Annual Passholder Opportunity - Splash Mountain 25th Anniversary/Birthday Poster!

If you've spent any time at all with Days in the Park over the course of the past few years, you know we around here love, absolutely LOVE, Splash Mountain!

So when we saw this we just knew we had to share it! We got wind of this last night on Facebook and had time to confirm it this morning so we thought we'd post up so you guys can make use of it and get your own poster celebrating the attraction's 25th birthday.

If you're an Annual Passholder, and aren't blacked out between the 16th (tomorrow) and Friday, you're eligible to receive one of these fantastic looking posters (while supplies last, of course), and you don't even have to ride the attraction to do it! But speaking as someone who once rode it six times straight without leaving our raft, why would you do that?

Distribution will be across from the attraction's exit near Pooh Corner. It would make a great souvenir to add to your collection so get out there, head to Critter Country and get it done! And by all means, comment and let us know if you get one; we'd love to see it!

Post by Disneyland Annual Passholders.

My Favorite Disneyland Attraction Vehicle

Welcome to those of you joining me from "Disney Babies Blog" and those of you just hopping aboard. I am the 3rd stop on our Magical Blogorail.

---

Welcome back!

So this month we've been charged with talking about our favorite Attraction Vehicle in the Disney Parks. I gave it quite a bit of thought, and of course came up with the standard answers: the Autopia cars, the logs on Splash Mountain, the Doom Buggies on The Haunted Mansion. But really, what's the fun of thinking inside the box? So I decided I'd show you instead of tell you this time.

Because when you really get down to brass tacks, there's simply nothing like being suspended hundreds of feet in the air with nothing between you and Paradise Pier but a silly cage.

Enjoy!


Thank you for joining me today. Your next stop on the Magical Blogorail Loop is "Pursuing the Magic".

---

Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail should you happen to have to make a stop along the way and want to reboard:
1st Stop ~ The CanaDisney Blog
2nd Stop ~ Disney Babies Blog
3rd Stop ~ Days in the Park
Final Stop ~ Pursuing the Magic

The Disneyland FASTPASS - "Almost" Wordless Wednesday

We never ceased to be amazed.  We'll be walking up through the FASTPASS line at various attractions scattered around the Disneyland Resort, and invariably will hear the words, "I hate people who use FASTPASS.  Why don't they wait in line like the rest of us?", muttered as we walk by.  While obviously this is an "almost" wordless post, so I can't spend much time dealing with this phenomenon now, it did make me think of this picture we took recently when we were at Disneyland Park for an entire day.  We think you'll understand why given the context.

Enjoy!  We sure did!!

Gawrsh, they must REALLY hate us for this one!

Days In The Park Podcast Episode 7 - I Know What We're Going To Talk About Today!

Episode 7 of our podcast is up and ready for some listening!

In our latest episode we spend some time discussing the changes currently taking place inside (and outside!) Disney California Adventure Park as part of the current expansion going on at The Resort.  But we’re not all business!  We’re talking food again this month as we highlight one of the newer restaurants at The Resort, Tangaroa Terrace.  And we spend some time wittily bantering about possibly our favorite attraction (and one of its Hidden Mickeys) at The Parks, Splash Mountain.

Stop on by our podcast website and give us a listen. We'll be happy you did!

"Almost" Wordless Wednesday: Wet Napping!

People are still asking for them, so here we go with another award-winning* sample of our Park "napping" photos.  This one's pretty self-explanatory, we guess, so let the napping begin!

*As far as we know, no awards for napping have ever been given out at any of the Disney Resorts, but we adamantly believe that they should be and that we would be prime candidates for one

History is Never Truly Forgotten; It Just Becomes A Part Of The Scenery

We talk about it all the time at Days In The Park; the "little details" all around The Parks that really make the place special.  We're not as familiar with how they do things at The World, but at The Resort, it's amazing how so many of our favorite things continue to pop up time after time.  Just when you're ready to lament the passing of something beloved, The Parks surprise us with all sorts of homages to attractions and shows that have long since passed on.  There are many of these that we've noticed lately, and we thought it would be fun to share just a few of them here.

