A Disney Morning (or Dealing With The Heat For One Ride)

My Disneyland pass is about to be blacked out for the summer. I don’t mind that I can’t go during the summer since it’s usually more crowded than plus the heat can be pretty bad. Sometimes I wish I could be there when some of my friends go, but I don’t want to have a more expensive annual pass just for an occasional summer day in the parks.

I had gone last week with my friend June to the parks to ride all of my favorite rides and to say goodbye to Soarin’ Over California. That was a great way to spend one more Disney day before being blacked out for 2 months, but I ended up going back for about an hour this past Sunday.

With Soarin’ Over California closing, Soarin’ Around The World was opening. The opening day was on Friday and I had some free time on Sunday to ride it so I decided to head down for a quick park visit.

Even though I got there around 9am, the heat was already pretty bad. I didn’t think to wear a hat since I was only going to be there for a quick stop, so I was trying to stay in the shade as much as possible. But even with the heat, nothing could take away my excitement to check out the new ride!

The line was pretty short, which I was surprised by. I figured with it being a new ride and it being a Sunday, the lines would have been out of control. But it was only about a 25 minute wait when I got there.

My quick review of the new ride is that I really liked it! I thought I wouldn’t since I loved the original so much. This new version has some elements of the music from the original but I like that they didn’t keep it exactly the same. And while I liked the movie a bit more in the original (and the scents that they have), the movement of the ride is better in the new one and it was a bit more exciting to ride.

I actually enjoyed it so much that I rode it twice back to back! I figured I should maximize the short amount of time I had in the parks and there weren’t any other rides I wanted to go on (or have to walk in the sun to get to). The only other thing that I did at the park was take some time to cool down inside of Starbucks because I needed some air conditioning time. But I got a seat at the window so I could enjoy the cool air with a view.

The park was pretty empty while I was there and I’m guessing people wanted to stay away because of the heat. A lot of people in the park seemed pretty overheated and I think people were surprised at how bad it was that early in the morning.

When I got to the tram to get back to the parking structure, I was the only person in line to get onto it to ride back.

But after I sat down, I saw tons of people coming over that wanted to leave the park. We ended up being about half full on the ride back and at the parking lot there was almost nobody there to ride the tram to the park. If I had a full day to be there (and had been prepared to be there all day), I would have stayed because all the rides had pretty short wait times and I think I could have gotten a lot done. But that wasn’t in the cards for me that day and I’m just happy that I was able to go for the short time that I did.

My car was parked on the top of the parking structure that day. While it was annoying because I had to let my car cool down before I could try to sit inside of it, I did get a pretty fun view of the Star Wars Land construction that is going on right now.

The construction changed even between my visit on Monday and my visit on Sunday. I’m excited to see how much things will change by the time I go back to the parks at the end of August or beginning of September. I know that the construction will still be taking a long time, but I find it fun to see the work in progress and seeing how Disneyland changes throughout the years.

Even though my Monday visit was really my goodbye to Disneyland for the summer, I’m glad I had this bonus short trip to say hello to what will surely be one of my new favorite rides.

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