Disneyland's Happiest Haunts Halloween Tour!

On Tuesday, we went on another tour, Disney's Halloween-themed Happiest Haunts tour. This tour has become really popular, and tickets sell out within minutes of becoming available. We decided to do the tour this year, instead of doing Mickey's Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, which we've done the last couple years. That's a lot of fun too, and you get several pounds of candy. However, we've still got candy from last year, so... yeah, time to see what the tour is like.

This tour, like the others, imparts a lot of Disney knowledge, but this one also gives you a lot of Halloween history as well, which was also interesting. We also got several treats on this tour. First up was the marshmallow treat shaped like a pumpkin!

This tour had a bigger group than we've had in other tours we've taken, around 20 people. I guess it's nice that they're giving more people the opportunity to take the tour, since it's so incredibly popular, but it made it a little less intimate. It was also pretty crowded at the park that day.

We were taken on 5 rides, which is the most of any of the tours we've done! We went straight to the front of the line on Big Thunder Mountain, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Space Mountain: Ghost Galaxy, Matterhorn, and of course, Haunted Mansion Holiday. That's 3 mountains total, plus Haunted Mansion is always more popular this time of year. 

The other treat we got was a Mickey shaped pumpkin sugar cookie! It was quite delicious, and very sugary.

All in all, it was a good tour (it's Disneyland, how can it not be?). However, I have to say I liked the other tours we've done (Walk in Walt's Footsteps, Disney's California Story, Cultivating the Magic) a bit better.

We also got a super special limited edition pin, for this year only, with a diamond ("diamond") on the top! Very cool.

It's Cinderella, rushing towards the pumpkin! Get it?!

We were hoping they'd give us passes to the Halloween Party, but alas, they escorted us directly out of the park as soon as the tour was done. Oh well. 

The next tour we'll try to take is the Holiday Time one! I'm sure that one is at least as popular as the Halloween one, so I'm sure it'll be difficult to get tickets, but we'll prevail! Holiday time at the parks is my absolute favorite time, so I'm really looking forward to it!

Happy Halloween everyone!

Apple Is The New Pumpkin Spice

Fall is finally here! Of course, it's hard to tell in LA; typically fall just means it's slightly cooler. But it's been up in the 3 digit temps lately and hasn't felt very fall like at all. Now that it's a bit cooler, I feel in the mood for fall-ish things, like pumpkins! And, apples! I've been seeing so much apple stuff lately! 

I saw this blog post from Live.Happy.Inspired about making apple crisps and I thought to myself, 'Hey, that doesn't look too complicated! I could probably do that!' Well, self, you thought wrong.

It was simple enough. I sliced an apple into thin (sort of) slices. Then I sprinkled some cinnamon on them and put them in the oven on 225 degrees for an hour.

I pulled them out, and they were not at all crispy. I put them back in for more time, and they just never got crispy. I don't think I sliced them thin enough. Apparently I'm supposed to have something called a 'mandolin' which I thought was an instrument played by Captain Correlli or something. Whatev.

Well, that was a bust. Time to drink! I found this blog post by My Newest Addiction about apple mimosas! 

I filled half a glass with Strongbow apple cider, and then topped that off with some champagne!

I got this Citrus Fusion kind from Barefoot Bubbly, give it that extra apple-y kick!

It tasted really delicious!

Seagram's Apple Orchard Whiskey is another great apple flavored alcohol that we've been enjoying. It's great to mix with the apple cider as well.

I think that apples should officially be the new pumpkin spice. Pumpkins are okay, but apple flavored things are pretty awesome! Uh, despite my failure with the apple crisps. I mean, they still tasted fine, they just weren't crispy. And of course, the mimosas turned out excellent!

Weekend Roundup - Casetify Launch Party & Magnificent 7 Convention!

It was another downtown LA weekend! 

On Saturday night, we went to a store called Poketo for a Casetify launch party thrown by a friend of mine! Casetify sells really beautiful phone cases, and even lets you design your own! 

