California Trip

This summer we didn't plan a vacation.  We had done Hawaii earlier, Ryan and I went to Costa Rica.  I thought about trying to plan something but the older two kids don't love family vacations and don't get that excited.  It just seemed easier to not try to plan anything.  Especially since Kylee and Dylan were getting their wisdom teeth out during dead-week when we would normally be able to travel.  Since we were in town that week, I signed up the younger two for a soccer camp.  Anyway, long story short we didn't go anywhere very far over the summer.  I thought I was okay with it, but as school was getting close to starting and things getting busy, I was starting to regret it.  Meanwhile, Sadie started saying she wanted to go to Universal Studios again.  And I saw some pictures of my friend's trip to Universal and saw their new "world" which was Super Mario Bros and it looked sooooo cool. Kaden might not be big into Harry Potter, but he likes Super Mario because he plays plenty of games and the new movie had come out earlier that year.  So I started tossing around the idea of a really quick road trip to California with the two younger kids.  We didn't have any time before school started because of soccer and what not.  But there was a school holiday.  It was going to be a quick trip.  Two days of travel and two full days in California.  One for the park and one for the beach.  I quickly found a hotel, a Turo car, and ticket costs for Universal.  If we were going to go, we wanted to get the fast pass and early entrance pass.  It's not something we have ever done with all six of us, but for just the three of us I thought we could swing it.  Ryan gave us the go-ahead, but he said he would prefer us to fly (which is why I found the Turo) and it just so happened that Allegiant has a flight from Idaho Falls to Santa Ana and it flew on the exact days we needed (Allegiant only flies a couple days a week so this was lucky).  We went on Labor Day weekend, which is why there was a school holiday.  Kaden had Friday off as well, and I assumed Sadie would too but apparently she didn't.  Oh well. 

Because it was a holiday weekend, and probably because it was Friday, the traffic was pretty bad.  I think the traffic is always bad there?  It took 2.5 hrs to drive 40 miles from Santa Ana to Los Angeles.  It should have taken an hour or less, but that's fine.  We were not in a hurry.  We did pull off at one point to get In & Out.

 If we were going to LA, we needed to see the Hollywood sign!  That was our first stop.  And our hotel was only a few minutes away from this.

LA is not my favorite.  When you think of California, LA is not what comes to mind.  It is so grimy and full of traffic and industrial buildings.  California is dreamy in most other places.  Orange County was so much better but we were only there for an hour or so before we got on our flight home.  And it was Labor Day and so so crowded at the beach we tried to go to.  But I got a GIANT smoothie bowl and I was happy.

If you are staying at a hotel in LA, your pool is not pretty.  This was off in a corner of the parking garage!  But the bonus is we had it all to ourselves.  Sadie loves swimming in the hotel pools with Kaden.  I should tell this story- The first night we were there and they were swimming, Kaden jumped in the pool and it was more shallow than he expected.  He came up grabbing his knee and starting to cry.  I had visions of broken legs or super bruised feet/ankles and we had tickets to Universal already purchased for the following day.  In the few seconds it took for him to calm down and let me know it wasn't in fact serious, I had pictured a trip to the ER, and renting a wagon to drag him around the park all day while he complained of pain.  I pictured his foot twisted unnaturally, or a bone sticking out of skin.  I was quite relieved when he shook it off and went back to playing and never mentioned it again.

We woke up bright and early and walked ourselves across the street and up the hill to Universal!  There was a bus but it didn't run until 8 and we needed to be there at 7 for our early entrance... Or so I thought.  I don't know if it was the time difference or what, but I had looked up the hours for Universal and saw that they opened at 8am.  So I assumed the early entrance was at 7.  We got there and got in line and waited... and waited...  It was 7:15 and I was getting really irritated that we paid extra money for an hour extra and they weren't letting us in.  Then I noticed a sign that had the hours on the building and it said 9am.  Whoops.  I guess we showed up two hours early.  We weren't even the first ones there either.  But a lot of other people showed up after us too.  So many that I got nervous that our early tickets were not going to do us any good.  (They did, it was good).

Waiting and waiting in line.

Finally we got in but had to walk through the whole park and down the escalators to get to Super Nintendo World.  This was the only place we had early access to.  We stopped at the store and got a "watch" for Kaden to be able to play all the games (I don't know how people afford this place).  Seriously, though.  The wristband was $40.  And I saw people buying them for their whole family, including multiple adults and tiny toddler children.  Why? 

