How To Do 24 Rides in One Day at California Adventure
We knew it was madness to go to California Adventure on Friday, August 10, 2012. The last Friday before LAUSD schools opened; temperatures projected within sizzling distance of 100*, and enthusiasm for the new Cars Land driving attendance to manic heights.
But it was an 8 year old boy’s birthday.
Here is how we not only got through the day but made California Adventure our OWN magic kingdom, without some high-priced tour
Getting evacuated at Radiator Springs Racers!
guide to grease the wheels:
1) get there early. Duh. But seriously – California Adventure doors may open (and did on that day) earlier than the posted time. Get a jump on your Fastpass management strategy.
2) If your kids are 8 or older and you’ve got two adults or a responsible teen with you, send a team immediately to get in the singles line at Radiator Springs Racers. In the morning, this line can be as short as 15 minutes and they can get their fill of this awesome ride.
[Total side note: we were evacuated from Radiator Springs Racers in the MIDDLE of the ride because a kid jumped onto the track. It was kind of a thrill to get to exit the vehicle and walk on the track in the middle of the ride – and we got to go again of course.]
3) Meanwhile send the other adult and any little kids to wait in the Fastpass line for Radiator Springs (thanks Tori Horowitz for the heads up on this) You’ll get a ticket for later in the day and will be able to also get other Fastpasses to use before your timeslot comes up. Note: you should be in line before 9am – these Fastpasses run out!
4) Fastpass strategy. This is the most important part of optimizing your day. Track the time at which new Fastpasses may be procured, and five minutes before the window begins, send one of the adults or teenagers with all the tickets to get the next Fastpass. Using this strategy we lined up a beautiful hour in the afternoon where we had THREE fastpass tickets right in a row. We were rock stars.
Silly Symphony Swings, my personal favorite family ride at California Adventure
5) Pace yourself. Drink water, rest frequently, and stretch out the day. You already paid for the tickets – make it a marathon! We enjoyed taking a break at the hidden gem in Radiator Springs – Flo’s V8 Cafe. Plenty of comfy seats in the air-conditioned side room, and we dawdled there for 45 minutes, even stretching out for a power nap in the back of the booth.
6) head to the water rides late in the day. No one is that excited about going on Grizzly Falls once the sun goes down – so get your poncho ready and enjoy!
7) Take advantage of singles lines and other special situations. WE ran into a few people who were running the singles line at Radiator Springs Racers, and we made the most of the Swings because my 5-year old had to go in a tandem, which was a much shorter line.
The grand total? Not that I’m bragging or anything – 2 Radiator Springs Racers, 3 California Screamin* (made possible by some bonus Fastpasses we got in the Radiator Springs line), 2 Grizzly Falls, 2 Soaring Over California, 1 Tower of Terror, 2 Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree, 1 Luigi’s Flying Tires, 3 Ariels (my 5 year old loves this, and there was no line), 2 Goofy’s Sky School, 2 Silly Symphony Swings (I love this ride – it’s a classic!), Buggys, Carousel, and a couple of the smaller rides in Bugs Land just for a palate cleansing break.
The 8-year old’s review? Totally Awesome.
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August’s Dead End Tour
- The classic sign at a dead end
August loves dead end streets. He hasn’t been able to explain WHY he is so fascinated by them, but for his birthday recently we agreed to go on a tour of dead end streets in our neighborhood. Here is the result of two hours of K-turns and circles around wide, beautiful cul-de-sacs. His favorite? Read on to find out.
We started off at Linda Flora, just up the road from our house on Roscomare. This part of Linda Flora is known for its haunted houses and excellent trick or treating at Halloween. We love to walk and ride our bikes here and then get a cold drink
August and Edwin at Acanto Place
at Bel Air Foods.
We drove down Roscomare after that and hit Verano and turned down Bellagio, catching Ledo, Ovada, Moraga and then Acanto. We saw Bel Terrace and discovered some wonderful little dead ends with great views of the Getty and the tram.
The perfect end - mystery behind a gate
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How to get back something you left in a cab
Racing around yesterday between meetings I did the unthinkable – left my luggage in a New York City taxicab. But of course I was smart enough to take the receipt, right? Nope. Apparently too busy for that too.
