The second day of our Disneyland visit was what they call "Magic Morning" or "Early Entry." That basically means guests with a certain ticket can enter Disneyland an hour before it opens to the general public -- meaning 7:00-8:00am. Since we had 3-day passes, we were eligible for Early Entry. (They have it on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.) Apparently, so were a lot of other people!
I wondered how many people would show up at 7:00am and was surprised at how many there were. So it kind of threw off our guidebook "touring plan" and by the time we got to the Madderhorn bobsleds about 8:00am the line was quite long, but I suppose the extra hour was worth the loss of sleep. :-)
We went to Space Mountain first thing and I rode it with Courtney & McKay, while Brian took Hannah and Hayley to the nearby Buzz Lightyear Astroblasters. Space Mountain was fun, but I must be getting old because it seemed to jar me more than I remembered. As you get off the ride, they have the display of pictures (hoping you'll buy one) and Brian told me that tons of people were taking pictures of their picture. So I did too. :-)
Then we switched so Brian could ride again (and McKay & Courtney were more than willing to go again) and I took the other two on Buzz Lightyear again.
The Buzz Lightyear ride is a lot of fun. As you go through the ride, you get to shoot these laser guns at targets and see how high of a score you can get. They also take your picture and let you e-mail it to yourself after the ride. We rode this several times, but here are the pictures from our last time through.
Courtney had been begging since the previous night to ride the Madderhorn Boblseds and it was finally time! Only the line was already quite long, so I left the three adventurers there and took the other two girls over to Fantasyland. They both had been waiting for their chance to ride Dumbo. (Courtney would have ridden, too, but she was more excited about the Madderhorn.)
Hannah was SO excited for this ride -- that tells you a little about her personality and taste in amusement park rides! Check out her cheesy grin:
And Hayley was pretty excited as well to be in charge of the Dumbo we would be riding in.
I love this picture of Hannah flying her Dumbo:
After Dumbo, we saw a short line for the Casey Junior Circus Train. Not a very exciting ride, but the girls were excited to be put in the "Wild Animals" cage.
We met back up with the 3 from the Madderhorn and all went on Peter Pan's Flight together. I think it's one of the better Fantasyland rides and had one of the longer lines. Here we are waiting in line.
Hannah wasn't scared to go on Peter Pan, but she was scared to go on similar "dark" Fantasyland rides, like Pinocchio's Daring Journey, Alice in Wonderland, and Snow White's Scary Adventures. We never got her on Snow White, but she did eventually try out Pinocchio and wasn't traumatized but didn't particularly like it either.
One of the highlights of Fantasyland (and all of Disneyland) is Sleeping Beauty's castle. We didn't do the walk-through, but had to take some pictures. I only wish we could have gotten a picture of the whole family in front of the castle.
We went over to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad roller coaster. For some reason, Courtney was hesitant to ride this one, so Brian and McKay went on while I waited with the girls. While we were waiting, Courtney decided she did want to ride it after all, so the two of us rode it after the boys got off. (And she decided that her favorite rides were all the "mountain" rides -- Space Mountain, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain and the Madderhorn.)
We decided to see the show in The Golden Horseshoe called "Billy Hill and the Hillbillies". While we were waiting for the show to start, Brian was checking out weather reports on his iPhone to see if a coming storm would affect our travel plans home.
I thought the show was really fun -- some amazing fiddling! (Although they don't have their fiddles out in this picture -- just the ukeleles, etc.)
McKay finally decided what he wanted to spend his money on -- a Space Mountain T-shirt. He rode this 3 times I think and declared it was his favorite!
Lunch time! We headed back to the hotel for a rest and picked up some lunch at the McDonald's down the street a bit. After lunch we wanted to try to take in some of the shows over at California Adventure. I left first and took the girls to the Playhouse Disney stage show. They have you sit on the floor (so the kids can get up and dance easier):
This was a cute show for the younger crowd with appearances from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse:
Handy Manny:
Little Einsteins:
and My Friends Tigger and Pooh:
Hayley jumping along with Tigger:
From that show we headed down to the big Hyperion Theater where Brian and McKay met us for the musical production of "Aladdin". We ended up sitting up in the balcony, but could still see pretty well.
I must say this was one of my favorite parts of our trip. I loved it! I thought they did a fabulous job with the production -- the sets were just amazing and they had some neat effects. Plus, the Genie was a hoot! He had so many pop-culture references (Twitter, Twilight, etc.) it was just hilarious. Here is a bad picture of the stage before the show started (I couldn't take any during the show).
I think everybody else liked the show as well -- I'm glad the kids got a chance to see a live musical theater production. (And on the drive home, I noticed the first movie they pulled out was Aladdin!)After the show, we decided to explore California Adventure a bit, as we hadn't really seen any of it yet (except for the parade which we watched pretty much from the entrance area). We found the kid's "Bug's Life" area which has a bunch of kiddie rides. We tried out the ladybug spinners:
Then we went over to the pier and the kids got a ride on King Triton's Carousel:
The kids wanted to try out the big "Fun Wheel":
This ferris wheel has several "swinging" baskets that rock back and forth while the wheel turns around. Of course, with Hannah in the mix, we had to choose the line for the non-swinging baskets (which was good, because it was shorter).
Ferris wheels are a pretty slow ride, but we enjoyed the view if not the very chilly air at the top! 
When we got off the Fun Wheel, Brian and McKay had to hurry, hurry over to the "Twlight Zone Tower of Terror" which they had Fastpasses for. Courtney opted not to try this one -- I think it must have had something to do with the name... We thought the park closed at 7:00pm and it was about 6:55pm at that point. While they hurried to the ride, I took the girls back to the Bug's Life area to see if we could get one some of the kiddie rides without too much waiting. That turned out to be the best time to be at the park!
First we tried out the bumper cars:
Then the caterpillar "Chew-Chew" train (which included scents as well as sights):
And then the flying baskets:
It was after 7pm by this point, but they were still running all the rides with basically no lines at all, so we kept riding! Brian and McKay rejoined us (and said the Tower of Terror was fun, although McKay said he didn't like the "creepy" crackling skeletons or something like that...). We walked back around towards the park entrance and the "Hollywood Backlot" area.
We noticed that the Monsters, Inc. ride was still running, so we all (except Hannah!) jumped right on that one as well and enjoyed a ride.
Then the park really was closing, so we went back across the plaza to Disneyland and got in a couple more rides before the kids were plain tuckered out (not to mention starving -- somehow with all the shows we forgot about dinner!).
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