Continued from our previous post - Honeymoon to the United States - 2 Days 2 Nights in Silicon Valley and Cambria
Day 10
Expectation:
9:00AM - Check out Four Points by Sheraton Anaheim
9:30AM - DISNEYLAND checked
10:00PM - Check in Redac Gateway Hotel in Torrance
Reality:
We woke up early to cook Maggie in the hotel as there was no free breakfast at Four Points :( It certainly did not help when there is no hot water boiler in the hotel room. We had to make a trip to the restaurant at the hotel to ask for hot water.
After we are done with breakfast, we make our way to Disneyland! There are two theme parks at Anaheim - Disneyland and Disney California Adventure Park. Due to time (and money) limitation (we only had 1 full day), I don't think it is possible to visit both theme parks and hence was forced to only pick one out of the two. After much extensive research, it seems that Disneyland is more family-oriented (read: less scary rides) while Disney California Adventure Park has more exciting rides. I don't really dare to take roller coaster rides and all, hence the choice is obvious.
One important thing to take note - selfie stick is NOT allowed in the park! KPO had a selfie stick for the GoPro in his bag and was flagged out during the security check before entering the park. He had to make a decision to throw it away on the spot or return to the hotel to keep it. Being a KPO, he would never let them throw away his stuff that easily. Guess what? He went out of the park and threw it into the bushes near a random bus stop instead of returning to the hotel in order not to waste too much time. Fortunately, we were still able to retrieve it back at the end of the day!
Of all the days, we chose to visit Disneyland on Black Friday (#faint). So you can pretty much imagine the crowd there. Almost all the must-visit rides have queues that are >60min long. Luckily we did some research prior to that and managed to make use of Fast Pass to visit most, if not all, of the popular rides.
Some of our recommended rides include:
- Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage - this is a new and relatively interesting ride conducted underwater.
- Indiana Jones Adventure
- Space Mountain
- Haunted Mansion
- Star Tours: The Adventures Continue
- It's a small world - this is basically the same in every Disneyland; not exactly super fun, but at least the ride is long, so it makes the queue more 'worthwhile'
- Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters - this is a ride where we get to shoot like a video game and I scored higher than KPO!
- Mickey and the Magical Map - this is a theatre show (above).
- Fantasmic - highly recommend this! We first saw this in Tokyo DisneySea. Love the water and fire effects. Everyone should not miss this.
- Fireworks
Aside, the Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room is one of the highly raved attraction, but it is really quite boring in our opinion. I even fell asleep in the room mid-way.
After a long and tiring day, we still have to drag our tired feet to our next accommodation Redac Gateway Hotel in Torrance. This is around 1-hour drive away from Disneyland and it is a business hotel mainly for Japanese. Hence, most of the signs and brochures come with Japanese translation and they also have Japanese toilet bowl in the hotel room (the kind with many buttons).
I am glad that KPO and I managed to visit so many Disneyland over our past ten years together. This includes Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo DisneySea, Paris Disneyland and now Disneyland in Anaheim. Where's next?
Day 11
Expectation:
09:00AM - Hotel breakfast - skipped
10:00AM - Warner Bro's studio - checked
12:00PM - The Original Farmers Market - checked
1:00PM - Hike up Hollywood sign - skipped, we are too tired
4:00PM - Griffith Observatory - checked
6:00PM - Dinner - checked
Reality:
I was super excited to have hotel breakfast again because we were eating instant noodles the day before. Hotel breakfast is provided for in Redac hotel, per the website stated in Hotels.com. However, we weren't given breakfast option when we checked in. KPO called in to complain and it seems that we were not qualified for breakfast because we booked using some promo code. What!!! In return, they gave us $100 credit to be offset in our next booking, so I guess it wasn't so bad after all.
Couldn't remember what we had for breakfast in the end. Probably the leftover butter cake from the past few days. After breakfast, we headed down to Warner Bro's Studio Tour at Hollywood. The studio tour allowed us to visit the behind-the-scenes where many TV shows and movies were created.
