Yes, just like that! Our year end holidays are coming to an end. We spent a good part of it on holiday in California and we had a blast there!
We flew on EVA air and I must say, Asian airlines are always great! The timing of the flight was good too. We left in the afternoon from Singapore and landed at LAX at about 230pm. After collecting our luggages and picking up the call, we got to Ah Yi's house at about dinner time. That meant that we did not have to struggle to stay awake for a long time. We did some light shopping at a nearby shopping place and then went to bed for the light. This really helped in easing the jetlag.
After resting for a 3 days to get over the jetlag, we made the long drive (7 hours) up to San Francisco to meet up with Wendy and family. It is always fun to go on road trips. It is even more fun as Les had to drive on the left! The boys were good on the drive. We only stopped once for lunch and another time for a toilet break. They entertained themselves by drawing (Kieran), watching movies on the iPad squashed between the front seats or taking naps. People are always amazed that our kids never had problems on long drives, but I guess they are just used to being in the car seats and they never knew they could make a fuss! :P
We started on theme parks in the 2nd week of our holiday. Our first stop was Universal Studios. We enjoyed the studio tours the most. We saw the new King Kong attraction in the back lots. They rebuilt the studio after the last one was burnt down in a fire back in 2008. This new attraction is now a 3D show where we saw King Kong fight with the V-rex to save our tram. It was a fantastic experience.
We next went Disneyland. We spent 3 days at Disneyland and the boys loved the Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blaster ride. We went on that ride umpteen times and there was no fast pass on it! At California Adventure Park, we loved Soarin' over California. Kiefer just managed to make the 40" height limit on this ride. We probably went onto the ride 3-4 times at least. During one of the times, the ride broke down and we received a fast pass that was good for any of the rides (except Star tours) in the park. That was great because we used it at Toy Story Midway Mania where the queue was forever at least 45 minutes long. Just because we had the pass, we managed to go on that ride a second time.
We bought the boys some Disney pins from ebay for the boys to do some
trading at Disneyland. They had a lot of fun looking for pins that they
like. It was a cheap and fun activity for them at DL, especially for
Kiefer, when he had to wait around for his gege and daddy to finish
their rides. He'll look for pins that he likes and trade them. We bought
the pins at ebay for only about $1 a piece and we managed to trade them
for beautiful pins that probably cost $6 - $15 a piece.
We drove down to Vegas and San Diego in the following week.The boys have not been to Vegas before and the last time we both went, it was 5 years ago. It was nice to be back there again. We watched 2 shows there. The Blue Man Group was hilarious. It was a musical/ percussion show that stimulated the senses. We also saw Cirque Du Soleil's Mystere. We watched such a late show that I actually fell asleep during the trapeze segment. The 2 boys loved the show, especially the big baby character that was in the show.
We originally wanted to drive to the Grand Canyon but decided against making the long drive. We did go to Hoover Dam though. Kieran could recall the exact scene from Superman that was filmed there. It was a nice sight-seeing trip.
In the final week, we were off to Seaworld, San Diego Zoo and Legoland. The boys were actually really looking forward to Seaworld. Though they still loved the Shamu show, we thought that Seaworld has lost its charm. Both the Shamu and Dolphin shows were quite bad. There was not much interaction between the animals and their trainers. In the Dolphin show, half the show had board divers jumping off the diving boards and also had a macaw (dancer in costume) flying around. However, Kiefer loved looking at the huge walrus at the Wild Artic exhibit. It was obvious that the walrus was really bored as it swam round and round in the same routine. Kiefer kept running up and down, following the walrus' path from outside the glass.
We haven't been back to San Diego Zoo in a while. We actually quite enjoy riding on the open top tram around the zoo. I think there were improvements made to the zoo because I didn't remember it to be so huge. However, the skyride (cable car) was closed and we missed going up on it. The boys enjoyed looking at the gorilla as there are no gorillas in our Singapore zoo.
Legoland was definitely their favourite park in San Diego. We adults love it too. The rides are just so fun. This is the first time Kiefer could drive in the Volvo driving school and he did so well in there. He finally earned his "driver's licence"! :P
After San Diego, we spent another 2 nights in LA and it was back to Singapore. It will be awhile before we can embark on such a long holiday again!