The last time this happened it was Christmas Eve – just a few months ago – and I was on a last-minute mission for Lego. Bleary-eyed, I was thrilled that a large drugstore was open at 10pm and actually had a great selection. I raced back home to put everything out under the tree – my phone fell out into the crack in the taxicab seat. But I just called it and the very nice taxi driver drove back to our apartment. Problem solved. The magic of Christmas and all that.
This was much worse – my favorite black pants, favorite necklace, the “jacket that would change my life”, best scarf and my best flats – my essential wardrobe all headed back to a garage in Long Island City. AND – the worst of all – the daily journal I write to my sons. Totally irreplaceable. I felt bereft.
I got on the plane with a sense of doom. There is no way I would be able to navigate the Taxi & Limo Commission and the Police Department from 3000 miles away in Los Angeles! I tried to think that maybe some nice wife or girlfriend in Queens would enjoy something that was in my bag. Good karma, who needs material possessions, I could rewrite the journal……
BUT this story has a happy ending. Back in LA I did internet research and started making calls. A very nice lady named Jean answered the phone somewhere in the system. Her mother died a few months ago, and she felt like helping me. She said something about St. Anthony and her Irish grandmother. I was so grateful I cried. We called the two services that process credit card transactions and they searched for a $20 fare to 17th Street at 1:45pm. Bingo – got the medallion number. Jean helped me identify the garage – Boulevard.
I was not so confident that the dispatcher at Boulevard Taxi would be happy to hear from me. He wasn’t thrilled, but he doled out the cell phone numbers of three drivers who might have seen my bag. I texted them and then waited.
Carlos called me back first – he wasn’t driving yesterday but seemed sympathetic and told me to keep trying.
Mohammed called me back next – he was in the taxi – a Ford Escape – and checked the back and said he was very sorry but no bag.
Dev was the last to call back. I had trouble understanding him but finally he made it clear that he WAS driving yesterday, he found my bag and left it at the garage in the office. Just then the dispatcher clicked through and said he discovered my bag under his desk! And would I like his mechanic to drive it into the city for me? You betcha and there’s $100 in it for you. “Nice bag,” said the dispatcher. “What is this made of, some kind of carpet?” Yup, that’s my bag – my heart leapt with joy. I told Dev and the dispatcher thanks and then waited. I wouldn’t really be able to relax until I got confirmation of its arrival back on the upper west side.
My bag just arrived safely at my friend’s apartment, favorite scarf and journal safe and sound. I wish I could hug that mechanic, that dispatcher, and Jean, Dev, Mohammed, Carlos and the two very nice policemen who made jokes with me when I called their precincts earlier in the day looking for it.
When I called Jean back to tell her the good news, she said “You made my day.” And I told her she had done a good thing. And then we both cried. It was a small interaction, but I can’t help feeling that New York gives back to you what you put into it and that can be pretty great. Thanks, New York.
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Top Ten Tips for Entrepreneurs
This is the top ten list I put together yesterday for a women’s entrepreneurial event in Santa Monica. I hope it’s useful to someone. I can be reached at anna at scribblepress dot com with any questions.
1) Have partners? Plan how to resolve conflicts in advance. These relationships always change. It’s natural as you move from one stage to the next that people will take on different roles. Figure out how you are going to balance things out before problems arise.
2) Know your strengths and weaknesses. Are you the one running the show? Your personal characteristics will become the characteristics of your company. The better your self-awareness, the more prepared you will be to recognize how your personality is shaping your company. Know your Myers-Briggs type; get feedback from former bosses, co-workers and employees. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses – your job is not to be perfect; it’s to be aware.
3) Own your own financials. Learn how to develop your own financial projections and revise them frequently. This is the key to understanding your business and raising money. Don’t outsource it to someone else.
4) Define your business model clearly, and redefine it frequently. What you start out with will be different in a month and again in a year. Make sure every day you know what your business model is and you are focused on delivering on it.
5) Own up to mistakes as soon as you see them and respond. It doesn’t do your business any good to keep following a direction once you know it’s the wrong direction. Acknowledge it, take your lumps and move on.
