Disney have a free entry on your birthday policy. Rebecca and I got badges to indicate we were celebrating my birthday and I got free entry. As you make your way around the park all the staff (and several strangers) wish you happy birthday. There were lots of other people celebrating their birthdays as well.

Our top priority today was to get to all the attractions that were too busy to see in Orlando with Space Mountain at the top of the list. The line was marked over 90 minutes at Orlando but we made a beeline for the ride this morning and were on it in about 15 mins. The Splash Mountain ride in LA is quite different to Orlando - for a start the watercraft is single seat wide instead of two across. We also got a bit wetter on this version. Tomorrow we are going to spend the day at Disney’s AdventureLand and try to tire ourselves out before we fly out about 11pm tomorrow night.

Traffic was a lot easier this morning on the way to Warner Bros. We got there early and was able to get onto the earlier tour. We travelled around the Warner Bros backlot and soundstages which included sets and facades from some of our favourite TV shows including Friends and Two and Half Men. We had our photos taken on the set of Central Perk from Friends (has been reassembled for tours as they show finished a few years back) and we also got to visit the set of Two and Half Men. The cast & crew are on hiatus right now having finished for the season so a lot of the props were covered with sheets but the set was still very cool.

We drove through the WB workshops where they have carpentry, metal work, plastics, plumbing and more all under the one roof and then headed over to the WB Museum and checked out some of the costumes and props including an entire floor of Harry Potter gear from the films. You can even be sorted by one of the sorting hats from the film. The tour only takes a couple of hours so we had the whole afternoon. We drove back down to Santa Monica and walked through the stalls at Venice Beach and the pier at Santa Monica.

It was still early so we plugged in the coordinates for the Nike Factory and drove out to Ontario (60miles). Traffic was shocking - bumper to bumper for 2.5hrs. The malls at Ontario are huge. We passed a Barnes & Noble and a Borders each of which would have been about the size of K-Mart. There were 2 cinemas at the mall we went to with a total of 52 theatres between them and they were not even large buildings next to the mall.

The 40 mile trip across town was pretty much all freeway but took us nearly 2 hours despite starting well after rush hour. We got to Universal Studios at 11am and got straight in line for the backlot tour. The tram you ride around in takes you through some stunt sets including Jaws, a bridge that breaks apart while you are driving on it and a subway station that suffers from an earthquake (a train derails, the roof drops and a fuel tanker drops through and catches fire and then the other side of the subway floods - all while you are in the middle of the action).

My favourite part of the day was the Simpsons ride. It is a video simulator - you sit in a car and it rocks around on hydraulics to make you feel like you what you see on screen is happening to you. It is very cool. The Simpsons are 3D rendered and you fly around a ride at KrustyLand with them with a few suprises in store. We also saw a special effects show that included live blue screen and robotic puppets. Tomorrow we’re off to see Warners Bros.

The tour we selected was a 6 hour tour of Los Angeles and was covered quite a lot of ground. We started in Venice Beach and then down the road to Santa Monica, over to Downtown LA, China Town and the Hollywood Hills and then continued on through Bel Air and Westwood. We had stops at Venice Beach, Union Station, Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood Bowl Observation Point, Bel Air and Rodeo Drive which broke up the bus tour nicely.

Our tourguide was good. He took us places not normally on the tours like the canals in Venice Beach (hard to get into) as well as a few places in the Hollywood Hills and Bel Air they don’t normally allow Tour Buses including the Spelling Estate in Bel Air which just went on the market for US$150million making it the most expensive house in the country at the moment.

We saw the houses of several stars including Jack Nicholson, Meg Ryan, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt & Jenniffer Anniston (when they were married), Jennifer Lopez & Marc Anthonys, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Shaquille O’Neal. We also saw the Location House for the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Our tour bus only had 16 people on it and 6 were from Australia (2 couples and a Mum & daughter). After touring around all day Rebecca and I had dinner at Souplantation - it is like Sizzler except you don’t order a main meal - just lots of soup, salad, bakery and desert. I enjoyed it despite no mains as my throat is still a bit swollen and I am having trouble chewing breads and the like.

We’ve arrived safely in Los Angeles. The journey from the airport to the hotel was pretty straight foward but that didn’t stop us getting lost more than twice. Check the satellite image below to see how close our hotel is to Disney Land (our hotel is the red marker). First order of business is to sort out what we are going to do for the rest of the week.