Our first foray into the big wide world: Los Angeles
Updated: 5 days ago
A little bit of background
I am writing this post in 2023, 27 years after our first big adventure beyond Australian (and New Zealand) shores. I've kept the journals our travels, typed on an electric typewriter and bound in a book, complete with ticket stubs, pictures from travel brochures, and other printed records of the trip. I hope you find it interesting reading, both for the throwback to travelling in a different time and for the world wanderings themselves.
We'd saved for a year for the 6-week trip in July-August of 1996. It was a honeymoon of sorts, as three years earlier when we were married we had no money for one. I had dreamed of international travel ever since I was very young, so this trip was huge for me as it was such a long time coming. The trip was meticulously planned using travel guides and my knowledge of the world at the time. No googling involved! It feels like a different time now, with information so easily at our fingertips now. We knew what we wanted to see and experience back then, but it felt much more like heading off into the unknown than travel does today. We essentially "disappeared" for six weeks with only our itinerary for family, friends and colleagues to follow from Australia.
This post has the honour of being the documentation of our inaugural world wanderings and it part of a series of Big Firsts on that trip. We had our first experience of:
a long haul flight from Australia
the United States and Los Angeles (this post)
the incredible city of London
Europe via a long weekend in Berlin
a bunch of countries in Europe on a bus tour
hiring a car in another country and driving around England, Scotland, and Wales staying in B&Bs.
Note that the photos I've included in this post were taken in 1996, on a now old-fashioned camera, where we had to wait until we got home to develop the prints. The quality seems terrible now! And of course, I have a limited selection of photos as back then there was no snapping with wild abandon. Rolls of film had a shot limitation and each roll had to be developed. These were the days, too, before social media, when there was nowhere to post anything. One was economical with one's photo-taking, that's for sure and we didn't think to take photos of the food we ate.
Day 1: Arrival in LA
The main aim of our trip was to experience the United Kingdom and Europe for the first time. We decided to break those two aims into two blocks, the UK via a hire car and bed and breakfast accommodation, and Europe on a Trafalgar bus tour. The flight we took with Qantas and British Airways allowed us to include a stopover. We chose to fly via Los Angeles and for a three-day stopover on our way from Brisbane to London.
Back then, air travel wasn't nearly as comfortable as it is now. The 13-hour flight from Brisbane to LA seemed torturous to me partly because it was the first time we'd flown such a distance. There weren't as many flights out of Brisbane in those days, either, so we had to fly to Sydney first. I remember feeling ill most of the way. We sure were novices back then!
I remember coming out of the airport into the hot Californian sun and the chaos that is LAX. We were dazed and confused before that was a thing! The waiting area outside the airport was busy and hectic, with people, taxis, and minibuses everywhere. We had never seen airport staff with walkie-talkies directing the traffic. Our stopover package included airport transfers and we didn't have to wait long for a shuttle to take us across the city to Anaheim to our motel. The trip took around an hour and the driver helpfully pointed interesting things out, but it all seemed like a blur to us.
It was a relief to check into the motel and have a shower, although the heat took some getting used to. We'd left home in winter and were living in a part of Queensland that had only warm-ish summers, so the sudden burst of heat was overwhelming at first. To be fair, there was a heat wave at the time of our visit, with temperatures in the high 30s to early 40s Celsius.
Los Angeles is the most populous city in the state of California and the second-most in the US beind NYC. It lies in the LA Basin adjacent to the Pacific Ocean through to the Santa Monica Mountains, the San Fernando Valley, and the San Gabriel Valley.
The area was originally inhabited by the Tongva people then claimed by Spain in 1542, to be bought (with the whole state) by the US in 1848. The city's name comes from the original name given by Spanish settlers, The Town of our Lady the Queen of the Angels.
It's hard to believe now, but our stopover package only cost $350AUD each. The information on the package is below. It included three nights in a motel two blocks from Disneyland, airport transfers, a day pass for Disneyland and one for Universal Studios, a shuttle to and from Universal, and a $10 Planet Hollywood voucher. Bonus!
