Eragon in the USA

The crowds didn’t seem as bad in the evening, so we went on a few rides. The Matterhorn bobsleds is such a violent ride, it’s fast and really throws you around. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad was broken for most of the day, so it was nice to ride it in the evening.

We went back to Galaxy’s Edge to do Smugglers Run again. Even in the dark it feels like Star Wars.

I went on Splash Mountain for the first time. I’m not a big fan of water rides, I don’t like the idea of wet clothes or shoes when you still have to walk around. I didn’t get too wet, but I still wouldn’t ride this one again.

After Galaxy’s Edge I headed back to the castle and towards Tomorrowland. I got my photo in front of the castle. It seems to big in photos but really it’s not that tall. The castle at Walt Disney World in Florida is easily 3x the size. But it’s cute and fun to look at and walk around.

Tomorrowland is my favorite part of Disneyland, it has 3 of my favorite rides, Star Tours, Space Mountain and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.

Star Tours is still one of my favorite rides, you’re on a shuttle and C3-P0 ends up being the pilot, you get stopped by a bad guy (Stormtroopers, Darth Vader, Kylo Ren, etv) and go into hyperspace and end up on different planets than planned. It’s randomized so no two rides are the same. I rode it twice on Monday, and 6 times on Thursday. I love it when we get Coruscant and Crait, and I got combos with both of those planets. We also go lots of Kashyyyk and Naboo.

Buzz Lightyear Astroblasters is interactive, you’re in a little spaceship and you have to shoot at targets to stop Zurg. If the ride pauses at the right moment, you can rack up massive scores, the highest I got on this trip was over 300,000.

I got a new Hawkeye pin and a Mickey pretzel. I love the soft pretzels at Disneyland, they’re egg free. There was a holiday flavor with cream cheese and toffee sprinkles, but it contained egg so I couldn’t eat it.

We went further into the Black Spire Outpost on Batuu (Galaxy’s Edge planet) and it’s crazy how everything feels like Star Wars. All of the buildings are Star Wars, the food, the people, it’s really like being on another planet.

It wouldn’t be Star Wars without blue milk. Luckily it’s dairy free (I don’t like milk) and tasted like a creamy slushy, M and I got one each but I only drank about half of mine. It was too sweet for my liking. But so good to drink Luke Skywalker’s favorite beverage. We drank it in front of Kylo Ren’s TIE Silencer ship. He did come out and talk to the crowd too.

The next ride we went on was Smugglers Run, where the pirate Holdo (from Clone Wars) needs you to help pilot the millennium Falcon and steal coaxium (hyperspace fuel) from the first order. This ride had a 45 minute wait time, but also had single rider so I got to ride it twice in 20 minutes with other groups. In this ride you’re split into groups of 6, and each group has 2 pilots, 2 gunners, and 2 engineers. Each role is different and affects the mission. The pilots fly the ship, one pilot is up and down, the other is left and right. Gunners shoot the TIE fighters and the train of coaxium. The engineers fix the ship when it’s damaged. I got to try all 3 roles, I think gunner was my favorite.

Overall I loved the ride, but it’s definitely better when it’s all adults and all Star Wars fans. As soon as you get a little kid or someone who’s just there for the ride and they don’t do their job properly, it’s not as enjoyable. I had a ride where a 4 year old was a pilot so the dad ended up doing both jobs, or where two little girls who didn’t speak English were the pilots and couldn’t understand the instructions. I still loved the ride and did it 3 times on Monday, and 4 times on Thursday.

Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge was the next land we hit. If you know me, you know I love Star Wars, so this was top of my list to see. The first ride we went on was Rise of the Resistance. It’s set in the sequel era, so it’s the resistance vs the First Order, so Finn, Rey, Poe, and BB-8 are your friends, and Kylo Ren and General Hux are the bad guys.

We waited 90 minutes in line, but the waiting areas are all themed and it’s not boring like some of the other ride queues. We finally got to the front of the line, where we’re taken into a room and Rey asks for help, then we board a resistance shuttle that gets attacked after liftoff by the First Order. It’s so cool standing on the shuttle and how it feels like you’re moving, and then looking out the view ports and seeing the planet get smaller and the TIE fighters and X-Wings come into view. In this part of the story we’re caught in a tractor beam and brought about the Star cruiser. A First Order guard then demands we exit the shuttle and are to be interrogated.

We enter into a hangar bay filled with stormtroopers and a giant viewport looking into space. In reality you’ve probably only moved 100m from the queue boarding the shuttle but it feels like you’re in space.

We get escorted from the hangar down a corridor that looks like it’s on a star destroyer from the films. The level of detail is crazy. Unfortunately the ride broke down for us here and we were issued with lightning lane passes to return later. We came back a couple hours later in the afternoon and finished the ride. We get herded into groups of 12 and put into an interrogation room. Hux and Ren are trying to get the location of the secret rebel base from us, but the resistance rescue us and put us on small shuttles for “prisoner transfer” and R5 the Astromech droid pilots us through the ship to safety. There are giant AT-AT’s, Stormtroopers shooting us and Kylo trying to cut through walls with his lightsaber. We’re zipping through the ship and going up and down elevators, then at the end there’s the weirdest drop sensation as we’re loaded into emergency ships to evacuate. We crash land back on Batuu (the Star Wars planet made up for Disney parks) and are greeted by the resistance.

