Again, our meet time is 7am for breakfast. We head over to Goofy’s kitchen today. This is a lunch/brunch buffet featuring very goofy items like peanut butter pizza and rice crispy cereal treats etc. More characters, more pictures, more fun.
From breakfast we walk back to the hotel and are escorted into CA Adventure, yes, only ones’ in the park again. We wave to all of the guests waiting beyond the gates to get in. Hee Hee ~ Love this~ Our backstage tour today is at *Spoiler Alert* Soarin Over California. The Mickey group gets to ride first and we all by ourselves. The host reminds us to look at the "gliders" and notice they are modeled after Erector sets. We are then taken backstage and wow what an event. I don’t want to spoil all of the fun for future groups so I’ll leave out some details. The host then shows us the beads of orange and pine that are like mini-bath oil beads that they change out every month. Next is Turtle Talk with Crush and its cool how he interacts, I’ve never seen this before. We then get to go into Animation Academy and draw with a real cartoonist instructing us. We of course draw Mickey and then in this hall then hand out Mickey ears to all guests who are having birthdays in April or May. That’s me ! We are then given 5 more fast passes and get the afternoon on our own. Our little groups decide to head to The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror (no, I was pulled kicking and screaming almost ). Even though I do not like this ride I do it and actually besides being a little shaky, its was fun… We ride Monsters Inc too with Nate’s family and then head to the Hyperion since we are given VIPs seats for the Aladdin show. We have front row seats, first floor, back section and wow this show still is one of my favorites. The Genie is funny and the venue is great. After this show we head back to the hotel for some down time. I got shopping and try out the gym. The hotel has a great gym with lots of top of the line bikes, steppers, treadmills and weight machines. It is attached to the Mandara Spa which smells fabulous. I love to come work out here so I can then take a shower in the spa area and use all of their lotions and sprays etc. The pool was packed today since it was 90 degrees and I’m wishing I had time to go.
We meet the group at Disneyland resort at 5:55pm for our farewell dinner. This is not my favorite part of the trip but is wonderful and we are in the Sleeping Beauty’s Pavilion above Goofy’s kitchen which is wonderful. We are greeted with cocktails and make our way to very cutely decorated tables of old black/silver/gold movie reel decorations. Our special guest for the dinner is Disney Artist and Historian Stacia Martin. She sketches for us our favorite characters and then personalizes them to take home. She is an amazing person and draws people in as she is sketching and asking questions, relaying history and information~ A real treat. The food here is pastas, meats, special salads, and an array of desserts. Wonderful and tasty and I try all the desserts almost just to make sure they are all good ~ they are~ We also are given a pin that says Adventures by Disney at the table too. Then Minnie and Mickey come in to see us off and take pictures with us. If you like Characters, wow, this is the tour!!
The group at this dinner stands up and tells their favorite part of the trip. It’s sad and funny and wonderful because from the first day until now, all of the "I came on this trip to see ___" have really changed. We have bonded, and laughed, and sang and cried. This dinner concludes with a slide show made by the guides of all the fun on the trip. It seems like weeks ago that we were in Hollywood and it’s so fun to see the shots they capture of the whole trip.
We all take up our sketches from Stacia and head out to Disneyland for VIP viewing of the Fireworks. Great seats located right at the Plaza Pavilion. Beautiful show and its great to see Tinkerbell flying around for a long time, not just dropping from the Matterhorn as she used to do. After the fireworks I head with Nick, Steven and Helen to Space Mountain to ride it at night. I had promised to do this with him and it was thoughtful he reminded me before we left. We took the monorail back home after that and I headed to bed. Beci of course wanted one more night to play so she stayed out with the fun group headed to ride many more hours of rides and got done late (how are those feet?).