Ah, Lombard St.
Where were we? Ah yes, Disneyland! And Coachella, an understandably meaningless name that I'll soon attach meaning to.
Disneyland: An Introduction
Disneyland is the first theme park created by Walt Disney. It's located outside Las Angeles in Anaheim, and shouldn't be confused with Disney World, which is inconveniently located on the other side of the states. It's also "the happiest place on Earth"®©™- a fact many seemed overly-keen to share with me.
Disneyland is a sensible size at 160 acres. It takes roughly a day to explore and has been expanded to include a second park called Californian Adventure (of another 60 acres or so). I tell you this because Disney World in Florida is slightly bigger - its 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, 23 themed resorts and numerous golf courses cover a staggering 30,080 acres! Bigger may be better, but Disneyland is still "the happiest place on Earth" - a fact I'm likely to remind you of at least a few more times...
Disneyland featured prominently in the 90's era "Saturday Disney" where bloody James whatever-his-bloody-name-was was forever riding rollercoasters and telling us how bloody fun the bloody place was (if you happened to have the means to go to the other side of the planet). Well, jokes on you James whatz-it, I've now ticked the carefully engineered childhood anxiety you and Saturday Disney worked so hard to create off my life's todo list! But I'm getting ahead of myself...
The Plan
On Tina's superb recommendation, we arranged to visit Disneyland over the Easter weekend, and as Tina's family live in the OC (Orange County) it provided a nice double-whammy opportunity for me to meet them. Sunday was spent lunching on delicious Vietnamese cuisine and then exploring Laguna Beach.
When I say "the OC", the image of opulent seaside living and expensive teen-strife conjured in your mind isn't accurate; the OC is a broad area with a sensible mix of people. It is, however, entirely appropriate for Laguna Beach; that area is crazy nice and full of shiny rich kids.
On a related note, I'm lead to believe the image conjured by "Beverly Hills 90210" is an accurate representation of it's namesake.
Disneyland
I was pretty impressed with Disneyland. It's thoroughly well put together and maintained, and a great deal of attention has been paid to make sure everything is as enjoyable as possible; every potentially-mundane experience has been Disney-ified and made to shine. That is, with the exception of the toilets - they're frightfully dull. I'll give you a few seconds to assume the worst about what I must have been expecting and then more gracefully on...
There isn't much in the way of thrill rides, although there are a few fun coasters and water rides. Disneyland is very much a family-friendly experience. The park appears to have been updated regularly to keep with the times. However, the "It's a Small World" ride seems to persist from the very first days as a nostalgic treat. It has you sit in a boat that floats through some 30 different rooms full of singing dolls, each representing a different culture from around the world. Each culture is singing the same short song about how its a small world after all, but each in their own language and stereo-typical instruments. The effect moves from charming to maddening after the tenth or so minute... but it's so iconic it's worth it! :)
They like to dress-up at Disneyland! You'll regularly bump into performers and costumed folk being mercilessly mobbed by kids (and adults...). Speaking of dress-ups, there's also a huge daily parade. The path the parade takes is clearly marked and defended by crew members (Disney-speak for security enforcers) to limit mobbing by kids or adults, which seems justified as the parade is actually pretty damn impressive! Cue slides!
Coachella!
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival seems like a remarkably, some would say patronisingly, straight forward name. It is in fact, quite misleading. Its a MASSIVE 3-day music festival held in the desert with some art, and a fair few smelly porta-loos thrown in for good measure.
Coachella is held in the Coachella Valley in Indio, California. Indio is a curious place. It's in the middle of the desert, and yet seems to consist almost entirely of golf-courses, palm trees, parks and other green things that consume far more water than is readily available. Fittingly, the festival is held on the grounds of a polo club, who don't mind having their grass crushed beyond recognition once anually, as it gives them an opportunity to use more water!
My mate Joel, who I worked with at Halfbrick many kilo-moons ago, is working in the states for 12 weeks and suggested we go. And so we did. However, we decided not to camp in the desert... let me explain.
The majority of Coachella's 75,000 attendants camp in adjacent fields. While this is a solid plan assuming the desert decides not to be hot, you'd be surprised how inconvenient and hot a desert can decide to be. Mercifully, we splashed out on a hotel package so we could hide in our air-conditioned room when the going got tough. Also shower and use the toilet; luxuries those camping often couldn't manage. This turned out to be a master-stroke (read: lucky) as every day hit 40°C by lunch, maxed out at 43°C and refused to relent until well after sunset. That stuff about deserts getting wicked cold at night turns out to be crap, too. It was also extremely dry, so you trade slight cool from sweat evaporation for the potential of devastating dehydration! So essentially, everyone was wearing as little as possible, constantly drinking water and hiding in the minimal shade provided by palm trees. One must be careful drinking water however; drink too little and you faint, drink too much and you risk needing to use a porta-loo and potentially faint for different reasons, under much less desirable circumstances...
