California 2002 - Trip Report

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The majority of our trip was organized by Disney Travel.  This was after I had done extensive research to get the best deal, and one web site said always check with Disney themselves, sometimes they have deals that cannot be beat.  How true it was.  Most of the package was not particularly cheap price wise, but they had a airline deal of 2 for 1 tickets going, which for a family of 6 works out great.  This included park hopper tickets for 5 days and 2 rooms at the Grand California hotel.  This was a pure theme park trip, had no intention of seeing any other SoCal sites.

Our general trip plan was...

Friday 12/6: Drive to Denver and spend the night

Saturday 12/7:  AM Fly to Anaheim, PM spend at Universal Studio's

Sunday 12/8: Universal Studio's

Monday 12/9: Drive down to Disneyland Resort, Spend afternoon at California Adventure

Tuesday 12/10 - Friday 12/13: Spend time between California Adventure and Disneyland

Throughout this report I will rate various rides, shows and eating places on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being bad and 5 being very good.  This represents the entire family's view, and not just my own.

We drove up to Denver Friday Night (Dec. 6th) and stayed near the airport so we could easily make our early flight.  This is the second time the family has flown somewhere and they are already acting like traveling veteran's.  Nothing special about the flight, it was direct to John Wayne Airport in Anaheim, and from there we drove about an hour up to Hollywood.  Our reservations for the first two nights were at the Universal Hilton (), a gleaming 24 story tower situated on 6 1/2 acres high on a hill above Los Angeles' entertainment district, with a view of Universal Studios theme park.  It's a beautiful Hotel with a direct shuttle service to Universal Studio's.  We had concierge service rooms and it was a very nice hotel, including mini-bars in the rooms.  The hotel restaurants were a little upper end for the kids but we managed.

 Universal Studio's, December 7th 2002

Our first day in I was not planning on going into the theme park, but once we were there we couldn't resist.  The only "bad" thing was I didn't have my camera with me so no pictures...

Rides and shows we managed to see the first afternoon were:

Animal Planet Live - Great for younger kids, but everyone should like it.

Terminator 2: 3D - My only complaint was it was Sooooooo loud.  I must be getting old.  Showing it's age a bit.

Waterworld - Very entertaining show, you might get WET.

Studio Tour - Definitely worth seeing, we wished we had had time to do it again.

Universal Studio's, December 8th 2002
Near Universal Studio's Entrance	Joshua, Veronica and Valerie in Front of Universal Studio's Globe	Universal Studio's Globe with the kids	Spiderman Rocks Music Show sign	Universal Studio's Christmas Tree
Spiderman Rocks Music Show	Universal Studio's Parade	More Parade...	More Parade...	More Parade...
Spiderman Rocks Show - Some good tunes.  Nice effects, loud.
More Parade...	More Parade...	More Parade...	More Parade...	More Parade...
Universal Parade - Get to see a lot of universal characters.  They throw goodies to the kids.  Doesn't compare to Disney Parade's.
More Parade...	More Parade...	Actor's from the WaterWorld show	The Hulk	Valerie, Joshua and Veronica and the Hulk
Veronica with Jaws	Matt and his buddy Jaws	Overlooking Universal backlot	Universal backlot	Veronica and Matt
Jurassic Park - The Ride - Me and the kids rode this.  Really fun, tame until BIG drop at end.  You can get pretty wet.
Back to the Future - The Ride - The kids rate this as the only 5 star ride - they rode it 4 times.  This is the only ride we did multiple times.
Backdraft - I thought it was cool.  Nobody else did.  Quite a bit of heat.

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