luckykaa

So, some overall impressions.

LA's public transport is actually a lot better than I expected. Buses are cheap and don't seem to be particularly fussy about collecting fares. The subway system does suffer a bit from being a B&B for the homeless but at least it's reasonably new (The oldest lines date from the 90s) and well lit. Also has lifts, which is nice to have, but they reek. Shame the escalators rarely worked when we were there. Still, we did get the subway to Hollywood Boulevard, a bus all the way to Disneyland (which is actually around 25 miles) and a light rail to Santa Monica.

The city really needs to do something about its homlessness problem. We did encounter an extremely chartming beggar but she shouldn't have had to ask strangers for money.

It's true that everyone is in, or wants to be in, the movie business!

Wish we had more time at Disneyland. And at Universal Studios for that matter. And would have been nice to have been less rained on that day.

Californians seem to be a lot more easy going than New Yorkers.

Hotel was very nice, and was used in many movies. Pool was okay, but they used to have a hot tub. They still had signs bout it but the wall leading to it was blocked off. The Historic Corridor was really nice though, with photos from Oscar celebrations that had been held there.

So, it's "catboy's choice@ day. Apparently I've been dragged around so it's my turn.

I wanted to be a science nerd. There's an observatory in the Hollywood Hills. It was a location for Terminator, Rebel Without a Cause, the Rocketeer and a lot of other movies, and is an excellent vantage point for seeing the Hollywood sign, but most importantly of all, it's an observatory! They have telescopes there.

flickums was not that interested. She was, however very  keen on petting some dogs that had shown up. This was obviously some sort of charity looking for homes for dogs. Flick took a liking to Sheena the husky, and was very upset that we wouldn't be able to take her home.

Observatory had a small visitor centre, mostly aimed at kids. There's the usual selection of exhibits - some models of planets and stars,  Faucault's pendulum, brass markings indicating scale distances of planetary orbits, but they also had a Tesla Coil and they demonstrate it at the weekends! It was the weekend!!

So having seen that, I wanted to go to Santa Monica Pier. Flickums persuaded me that we should take a short detour to Union Station which doubled as the police station in Blade Runner.

So after that brief detour, we got on the train to Santa Monica. It was more of a train than a tram, but the lack of street running means it's probably best classified as light rail. Anyway, it was a long journey, but there was a very talkative conspiracy theorist telling us all about everything from his Portuguese ex-wife to how we all have a chromosome 2 and how he's a private investigator. Given some of the crazies we encountered, this was one of the more pleasant ones.

So, we arrived. Santa Monica is a seaside resort and as a seaside cat, I find all seaside resorts comfortingly similar. There are shops selling beach stuff, and a pier. Santa Monica has a sandy beach and it's actually pleasantly warm and busy even in February, so definitely a nice place to visit.

I was hoping it would be more stereotypically Californian, with people playing frisbee, driving dune bugs around and roller-blading along the promenade but that was not to be. There were buskers on the pier, including some Stormtroopers who let people take photos with them for a substantial tip, and a chap playing a "Tale As Old As Time" from Beauty And The Beast on violin. Rides were extortionately expensive so gave them a miss.

A lady came up and started chatting to us, complimenting flickums a lot, before asking for money. She was very nice though, and this was the politest beggar I'd ever encountered so I figure she earned $10.

We got the the end of the pier, and looked out over the ocean. That was really all I wanted to do there. Soak up the seaside ambiance. There was a small display showing the history of the pier. Apparently the inspiration for Popeye - Olaf Olsen - was one of the people who spent a lot of time on the pier. At one point there was a proposal to replace the pier with a bridge to an artificial island, showing that politicians sometimes just don't get it.

I felt at this point I'd soaked up enough seaside atmosphere. so we returned and headed to Hollywood Boulevard, stiopped to look at the Apollo 11 'star" (actually a moon), and grabbed dinner, but we were really here for my final pick of the day,  I wanted to go to the Scum and Villainy cantina. A Star Wars themed bar, with many a cocktail. I had a "Stay Puft Martini", a Tiki Temple of Doom (served with the Indiana Jones theme accompanying) and a cocknocker (alcohol free).

Really nice place. Cocktails were surprisingly cheap. Staff seemed highly geeky! Door the the gents' was painted up as the TARDIS.

It was a pleasant last full day.

Today's weather: Rain. Lots of rain. All the rain!

But that didn't deter us. We had tickets booked for Universal Studios and by golly we were going to go to Universal Studios! And we did. We even got to sit at the front of the carriage of the shuttle/bus/road-train thing which was a mistake because it doesn't have front windows and it was raining.

