Disneyland truly is the happiest place on earth, even for four people struggling with jetlag, it has such a magical feel with every detail capturing your heart and your imagination (that sentence may have made you vomit in your mouth, but Disney makes me all sentimental and soft). As you arrive at Disneyland you first walk through Downtown Disney, the best place for shopping I have ever seen. With a LEGO store featuring giant LEGO sculptures of Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and Sleeping Beauty, and a store where you could build your own remote controlled car, we had to force ourselves to move on to the actual theme park, or we'd spend all of our day just in Downtown. However we couldn't leave before buying mouse ears of course.

Hitting up California Adventure Park first we flitted from world to world smiling at the character references and the imaginative detail in each ride and attraction. Although mildly-disappointed in most of the rides (nothing can compare to the adrenaline rush of Dream World), everything just felt so special and exciting that we were happy just wandering around. One ride did stand out though: the Hollywood Hotel Tower of Terror. Hands down one of my favourite rides ever. Queuing through an 'abandoned hotel' you are led to an elevator that takes you to the 'Twilight Zone'. Looking after you while you wait are purple and gold uniformed bell-hops, one of whom took a quite a liking to me. Waiting to board the 'elevator' we caught an older bell-hop staring at me. I caught him, smiled and averted my gaze. Looking back a couple of seconds later there he was, still staring, with a creepy smile plastered on his face. Laughing we turned away again as he moved towards a back door, we gazed back to find him staring around the corner of the door at me again. This happened quite a few times, enough to be very very hilarious, but also quite uncomfortable. Entering the ride we strapped ourselves in, and received our safety demonstration from my admirer, punctuated with creepy and meaningful stares. The ride was brilliant - the elevator launches up and down at random while you are stuck in complete darkness, your stomach launching itself up and down your throat. The elevator catapults itself to the top revealing a stunning view across the whole theme park, only to plummet back down and up and down again, our laughter and screams (and the tears of one poor frightened boy who said "we shouldn't be here" during the queue) echoing around us. So the excellence of the ride, as well as the creepy antics of the staff, definitely made that ride a highlight of the day, which Dumsday missed out on because he's a wuss.

After we'd exhausted the possibilities of the Adventure Park, which were unfortunately limited as most of the 'good' rides were closed for maintenance, we crossed the border into Disneyland. Focussing more on theming and character experience, Disneyland isn't as fun as Adventure Park, but still just as enjoyable. Another definite highlight was the Animation Academy, where you could see original sketches and animation drafts of Disney classics, lend your voice to a movie scene, and find out which Disney character you were: Anita was Alice, Dumsday got Mufasa, Sav was Gaston (it's the chin, definitely the chin), and I got Eve from Wall-E.

Because we had gathered inside information from previous visitors to Disneyland, we had already collected our FastPass tickets to the World of Colour show that night, so after briefly watching Mickey's Parade, we staked out our spot back in the Adventure Park for the most amazing light show I've ever seen. Prior to the show, to help entertain the crowd, you could compete in a small competition were the Mickey Wheel would light up in a sequence of colours, which you had to replicate on your phone. Who ever got the most points would then get to program the next sequence. Needless to say our competitive natures kicked in and we were fanatically playing to win, but to no success.

At 8.30pm the real magic happened. Even if there were no rides and no themed worlds, I would be happy to pay the ticket price just for World of Colour. Projected images on fountains of water, choreographed to my favourite Disney songs, I was on the verge of tears with an immovable grin spreading wide across my face. It was the best.

Following the crowds out of the now closed park we made a bee-line to the massive gift shop in Downtown Disney. After almost an hour of shopping we all emerged with a fantastic collection of well-priced memorabilia which will hopefully make it back home in one piece.

Meeting our Hostel Hopper at 10.15pm, our night still wasn't over. Reaching the hostel sometime after 11pm, we went straight over to a bar across the road. At 1.30pm the last drinks bell was rung, and the second we bought our final drinks we were forcibly kicked out. I guess now they had our money they didn't care that we couldn't actually drink our drinks. Annoyed, and rather tipsy (or drunk in the case of Anita and me), we made friends with two locals and continued our party at their tiny apartment and roof-top terrace a few streets away. Such a complete contrast of experiences in one day: the pristine and over-the-top glamour of Disneyland, followed by the filthy hovel-like apartment of LA's 'struggling artists' (one was a Industrial Designer/Artist, the other a Screen Writer, both working in hospitality). A few hours later we were back at our hostel, passing out exhausted once again, at 4.30am.

Highlights: All of Disneyland; Hollywood Hotel Tower of Terror; World of Colour; delicious and cheap theme park food; getting the best souvineers ever

Lowlights: Never winning the World of Colour game; rides being closed for maintenance; being kicked out of a bar at 1.30pm due to California-wide lock-out