On Monday we went to Disneyland. We stayed in a hotel across the street so that we didn’t have to drive 45 minutes each way, or pay $30 in daily parking too. We got to the park right as it opened and decided to rope drop (run to first) the Indiana Jones ride. It’s notorious for being broken, and I didn’t get to go on in on my 2018 trip, so it had been a long time. We waited about 30 minutes to ride, and it was just as awesome as I remembered.

The Chargers didn’t play well, quickly going down 17-0 to the Seahawks. The Chargers looked to be turning it around with 14 unanswered, making it a 3 point game. But then the Chargers were plagued with injuries and a pick-6 and ended up losing 37-21. It would’ve been nice if the home team had won, but it was still an amazing experience.

We drove home on an 8 lane highway, it’s crazy to think that in NZ most of our towns are lucky to have a couple of two lane roads.

Mr H had flown an NZ flag on the pole with his Chargers team flag. It was really cool and we got lots of comments. It was partly to welcome me, and partly for if I got lost I could look for the flag. We got tacos from the guy tailgating next to us and hd a great time. Mr H had my favorite drink (Dr Pepper) and snacks (Doritos). I wandered around a bit to see what others were doing and it’s just a giant party. It was lots of fun.

We went in about an hour before the game to get our seats.

The first night in LA I stayed in a hotel by the airport. I know by now with travel I can be a bit cranky after the flight, and I tend to just want to shower and sleep. I checked into the Sonesta, and because I’d signed up for their loyalty program I got upgraded from the standard room I had booked (on the 3rd floor) to a King Suite on the 15th floor with views of the LAX runway. The bed was huge. Like I think it was a square, you could’ve laid any direction and still not reached the sides.

I got in, had a shower, and then went to bed (at like 3pm local time). I really wasn’t feeling great. But I couldn’t sleep. Around 7pm I went down to the hotel bar for something to eat. I had a pizza, a ginger beer, and a sprite. The pizza was lovely, the ginger beer was awful, and the sprite was refreshing. I watched the baseball while eating. It cost $40USD ($68 NZD) which is a rip off, but worth it for the convenience of having food right there.

I went back up to my room and still couldn’t sleep. I flicked through the tv channels and found one playing old NCIS episodes, so I watched a couple til I was tired enough to sleep. I had my alarm set late in the morning, I didn’t need to checkout until 10, so I got nearly 8 hours sleep and started to adjust to the California timezone.

Goodbye New Zealand, hello USA. I left NZ on Saturday, October 22 to start my trip. It was hard saying goodbye to my family, but I’ll be back soon. I flew from Palmy to Auckland, and had McDonald’s in the airport before getting on my flight.

I had a seat in the middle, right behind premium economy, so I had plenty of space. I don’t mind paying a little bit more to have that extra bit of room. One of the cool things with AirNZ international flights is that they now have wifi. It was nice to be connected to the outside world while flying.

I had a vegan meal on board (egg free), the dinner was okay, a chicken pea tomato curry and rice, but it was a bit weird that breakfast the next day was the same chickpea concoction but with spinach and pineapple. I didn’t eat the breakfast. I watched the Lightyear movie, it was pretty good. I got about 4 hours sleep in, and another 2 hours just dozing. Then the turbulence hit. It was very bumpy for the last 4 hours or so of the flight. It was the first time I’ve felt motion sickness on the plane, I couldn’t eat or drink and for the longest time I thought I was going to throw up.

The protrait Gallery was amazing, definitely worth spending an afternoon there.

Then we went to the National Portrait Gallery. I was most interested in seeing the official portraits of Barack and Michelle Obama. They were amazing! There were lines to see them.

Lincoln’s Portrait was cool, and Bill Clinton’s was weird.

The gallery itself is amazing, there’s a giant atrium in the center.

My first American thanksgiving was amazing. My friends Kyle and Carey has a “Friendsgiving” where they invited a whole bunch of friends over for the thanksgiving meal. We had baked ham, roast potatoes, chipotle sweet potato, green beans, Brussels sprouts, cranberry jelly, and homemade sourdough rolls. It was amazing!

Mt Vernon had some awesome gardens, they even had a glass house that was kept warm by stoves in the winter, to protect their tropical plants. It was really elaborate, and showed how wealthy the Washington’s were.

George Washington was really into farming, and finding more efficient ways to farm. This section of the plantation was called the pioneer farm, and was a recreation of some of the things Washington did on his other farms near by.

He did an experiment with boxes of soil and plants, and the soil had different fertilizers added, to see which plants produced the best results.

There’s a cool octagonal two story barn, where the wheat was on the floor on the top story, then cattle were walked up a ramp to stop the wheat, they experimented with the gaps in the boards to get just the grain to come out of the stalks, and fall through to the lower level.

We saw George and Martha Washington’s tomb, it was quite sad.