6) Raise more and spend less. You will need twice as much money as you will raise, so raise as much as you can and then save every penny. Don’t spend on large quantities of anything or get into long-term contracts until you are sure.
7) Build your team on all levels according to your growth stage. When you are developing an idea, you need lots of advisors. When you are raising money, you need the commitment from good people to round out your team. Once you are up and running, you need great junior people.
8) Use your mission and vision to create focus. If you have a well-defined mission and vision statement, it will help you to bring focus to your everyday activities and analyze business opportunities. When someone says to you, “You know what you should do?” and offers you yet another great idea for a new project, this will help you stay on track. How to respond to those people? Just smile and say, “great idea! thanks!” and go back to your plan.
9) Mine your data. Once you are up and running, study your numbers and learn from them. Your customers are telling you what they want through their buying patterns.
10) Practice regular triage. On any given day, there will be too many things for you to do. Make sure your time, and that of your staff, is spent on the most essential things for growing your business.
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My Cars, and What Happened in Them
1985. My first car was a 1978 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser station wagon, baby blue with fake wood panels. You almost couldn’t invent a more classic first car. The thought that I, a 17-year-old subway-riding New Yorker, drove this beast with its loopy steering wheel and wide rear end through the streets of Manhattan – kind of terrifying.
It cost $800 and we bought it from my dad’s friend Jim after its days of ferrying Jim’s family back and forth from their Connecticut weekend house were over. Now it was my turn. Somehow, my parents let me and 9 of my high school friends spend the weekend alone at OUR Connecticut country house. Yes, we all traveled in the car. Nicknamed Blue Thunder, of course. In the days long before it was horrifying to cram teenagers without seatbelts in the “way back.”
As we approached our house the road got curvy and my friend Bennet lost his grip on the steering wheel and suddenly swerved. There was a loud crack as we watched my neighbor Mr. Goedewagon’s mailbox fly, post and all, deep into the woods.
Oh, crap. I had never met Mr. Goedewagon. But he had a really scary name. And I really wanted to be able to keep taking 9 of my friends on unsupervised weekends to our country house.
So we drove on. And for a long time I imagined poor Mr. Goedewagon going to look for his mailbox and finding it had disappeared. If you are listening, Mr. Goedewagon, I am really sorry about your mailbox. And mom? Oops – did I totally forget to tell you that we accidentally knocked over Mr. Goedewagon’s mailbox the other weekend?
This amazing car continued to faithfully ferry me and various friends, strangers, siblings, siblings of strangers, and others back and forth to the Connecticut house, to college football games (it actually HAD a tailgate), to Myrtle Beach, to various ski resorts, and other fun places all through college, until I sold it for parts sometime in 1990. Thanks Blue Thunder – you were a good friend, and you never told about the mailbox.
1992. My second car was a teal 1992 Saturn SL2 4-door. I know, I know. But I wasn’t a car person, and it seemed like a hip new car company to me. I think I actually saw the ads and was swayed by them. It was so modern. I was a happening young law student, driving a cool car. At least in my own mind.
I lived with my two friends at law school, Nicole and Rachel, on Whitney Avenue. We parked the sporty little car right in our driveway, and enjoyed the new car smell when we picked up our friends to go to Sally’s or Pepe’s for pizza. I remember the satisfying “pop” when I clicked the automatic trunk release. _Cool_.
In this car we took a girls road trip on the Merritt Parkway back to my parents’ house in Manhattan. Rachel was driving (Why am I never driving in these stories? Because I was convinced people who were not from Manhattan were probably better drivers I suppose.) Yeah, we were having fun. Yeah, we were probably going a little fast for LAW STUDENTS. All of a sudden, Sirens. Rachel sighed. “”Oh for goodness sakes,” she said. “What a waste of time.” For goodness sakes was one of her trademark phrases.
What are you talking about! I thought – we are going to be arrested and thrown in jail! My palms were sweating and I was practically hyperventilating. “Anna, get a grip,” said Rachel, easing the car to the shoulder on the parkway. “My Dad’s a judge, I know how to talk to cops.”
