Disneyland Trip Part II: Disneyland

Sunday night we drove to Anaheim. We stayed at the Anaheim Islander Inn and Suites. It wasn't fantastic, but it was clean, inexpensive and walking distance from Disneyland. Monday was our first day at the park. It "rained" (I believe rain in southern California doesn't exactly exist, but is more so a drizzle) and I think that kept some of the crowds away. We stayed in Disneyland all day Monday and were able to ride many rides. We waited no more than 15-20 minutes a ride and several were 5 minutes or so.

We rode a lot of the "psychedelic" rides (Alice In Wonderland, Roger Rabit, Peter Pan) the first day and Hazel did not appreciate them. When we left the park that first night, she kept saying, "No Disneyland." I think Clara was just in awe at everything. Come to find out, she always thought Disneyland was where you got to go see the Disneyland castle. She didn't know it was full of rides. My favorite part was the lighting on the castle after the firework show. It was awesome, which is why you'll see lots and lots of pictures of it below.

 

 

Our second day, Tuesday, we started out in California Adventures. We went to the Little Mermaid ride first and the nice old man told us we might want to go to the Toy Story ride first. We did and pretty much walked on with no wait. I was so glad he told us that because I don't think the line was less than 30-45 minutes the rest of the day. We went to Disneyland in the afternoon for the parade and then came back to California Adventures for the laser show at night. We also walked through the new Cars Land. It's pretty amazing. Although the parks seemed much more crowded than Monday, we still didn't wait more than 20 minutes or so for a ride and many were less. We got just about everything done we wanted to and still had time to watch the Aladdin show, part of the parade and the laser show.

 

 

We had one goal for our third and final day: the Cars ride. Apparently none of us were in tune enough to know how insane the crowds are for the new attractions. On day two, we noticed the fast passes for Cars sold out before Noon. As soon as we got inside the park, Jason went to the line for the ride and I went to the line for the fast pass. My line was a 45 minute wait and even then, that didn't guarantee we'd get a fast pass nor did it guarantee we'd get a fast pass for a time that was before we needed to leave. So we took a gamble and went and stood in the line (with a posted wait of 110 minutes). Thankfully, the wait was only an hour and I got to take Clara on the ride first (we did the family switch on the rides with height limits and 9 times out of 10, it worked out awesome... plus, Clara often got to ride the rides multiple times). After that, we rode Tower of Terror (the first time Clara got scared from a ride, and even then, she wasn't that scared) and went over to Disneyland to ride the Monorail and Space Mountain and walk through the castle. Space Mountain was Clara's favorite and I think she ended up going on it 4 times. It is a pretty cool ride. We got to ride in the front on the Monorail which turned out to be pretty cool. Clara and Hazel loved it.

^Best family picture of the trip

^I loved the souvenir Clara picked

Here are my final thoughts on our trip:

||| One of my biggest concerns was the food. I didn't want to pay $15 for a meal that was nasty. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I could spend around $10 and get a very healthy, whole meal. Like the salad I got in California Adventures. For the most part, the food was not that expensive and there were plenty of healthy alternatives.

||| The girls did really, really good. They both fell asleep in the stroller every night by the time we got back to the hotel (well, Hazel usually fell asleep before we even left), but they never threw a fit. Clara had a moment where she cried because she couldn't eat with me (I had just gone to the bathroom), but other than that, I was so happy with how well behaved they were.

||| Clara was so brave! She tried every single ride she was tall enough to ride. I think the only rides she couldn't ride were California Screamin' and Indiana Jones, but Indiana Jones was closed. She loved the Matterhorn and Space Mountain and preferred rides over pictures with characters (didn't get a single one, but I always gave her a choice).

||| It was so nice having Dan and Karen with us. 

||| Jason was pretty grumpy most of the trip and he told me it's because he doesn't like people and he doesn't like it when I take pictures. Too bad those are usually two certainties of most vacations.

||| The family switch deal is pretty handy. We took full advantage of it.

||| I dropped my phone while we were there. I went to take it out of my pocket and in the motion of bringing it to my face to take a picture, it flew out of my hand onto the concrete. The first, direct impact was on the corner. Fortunately, I had just put a temporary case on it and it bounced like a bouncy ball. The case didn't even have a mark on it. I was so glad!

||| I think we picked a really good time to go. Even when the parks seemed somewhat crowded, the lines were never too bad. We got to ride everything we wanted to and never felt rushed or stressed that we were running out of time.

||| Buying Clara a neon shirt for the trip was a great idea. (Toot! Toot!)

||| We got an awesome deal on our tickets. I am really grateful to have found out about them when we did because it saved us over $200.

||| People wear the most bizarre shoes to theme parks. It can't possibly be comfortable to walk around in heals for 12 hours.

||| I brought my nice camera on the last day so we wouldn't have to lug it around and protect it for a full day (we left early afternoon on our last day). After threatening Jason that he better cooperate for a family picture in front of the flower Mickey, waiting in line so no one would be in our picture and having Karen take tons of pictures, I decided to go take pictures of my girls by the castle. That's when I realized there was no card in my camera. I've never done that before and Disneyland was not a good first for that. Nooooo! At least we had our cell phones. 

||| I love how colorful everything is.

||| 2 1/2 days was a good amount of time to be at the parks. I don't think 2 days would have been enough and 4 might have been too long. It would have been nice to spend the whole third day there and travel home on the next day. Maybe next time.

Oh, and I took just under 1,000 pictures on our trip. I pared that down to 199 to make a book for Clara and Hazel. I'm too lazy/busy/indecisive to go through them again, hence the collage overload.