New blog - The Griffiths in Japan

Here is the link to our latest blog:

http://thegriffithsinjapan.blogspot.co.uk/

See you there!

Steve

The Griffiths in Florida

Here is the link to our latest blog:

http://griffithsinflorida.blogspot.co.uk/

The Griffiths in Lapland

Here is our new blog, on our trip to Lapland.

http://griffithsinlapland.blogspot.co.uk/

Antigua blog

Here is the link to our new blog, imaginatively titled:

http://griffithsinantigua.blogspot.co.uk/

See you there!!

Back home

Steve and the kids went for a final swim in the morning, leaving Rachel with some space to finish the packing. Luckily everything went back in! We had to checkout at 12 and didn't need to be at the airport until 3 so we stopped at an Outlet Mall and had a final dinner and did a bit of shopping. We made it safely to the airport and through into the departure lounge, where we all had nice refreshing Frappucinos!

We had a nice 777 home with a good entertainment system, though Isobel was torn as Brave was available but we'd promised to take her to see it on Sunday. In the end she watched some of it as a taster! The drive home was uneventful and we got back about 3 PM, all fairly tired!

As a footnote, the blog allows you to see stats of page views. As expected we saw a lot from the UK and France, plus the US as we looked ourselves, but we also seem to have picked up a big following in Russia, with  67 page views over the 3 weeks, plus a few in Germany and South Korea. I wonder what they were searching for to find it!

Anyway, that's it for now. See you all soon and we have a lot more photos and videos to bore you with. :)

Disneyland afternoon and baseball

Such was the shortness of the queues we'd been on pretty much everything we wanted to go on by 4 PM just in time to catch the parade. We managed to get a good spot to view it, but it was in the sun and getting very warm by this time.

We also went on the Indiana Jones ride which we hadn't been too before, which was excellent if a little bone shaking.

After a short refresh in the room we jumped into the car to drive the couple of miles to the LA Angels of Anaheim stadium to see our final treat of the holiday, a baseball game.

Isobel wasn't too bothered apart from the free food in our package but Sam really got into the spirit of things and made friends with a couple of kids sitting behind us, including some rather ambitious flirting with the girl who was probably about 16. He enjoyed being somewhere where shouting, screaming and being annoying are endearing American traits. The game ended up being a humdinger too, with the Angels coming from behind to win 6-5 against the Red Sox in the final innings.

Disneyland morning

Another early start, this time to go to Disneyland. It was really quiet, to the point where there wasn't any point getting fast passes, when you tried to use them the queues were so small they were after the fast pass entry points. It was another glorious sunny day too.

It was just as well it was sunny, as Rachel got soaked on Splash Mountain roughly 2 seconds after this photo was taken on the way down.

Isobel managed to see both Merida from Brave and Rapunzel, while Steve and Sam went on the new Star Tours updated ride. Lunch was a rather tasty pasta and salad (pizza for the kids).

Disney California Adventure afternoon

After a hot dog lunch we carried on around the park. It was pretty hot by now, hotter than we had expected, but everyone was well creamed up. We watched the live Aladdin stage show which was excellent, the Genie shoed in some very topical jokes including one about Prince Harry in Vegas. We didn't have to queue for more than about 15 minutes for any other ride and most of the fast passes were barely an hour ahead.

After dinner we watched the World of Color water and light show on the lake, a mixture of fountains and projections onto water screens. It was very magical and the Blackberry pics don't really do it justice I'm sure. As an added bonus we got to see the Disneyland fireworks as we walked home, all fairly tired!

Disneyland California Adventure morning

We were up and out early to walk over the road to the California Adventure park. We haven't been here before, last time we were here we just did Disneyland. They have just opened a Cars land area (after the film) which had made it more popular, in fact the first thing we did when we got in is got fast track tickets for the Radiator Springs Racers because it is very popular and the queues by midday were about 2 hours, which is insane. 

Luckily it meant the rest of the park was quieter. We got Sam to go on the California Screamin' roller coaster.

The Cars ride was good, a bit like Test Track in Florida. Other good rides were the River Rapids as it was very hot and nice to get wet, Goofy's Sky School was like the mighty mouse and Toy Story Midway Mania. We saw Jake and the NeverLand Pirates live on stage and came out just in time to see the Pixar parade.

Hollywood and Vine

As you may have seen on Facebook, we had to find Judy Garland's star on Hollywood Boulevard. As a bonus we also found her handprints at the Chinese Theater.

We were saved by a McDonalds when Rachel needed the loo, public toilets are hard to find in Hollywood! After this we drove down to Venice Beach. Unfortunately it was a sunny Summer Sunday and lots of other people had the same idea, so parking proved to be a challenge.

We headed back and went to Downtown Disney, where the kids looked around the stores and began to get very excited.