Now this was one studly cop. Kind of a latin Justin Timberlake. Sidles over to us and realizes he scored a jackpot – 4 young ladies just waiting to charm an officer of the law. And Rachel had her game on – with a few batted eyelashes and a few well-timed hair flips with a giggle, we were on our way. I want to say she gave him her number, but I probably made that part up.
The Saturn was my faithful companion through law school. When I graduated, I returned to the urban jungle and decided I didn’t need a car, so I sold it to my dear friends Allie and Janice. I am not sure they ever forgave me.
1999. Midnight Blue 1999 VW Cabrio Convertible. By this time I am 31 and driving a younger woman’s car. But it’s 1999, and I live in San Francisco for the first time, and I work for an internet company. My car has wood panels on the INSIDE, leather seats, and fits into teeny parking spaces. I feel sexy and young driving this car, just like I feel sexy and young living my groovy life in Cow Hollow, part of the internet revolution.
This car takes me to great places. The Golden Gate bridge, Stinson Beach, the Marin Headlands, Yosemite – in this car, I learn to love California as only a New Yorker who wants to hate California can. I figure out how to strap my road bike to the back of this car so I can go to bike in amazing places, and go to triathlons. I actually compete in 4 triathlons. I love sushi. I drive over the Golden Gate bridge for brunch, the wind blowing in my hair. I fall in love with San Francisco in this car. I drive my parents and my sister up to Napa Valley for thanksgiving, their legs jammed up in the too-small back seat.
One night after a particularly boisterous “business dinner”, we are kicked out of a restaurant in downtown San Francisco and ordered not to return. Ever. Cool, I think – never been banned from a restaurant before. We approach my car, and the guys from work decide it’s going to be funny to stand on the hood of the car and sing Mexican drinking songs. I’m amazed they actually KNOW Mexican drinking songs. I mean, these are internet nerds. But at this point the whole “banned from the restaurant” thing is no longer funny and I am only thinking about how my baby can’t have these big guys STANDING on her!
So it turns out, I’m right. When I turn the car in, 8 months later? $700 charge for the dent in the hood.
2001. So now I move to Los Angeles. It’s time to up the ante, people. I am 33 and single. I need a car that is really going to establish me in my new community. My selection? 2001 BMW 325ci convertible. Kapow. Watch out, LA. I came to town to work in the entertainment industry, and I have got the car to prove it.
In the Cabrio you have to manually secure the convertible top, but not the BMW 325 ci. Manual labor? That is SO San Francisco. Here in LA we just push a button and the top just secures itself. If only it could do my mani pedi too…..
I love this car but it’s a stranger to me, and always remains a stranger. When I am driving the baby blue BMW convertible, I feel like I am in someone else’s car, and someone else’s life. What am I doing in LA? What am I doing living near the beach? I am a pale New York City girl, and LA with its BMW convertibles and great tans never feels quite like home to me.
Nonetheless, it is in this car that drives me to my husband, and drives us together to our honeymoon up in Ojai, where all our family joins us. My BMW convertible starts to feel like a beloved child, not a stranger, and then it’s time to give it up.
2004. Now I am married, and I have a baby. Oh, and I also have two stepdaughters, who are 3 and 5. I have gone in six months from being single with a cat and a convertible in Santa Monica to being married with a baby son and two stepdaughters in Bel Air. Oh yeah. Now I drive a Volvo.
It’s a Volvo s80 four-door. It’s safe. Because that is what we new mommies care about, ya know? For a while I still feel like I am living someone else’s life. Who is this woman with the huge Volvo and the Britax car seat and the booster seats and these two adorable blond girls who don’t belong to her and this incredibly fat, cute baby?
But after a while, I begin to feel incredible contentment in this Volvo. It’s boring, It’s safe. It doesn’t draw attention to itself. The Volvo is happy to pick up the stepdaughters from school and realize they are happy to see me. The Volvo likes to take the baby to music class where he claps his hands and falls on his fat face on the floor. The Volvo has a big trunk, where I can put everything our huge family needs from Costco. The Volvo doesn’t embarrass me when I go to pitch meetings to raise money for my new company. It doesn’t ask for anything – it’s content to stay in the background.
2008. So now we get to my current car. Perhaps you’ve guessed? I drive a 2008 Prius. It’s silver, because that is what my friend Armando could procure at a good price with the 24 hours notice I gave him.