It was a great party, with free Salt & Straw ice cream (the Brownie cone was amazing), California donuts (we tried the one with mini M&Ms on top!), rose malt liqueur (surprisingly delicious!), and pressed juice from Press Brothers. We even got swag bags with a couple notebooks, pen, postcard, sticker, plus a code for a free phone case!

On Sunday, we went back downtown to attend a Magnificent 7 convention, for fans of the '90s TV show. This was the 3rd year for this fan-run show, and had been going on all weekend.

It was a pretty small group, maybe about 50 people, but they all seemed to be pretty die-hard fans. The panels that day included a Skype chat with a guy who runs a Steve McQueen museum, a panel with a screenwriter giving some basic screenwriting tips, and then the big event of the day, a panel with 5 of the actors from the show, followed by a photo session and autograph session.

I'm not that familiar with the show; I didn't watch it when it was on, but we crammed a season of the show during the past week. Since I didn't have much background on the fandom, I felt like an anthropologist watching these fans interact with the actors and each other. The large majority of people there were middle-aged women, plus a teenage-ish girl who commented that she liked to read gay cowboy erotica and asked/answered a question to the actor panel regarding which Hogwarts houses each character would be in, and I thought to myself, 'oh so that's what I would be like if I was a teenager in 2015.'

During a break, we walked around the convention center a little bit. There was a big Tony Robbins convention going on in the main part of the center, and they had some booths and exhibits outside the exhibit hall, so we checked that out, and then in another area, there was a religious/family/Hispanic show going on as well, complete with a nun selling fancy rosaries. Walking back to our car later on, we walked past a line of people waiting to get into a WWE wrestling match (is that what they're called, matches?), tons of whom had those championship belt thingies around their waist or over their shoulder. We witnessed 4 very disparate fandoms that day, all contained within the LA Convention Center/Staples Center area. Pretty interesting!

We're Back to the Future!

As I'm sure everyone is aware (how can you not be?), yesterday was October 21, 2015, the exact date that Marty McFly went to the future in Back to the Future II. I was glad to see that everyone kind of made a big deal of it, since the trilogy has been one of my favorite films my whole life.

We celebrated by seeing the trilogy at the Cinemark near us. But first, Marty and Doc joined us for some Moscow Mules at Whole Foods!

They also insisted on grabbing some drinks to go, for during the movie. And can I just say how much I love that movie theaters are allowing you to take drinks into the theater with you?

It was a pretty packed and enthusiastic crowd, cheering and clapping at all the right parts. That's the best kind of audience to see a movie with, especially one like this!

Now, where's my hoverboard??

Cultivating the Magic Disneyland Tour!

This weekend, we took the Cultivating the Magic tour at Disneyland. This tour is aimed at the horticulture found around Disneyland. "Flower and stuff, that's dumb," you might say. No, you're dumb and this tour was awesome and incredibly interesting and made me take more notice of details around the park that I normally overlook.

This tour was one of the cheaper ones at just $30 per person, and it was a ton of value for the money. It includes the 2 hour tour, a pin with your name on it, 3 rides, and another special pin, plus a packet of seeds!

There were so many new facts about Disneyland that I didn't know before. I don't want to give too much away, so I'll just give some highlights. For example, the trees on Main Street are in the same 3/4 scale as the other buildings, and when they get too big, they are taken out and moved elsewhere, and new small ones are put in their place. 

The first ride we got to skip the line on was Jungle Cruise, but it wasn't the normal spiel. We had the whole boat to ourselves, as our tour guide talked about all the plant life throughout the ride. The bamboo trees throughout the ride were there before the park was, and Adventureland and Tomorrowland switched from their planned places in order to leave them where they were and have them within the ride!

Next, we went on Haunted Mansion, which is currently in it's holiday overlay of Nightmare Before Christmas, and thus has a line of well over an hour. Some people in our group literally jumped and clapped their hands they were so happy to go on it!

We also went on the Storybookland boats, and again had the whole boat to ourselves so that our tour guide could tell us all about the plant life and how they get those little trees so tiny.

This is an actual redwood tree, found in Adventureland!

I love unusual colored roses! These are peppermint roses, meant to be reminiscent of Alice painting the white roses red.