The collage below shows the motel - the Convention Centre Inn - where we stayed. We chose an inexpensive accommodation option as we had limited funds back then. The motel was pretty basic and of course looks very dated now. I looked the motel up recently and it's not even there now, replaced by a nice, new, shiny hotel complex. We, however, did not care that the room was basic as we were in LA! The room was clean and the bed king sized. I remarked in my original journal that we had a clock by the bed with LCD display and an alarm to wake us up on our first full day in the city. That seemed like some amazing technology to us back then. There was an included breakfast but we only ate it once. Breakfast consisted of a table set out near reception with a bunch of sweet muffins and small cranberry juice bottles in an ice chest. So American and totally not our vibe!
The motel was on the super busy road that leads to Disneyland. We'd never seen so much traffic before! The reception staff were very friendly and helpful and they had lots of brochures in the office for tourists. Those were the day when you consulted printed brochures for information. Sugary sweet breakfasts aside, we were quite happy staying there. It felt rather grand to us!
I still recall the surreal feelings we experienced on that first day. The United States - and Los Angeles in particular - loomed so large to us, images fed to us entirely by movies and television. We couldn't quite believe we were standing in what seemed to us a fairytale-like place. Needing to stretch our legs after the flight, we stumbled around in the heat and found a Carl's Jr burger place near the hotel. Our first ever American burger joint! I'm not sure what time our bodies thought it was, but we wanted the diner-type experience anyway. As I recall, I had a salad and W a burger. No photos of course, as those were the days before foodagram posting.
As the above image from our stopover package brochure shows, we were granted the incredible bonus of a $10 Planet Hollywood voucher. Today that doesn't seem like much, but it was enough for me to purchase a t-shirt, shown in the Planet Hollywood collection a bit further along in this post. I can't recall where we obtained to brochure shown in the below shot, but I remember that we had no context without Google Maps to guide us and no idea of the distance to South Coast Plaza from our hotel. I have no idea why we thought we could walk it as, after going back to the hotel for advice, we discovered the shopping mall was a 45-minute shuttle ride across the city. D'oh!
Now, having a voucher from Planet Hollywood probably sounds archaic now, but the restaurants were HUGE in the 1990s. Bruce Willis, an initial investor, was one of my favourite actors at the time. After finally locating the restaurant at South Coast Plaza, we had a poke around all the cool movie memorabilia at the restaurant. One of the items on display was the Harley from the first Terminator film. Sadly, I don't have any photos from inside the restaurant, but I do of the Planet Hollywood in Orlando that we went into in 2008. I'm not sure how many of the restaurants have survived the financial difficulties that plagued the chain. The one we went to in South Coast Plaza opened to much fanfare in 1992, but has since closed down.
Other firsts that afternoon included an American hot dog at a diner, a Macy's store purchase of a pair of sunglasses, a chocolate coke (that we thought tasted awful so we didn't finish it), and our first experience using foreign currency. All these things don't sound like much these days, but to us they were incredible new experiences. It sounds a bit naff now, but I kind of liked that we were so wide-eyed. It made everything we did seem so amazing. That sense of wonder is perhaps a lesser thing nowadays, with access to so much information on the interwebs.
That first afternoon on LA was peppered by the overwhelming tiredness that comes from a long distance travel. I struggled to stay awake as we took the bus back to the hotel, even though it was only early evening. Despite the lingering heat and sun not setting until after 10pm, I remember us crashing and sleeping right through until the alarm went off the next morning. The below (dreadful) photo of me shows how I struggled to cope with the effects of my first long haul flight. This shot was taken in our motel room on our last day in LA, but I still look terrible. W looks great, though! And the bonus is I caught on camera the Disneyland t-shirt we excitedly bought to remember that iconic experience, that he faithfully wore until the shirt wore out!
Day 2: Disneyland
I remember our incredible excitement as we headed the short trip to Disneyland on the free shuttle, with what seemed like every other tourist in the city. We spent a long, hot, exhausting day at Disneyland but it was an important first in our world wanderings as it was the first time we'd been to a truly iconic place. Disneyland seemed to take on almost mythical proportions at that point in our lives. It's one of those bucket list kinds of things that we wanted to do without ever really knowing why, other than that the place is just so legendary.