This car is perfect for me, for now. I’m 41 and I feel young in this car. It has a navigation system. I can fit all four of my kids in it (my own two boys and my girls – who don’t feel like stepdaughters at all but like my own kids) – that is, as long as my husband is off driving his Chevy Tahoe somewhere by himself. It has a hatchback that seems roomy enough to always fit the boxes I need to carry back and forth to the store I am lucky enough to own and run. It’s silver, it’s not even an interesting color, and I really don’t care.
I have a great life, right now, with my Prius. And so far I have not knocked over anyone’s mailbox.
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There goes my type
I saw him in Starbucks on Friday morning. My Type. Tall and wiry. Geeky glasses that made him look strangely more handsome. Scruffy hair, untucked Oxford shirt, worn corduroys and a gently run down cashmere sweater that was probably expensive at one point. He was either a banker who wanted to be a writer or a writer who came from a family with money. Either way, the kind of guy who would read The New York Review of Books, could discuss Richard Feynman or Richard Ford, and played a mean game of tennis before mixing his wife a nice gin and tonic.
As a happily married woman, I had no interest in making eye contact with My Type, but did watch him leave the Starbucks and get into a vintage Alfa Romeo – again, must have been expensive at one point – and motor off. Perfect. Of course that was his car.
Sigh. There goes My Type.
This is not, however, the man I married or even the men I used to date. My husband is as solid as a football player, wouldn’t be caught dead in geeky glasses, and may have never even heard of the New York Review of Books. He does cannonballs into the pool. My husband would never be described as quiet or introspective. He screams at the tv during Cowboys games. He drives a big car. He gives bear hugs and calls 3 times a day just to check in. My Type would be too busy having Deep Thoughts to do that, I am sure.
So why is My Type, “my type”? He’s obviously not the kind of man I ended up with. Ironically, my husband says that his type is dark-haired – he always cites Penelope Cruz as the perfect woman. Uh-huh. Put me, his first wife and his college girlfriend together in a line. 3 blonde, blue-eyed, tall, athletic-looking girls. We could all be sisters. But apparently, “not his type.”
So why are the people we end up with – the people we REALLY like – so different from what we consciously describe as “our type”? Perhaps it’s just a cruel trick of fate, to make us look in all the wrong places and then get surprised by love just where we least expect it. Or perhaps it’s two sides of our brain wanting different things.
I don’t know the answer, but I’m glad to be married to my husband instead of My Type.
And I don’t think our four kids would have been very comfortable in the trunk of that Alfa Romeo.
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On OUTLIERS
This was me on the plane: upgraded to business class. The New Yorker, Forbes, The Atlantic Monthly (ok, I also had People and US Weekly). Practically forced by nice foreign-sounding flight attendant to drink champagne. Then offered a portable DVR with ALL KINDS of great chick movies on it. I literally thought I had died and gone to heaven. On a plane without an entire truckload of CARS DVDS? Impossible.
One the flight out it was fantastic. I watched MAMMA MIA and THE WOMEN. I read my magazines. I felt totally content.
Four days later, flight back. I really missed my kids! It wasn’t even fun anymore having time to myself. Hence my new theory. 3 days is long enough to be away.
On the way back I read OUTLIERS by Malcolm Gladwell and – like all his books – I found it gripping. He’s writing about what the ingredients for success are, and he debunks the notion that people get to the top through sheer talent and pluck, overcoming all obstacles with their natural talent and perseverence. As a side note, I should say that this is somewhat comforting to anyone who may feel that the promise their high school teachers saw in them has not yet been realized.
Basically, in addition to a certain level of natural ability, success can be attributed to good timing and perseverence. The magic number for getting REALLY good at something seems to be – across disciplines from music to computing to law practice – 10,000 hours of practice.
If you think about that in terms of what it takes to create the next Tiger Woods – and I am sure a lot of parents do when they read this book – your reaction is probably, wow. that’s a lot of practice time! That probably means Junior won’t get to do a lot of other stuff besides play golf/practice the piano/learn Russian/whatever you have decided the kid should excel at. I know Gladwell wasn’t intending to encourage parents to be insane, but if you took this book to heart and it was your secret dream to raise a tennis champion, you might be inclined to pull your three year old out of every other activity and start logging those ten thousand hours.