This includes visiting the exhibit for Harry Potter, DC Universe as well as the Batmobile collections where we get to see all the Batman vehicles! I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this tour.
After the tour, we visited The Original Farmers' Market and The Grove (they are located side by side) for lunch and we had the best donut we have ever eaten in our entire lives! If you think Krispy Kreme's glazed donut is good, you should try the glazed donut at Bob's Coffee & Doughnuts at The Original Farmers' Market. The donut is so soft that you have to hold it with care and it simply melts in your mouth. Anyway, The Original Farmers' Market feels like Pasarbella in Singapore. You will be spoilt with a large variety of food choices there.
We were too tired to stick to our itinerary to hike up Hollywood after lunch. Instead, we decided to drive straight up to Griffith Observatory, since we can see the same Hollywood sign there. Signs of aging! It was a massive jam up the Griffith Observatory but at least it's free parking there (yay). We visited the Observatory after taking some mandatory photos with the Hollywood sign. The Observatory is basically a place which explains about astronomy. It is educational and most importantly, free of charge~
As we still have some time before dinner, we decided to visit a nearby Walmart Supercentre. The Walmart is huge indeed and it seems to sell everything ranging from food to clothes to electronics to drugs/medicine to cosmetics. I don't think the prices are super cheap there, but at least they are reasonable and you can definitely find a variety of brands there. We then visited the nearby In-And-Out burger which our friend recommended us and also ordered a milkshake for comparison with Shake Shack. I preferred the burger at Shake Shack, but the milkshake at both places are comparable!
That sums up our adventure in Los Angeles. It is pretty sad that we only had 2 full days to travel around Los Angeles as it is a massive place and I am sure we can discover more interesting places if we had more time. Stay tuned to our next post as we travel down from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon.
You might be interested in these blog posts too:
- Honeymoon to the United States - 2 Days 2 Nights in Silicon Valley and Cambria
- Honeymoon to the United States - 3 Days 2 Nights in Yosemite
- Honeymoon to the United States - 2 Days 2 Nights in San Francisco
- Honeymoon to the United States - 3 Days 2 Nights in New York
- Honeymoon to the United States - Total Expenses
- Honeymoon to the United States - Renting a $275,888 Mercedes Benz Convertible with Hertz
- Singapore Airlines Suites Experience - SQ26 Singapore to New York
- Singapore Airlines Suites Experience - The Private Room
- Redeeming KrisFlyer Miles for Singapore Airlines Suites = 38.6% Cashback!
Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)
Day 10
Expectation:
9:00AM - Check out Four Points by Sheraton Anaheim
9:30AM - DISNEYLAND checked
10:00PM - Check in Redac Gateway Hotel in Torrance
Reality:
After we are done with breakfast, we make our way to Disneyland! There are two theme parks at Anaheim - Disneyland and Disney California Adventure Park. Due to time (and money) limitation (we only had 1 full day), I don't think it is possible to visit both theme parks and hence was forced to only pick one out of the two. After much extensive research, it seems that Disneyland is more family-oriented (read: less scary rides) while Disney California Adventure Park has more exciting rides. I don't really dare to take roller coaster rides and all, hence the choice is obvious.
One important thing to take note - selfie stick is NOT allowed in the park! KPO had a selfie stick for the GoPro in his bag and was flagged out during the security check before entering the park. He had to make a decision to throw it away on the spot or return to the hotel to keep it. Being a KPO, he would never let them throw away his stuff that easily. Guess what? He went out of the park and threw it into the bushes near a random bus stop instead of returning to the hotel in order not to waste too much time. Fortunately, we were still able to retrieve it back at the end of the day!
Of all the days, we chose to visit Disneyland on Black Friday (#faint). So you can pretty much imagine the crowd there. Almost all the must-visit rides have queues that are >60min long. Luckily we did some research prior to that and managed to make use of Fast Pass to visit most, if not all, of the popular rides.
Some of our recommended rides include:
- Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage - this is a new and relatively interesting ride conducted underwater.