So, Universal Studios is a theme park next to the Universal studio complex. There are rides, including the studio tour! Since there was no wait time on that, and it was the one thing I really wanted to do, that's where we went first!

Our guide was Joy. My god was she enthusiastic! Our driver was Mark. Joy was extremely enthusiastic about Mark's driving skills. So we enthusiastically set off. Part of the tour was simply showing some of the town sets. These get re-used a lot apparently. There was a Wild West area, Mexico, and "Little Europe" - a set that can fit in for pretty much any European country just by changing the language used for road signs. It was also used for The Good Place. Wouldn't have recognised it if it wasn't pointed out although I might have recognised the station.

Some of the sets were just facades, but we had a whole crashed plane set that was used for War Of The Worlds.

We also had some set pieces. Amity Island, where Joy's "boyfriend" George was diving. But poor George got eaten by a mechanical shark. Poor Joy was heartbroken for several seconds. There were a few set pieces like that. The Mexico set they could make it rain. Since it was pouring with rain, that didn't make a lot of difference. But they also caused a flash flood! All very impressive.

The other aspect of the tour are two action rides. The "tram" (an open bus with several carriages) pulls into a studio building, and we get a 3D action sequence (3D glasses provided) with hydraulics to shake us all about! First one was Kong, where we were in the middle of a fight between King Kong and some dinosaurs. The other was a Fast And Furious ride - it even started with several women who didn't pack enough clothes. they were ushered away, we had a rather cheesy expositional sequence with Vin Diesel and other F&F cast, before we were launched into an exciting car chase!

So we finished the tour and looked at ride times. Because of the weather these were all pretty darn short. Jurassic World ride (which is mostly outside, and a "splash" ride)  had a 5 minute queue. Figured I was already wet so why not! Plot is a basic tour of the park goes wrong, so it's a pleasant cruise round the herbivore pens, then everything goes haywire and we get attacked by dinosaurs before, for reasons that don't need to make sense, we do a dive and splash into the water.

flickums  was happy waiting in the Jurassic Park cafe, and let me go on another ride that she's too wussy for. Revenge of The Mummy. A really good roller coaster that starts off in the dark, then goes backwards!!! Neither ride had a queue so I didn't feel too bad about having Flick wait for me.

We were already there so decided to have lunch at the Jurassic Cafe. Flick ordered a turkey leg platter, which, appropriately for the cafe, looked as big as a dinosaur leg!

I managed to persuade Flick to go on the Transformers 3D ride. There aren't any drops and this was confirmed by several sources. This didn't stop it from being a really intense ride! Riders are in cars that zip about and zoom around with a really solid impression of flying and racing around. Presumably it's mostly fairly stationary aside from the tilting and shaking, and we're just shuttled between screens but the illusion is absolutely incredible and really feels like we must have travelled miles at extreme speeds! Definitely the most exciting ride I've been on this holiday!

We then went for the less intense King Fu Panda ride. This was essentially a movie with tilting vibrating seats. Good fun though and quite nice to have a sit down.

We weren't intending Kung Fu Panda to be our final ride, but next we went for the Secret Life Of Pet. Unlike the others this seemed to have a really long queue. That spent long periods not moving at all. After a while we started questioning why we were even there. We hadn't seen the movie, and there wasn't any particular selling point. Decided to bail on that one.

At this point we were getting Flash Flood warnings on our phones (In America these are automated broadcast messages)

We were going to go to Waterworld - the water based stunt show and call it a day, but turned out it was cancelled, ironically because of the rain. Decided to call it a wash - in every sense of the word - and head back to the hotel.

Managed quite a haul in the shops. Flickums bought a "Bort" keyring. Sadly we didn't see any calendars with the month of  Smarch. I picked up a wallet for Flickums because it was half-price. Somehow it was even less than that. No idea what happened there. We also acquired socks (matching His And Hers Frankenstein/Bride Of Frankenstein socks), T-shirts and a cuddly Toothless, who I plan to train. That last one was a last minute impulse purchase I decided I wanted just after we left. I dashed back in (fortunately we had a re-entry hand stamp that we went for mainly out of a sense of irony), and bought it. Flickums had made good use of the time making her own purchase of a pancake. I was offered a bite. It was hot, and delicious!!!

So a few other notes; there's a "Springfield" area with a lot of shops and restaurants based on Simpsons shops. There's Moe's bar, a Krusty Burger, a Kwik-e-Mart (the gift shop) and others. There's also a Harry Potter area that we avoided because we're not that fond of JK Rowling right now.

At the time we left, despite it still being relatively early, very few people were still arriving. Quite a number were leaving.