Disneyland is a theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim. It was the first park opened by Walt Disney's company, in July 1955.
The park has expanded since its openning and a second park, Disney California Adventure, opened in 2001 on the site of the original parking lot.
Disneyland has the largest cumulative attendance of any global theme park, with over 900 million visitors since 1955. It covers over 40 hectares of land with nine themed "lands".
In reality, the park then was smaller than we'd expected. Remember this is the original Disneyland, now known as Disneyland Park to differentiate it from the second park, Disney Califorina Adventure (that I experienced in 2012). Some of the rides seemed dated and a bit tacky, but then I'm not a theme park kind of person anyway. All that said, we had lots of fun wandering around the different worlds and taking in all the Disney icons, like the castle and the teacups. I really did have to pinch myself to believe that I was actually there.
Surprisingly, the park wasn't too busy around 9am that morning. We lined up for about 40 minutes for the Indiana Jones ride first as it had only recently opened. I'm not a rides person, but I did describe the Indiana Jones ride as 'scary' in my journal. The scary bit was when a huge boulder came down on top of the cart we were in and we suddenly jolted underneath it. The ride is still open today, in the original Disneyland.
We chose a selection of rides to go on and waited between 15 and 45 minutes for each ride. We went on/in/under the Mark Twain paddle steamer (hilarious Americana), the Haunted Mansion (cool, especially the hologram), the Pirates of the Caribbean (fun log ride), Space Tours (awesome virtual reality ride, probably outdated technology now!), the original yellow submarine (super old and tacky but iconic), and Mickey's Toontown (fun older type of ride with a manual operation to twist the carriage around). A lot of these rides are still in operation in the original part of the park but are probably ridden by visitors for the nostalgia element rather than the ride itself...
We took the park railway - a great way to take everything in - went to the Michael Jackson 3D and Hunchback of Notre Dame shows, and stood in the heat to watch the Mickey and Minnie Mouse and the Lion King parades. I must admit to being a bit over it all by the end of the day. I little Disney goes a long way...
It was super hot that day but we loved the fresh lemonade stands dotted around the park. We ate ham and turkey croissants at the New Orleans café for lunch and got into the spirit of America with a burger and fries for dinner. The giant portion sizes were another new experience!
We stayed at the park until 10pm to watch the Main Street Electrical Parade. Yes, that's the actual name of it! Hilarious. I don't think it runs these days, so it was kind of cool to have experienced it. My photos don't do it justice as of course we didn't have a clever camera back then. We were struck by the patriotism on display, unaccustomed as we were to such things. There were so many people in Main Street watching the parade and it was a battle to get back to the shuttle after it ended.
Being at the park was a massive sensory experience. The Disney overload was real. So many candy-floss colours, people all over the place, endless selling Disney merchandise, and lots of iconic things to wrap our heads around. Remember that this was the mid-1990s and we hadn't been outside of Australia or New Zealand at that point. It was surreal to be at Disneyland when our only experience to date was through books, brochures, television and film. What an amazing day we had!
Day 3: Universal Studios
As a movie buff, I was looking forward to Universal Studios more than Disneyland. We took the transfer shuttle that was included in our stopover package super early that next day. The drive took over an hour but it was a great opportunity to experience the busy LA freeway system, see city smog for the first time, and catch sight of the Hollywood sign. Cool.
Universal Studios Hollywood is a film studio and theme park in Universal City near Hollywood. It was originally created to offer tours of Universal sets and was later expanded into a theme park and resort.
The studio was once a ranch and zoo, but in 1915 the studio was opened. Expansion didn't happen until the 1960s when rides were added.
The park is split vertically into two main zones - the Upper Lot and the Lower Lot. It's built into a hillside and the two lots are connected by a multi-tiered cluster of escalators.
It's a good idea to do the Lower Lot studio tour first as the wait can be long otherwise. We did that! The tour is actually kind of awesome. Riders sit in an open tram that jauntily wanders past lots of movie and television sets and props. There are stops along the way to experience movie special effects such as attacks by Jaws and King Kong, a flash flood, a bridge collapse, and an earthquake. Shots of the flood and King Kong effects are featured in the collage below. One thing I do remember well is the guide. He was so hilariously exuberant that at first we thought it was a recording!