And so we began enjoying music in the company of other lunatics. There were some excellent bands to see over the 3 days. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing M83, The Shins, Bon Iver and Radiohead. And discovered that I love the chilled out sound of Real Estate. Snoop Dog and Dr Dre also put on, what I'm lead to believe, was a fine show with the assistance of holo-Tupac and a humorous array of unnecessary expletives.
I paid US$6 for an ice-cream. The following day I paid US$7 for the same ice-cream in a waffle sandwich. Like cinemas, festivals have their own curious economy where the cool rush brought on by eating an ice-creams seems more valuable than silly pieces of paper... Beers were $9, Heineken and you had to drink them in little beer zones nowhere near the music. We decided not to drink. Not because it was a waste of money, kept us from music, or made us need to pee (see above) but because it was Heineken. Also, we had beer in our hotel fridge... :)
I'll wrap up with some photos of the art installations strewn around the festival grounds.
Seal Beach
Before heading to Coachella I took a look around Seal Beach, Joel's temporary home, and took some pretty photos (damn your internal desire for things to be recounted in chronological order!). These are they!
That's all folks.
Well, that took forever to write. Hope you enjoyed living vicariously through me. I'd have included more cool photos of stuff at Disneyland, but I didn't take any... so you get what you get, I'm afraid.
So, how are you?
Love,
Dan
PS. Did you know DIsneyland is the happiest place on earth? :P
Disneyland is the first theme park created by Walt Disney. It's located outside Las Angeles in Anaheim, and shouldn't be confused with Disney World, which is inconveniently located on the other side of the states. It's also "the happiest place on Earth"®©™- a fact many seemed overly-keen to share with me.
Disneyland is a sensible size at 160 acres. It takes roughly a day to explore and has been expanded to include a second park called Californian Adventure (of another 60 acres or so). I tell you this because Disney World in Florida is slightly bigger - its 4 theme parks, 2 water parks, 23 themed resorts and numerous golf courses cover a staggering 30,080 acres! Bigger may be better, but Disneyland is still "the happiest place on Earth" - a fact I'm likely to remind you of at least a few more times...
Disneyland featured prominently in the 90's era "Saturday Disney" where bloody James whatever-his-bloody-name-was was forever riding rollercoasters and telling us how bloody fun the bloody place was (if you happened to have the means to go to the other side of the planet). Well, jokes on you James whatz-it, I've now ticked the carefully engineered childhood anxiety you and Saturday Disney worked so hard to create off my life's todo list! But I'm getting ahead of myself...
The Plan
On Tina's superb recommendation, we arranged to visit Disneyland over the Easter weekend, and as Tina's family live in the OC (Orange County) it provided a nice double-whammy opportunity for me to meet them. Sunday was spent lunching on delicious Vietnamese cuisine and then exploring Laguna Beach.
When I say "the OC", the image of opulent seaside living and expensive teen-strife conjured in your mind isn't accurate; the OC is a broad area with a sensible mix of people. It is, however, entirely appropriate for Laguna Beach; that area is crazy nice and full of shiny rich kids.
 |
| Laguna Beach. Shiny rich kids not pictured. |
On a related note, I'm lead to believe the image conjured by "Beverly Hills 90210" is an accurate representation of it's namesake.
Disneyland
I was pretty impressed with Disneyland. It's thoroughly well put together and maintained, and a great deal of attention has been paid to make sure everything is as enjoyable as possible; every potentially-mundane experience has been Disney-ified and made to shine. That is, with the exception of the toilets - they're frightfully dull. I'll give you a few seconds to assume the worst about what I must have been expecting and then more gracefully on...
 |
| Me imitating a chump in front of the castle. It's not a real castle. |
There isn't much in the way of thrill rides, although there are a few fun coasters and water rides. Disneyland is very much a family-friendly experience. The park appears to have been updated regularly to keep with the times. However, the "It's a Small World" ride seems to persist from the very first days as a nostalgic treat. It has you sit in a boat that floats through some 30 different rooms full of singing dolls, each representing a different culture from around the world. Each culture is singing the same short song about how its a small world after all, but each in their own language and stereo-typical instruments. The effect moves from charming to maddening after the tenth or so minute... but it's so iconic it's worth it! :)
 |
| Tina in a fire engine. It's not a real fire engine. |
They like to dress-up at Disneyland! You'll regularly bump into performers and costumed folk being mercilessly mobbed by kids (and adults...). Speaking of dress-ups, there's also a huge daily parade. The path the parade takes is clearly marked and defended by crew members (Disney-speak for security enforcers) to limit mobbing by kids or adults, which seems justified as the parade is actually pretty damn impressive! Cue slides!
