Weekend Roundup - Disneyland, Long Beach Comic Con, Disneyland again!

So my weekend started out being a hot, sweaty mess, and ended up awesome! We were sitting around our sweltering apartment on Friday after work, miserable and sweaty, when we spontaneously decided to spend the night in Anaheim. We already had a hotel room at our usual Anaheim spot, the Red Lion, booked for Saturday night, so we just tacked on a night and drove down there at 7pm! Right after we checked in, we headed to Disneyland! They had just decorated for Halloween that day, so we got to see all the fun pumpkin and orange stuff; it felt a bit incongruous with how hot it was, but oh well. 

We tried out our single rider trick that we learned from Universal Studios, and skipped a majority of the lines for Indiana Jones and Matterhorn! 

We got a Fast Pass for Star Tours, and spent a few minutes waiting in line for Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. That's 4 rides in just a few hours! 

We even managed to see most of the fireworks show, Disneyland Forever, and the Paint the Night parade! 

Not bad for an unplanned Friday night!

On Saturday, we went to Long Beach Comic Con. I was really looking forward to it all week, since LBCC is usually a really chill, but fun, show where I end up buying a bunch of stuff. This year, though... I don't know what went wrong this year. First of all, the parking was half a mile away from where it normally is. There was some other event going on that apparently had priority or something, and LBCC attendees were forced to park at some distance location, with an incredibly long line, $10 fee, and half-mile trek to the convention center. We were lucky enough to be able to find some street parking near-ish-by,   which unfortunately meant we had to feed the meter every 2 hours.

Then, the line just to get in was almost an hour. I haven't had to wait an hour to get into freaking San Diego Comic Con in the last 5 years. LBCC ain't no SDCC. And there was no real explanation was to why this wait exited, just: there were more people than expected. How do you not know how many people have bought tickets to your show?! That's absolutely no excuse. There were only 4 people handling registration. I would think that, if the line has been that long for that amount of time, allot more people to registration. And it's not like there was more show. It was the same show as always. I hate to be negative, but this was a really horrible way to start a show. Parking and registration are the first impressions you have of a conventions and if they're bad, your audience is going to perceive the show is bad as well, and it'll just go downhill from there. Sigh. Please, LBCC, step up your game for next year! 

Since we had to watch the clock and go back to feed the meter, the only panel we got to see was part of a GI Joe voice actor panel, which we'd seen at a previous show. They were still really entertaining, and it's awesome they're so into it.

On Sunday, we headed back to the Disneyland Resort, spending the morning at California Adventure. We rode some fun small rides in the Paradise Pier area - Little Mermaid (best. ride. ever.), Flying Zeppelins, Goofy's Sky Coaster. We also went to a showing of the Aladdin show, since I recently read that it will soon be replaced by a Frozen show, and I hadn't seen it in several years.

Then we went over to Disneyland again, and had lunch, and got ice cream at the Golden Horseshoe, when suddenly a show unexpectedly started! It was a pleasant surprise. I've never seen it before and it was really funny!

Despite the heat, it was a really great weekend! And man, did I sleep well in that air-conditioned hotel room! I can't wait until the temperatures go down around here!