The last full day of our vacation is today and as always I needed a surprise for Danielle but  what and how could I organize it?

Yesterday I insisted that we had breakfast in our hotel and  I went to the reception to thank them for the good advice on he trip to downtown LA. Danielle believed this so I thought nothing can go wrong from here. I asked the lady at the reception to call the Disneyland Dining reservations and asked for a character breakfast at Goofy’s Kitchen in the Disneyland hotel. But it took so long to get through the waiting line that before she had an operator on the phone Danielle already came to see what took so long. So the surprise was a little bit away but she was still happy with it.

Off course this meant getting out of bed early today, at 7:00 sharp our alarm clock wakes Danielle and she woke me 30 minutes later. At 7:50 we are in the car on our way to the happiest place on earth.

We parked at the Disneyland Hotel parking and at 8:15 we were in line for a photo with Goofy, the first photo of today. We get the photo package and the digital copy for free with our PhotoPass+. The breakfast buffet is really good and it’s also not so crowded. The food is also themed to a goofy style with for example a peanut butter jelly pizza, upside down cakes and more. And besides food there were also characters we made photos together with Chip, Dale, Pluto, Aladdin and the Fairy Godmother.

At 9:45 we left for Disneyland because we wanted more photos! But before it was time for photos we did some space traveling with Star Tours and grabbed a Fastpass at Space Mountain.

The first photos we made were at Pixie Hollow with Tink in her winter clothing and from there we went for some Disney princesses at the royal walk in Fantasyland.

From there we walked to Rapunzel at the Tangled photo location were we waited for about 45 minutes for a photo. From there we walked through Frontierland where we found the fabulous five in the Halloween outfit. Too bad that there was no photopass photographers on this spot.

From there we walked over central plaza to take some additional photos with with the enormous castle in the background. And than it was time for our Space Mountain Fastpass, the onride photo is also included in our photopass+ and that was the last photo in Disneyland.

It was about 15:00 when we hopped to Disney’s California Adventure. First thing to do was getting photos made on our way to the Tower of Terror. We first walked in the standby entrance but after looking in the Mobile Magic app we decided to grab a fastpass instead since the return time was about the same and so we could make some other photos in the meantime. After we made some photos we grabbed a coffee at the Starbucks in the park and then it started to rain. The first rain of our vacation on the last full day.

So we walked through the rain to see the Aladdin Musical, the genie was this time even better he had some great one-liners and jokes. After the show our fastpass time slot for the Tower of Terror was passed but we could still get into the fastpass line. We loaded the photo on our photopass and we walked through the park to have a last look on Cars Land and checkout the wait time at the California Screamin’, the wait was only 15 minutes so we decided to ride this coaster once again. The last ride of this vacation.

We left the park after a couple more photos for our photopass+ and went to the Irvine Spectrum mall about 20 minutes south on the I5. It’s a nice looking mall but there was not much going on, probably because it was a thursday evening. We got our diner at Dave & Busters and afterwards we drove back to our hotel for the last night on the west coast.

Today we had planned to visit the Universal Studios Hollywood. Because Hollywood is the place-to-be when it is about movies we expected a lot from this park, but we heard from people in the bus yesterday that this park is less than Universal in Orlando. So we were thinking, okay…… But we had to see it ourselves.

Because of traffic we arrived later as expected at the Universal Studios, at about 11:00 a.m. We parked our car in the parking garage and walked through the Universal City Walk to the entrance of the Universal Studios. First thing to do was the Studio Tour. They said the waiting times was approximately 30 minutes but in the end we waited over more than one hour. Then the tour begins. You drive through the real studios of Universal but there is not much more to see than just buildings. There were some nice scenes/attraction in the tour like King Kong, Jaws, Disaster and we also saw some really nice sets like from Desperate housewives and War of the Worlds. After one hour the tour was finished and we looked at the map what to do next. We were too late for the first show of Water World, so we went to Transformers.

Transformers is an attraction compared with the Spiderman ride in the Universal Studios in Orlando which attraction they do not have here in Hollywood. As the waiting line at the Mummy was not that long, we put our backpack in a locker and stepped into the waiting line. This ride is actually even better than the one in Orlando but really short.

After the Mummy all the attractions (except for Jurassic Park) in de Lower Level were done so we went back up with the escalators to the upper level. Because we really wanted to see the Water World show there was really nothing else we could do, so we went for a drink and waiter for Water World to begin. I must say, the show was good for a theme park. But when you know there were actors in it from shows like CSI and bones….. hmmmmm, it wasn’t that good.

We decided we had seen enough from Universal and we left the park and drove towards Santa Monica to visit the world-famous Santa Monica Pier. This sounds easier than it was. Because of all the traffic it took very long until we arrived but we soon found a parking spot not to far from the Pier. We walked over the beach (which has a road on it for cyclist, inline-skaters) to the Pier. The Pier is very nostalgic and also the end of the Historical Route 66.

We walked all the way to the end of the Pier where you have a very nice view at the Pacific Ocean. Slowly we walked around the whole Pier and back over the beach to the car.

Then it was time for a little shopping, but it took very long to get there because of traffic, but we did and survived. Tonight we had dinner at a new place for us called Johnny Rockets. They really have great shakes and burgers and all you can eat fries, but you won´t need it because the shakes are so heavy.

As soon dinner was over we drove back to the hotel.