Coachella!
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival seems like a remarkably, some would say patronisingly, straight forward name. It is in fact, quite misleading. Its a MASSIVE 3-day music festival held in the desert with some art, and a fair few smelly porta-loos thrown in for good measure.
Coachella is held in the Coachella Valley in Indio, California. Indio is a curious place. It's in the middle of the desert, and yet seems to consist almost entirely of golf-courses, palm trees, parks and other green things that consume far more water than is readily available. Fittingly, the festival is held on the grounds of a polo club, who don't mind having their grass crushed beyond recognition once anually, as it gives them an opportunity to use more water!
 |
| Desert by day... |
 |
| ...desert by dusk. |
My mate Joel, who I worked with at Halfbrick many kilo-moons ago, is working in the states for 12 weeks and suggested we go. And so we did. However, we decided not to camp in the desert... let me explain.
The majority of Coachella's 75,000 attendants camp in adjacent fields. While this is a solid plan assuming the desert decides not to be hot, you'd be surprised how inconvenient and hot a desert can decide to be. Mercifully, we splashed out on a hotel package so we could hide in our air-conditioned room when the going got tough. Also shower and use the toilet; luxuries those camping often couldn't manage. This turned out to be a master-stroke (read: lucky) as every day hit 40°C by lunch, maxed out at 43°C and refused to relent until well after sunset. That stuff about deserts getting wicked cold at night turns out to be crap, too. It was also extremely dry, so you trade slight cool from sweat evaporation for the potential of devastating dehydration! So essentially, everyone was wearing as little as possible, constantly drinking water and hiding in the minimal shade provided by palm trees. One must be careful drinking water however; drink too little and you faint, drink too much and you risk needing to use a porta-loo and potentially faint for different reasons, under much less desirable circumstances...
 |
| 3 of the 5 stages had coverage to limit the heat to unbearable. |
And so we began enjoying music in the company of other lunatics. There were some excellent bands to see over the 3 days. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing M83, The Shins, Bon Iver and Radiohead. And discovered that I love the chilled out sound of Real Estate. Snoop Dog and Dr Dre also put on, what I'm lead to believe, was a fine show with the assistance of holo-Tupac and a humorous array of unnecessary expletives.
 |
| Music in progress. |
 |
| The main stage. That building is easily 5 storeys with room for everyone in front... |
I paid US$6 for an ice-cream. The following day I paid US$7 for the same ice-cream in a waffle sandwich. Like cinemas, festivals have their own curious economy where the cool rush brought on by eating an ice-creams seems more valuable than silly pieces of paper... Beers were $9, Heineken and you had to drink them in little beer zones nowhere near the music. We decided not to drink. Not because it was a waste of money, kept us from music, or made us need to pee (see above) but because it was Heineken. Also, we had beer in our hotel fridge... :)
I'll wrap up with some photos of the art installations strewn around the festival grounds.
Seal Beach
Before heading to Coachella I took a look around Seal Beach, Joel's temporary home, and took some pretty photos (damn your internal desire for things to be recounted in chronological order!). These are they!
 |
| BBQ pulled pork sandwich with sweet potato fries. MMmmmm..... |
That's all folks.
Well, that took forever to write. Hope you enjoyed living vicariously through me. I'd have included more cool photos of stuff at Disneyland, but I didn't take any... so you get what you get, I'm afraid.
So, how are you?
Love,
Dan
PS. Did you know DIsneyland is the happiest place on earth? :P
Great work Dan. Thanks for sharing your travels :) we miss you here, but your stories help...
ReplyDeleteLove em
Awesome. Thanks for the update.
ReplyDeleteCooooooooooooooooooool.
ReplyDelete(I discovered my bookmark of your blog.)
Joel.
Sounds like you're having all the fun. Disneyland is pretty bad-ass (and happy), did they have the cars section open yet when you were there? Chunks of California Adventure was still being built when we came by
ReplyDeleteDano -- I'm lovin' listening to Real Estate! Soooo good!
ReplyDelete