Spring is such a lovely time! When we get to spring break week, that means summer is right around the corner, but the fun is already starting! For our spring break this year, the fam and I went to California to visit Disneyland, Universal Studios Hollywood, and take in the touristy sites of the greater Los Angeles area. While we’ve been to Disneyland several times before, this was our first visit to Universal Studios Hollywood, and we were very excited to see Super Nintendo World in person. It didn’t disappoint! Let’s dig in to the deets…
I tell you, as I get older, flying through multiple time zones really kicks my butt! California’s not even that far behind Virginia and I just felt wiped out when we got to Anaheim. I don’t think I ever really adjusted to the time difference on this trip and coming home to the actual time change (spring forward!) surely didn’t help anything. Anyway, we flew into Santa Ana/Orange County airport, so we were very close to Disneyland. After a quick Lyft over to the Disneyland hotel, we got checked in and saw our ah-mazing room for the first time. Two-bedroom family suite in the Frontier tower and I upgraded to add access to the E-Ticket Club upon arrival. This room was killer. You walked in through the double doors, down a hallway into the room’s living room area (convertible sofa and two chairs). Behind the sofa area was a gigantic dining room with a huge table plus a wet bar with a large counter and cabinets. Down another hallway past the wet bar was bedroom number one with a king bed and its own full bathroom then a second bedroom with a king bed and its own full bathroom. There was also a half bath in the hallway between the two bedrooms. This room was quite possibly bigger than my house! We loved every minute of the stay there and did not want to leave! It even had its own doorbell… couldn’t figure out quite why until one evening the doorbell rang (housekeeping) and I realized I never would have heard them knocking from back in the second bedroom otherwise. Livin’ the life!
Adding access to the E-Ticket Club lounge was the best. We’ve enjoyed the lounge on prior trips and knew that the offerings there (breakfast, snacks and drinks during the day, appetizers and drinks in the evening, and the desserts late) plus the ability to see Disneyland fireworks from the lounge and the INCREDIBLE staff (thank you ROBERT!!!) make adding the access on a no-brainer for us. While the add-on isn’t always available if you didn’t book a club level room initially, the cost of $250/night plus tax can be a super deal, especially if you have a bigger family. We were just a party of four with the fam, me, and the daughter’s BF, but we definitely got our money’s worth.
The two parks, Disneyland and California Adventure, were perfect as usual. Our lines were decent, Genie+ worked well, and the weather was fine (albeit a bit chillier than I prefer). The food is always hit or miss for me and the daughter since we’re vegetarians and, for whatever reason, I feel like the food there just isn’t made to suit us. There’s not even a ton of the ‘fake meat’ products out there, which we don’t like anyway, but just so meat heavy overall. It’s a bummer for us, because we definitely like to eat! We did have quite a few rides going down during our stay and that was also a bummer, but we dealt with it and rode what we could. We were also able to go to the first Disneyland After Dark: Disney Channel nite event after hours at the Disneyland park one evening. The After Dark events aren’t new but this was the first time there was a Disney Channel themed one. We had a good time there during the event but didn’t stay super long as all of us were wiped out and I was having issues with one of my feet. I tell you though, Disneyland guests get way more into these after-hours events than the guests at Disney World do. It’s always like night and day between the two coasts and how much the guests really ‘do Disney’. I think it is the difference between the California parks being visited by more locals and the Florida parks being visited by more out-of-towners. You can tell that the CA folks are frequent visitors and really get into the spirit of the parks. Totally different vibe (and I like it!)
Before we left Anaheim to head to North Hollywood, we took a day to do a Los Angeles City Tour. We’ve done these in the past but chose to go with a different company for this tour. The group was small with the four of us and only six others. It lasted a good while, taking up the bulk of a day, but we got a lot in and had a great time. We stopped by the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum which held the 1932 and 1984 Summer Olympics, the Staples Center (now called the Crypto.com arena) where a variety of teams including the LA Lakers play, Griffith Park and the Griffith Observatory where you can see the Hollywood sign from afar, the Beverly Hills sign, the Santa Monica Pier, Venice Beach, the Walk of Fame and Dolby Theater area (the Oscars were being set up to be held that weekend), the Original Farmer’s Market and The Grove, and then drove past various landmarks in LA and the surrounding area. We had lunch at the Farmer’s Market, which is always fun and offers a variety of choices to enjoy. It was handy to refresh ourselves with that area since we were coming back there the following day for another activity.