Disneyland is not close to Downtown LA. But there is an express bus service that will take us there in 2 hours. Not bad for $2 per person, especially since the driver decided he couldn't be bothered dealing with 2 tourists trying to pay so let us on for free.

Disney has the usual security bag check. We got through there, and flickums asked someone where we could buy tickets.

"You don't have a reservation!?" came the shocked reply. We were grudgingly directed to the ticket booth. I tried getting the app to work. Turns out it was the Disneyland Paris app. Tried downloading the correct app. Didn't want to let me log in. Tickets were a lot more expensive than Flickums was prepared for. And for some reason needed to supply an email address for tickets, as the ticket seller disappeared for several minutes dealing with this.

With Flick still feeling from sticker shock, we got in! I was feeling a bit grumpy over tech frustrating me, so Flickums let me have first choice. After walking down Main street, we were right by Star Tours! So that's my choice. It's really good fun! It's a simulator - hydraulic movements - and the premise is we're taking a trip to see the sights of the Star Wars universe but we get mixed up in the events of the movies.

Next was Flickums Choice, there wouldn't be any argument, so Haunted Mansion!!! 

This did involve taking the train! Which took us through the dinsosaur era!

Haunted Manson is really good fun! Lots of clever optical illusions. Starts in a "Stretching Room", which seems to just extend. Portraits around the edges extend so you see the full bodies of the people in who are now shown to be in dangerous situations. The stretching room is actually a lift. something I told Flick about some time ago but she already knew and now I'm relentlessly teased about. But it is a really good ride! So much fun, and lots of clever optical illusions for the ghosts.

Flick then insisted we go to Fantasyland which is where all the princesses live. Flick was getting very excited, then exploded at seeing a princess meet and greet! I glued the exploded flickums fragments together and we joined the queue. Flick was assuming we'd get a random princess, but we got three! First up was Cinderella who loved that I was being Lucifer for the day! Next up was Ariel who said it must have been a long swim from England. And we were directed to the next room. where Flick almost missed Snow White! I was on the verge of a rugby tackle before she noticed, and seemed really quite star struck! After that we went on the Snow White Enchanted Wish ride at Flick's behest,

I felt at this point, I could demand it was my turn to choose, so I went to Galaxy's Edge - the Star Wars area. Disney have done some fantastic set dressing there! It really feels like you're on Tatooine! There was a bar selling blue milk, which tasted kinda weird. We then went to Docking Bay 7 for food. Really quite tasty - Star wars themed but fairly general fast food type stuff. I had a pitta hummus and fake meatball thing - "Felucian Kefta", Flick had "Chicken Yip Tip" which was crispy chicken served with American style gravy.

Rides in the area were a little heavy on the queuing, so I was dragged back to Fantasyland for Mr Toad's Wild ride - basically a car taking us through Wind In The Willows scenes. Next was It's a Small World because apparently it's the law. I have to say this is one that confuses me. I guess it was quite a nice attraction when is started in the 1964 worlds fair, but it seems a little tame and kinda of cheap looking by today's standards. And damn that song gets stuck in your head!

I really wanted something that was more of a Neil thing, so we agreed to go our separate ways, Flick hates roller coasters. I love them, so I went for Space Mountain! Longest I had to queue. An hour and a bit. But I would have been upset if I hadn't gone on this one. It's one of the famous rides. A space themed roller coaster in the dark! There are some elements that really feel like you're just being launched into a void! Great fun!

Poor Flick was stuck in the  queue for the storybook canal, and then they closed the ride on her, so had to go for some retail therapy.

At this point the Pirates Of the Caribbean ride queue had died down a bit so we went on that. Good fun. We got to sail past diners at one of the restaurants. Were planning on food after this but Haunted Mansion queue had shrunk and Flick wanted another go!

Dinner at Alien Pizza Planet.

I really wanted to go on the Smuggler's run ride so we figured we'd squeeze in a few more rides. especially because things were a lot quicker now people had started going home. It was a confusing ride. Interactive to a degree. We were pilots. I was left/right, flick was up/down. Not sure whether the controls actually did that much but it was fun!

We were hoping to see the castle, and go on the paddle steamer but by this point things were starting to close. Decided to finish off with one last ride on Peter Pan - okay that came out wrong. But anyway, the ride involves flying over London and Neverland in a pirate ship.

And at this point we just had the trouble of getting home. Was a bit confusing where to get the bus. Tried the other side of the road, but no. Disney staff were pretty hopeless and guessed wildly but were wrong. A helpful man who knew what he was talking about. Turns out buses in both directions stop at the same stop.

2 hours later we were finally back home.

Bed was nice. Bed was warm!