience, so it was new for me lol but, because the park was decorated for Christmas, the whole park was playing Christmas tunes. To make it even more interesting, each area of the park was playing tunes to the theme, and in this particular patch, they were playing lots of bluesy / dixie kinda songs that I just love!
There's not much in this area, mostly shops and a couple of food places. In the shot above, on the right hand side is a store that had the best selection of Disney Nanoblocks. I bought a few (many) while I was there. It also was the only place that I spotted Disney pins. I don't think they were the official
Disney Pins but they were definitely pins of a Disney style hehe
I was really struggling to figure out what to eat here. The counter service food selections didn't seem as exciting as TDS, and all the restaurants seemed to have long queues in front of them. So I stopped at this crepe place, just on the corner of the same street. I think I got some kind of chicken wrap thing, which was quite nice, but it was all the other bits and pieces that I added to it that made it special
The wrap / crepe thing is hidden in the paper, but you can see I also ordered a rhubarb and lychee tea, that came with a white chocolate and raspberry spoon. It's an...err..acquired taste hehe, not yucky by any stretch, just not what I'm used to. I only bought it because I wanted the thing on the very right, which is a heat proof sleeve, complete with little dangly charm. It's been nine months since I bought that thing, and
I have never used it...! hahaha
What next? Well, I guess I'm in the area, so how about some pirates?!
I can't see a wait time, but I'm pretty sure it was only about 15 or 20 minutes or something. Just long enough to get to the end of the line. At the start of this ride you cruise past the Blue Bayou restaurant. Maybe I was sitting on the wrong side of the interaction, but the idea didn't really appeal to me. It's an 'outdoor' seat that's actually indoors and just looks at people in ride boats float past? So I scratched that restaurant off my list of things to do (I had also checked out the menu a little earlier, and I don't think it was my style - probably too much seafood or something).
So there I was sitting in my boat, ready to slowly cruise past some pirates doing their pirating thing, when...whoosh! We have a quick little drop down into the start of the ride. What the?? Where did that come from? I absolutely do not remember that happening at WDW, and besides that, how can they have a drop in a ride where you're not held down by anything...omg, this is an outrage!
hahaha
Here's the only shot I managed to take that didn't come out a dark and blurry mess:
It felt like there was more detail to this ride than I remember. More explosions and more animatronics. In terms of a boat ride through animated scenes, I still preferred Sindbad
And then I headed back over to Tomorrowland (?) to see if I could score a ticket to the show, One Man's Dream II. My luck didn't see me through this day, as I got a buh-bough sound after pushing all the buttons. I should add that the lottery room itself was really quite busy at this point in time, and a bit disorganised. There were a few people floating around the room helping people through the sequence, but before that, once you got to the front of the queue it was a bit hard to see which terminals were free to use, because of the layout of the room.
I was planning on wrapping up my day at
Disneyland at this point in time, but I couldn't leave on a downer. Given the lottery terminals are right next to Space Mountain, which is right next to Star Tours, I figured I would ride one, and standby the other. Star Tours had the shorter wait, so I grabbed a FP for SM (and the LED signs quoting the FP return times were facing right into the sun and impossible to read, so pulling a FP was kinda like a lottery anyhow!), and jumped in the other queue.
This is the food place across the road:
The queue area inside is quite big:
These guys had a bit of discussion (in Japanese, so don't ask me what it was about!)
I didn't get to do Star Tours at WDW the year before, so I have no prior experience, and I'm not a Star Wars fan at all. The whole ride is in Japanese, so I really had no idea what was going on, apart from...we were flying...? In space? Trying to escape someone? *shrug* eh! Sorry hahaha