While riding The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, we couldn't help but take notice that some of the characters from the Country Bear Jamboree, which was the prior resident of the Pooh attraction, are still in residence here even today.  You can find them once you leave the Heffalump and Woozle room, or the "dream room" as we refer to it, and if you turn around and look behind you and up at the wall as you enter the next room, you should see three very familiar creatures; the three moose Buff, Max and Melvin.  Unfortunately, no picture of this one so we hope you'll take the time to check them out for yourself.  It's a dark ride and at the risk of blinding others with our flash, we opted not to take the shot.

But looking at them recently got us thinking that lately we have been noticing a lot of familiar faces around The Park.

Right next door to Pooh is Splash Mountain, which is home to a great number of the old America Sings audio-animatronics.  Next time you take a ride, look for some of them in the big musical finale in the final room aboard the "Zip-A-Dee Lady" Riverboat singing, what else(?), "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah".  Others were stripped and taken to the now gone original Star Tours attraction, and we're keeping our eyes open for them still now that the new Star Tours has opened.

Just around the corner from these two attractions is the Indiana Jones Adventure - The Temple of the Forbidden Eye.  If you ask a Cast Member for an assist, you might just spot our gloomy friend Eeyore's Parking sign.  This is located while in line, in the projection room, which is the last large room you come to before boarding.  This sign was taken from the old Disneyland parking lot that once stood where Indiana Jones now sits, and is a reminder to everyone who looks what once was.

Photo courtesy of FindingMickey.com

Even the newest attractions have gotten into the act!  Over in Disney California Adventure, The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure is now home to a King Triton Statue, which once lived at the Little Mermaid Meet and Greet in Disneyland Park, which is where Pixie Hollow is now located.

We're constantly amazed at how The Resort sees fit to reuse or recycle so many of our favorite classics back into circulation in new and inventive ways.  We know of quite a few more, but these were just some of our favorites and we thought it would be fun to share with you!

Now that we have given you just a few of our favorites, do you know of any that you'd like to share with us?  Let us know and we'll be happy to do a follow-up post and include your ideas and give you full credit.  It's fun to participate together, so let us know if there are any that you would like to see here. 

Now get out there and look at your Park history!

Star Tours: The Adventures Continue Opening Day!

It seems only fitting that we end our week's worth of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue and "Star Wars" articles with a piece on the very attraction that inspired us to do so in the first place.  We've literally been talking for months now about how excited we were for the new attraction to debut, and it officially opened for the very first time yesterday.  Even though we were lucky enough to have ridden it several times before it was officially opened to the public, we were nonetheless extremely excited to get to The Park and be a part of the insanity of seeing it open to everyone.  We haven't been blogging long now, and we've never been to another attraction's official opening day before, so when you put the two together we just knew we had to be there for this one!

Our plan had originally been to be inside The Park when rope-drop occurred, but we ultimately decided to take it easy in the morning and go into The Park a little bit later than planned.  If you read our "challenge" in our post earlier in the week, you'll remember it was also originally in the plans to basically just "run around the mulberry bush" all day long and ride Star Tours over and over again until we collapsed, either from exhaustion or heart attack.  Well, you know what they say about best-laid plans, but we'll get back to that in a minute.  We wound up getting to The Park around 9:30 in the morning to this...

Greeted with madness!

It might look like it's just a mass of people moving through The Hub near the Partners Statue, but we can assure you it was not.  When we arrived the line began at the back of the statue, wound around in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle a bit, weaved towards Pixie Hollow, back into The Hub, into Tomorrowland and down towards the entrance to Star Tours, back out into The Hub again, along the front of Plaza Inn, past the entrance to Star Tours and back near the Star Trader, back towards and into the overflow room, and finally into the Star Tours building itself.  Sound convoluted enough for you?  Yeah, we though pretty much the same thing.

Several things were already kind of working against us at this point.  First, the attraction wasn't set to open until 10:30 so a long line had already had time to form.  Second, the Fast Pass system for the attraction wasn't in operation yet.  We had kind of counted on that to get us a few extra rides during the day, so we pretty much knew immediately that the number of times we were going to be able to ride were going to be drastically reduced.  But, ever the intrepid adventurers and gluttons for punishment that we are, we jumped into line and prepared to wait.

