Disney’s California Adventure: Photo Tour After Dark

Today, we continue look at Disneyland Resort with an look at Disney’s California Adventure park after the sun goes down.

Disneyland Resort’s 2nd gate opened in 2001. Originally a bit of the black sheep of US Disney parks, California Adventure underwent a massive 1.1 billion dollar overhaul from 2007 – 2012. This included the addition of the hugely impressive Cars land, as well as several more minor changes to improve the overall cohesive theme of the park.

Dedication to a cohesive California theme has wavered a bit since then, particularly with the overlays of Guardains of the Galaxy and Pixar Pier the last few years. The park has become very much a mish mash of various IPs similar to the current state of Hollywood Studios at WDW.

Despite this, there area plenty of things to love at California Adventure. The park has lots of great rides, one of the better lands of any Disney park, and a top notch night show in World of Color! So without any further ado, lets take a walk around Disney’s California Adventure after dark.

Like our previous Disneyland after dark post, these photos are from multiple visits and in no particular order.

We start off in Cars Land. This is the best overall area of the park and one of the best Disney built lands in general. The attention to detail is off the charts! Unsurprisingly, it looks amazing at night!

Let’s head over to Pixar Pier.

Unfortunately, World of Color was closed for most of last year, including during our summer visit. Here are some photos I took back in 2015 of the 60th anniversary version of the show instead.

Instead, fans got the wonderful Paint the Night Parade from April – November of last year. We really hoped that this parade (or a new night parade of the same quality) would be coming to WDW for its upcoming 50th anniversary, but alas it seems like that won’t happen at this point.

Paint the Night is by far our favorite parade we have ever seen. For a full look at the parade, check out our post here!

Back to Pixar Pier. We are not big fans of the overlay as it doesn’t really have a consistent theme. But that doesn’t make it any less beautiful when lit up at night!

Here is a photo from a few years back when it was still Paradise Pier.

Moving on to Grizzly Peak. This is one of our favorite areas of the park. The theming is on point and Grizzly River Run is a great rapids attraction. The area also has a couple little walk ways hidden away that make great places to just relax for a few minutes during the day.