This is probably my favorite detail that our guide pointed out. This area is right between New Orleans Square and Adventureland; look how the fence changes to reflect the different lands. AMAZING.

We also checked out the Drawing Disneyland: The Early Years exhibit at the Disney Gallery. I think I'd seen some of the artwork at D23, but there was a lot more cool stuff to be seen. Like this statuette of one of the paintings in the Haunted Mansion.

And check out this glass slipper from Cinderella, and the tiara!

The Disney Gallery is in the lobby of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, which you should be sure to check out, because they've got an improved animatronic that actually has facial expressions! It's pretty cool.

Almost as cool as this chillaxing dog wearing Mickey ears. That dog is living his best life.

Weekend Roundup - Four Movies, A Bunch of Food, and Some Video Games!

My weekend was full of movies, food, and fun! First, we went to the Landmark to see the movie Steve Jobs. Starring Michael Fassbender, the movie follows Steve Jobs during product launches and the ensuing personal and professional drama in 3 separate years: 1985, 1988, and 1996.

From there, we went to the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood to catch another Beyond Fest film. We ended up catching the end part of the 1925 silent film, Phantom of the Opera, with a real life orchestra providing the music! It was a really cool experience to see the film the way it was originally seen.

After a dinner and happy hour at one of our favorite Hollywood spots, Boardner's, we went back to the Theatre to see Dog Day Afternoon. I'd never seen it before, and didn't even really know what it was about beforehand, but I really enjoyed it. Al Pacino gave an amazing performance of an inexperienced bank robber trying to figure it out as he goes along. Pacino was on hand afterwards for a Q&A moderated by Brett Ratner.

The next day, we headed downtown to the Ace Theatre to see Monster Squad.

The Ace is just spectacular inside; it's one of those classic movie palaces. They don't make them like this anymore!!

We had VIP tickets, so we got a couple drinks in the VIP section before taking our seats.

I had never even heard of Monster Squad before this screening. It's a cute '80s kid horror-comedy about a bunch of kids battling the classic Universal monsters.

Before the movie, they had a Q&A with some of the cast and guys who played the monsters.

After the movie, they had another Q&A with 3 of the kid actors.

From there, we met up with some friends at Manna Korean BBQ, where I ate my weight in various meats.

After we stuffed ourselves, we walked over to Eighty-Two, the barcade with a full bar and 2 rooms full of classic arcade games and pinball games. I had fun with a Terminator 2 game that I think must have been new because I don't remember seeing it last time we were there.

Things I Love Thursday - Rimmel Lift Me Up Mascara, Impress Press-on Nails

Lift Me Up Rimmel Mascara!

I was browsing the makeup section at Target the other day when an employee offered me a sample bag of various toiletries. Um, yes, please! In that bag were some small sample sizes of various face cleansers and moisturizers, and a full-size tube of Rimmel's newest mascara, Lift Me Up. Contained in a pretty, shiny green tube, this mascara is fortified with cucumbers and vitamins, and it literally even smells like cucumber, which I love. Cucumbers are awesome; I mean, not to eat, but they make great cocktails! The brush is an hourglass shape, and it goes on smoothly and not at all clumpy, like some mascaras I've had lately; plus, it doesn't make my eyelashes feel crispy either. This is definitely going into my regular rotation of mascaras!


Impress Press-on Nails!

I recently got a couple sets of Impress Manicure press-on nails to try out. Now, I love painting my nails, but it usually does mean you have to set aside a small chunk of time to remove your nail polish, shape your nails, apply base coat, let it dry, apply a coat of nail polish, let it dry, apply a second coat, let it dry, apply a top coat, let it dry. It's kind of a lot. With these nails from Impress, all you have to do it peel the backing, press them on your nails, and you're good to go! They have a special pressure sensitive adhesive, so no need to worry about glue or anything. Plus, they're easy to remove, just peel them off carefully. They're perfect for when  you need your nails to look amazing, but just don't have the time to put into it. They even have a great variety of not only colors, but also fun accent nails, glitter tips, patterns, etc.


Disclaimer: I received products from Impress Manicure in exchange for my review.