Making our first pass by Star Tours

Amy had made it out to join us by this point so along with her and Chad's son Michael, the waiting commenced.  We wish we could candy coat it and make it sound like it was the most exciting thing we had ever done, but there's really not much to say.  We wound around the area for the next three and half hours before we were finally able to board.  We spent the time tweeting, blogging (some of which you may have read), talking with some people around us, engaging an awesome Cast Member named Sam who was running part of the line at the time, and just enjoying the atmosphere.  Even though we can't really say moving through the line was exciting, the atmosphere was very much so, if that makes sense.  We loved listening to people, chatting it up, and the excitement in the air was palpable.  Even though the line was huge and the wait was long, people were genuinely excited about riding Star Tours for the first time, and it was an awesome experience to be waiting alongside them, excited just like they were.

Some of our favorite art in the overflow room - The StarSpeeder 1000

Even now we long for a trip to Alderaan!

They promised Rex and delivered. Too bad the poor guy has been labeled "defective".

Mark, Amy and Michael get ready to board!

We didn't get to spend a whole lot of time in the queue taking pictures yesterday (once inside the line moved very quickly), but we did notice a few things we hadn't before.  Rex talked!  Well, sort of.  Since he had been labeled "defective" he kind of stuttered a lot and repeated himself over and over (just like a broken droid would), but it was definitely a nice touch!  We also got a big kick out of the droid in charge of checking the luggage on the left as you move through.  As the luggage moves along the conveyer, he inspects the inside of each piece with an x-ray machine and there's some pretty funny stuff going on in some of those bags.  We won't spoil it for you, but be sure to keep an eye out for it!  And there's a Hidden Mickey in this room as well!  We'll say more about it when our friends from FindingMickey.com have had a chance to see it for themselves, but it's really cool so keep an eye out.

We made it through, got our glasses, watched the pre-flight video and hopped aboard.  Amazing atmosphere in the cabin during that first ride.  People were obviously truly excited to be on board, and there was a ton of clapping, yelling, screaming, and laughing going on.  It was awesome to be a part of it all.  Unfortunately, other than seeing a different "Rebel" on this ride (we saw Admiral Ackbar finally), we didn't get to see any new planets or sequences.  Well, Amy did, but Chad and Mark have been stuck waiting to see Coruscant or Tattooine for a few rides now.  Ah well, another excuse to ride it lots in the future!

Once we were done with that first ride, we had a decision to make, though.  Were we going to see our own "challenge" through and hop right back in line again, or move on to greener pastures?  It was already around 2:30 at the time, and after weighing our options, and given the length of time the line still was (still 2 hours plus), and thinking about how many times we'd really be able to ride the rest of the day, we decided to move on and try to catch it again later in the night.  We talked about it some later and came to the conclusion that with food being a necessity, we really would only have been to ride it one, maybe two more times than we did, so we're pretty happy with the decision that we made.  We moved on to the Tomorrowland station, and railed it on over to New Orleans Square for lunch at Cafe Orleans.  We weren't in line for Star Tours, but we had an awesome time hanging out, enjoying some fantastic grub, and watching 8-year old Michael really put the moves on Amy in some "Kids Meal" competition.

Days In The Park gets all competitive, Kid's Meal style!

Gumbo, Pomme Frites and Mac at Cheese at the Cafe

Amy's Monte Cristo and Mint Julep

Splash Mountain awaits

After an awesome lunch, we met up with another friend of ours and hopped into line (it was day all about lines) for a ride on another of our favorite attractions, Splash Mountain.  We hadn't had a chance to ride it yet since it reopened on the 27th, so we waited the hour or so it took (seemed like a drop in the bucket compared to Star Tours) to ride and get soaked.  And we meant, we got soaked.  We've never been so drenched coming off of this ride, ever.  Even when we rode it around 5 times without leaving our boat, we weren't as wet as we got yesterday.  Amy swears (and she used to work at Splash Mountain) that she's never seen a wall of water as big as the one that nailed us yesterday, so we figure that's really saying something.  We remember seeing the water rise up and over Michael's head and just making it way back along the boat.  It was seriously frightening and fun at the same time.  If you get a chance to ride Splash soon, we recommend it big time.  They seem to have ramped the water up to an 11, and it's always a good time!