- Indiana Jones Adventure
- Space Mountain
- Haunted Mansion
- Star Tours: The Adventures Continue
- It's a small world - this is basically the same in every Disneyland; not exactly super fun, but at least the ride is long, so it makes the queue more 'worthwhile'
 |
| Left - Me, Right - KPO |
- Mickey and the Magical Map - this is a theatre show (above).
- Fantasmic - highly recommend this! We first saw this in Tokyo DisneySea. Love the water and fire effects. Everyone should not miss this.
- Fireworks
Aside, the Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room is one of the highly raved attraction, but it is really quite boring in our opinion. I even fell asleep in the room mid-way.
After a long and tiring day, we still have to drag our tired feet to our next accommodation Redac Gateway Hotel in Torrance. This is around 1-hour drive away from Disneyland and it is a business hotel mainly for Japanese. Hence, most of the signs and brochures come with Japanese translation and they also have Japanese toilet bowl in the hotel room (the kind with many buttons).
I am glad that KPO and I managed to visit so many Disneyland over our past ten years together. This includes Hong Kong Disneyland, Tokyo DisneySea, Paris Disneyland and now Disneyland in Anaheim. Where's next?
Day 11
Expectation:
09:00AM - Hotel breakfast - skipped
10:00AM - Warner Bro's studio - checked
12:00PM - The Original Farmers Market - checked
1:00PM - Hike up Hollywood sign - skipped, we are too tired
4:00PM - Griffith Observatory - checked
6:00PM - Dinner - checked
Reality:
I was super excited to have hotel breakfast again because we were eating instant noodles the day before. Hotel breakfast is provided for in Redac hotel, per the website stated in Hotels.com. However, we weren't given breakfast option when we checked in. KPO called in to complain and it seems that we were not qualified for breakfast because we booked using some promo code. What!!! In return, they gave us $100 credit to be offset in our next booking, so I guess it wasn't so bad after all.
Couldn't remember what we had for breakfast in the end. Probably the leftover butter cake from the past few days. After breakfast, we headed down to Warner Bro's Studio Tour at Hollywood. The studio tour allowed us to visit the behind-the-scenes where many TV shows and movies were created.
This includes visiting the exhibit for Harry Potter, DC Universe as well as the Batmobile collections where we get to see all the Batman vehicles! I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this tour.
 |
| Enjoying our avocado toast like any other millennials |
 |
| Driving towards the Hollywood sign |
 |
| The view from outside Griffith Observatory |
 |
| The view from the roof of the Griffith Observatory |
As we still have some time before dinner, we decided to visit a nearby Walmart Supercentre. The Walmart is huge indeed and it seems to sell everything ranging from food to clothes to electronics to drugs/medicine to cosmetics. I don't think the prices are super cheap there, but at least they are reasonable and you can definitely find a variety of brands there. We then visited the nearby In-And-Out burger which our friend recommended us and also ordered a milkshake for comparison with Shake Shack. I preferred the burger at Shake Shack, but the milkshake at both places are comparable!
That sums up our adventure in Los Angeles. It is pretty sad that we only had 2 full days to travel around Los Angeles as it is a massive place and I am sure we can discover more interesting places if we had more time. Stay tuned to our next post as we travel down from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon.
You might be interested in these blog posts too:
- Honeymoon to the United States - 2 Days 2 Nights in Silicon Valley and Cambria
- Honeymoon to the United States - 3 Days 2 Nights in Yosemite
- Honeymoon to the United States - 2 Days 2 Nights in San Francisco
- Honeymoon to the United States - 3 Days 2 Nights in New York
- Honeymoon to the United States - Total Expenses
- Honeymoon to the United States - Renting a $275,888 Mercedes Benz Convertible with Hertz
- Singapore Airlines Suites Experience - SQ26 Singapore to New York
- Singapore Airlines Suites Experience - The Private Room
- Redeeming KrisFlyer Miles for Singapore Airlines Suites = 38.6% Cashback!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)
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