After leaving the Disneyland hotel, we took a Lyft over to North Hollywood for our next hotel, The Garland. We’ve stayed there in the past and it is a boutique-style older hotel, just over 50 years old now. It’s a cute place, funky retro, but we had some overall unpleasant staff interactions there this time, so we likely won’t return. I am not sure that we would have anyway, since we don’t normally have a need to stay in that area, but I will try another option if we do.
The reason for being over in North Hollywood was so we would be closer to Universal Studios Hollywood for our day there. We also had reservations to play the Squid Game The Trials Experience over near the Farmer’s Market at CBS Television Studios, so being in North Hollywood was closer than coming to that area from Anaheim. This experience is now closed, it ended its run a couple of days after we left, but it was incredible. Definitely a highlight of our trip overall. If you’ve ever watched the Squid Game show on Netflix, it was very much like that, without dying of course. No big piggy bank of money for the winner at the end either. We went in with a group of probably 30ish people and played a variety of games themed like the ones on the show. It was intense at times, and we all had so much fun. I came in third somehow miraculously and the daughter was the overall winner! She kicked everyone’s butt, including mine, who she trounced in the final game by knocking the egg I was holding off of my spoon. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but I have seen some pics and videos circulating online that capture some of the games. And yes, Red Light, Green Light was one of them! As the winner, she got to go into the VIP lounge at the end of the experience (normally a paid add-on) where you can watch the other players go through their games in real-time while on comfy sofas and with snacks/drinks for purchase. They also had a photo booth there for those fun strip photos you can take a touristy spots at no cost, which was great since the ones out in the main experience were $6/each. You were able to shop in a market for souvenirs from the game and also purchase Korean foods and snacks before/after you played. It was a lot of fun and I would definitely do it again should it show up somewhere else I’m visiting.
On our day at Universal Studios Hollywood, we had to get up early and Lyft over to the park for Early Entry at Super Nintendo World. This is an add-on for about $20/person and well worth it. You are given an hour in that land before it opens to everyone else. As small as SNW is and as many people as want into it, that hour really comes in handy. We were able to get in, look around and take some pictures, and ride Bowser’s Challenge with a 30-minute wait (which I think was actually probably shorter than that). I’ve been on a lot of rides in a lot of places and this one definitely ranks up at the very top. It is interactive and whimsical and, despite all the motion, none of us felt sick, which was very surprising. I could have gone on it over and over just to watch more of the ride itself since I focused so much on playing the game the first time. Ten out of ten, highly recommend. The theme overall in this land was incredible, definitely brought back so many childhood memories of hours playing Super Mario Brothers. We ate at Toadstool Cafe which was good, but had a very long wait for ordering and getting your food. This restaurant requires a reservation that can only be made the morning of the visit, but it was definitely worth trying out and seeing inside of. We also had some fun Mario themed drinks back in the regular part of the park at the Power-Up Cafe that were quite delish, and I would buy them again. Overall, I wish the land was bigger (shoot, it could be a whole park!) and had more rides but I think that’s generally how it goes when there’s something you like. You just want more, more, more!
The rest of the park for me was just ok. We did get a complimentary Express Pass to use for the Studio Tour included with the SNW Early Entry, so we used that before it expired at 11am. The Tour was fun, and I enjoyed the King Kong, Jaws, and Nope sections the most. It ran for about an hour and kept my interest up. Afterward, we went to the Harry Potter section of the park and walked around with a Frozen Butterbeer. I’m not the biggest Harry Potter fan but it was well-done like the sections of Universal Orlando and more compact since they only have one HP section versus the two in Orlando. The Simpsons area was fun, and I wish we could have tried the ride there, but the line was pretty long and we were about out of stamina since we were at the end of our trip. I’d say the other highlight besides SNW and the tour was the Waterworld show. That one was unexpectedly very good and well worth the time spent. Stay out of those splash zones though! We skipped CityWalk this time and decided just to go back to The Garland and get in the hot tub for a bit (great choice, in fact).
After all of the fun, it was time to hop on a plane and fly back to reality. Darn reality! Now I am anxiously awaiting our next adventure, but I have about a month to go! Stay tuned!
xoxo,
Amber