Before the soaking

Hoisting the R2 popcorn bucket - Michael was so happy!

We're happy to say that we did in fact ride Star Tours just one more time before we went home.  By this point, Amy had had to mosey on but we still had a nice little group going and we decided to ride it one more time.  We hopped back in line and waited another two and half hours to ride it once more.  Saw nothing new this time, either, but had a fantastic time yet again.  There was a huge group of "Star Wars" fans on our final flight of the night that were just loving being on board, and that made it all the more fun.  Plus, riding with friends who had never ridden it before (and their little 4-year old son) made it just that much more special for us.  We left The Park around 10:30 or so, only having ridden twice, but loving every minute of our day out.

Yeah, it was longer than that...

So there you have it, the official opening of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue from the Days In The Park view.  The Day didn't really pan out the way that we had originally envisioned, but that's okay!  We had a fantastic time (we really hope that came through), and that makes it all worthwhile.  We're definitely ones that understand the importance of going with the flow while you're in The Park, and not getting stressed out or locking yourself into one thing, so for us the Day went exactly the way it was supposed to.  No regrets, no sense of failure, just an overwhelming sense of "Yeah, that's what it's all about!". 

How about you guys?  Were any of our other readers in The Park yesterday?  How many times did you brave the lines to ride?  Let us know because as always we'd love to hear from you.  Thanks for coming along with us!

We went to Star Tours Opening Day and all we got was this AWESOME shirt!

Odds and Ends: Weekly Cap-Off (5/23 - 5/29)

Visits to the Park this week:  2
We're down from the norm, but we still made it out a couple of different times this week, ensuring that our Annual Passes continue to earn us dividends! 

We were out on Monday along with Amy for another Cast Member Preview ride on The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure (which is fantastic by the way!), and we will be out for an hour or two this morning along with our friends at Disney Day Trippers riding Star Tours: The Adventures Continue one last time before the attraction officially opens up on June 3rd.

They were short trips into The Parks this week, but awesome as always! 

Last Week on Days In The Park:
On Monday, we took you out for another "Magical Mystery Monday" and challenged you to guess where in The Parks we took the picture

Tuesday, we gave your a very early, spoiler-free review of Star Tours: The Adventures Continue 

We got back on track this week our usual "Almost" Wordless post on Wednesday

Thursday, we co-hosted a "Disney Blog Hop" with our friend Lisa from Babes In Disneyland!

On Friday, we posted not one, but two Vinylmation articles: Our Latest Vinylmation Adventure and a look at a new segment called Vinylmation Domination

And lastly, we slowed down on Saturday and decided to give back to the community as Chad participated in this year's AIDS Walk OC

This Week At The Parks:
It's here!  "Summer Soundsational" has arrived!

Mickey's Soundsational Parade opened up in Disneyland Park this past Friday, The Little Mermaid and Star Tours open up this week on June 3rd, and the all new pool and restaurants Tangaroa Terrace and Trader Sam's opened up at the Disneyland Hotel this past week as well.  Oh, and did we mention that Splash Mountain opened up this past Friday too?  We couldn't be more psyched!

June 3rd is the first official day of summer in The Park and we're tremendously excited about it.  Anyone else planning on being there this weekend?  Stop by and say hi!

Video Of The Week:
We just got through talking about!  This week's video features Mickey's Soundsational Parade footage which the Disney Parks Blog post this week.  We've said it here a few times before; we're not really parade people, but we're very excited about this one!

In addition, our friend Sarah from Magical Days With The Mouse was able to attend the parade this weekend and took some amazing pictures of it all. You can check it out here.