We went immediately to the one ride and flew through the line (later this line was like 2-3 hours long).  It was a really cool ride.  We wanted to go again but decided to do the other stuff first and then the line was 60 minutes and we decided not to but I wish we would've gone again immediately.

The wristband collected points or coins.  There was an app on my phone I could follow.  We had to collect keys so we could get into the castle (or dungeon?) so we had to wait in line for Kaden to do these cheesy stupid games (The characters were all awesome and the whole world was awesome, but the games were dumb).  

Throughout the time in lines we saw some characters like Toad (their fav) and Princess Peach.

After we got to play the game Kaden had earned, which was pretty fun actually and quite cool- it used our shadows and we had to jump and punch things and our shadow would jump way in the air, it was getting crowded and we felt we had seen all we needed to see so we said goodbye and we left that world.

Universal in California is not all that big.  There are not that many rides.  Not so many that you can't hit them all at least.  And Sadie was determined that we would hit them all.  The only problem is Kaden is not a fan of rollercoasters.  But Sadie didn't want to go on one by herself, and I couldn't leave Kaden by himself while we went on one.  So Kaden ended up pressured to go on them.  There were only a couple- The Mummy and The Simpsons.  We also saw all the shows.  Our fast pass tickets let us cut the line one time per ride.  But that was all we needed!  The lines weren't actually all that bad anyway, but not bad all at with fast pass.

I love the improv transformer guys, they are hilarious.  We didn't see the Raptor trainer this time which was too bad because that was one of my favorites and one thing we missed when we went in Florida.  I guess there's not as many actors in Florida.

The studio tour was something we really liked last time we were here.  Kaden was small but he liked it and talked about it for awhile after we got home.  So we were excited to go but it was actually quite long and boring most of the time...  I don't know what the difference was but it was different.

One place that never disappoints is the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!

Kaden was picked to do the wand choosing!  It was so cute and fun.  Funny that he is the least biggest fan of Harry Potter and he was chosen though.  I'm glad he had that experience.  They offered a free engraving on the wand that chose him (or any wand) and so we let Sadie choose a wand since he had the wristband.  They had fun using the wand in the village too.  We got lunch in an English Pub in Hogsmead and it was a huge meal and quite healthy! For me at least.  I got roast chicken and it was huge pieces.  And I got grapes and stuff.  I'm sure Kaden and Sadie got chicken nuggets or something.  And we had our share of butterbeer!

Lots of characters out and about.

This was the view of Super Nintendo World from the escalators.

This was the fire and water show (can't remember what it was called).  Kaden thought it was going to be dumb but he ended up liking it.

Going on roller coasters at least earned him a giant Simpson's donut (we shared)

As soon as Labor Day was passed, they were doing Halloween stuff.  So they had some scary stuff already set up.

We accomplished ALL the park had to offer and it was still fairly early so we walked back to our hotel and the kids got to swim again.  I used the treadmill in the hotel gym and it was like 85 degrees in there but you gotta make it work.

We drove through the mountains, which I thought were cool but Kaden got pretty carsick, and made it to Malibu.  Beach access there is pretty random.  We had to just find a place to park on the road and walk to the entrances that are hidden between houses or buildings.  Malibu is pretty though!

The tide must've been high because the waves would occasionally come ALL the way up to the houses and get our stuff wet.  They played for a bit but I convinced them to try Santa Monica beach.

There's a reason Santa Monica is so popular!  Plenty of parking (even if you had to pay) so much sand and nice beach area.  And of course the pier with the rides in the distance.

They played for awhile and I people-watched.  We decided we needed ice cream but with traffic and parking it was easier to just walk.

This is the California I know and love.  Still too much traffic, but so pretty.  LA is not it.  When we left our hotel to walk to Universal at 6:40 in the morning, there was a man on his stomach on the sidewalk/road with multiple police and cars surrounding him.  Who gets in that kind of trouble so early in the morning?  I would expect it at 3am.  And when we walked just down the street to the subway, we passed a homeless man.  And while I was running on the treadmill looking out the window, I saw a few different homeless people.  How do I know they were homeless?  Well one of them had a little camp set up right across the street by the freeway entrance.  Anyway, I could do without LA.

It was a really quick trip and we had a lot of fun and we are happy that we went!