Day 1 - Disneyland

 

(I LOVE LOVE LOVE this note from Lexi.  It’s SO Lexi :-)

 

In November, we ventured three hours down South for a trip to Disneyland. We had the entire week of Thanksgiving off, and it was Lexi’s 7th birthday…so it sounded like a fun time to go. And it was.  Unless you have an intense aversion to HUGE, HUGE crowds and it makes you impatient, nervous and edgy.  Other than that, right now one month later, I have 90% happy memories in my mind :-)

 

We got a good deal on tickets from Costco.  Each day will have ended up costing us the equivalent of $38 (for a parkhopper!).  We bought 4-day parkhoppers for $199 which included a $50 gift card.  We then used two of the days, and sold two of the days.  So two full days at Disney/Cal Adventure including food and miscellaneous items (not hotel) cost the five of us $500.  Not bad.  And the hotel we stayed in was only $50 a night.

So we arrived at Disneyland right as it opened at 8:00 am on Monday.  It wasn’t too bad at first, crowd-wise.  We headed straight to the Peter Pan ride and then did as much as we can from there.  The weather was great, in the 60’s. 

 

 

I love how much work they put into TOTALLY transforming every inch of the park for the Holidays.  It’s incredible detail.  It’s a Small World is literally a different ride during Christmas time!  It was so cool!  I am so glad we ran there for one of our first rides because we waited like 5 minutes, as opposed to the hour or two wait that developed soon after.

 

 

I also love the detail of the bushes.  And each one was meticulously draped with lights.

 

 

 

Princess coronation…

 

 

 

Minnie’s House

 

 

We waited over an hour for the new-ish Nemo submarine ride.  Some people (like Lexi) loved it.  Other’s (like me) thought that, although a cool concept, it was a suffocating waste of time.

 

 

We have never ever waited in the long line to meet the princesses, any time we have gone to Disneyland in the last 5 or so years.  And, even though my girls are really not THAT into princesses anymore, we decided to do the wait and meet them this time.  Ariel was REALLY friendly.  Mulan was nice.  And Jasmine actually seemed like she hated every aspect of her job.  She was probably tired of little kids.

 

I really can’t explain what it was like trying to get a spot for the parade.  We got a spot over an hour before and we STILL had to squeeze into a tiny space.  While Tucker and the girls waited, I ran to get dinner.  Dinner was $6.99 corn dogs, which the kids ate 1/3 of theirs.  The parade was really cool and I’m glad we saw it.  Sometimes I like to sneak away during that time and ride the rides with shorter lines, but I knew this was a special Christmas parade.  The girls loved it.

 

There was so much more we didn’t get to do, but by 10:00 we were almost completely dead and freezing so we went back to the hotel and crashed into bed.