Here At Days In The Park:
It's Star Tours week at Days In The Park!  In honor of the attraction's "official" opening this coming weekend, and because we love "Star Wars" so much, we've decided to dedicate a whole week to "Star Wars" and Tours themed posts.  You can can never have too much of "a galaxy far, far away", right?  So keep your eyes peeled here for all kinds of articles dedicated to your favorite "Wars", lots of pics, and maybe even a surprise or two, you never know!  We can't wait for Monday to get here so we can start!

We hope you'll keep dropping by to spend a Day In The Park with us.  We enjoy having you around!

The Friday Fast Pass: The Fastpass!

It's been a while since we did one of our Friday Fast Pass segments! We figured what better way to get back into the groove of offering up some Days In The Park tips than to focus on the very thing we took our segment's namesake from: the Park Fastpass.

What people did before the invention of the Fastpass system is beyond us! Well, we know they stood in line a lot more, but we're sure you get what we're trying to say. And when it comes to line bypassing, nobody does it better than Disney! You need only look to other theme parks and the example they set (charging you above and beyond your park admission for the privilege) to see just what a great thing The Parks have going for them here, and you'd do best to take advantage of it as often as you can.

If you're uninitiated into the world that is Fastpass still, it's really simple to explain. As mentioned before, it's basically a "line bypassing" system The Parks have implemented meant to save people time and cut down on long lines. You get it automatically with your Park admission ticket, so you don't have to do anything except go to the attraction you want and, if it has a Fastpass option available, get a Fastpass ticket to come back at a later time and ride (or see in the case of  World of Color) it without having to wait in the long lines to do it. The attractions that have Fastpass options have little ticket dispensing booths near the entrance and all you have to do is insert your Park ticket (or Annual Pass if you're a passholder) and it will spit out a ticket for you to bring back at a later time to enjoy your attraction. Easy enough, right?

Each of the two Parks has their own set of attractions that are "Fastpass enabled". They are:

Disneyland Park:

• Space Mountain
• Roger Rabbit's Cartoon Spin
• Autopia
• Indiana Jones Adventure
• Splash Mountain
• Big Thunder Mountain Railroad

Disney's California Adventure:

• Twilight Zone Tower of Terror
• Soarin' Over California
• Grizzly River Run
• California Screamin'
• World of Color

We also have reason to believe that they will be adding a Fastpass option to the new Star Tours: The Adventure Continues and The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Undersea Adventure in the future (having taken those from Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and we're still unsure about the ones that were at Mulholland Madness previously), but we guess that only time will tell.

So, do we actually use the Fastpass system ourselves? You bet we do! Over the years it's become an integral part of our Park excursions, and it's even more important for people who don't make it to The Parks as often to use this fantastic system.

With that in mind, we present our top 5 tips for using the Fastpass system in The Parks for maximum enjoyment!

1. Begin early! It just stands to reason logically that the earlier you get into The Park, and the earlier you begin racking up Fastpasses, the more you can get throughout the day (barring an attraction running out which does happen, especially with some of the more popular attractions like Space Mountain). You're allowed to get one Fastpass every hour (from when you got your last one - your Fastpass ticket will tell you on the front when you're eligible to get another) so do it! And although we tend to fly by the seat of our pants most days, when we do go to The Park with a mind to ride something, we occasionally do know which attractions we want to get Fastpasses for, and we make sure to move down the list and get our next as quickly as we possibly can so we get everything in before the end of the day. Starting early will help you do that.
2. Double the pleasure! Using the Fastpass system to your advantage you can almost get two rides for the price of one. Many times we'll get a Fastpass, sacrifice ourselves to the lines, and by the time we're done with the first ride, our Fastpasses are up and we can get right back on for a second go-around. It's a really great way to do rides like Space Mountain, Splash Mountain or the Tower of Terror if you've a mind to. And sometimes we've even been able to triple our pleasure! If you have members of your party who aren't riders, if they're willing, you can even borrow their tickets or passes to get extra Fastpasses and do it again! We don't do this one often but we have been known to from time to time.
3. Know what to use your Fastpasses for! In our experience, some of the attractions that have Fastpass options aren't necessarily the best ones to be using it on. The lines are usually pretty negligible and are fast moving so we don't like to use them there. Our suggestions would be Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland Park, and Tower of Terror, Soarin' Over California and Grizzly River Run at Disney's California Adventure. These are the ones that typically have the longest lines during the busiest seasons which can run anywhere from 1 1/2 to 2 hours. 
4. You can go past your time on your Fastpass ticket to ride. Each Fastpass ticket has a return time on it ("Return Anytime Between 9:30 and 10:30AM for example). For the longest time we thought it was a rule that must strictly be adhered to, but that's not the case. You can go ride anytime after that. We'll never forget when our friends found out that we didn't know this. Their laughter and mockery are still ringing in our ears. We still try to get back to the attraction as quickly as we can, but it's nice to know that if we miss our time for some reason (such as standing in another line) that we can still use our Fastpasses anytime we want.
5. And lastly, pay the kindness forward! We can't count the number of times we've been moving about The Parks, and a family or something has come up to us and offered us their unused Fastpasses. We make it a point (the passes in the picture at the top of this article notwithstanding) that if we have Fastpasses on us that are unused to do our best to give it to another group or family that might be able to use them. If you're not going to use them, do your best to pass them on and make someone else's day just a little more magical. Isn't that what it's all about?