![All photos in this collection are mine, other than one of the tour trolley [middle left], taken from here.](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/7497d1_da2928043ffb4958b069f9adef92e779~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_980,h_784,al_c,q_90,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/7497d1_da2928043ffb4958b069f9adef92e779~mv2.png)
Over time new rides and shows have been added to the park, replacing older ones. We were keen to do the Jurassic Park ride as it had only opened the previous month. We waited over an hour in the heat for our turn. It was totally worth the wait, though. The Jurassic Park ride is a water ride where riders are taken past all kinds of animatronic dinosaurs that lunge at the cars before a final encounter with a t-rex and a plunge of 26 metres into a lagoon. I am terrible with heights and sudden drops so the ride's ending scared the life out of me. I remember holding on until my knuckles were white and coming off with shaking legs. The ride was briefly closed in 2018 and reopened the following year as Jurassic World: The ride with new animatronics and special effects. I went on the original again ride when I returned to Universal Studios in 2012.
We also went on the Back to the future simulator ride that I found super scary. Riders sat in an open DeLorean car and experienced fast motion while watching a film projected onto a large, domed IMAX screen. The ride opened in 1993 but later closed in 2006, replaced by a Simpsons ride.
I loved the ET Adventure ride that we did after lunch. That ride was opened in 1991 but closed in 2003, replaced by a Revenge of the Mummy ride that opened in 2006. I went on The Mummy ride during my 2012 visit to the park. I enjoyed the ET ride as it wasn't scary. There was a lengthy pre-show and interior queue part to the adventure that made riders feel like they were inside the film. The ride itself recreated the bicycles from the iconic film. Each rider sat in their own bike, as per the below shot, to experience the ride through the air, just as the kids did in the film. The views were magical.
There are new special effects attractions at the park these days. Space had to be freed up for the development of the Transformers ride, but in 1996, there was an awesome special effect experience based on Backdraft, a 1991 film starring Kurt Russell and Billy Baldwin, about two Chicago firefighting brothers. Guests lined up on a tiered observation platform, overlooking a simulated warehouse scene, then suddenly a discombobulated voice shouts a fire warning. A series of explosions follow a backdraft in the warehouse. We had a huge fright when the gantry we were standing on suddenly dropped in the middle of the action. I believe the platform only dropped a little way before guests are ushered out of the building, but it had the desired effect!
There was another special effects attraction, Cinemagic, that is no longer there that we did which was a cool audience-participation experience of a bunch of film sound and special effects. We thought the shows were awesome, especially The Flintstones and WaterWorld. First opening in 1995 and still going strong,WaterWorld showcases lots of cool stunts based on the film and The Flintstones was a musical show, opening in 1991 and ending in 1997. I did the cheesy touristy thing and lined up for a photo with the cast, as shown in the below collection. The Animal Actors show rang from 1970 until 2023, where trained rescue dogs, cats, birds and other animals demonstrated movie and television stunt techniques.
We had an amazing day out at Universal Studios and it was easily the highlight for me of our LA stopover. The park is perfect for film buffs and it's so cool to wander around what feels like a giant movie set. All the rides have interesting scenes from the films that lead into the ride itself. I remember we ate sandwiches and salads for lunch and a themed burger and fries in the Jurassic Park café for dinner. I also recall seeing cookies the size of dinner plates in one of the bakeries. Americans sure do super-sized food!
The bus ride back to our motel was fun, too. Cliff, our driver, entertained us pretending to be lost and quizzing us on our freeway knowledge. We drove a different way back to the morning's trip, through downtown LA and past the Capitol Records and the building used as the Nakatomi tower in Die Hard.
Day 4: The Movieland Wax Museum
Day 4 of our LA stopover was also the start of our sojourn in London before we travelled on to Europe. We had an early evening flight that allowed us to spend most of the day in LA. The previous day we'd booked and paid a deposit on a bus tour around Beverly Hills, including driving by celebrity homes. When we boarded the tour bus, however, the driver told us we wouldn't be back in time to catch our shuttle to the airport. I was so disappointed as one of my LA bucket list items was to go to Beverly Hills.