Personally, I don’t WANT to raise a tennis champion. I like to think of myself as a renaissance person (OK, you could also call me a dilettante I suppose). I believe in a sprinkling of this and a little bit of that and above all, following my child’s own interests. My son is totally obsessed with garbage right now, to the point where he only wants to hear SONGS about garbage so I am having to make up new songs. I’m hoping by this time next year, he’ll be obsessed with something else. And then something else. I think I’ll be happy if he never logs ten thousand hours doing anything.
Certainly not riding around in planes, no matter how comfortable the seats are……
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What You Can Do With A Nail
A much less cool nail than the one my sister wanted
There’s a story about my sister when she was a kid that says a lot about creativity in children.
My mother was walking six-year-old Genevieve to school (my mother’s friend Alice Munro was with them). There was a big construction nail in the street on Ninth Avenue at 17th Street, getting run over by taxis and buses.
Genevieve really wanted to pick the nail up, but of course my mother wouldn’t let her. They walked on towards the school, my mom and Alice chatting and not paying attention to Genevieve, until she stopped and sat down on the pavement, refusing to go any further. Alice and my mother looked at each other, having no idea what was wrong. Genevieve looked up defiantly at my mother and said, “I COULD HAVE DONE A LOT OF THINGS WITH THAT NAIL!”
Alice turned to Ginger and said, “well, that’s it – you’ve stifled her creativity forever.” And they laughed, but my mother did feel a pang of guilt that she hadn’t let Genevieve pick up the nail.
We never found out what she could have done with the nail, but I like to imagine that she was thinking of spaceships and magic cabins and all kinds of things that only a child whose mind is allowed to wander can dream up.
We both made a lot of things as kids – I was allowed (it was a different time and my parents were somewhat bohemian) to roam around West 21st Street with the neighborhood kids, picking up discarded vacuum cleaners, toasters and other trash and making fanciful machines out of it all. I can’t imagine most parents today allowing their children to poke through New York City garbage unsupervised – nor would I let my own kids do this – but the general point still holds. If your child has a burning desire to do something with an old box, a baby food jar and some pipe cleaners, then encourage them. Maybe they’ll even let you play in their elf village when it’s finished.
PS, Genevieve – do you have any idea what you wanted to do with the nail?
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A Whole New Mind and Our Kids
I recently read Daniel Pink’s A WHOLE NEW MIND in less than two days. Which is pretty amazing, since I have two sons (2 and 4), two stepdaughters (8 and 10), a husband who travels for work (he would prefer i not divulge his age), and my own young company (Scribble Press, a place to write, illustrate and publish your own books). I barely have time to read the instructions on the frozen food package, much less an actual book.
I loved this book. The central idea – that we are leaving the information age, and entering the conceptual age, and that an entirely different skill set will be required to succeed in this new economy – resonated with me on a deep level. Empathy as an important quality in the economy? Storytelling and imagination as key skills? I loved these ideas because they play to my strengths, but also because I believe that we need to foster in our children these essentially untestable skills if they are to be successful, and thoughtful, people.
When I was young I wrote a lot of books. Most of them were silly – recaps of what happened on Emergency, or thinly-disguised retellings of Charlie’s Angels plots. But some were more substantive – I wrote an entire book about how to grow green beans. And each one I wrote out by hand, stitched together, and bound in a cloth cover.
So when I read A WHOLE NEW MIND, I thought of my prior life as a “published” author – I wasn’t graded on my books – they weren’t even for school. But they mattered to me, and I still have every one of them (unlike my grade school math tests). Those books are part of the fabric of who I am. One of the reasons I love Scribble Press is seeing the look on the new author’s face when their book comes out of the printing press. I’m hoping that giving kids the tools to publish their own stories is playing a small part of preparing them for being successful and thoughtful people – and playing their part in the conceptual age.
I am sure it will end up being about something else, but I am starting this blog hoping it will be about how to inspire creativity in our kids, and teach those untestable skills, and give them space to learn on their own the things that may actually be unteachable.
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Annadotes 