So there you have it: our Days In The Park tips for this week all about the Park Fastpass system. We know that a lot of people already know about this stuff, but you never know when it might come in handy, or when one of our tips might be something even users might not have thought of before.

Do you have any tips of your own concerning Fastpasses? Let us know and we'll do a follow-up article soon and include them. 

Now get out there and ride it up!

"Almost" Wordless Wednesday: Some Random Park-Influenced Goodness

Okay, okay.  We couldn't stay away for two whole days.  We're weak like that, we guess.  So here are a few pictures we've had hanging around for a while.  We've been looking for a spot to put them, and it seemed like the perfect time.

All of these were taken with a cell phone.  Usually, we like to carry the DSLR around with us, but there's just something about grabbing shots (or at least trying to) on the fly that's appealing and very often gives pictures a little more character than a "professional" shot might have.

With that in mind, here are some shots we've taken recently in The Park, as well as some around the house that were "Park-influenced", we guess you could say.

Enjoy!

Couldn't resist a ride.  "We think we can, we think we can..."

"RAWR!"

One of our favorite spots in The Park; and the first place we ever got yelled at to "keep our arms in the boat".

Harold likes to roam around the room late at night.  No idea how he got there.

A little Star Tours concept art.  Can't wait for 2.0!

Poor kid's been fishing for years...

The single greatest moment of my life

Chad's PS3 sporting Disney.  Even at home The Mouse is always near.

One of Amy's Favorite Things:  Mr. Smee's feet.

Stephanie enjoying a night out with Chad (and a train ride!)

Just before we tore into the box like a 5 year old on Christmas morning

---

Great Moments In Our History: Splash Mountain Redux

Last week, we introduced you to one of our favorite pastimes while we're hanging in either of The Parks.

We won't go over the entire thread again (you can click and read if you haven't already) but to put it short and sweet, we enjoy setting personal "records" while we're at The Park.  We like to see how many times we can ride a certain attraction in one day or how many consecutive trips into The Park we can ride the same attraction; things like that.

As of last week, one of our favorites involved Splash Mountain.  Up until this point, our high-water mark (punnage!) on this particular attraction was our riding it three times, consecutively, without ever having left our raft.  But we were determined to break that mark this past weekend.

In fact, if you'll recall (and read last week's post) we had grand designs of blogging while we were actually on the ride, as well as breaking our own record.  We suppose 1 out of 2 isn't bad.  The whole blogging thing didn't really work out.  Guess a DROID with a dead battery will do that.

But just as we had planned we wandered over into Critter Country around 8:45, around 15 minutes before we knew that Fantasmic! would be starting.  Unforeseen, but completely welcome, was the addition of three other friends from Twitter to our party:  Julie, Jenna and Destiny.  The pressure was palpable.  Not only did we have to beat the record for ourselves, and our blog, but we couldn't be seen with egg on our faces in front of our new friends.  It was on, Br'er Rabbit.

