Last Day in the USA

Day seven saw us do a quick half day trip to the Theme Parks to repeat some favorites. These included The Matterhorn, Space Mountain, Star Wars - Star Tours at Disney and Pixie Hollow. Soaring California and Screamin California at California Adventure. Unfortunately none of the rides had the same adrenalin rush as they did the first time except Screamin that would still be exhilarating no matter how many times you ride it. There seem to be a lot of glitches in the rides over the last couple of days. We were able to catch up with most of the rides we wanted to do after a couple of visits and uses of
Fast Passes. The one ride we missed and are disappointed about is the monorail. We tried to get on it a number of times over the last couple of days and missed out. We would have loved to see the Parks from above and take yet some more photos.

All in all our trip to LA and Anaheim has been good. We certainly know that Anaheim is really the only area we would spend any time in in the future. We know we are basing this on a very limited exposure. Unless there are any great changes we would not worry about visiting Universal again. Our accommodation, ,Desert Palms, was adequate but a little dated. Staff were very friendly and helpful. We would consider staying here again but now we know the lay of the land there are certainly many other accommodation options that we had seen during researching that are in the same area or even closer. We had a approximately a ten minute comfortable walk to get into Disneyland in one direction or we could approach from the other side and come into Down Town Disney in a similar time. There were some very handy shops very near to the hotel which contained reasonably priced grocery and basic pharmacy, laundry and souvenirs. Over the road was Subway, a great pizza place, Chinese, Mexican, ice-cream shop and more souvenirs. All of the fast food was quick, cheap and tasty.

Currently we are sitting at LAX waiting for our flight to Auckland. The girls have palled up with three children of a similar age returning home to NZ. They are sitting on the floor drawing, reading and playing cards. This is good as a three hour wait at the airport can be tedious for adults let alone tired children. We have found the children are two rows ahead of us. We don’t know yet whether this will be a good thing or not.