A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

SECOND-HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH:  Bullet points from two days at Disneyland/California Adventure:

• Wow, that's a small castle.
• Some things are bigger-and-better: Pirates and Small World in particular (love the outdoor entrance).
• A bifrost bridge to Asgard has opened at Tomorrowland (in the Innoventions space), with many authentic relics available, plus meet-and-greets with Thor and Captain America which my girls loved. (The latter: "How do you get along with Tony Stark?" "I wish he didn't play that rock music so much.")  They also had a full array of Iron Man suits across time, which was pretty darn neat.  
• I'm still a bit skittish on non-Disney properties being at the main park -- in addition to the Marvel stuff, you've got Star Tours (still awesome) and the Indiana Jones ride (temporarily offline) coexisting with Jack Sparrow and the Princesses.  But the rides themselves are great and well-done. (Of course. It's Disney.)
• California Adventure is a better park than Hollywood Studios at WDW.  The new Cars Land stuff is gorgeous and well-done; Paradise Pier is just a great grouping of attractions, including Toy Story Midway Mania (So great. Always.) 
• Soarin' Over California is great, but so much better when you're in the top row so you don't have dangling feet over year head as a distraction. (Yes, we did it twice.)
• But the best thing there, even greater than the Radiator Springs car ride, is that they've got an auditorium where every half-hour, they teach lessons on how to draw a different Disney character, with sketching pencils for everyone. Fantastic. We'd do it 2-3 times a day if we had more time.
• Also, we ran into a 50s "police officer" there who started questioning the girls on where they were from, etc. "Oh, what's the best cheesesteak in Philadelphia?", he asked. "Jim's?", Lucy responded.  He paused. "Is that on South Street?", he responded. So great. (They were issued a citation extolling their Good Citizenship.) This is the kind of unnecessary interstitial stuff that I will always laud Disney for doing, just totally rounding out a wonderful experience.