We'll spare you all the gory details, but it should be sufficient enough to say that five spins around the mountain later our record was completely smashed.  By this point (thankfully!) the lines were finally forming again and we had to jettison our boat.

Our record-breaking extravaganza wasn't without peril and consequence, though.  Deciding it would be best to man up and protect the women from the impending flood of water, we sat in the front of the boat.  We don't think we've ever been so wet in our entire lives.  If we had jumped into the Rivers of America fully clothed we couldn't possibly have been that wet.  We got off the attraction with our tuckus completely numb, our ears ringing (primarily from Destiny screaming the entire time), and weighing a full 100 lbs. heavier than we were when we got on.

But we all agreed (as we wrung the water out of our hoodies, poured the water out of our shoes, and cinched our belts tighter so our pants wouldn't fall off because they were so weighed down with water) that we had a blast.  We would have to think there's not many others who have done what we did.  If there are, our hats are off to you.  As it stands, though, we think we've done all we can take for right now.  The wetness must come to an end, and we are still in the process of drying off.

But like the Splash Mountain shirt says (only $19.95!), "It Was Soaking Awesome!".

---

Great Moments In Our History: Splash Mountain

Note:  The title of today's blog is not "Great Moments in American History" or anything quite so overly-dramatic, but is simply a nod towards our greatness, with maybe just a dash of narcissism thrown in for good measure.

One of our favorite things to do when we're hanging out at one of The Parks is try to set new "records" for ourselves.  We're by no means in competition with anyone else directly (at least, not that we know of), but we kind of enjoy competing against ourselves if you will.  We like to set marks and keep streaks alive for as long we can.  Some of our own "personal marks", if you will, include: 

• Most trips on California Screamin' in one day:  4
• Most consecutive back to back trips on California Screamin' in one day: 2 (and boy, were we feeling wonky after those!)
• Most trips on the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in one day: 3
• Consecutive trips to Disneyland Park with at least one ride on Pirates of the Caribbean:  we're not entirely sure about this one, but by our guesstimates, around 35

Well, you get the idea.  One we've been stuck on for a while now (that we're seeking to dump on its head when we go to The Park this weekend) is one of our streaks on Splash Mountain; this one involving the most consecutive trips around the Mountain without ever having to leave your raft.  Right now, our record stands at 3.

We somehow managed to stumble on a really good time to do this a few months ago while wandering around New Orleans Square right around Fantasmic! time.  With nothing else to do (we had already ridden Pirates; at that time our streak for that one was still alive) we wandered into Critter Country to find that the line for Splash Mountain was practically non-existent.  Eager to seize such an opportunity (usually the lines are horrendous) we waltzed right to the front of the loading dock and right into our raft with four other people.  We made our first run, and were genuinely surprised when we pulled back to dock to find that no-one else was in the entire building at all.  The other people in our raft bailed (chickens!) and we were left to fly solo on round 2.  Back around we went, how do ya do?  We pulled back into the dock to find only two more people waiting in line.  On our raft they came, and off we went around the mountain for a third time.  By this point, we had already begun discussing the possibility of a fourth time around without even having to leave our seats, but we could hear Fantasmic! had ended, and just as we pulled back into dock, a line had begun forming once again.  So off we came, our streak rudely ended by Mickey's victory.  We figure we spent roughly 40 minutes or so in the same boat without getting up (if our numb butts were any indication).  Quite the accomplishment, we think!

But we haven't forgotten that fateful night, or the hanky-panky going on in our ride photo perpetrated by the couple in front of us on our third time around.  And we're determined to top it.  That is, we're determined to top our ride record.  Not the hanky-panky.

So this Sunday night, we're taking on the Mountain again.  We hope to blog about it while we're doing it (live blogging from the ride itself; who'd'a thunk?!) so we hope you'll be around to see it.  Will we do it?  What do we think our chances are?  

Pretty good, sure as you're born.

Do you have any Park records you're willing to put on the line?  Anything you think we'd like to try and top?  Let us know about it.  It's on! 

---