The information on the brochure about the duration of the tour didn't include the drive from Anaheim to Beverly Hills so we thought we'd have enough time. We'd pre-booked the airport shuttle to collect us at 2pm for 5.30pm flight but we ended up arriving at the airport with plenty of time to spare. I was sorry about our arrangements not working out, but I guess it was better to be waiting around at the airport than missing the flight.
After embarrassingly removing ourselves from the tour, we checked out other options from the brochures in the motel office. We decided to go to the Movieland Wax Museum on Beach Boulevard, Buena Park, something we could get to on the minibus that serviced the nearby Knotsberry Farm.
The museum was actually rather fun in the end! It was housed in a warehouse-like building, with a dark warren of exhibits set up to recreate movie scenes with wax figures of their stars. The whole thing was super atmospheric, in a kitschy gothic kind of way. It wasn't how I expected to spend our final day in LA, but it was definitely a memorable experience. Sadly, dwindling visitor numbers caused the museum's closure in 2005, and it was torn down in 2016 to make way for the construction of new retail space.
Hilarious! Even more hilarious, as soon as we entered the cavernous museum, an attendant grabbed us and sat us down for the obligatory tourist photo with the Frankenstein wax figure. We bought W's photo as mine was rubbish. (As an aside, I hate posing for photos. I never know what to do with my face!) This is it. How funny!
The Movieland Wax Museum was opened in 1962 by Allen Parkinson, inspired by Madame Tussauds' in London. Mary Pickford performed the dedication at the opening ceremony.
The museum was sold to the Six Flags company in 1970 who later built a similar museum in Orlando, the Stars Hall of Fame, that was opened in 1975.
In 1985, Six Flags sold the California museum to the company that owns the wax museum at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco
Next to the museum was a restaurant called PoFolks. It's a chain restaurant that is described as "an American family restaurant serving hearty, homestyle cooking." The restaurant can be seen behind the museum in the below photo. The chain is still around, but the one we ate at is now permanently closed.
The restaurant has a distinctly Western theme, with a train running around the wall above door height. I remember the place so well, as we ordered chicken sandwiches thinking they would just be a basic chicken and salad sandwich. On top of the gigantic sandwiches, we were also served fries and salad and bottomless soft drinks. This was a massive meal to us!
After lunch we caught a mini-bus back to the hotel, checked out, and took the airport shuttle to LAX for our evening flight to London. This was our chance to take in the enormity of LAX and the chaos of the renovations that were happening at the time. We also had time to rest and reflect on our LA wanderings. We ended up with loads of time at the airport so it was a shame that we didn't get to do the planned Beverly Hills tour.
America seemed so big and bold to us, our first experience super intense. In those days, without access to information like we have now, it was easy to be overwhelmed by the enormity of what we'd seen. We were at the very beginning of our travel adventures - so wide-eyed - and not the seasoned travellers that we are now. I feel like that amplified the experiences. That said, everything we saw and did fitted with images we had in our minds of Los Angeles. There was both comfort and some sadness in seeing stereotypes played out in front of us, although, to be fair, we only saw the touristy side of the city. The whole place felt rather surreal, like we had stepped onto a giant movie set!
LA will always be a meaningful experience as it was our first foray into the big, wide world. We were so naive and full of wonder back then!
While LA isn't really my vibe, the privilege of experiencing Disneyland and Universal Studios will stay with me forever.
The experience means more to me almost 30 years later for the way travel was back then. Looking back now, those seemingly "old ways of doing things" made for a such an adventure. It really did feel as if we were heading off into the unknown.
Just being in America and in the sensory overload (and the heat) of LA. To see the city and iconic Americana come to life was such a wondrous experience.
Pinch me moments at Disneyland and Universal Studios.
Giant-sized portions! Sweet sickly muffins and cranberry juice for breakfast! American food in general. Just wow.
The disappointment of missing out on the Beverly Hills tour, with the surreal and hilarious Wax Museum as an unexpected consolation prize.
Los Angeles isn't really my thing, if I am being honest, and subsequent visits in 2008, 2012 and 2016 haven't changed my perspective. The next part of our incredible inaugural world wandering was London. Read on for more of our adventures...
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