The Happiest Place on Earth

Short story: We went to Disneyland and had a blast!!

Long story:

November 1-4th, Mitchell and I were down in Anaheim, CA at Disneyland! We had the BEST time! We discovered that we enjoy Disney for different reasons. Mitchell is really interested in how all the rides work, how everything runs so smoothly and speculating how much money Disney makes. I am in la-la land soaking up all the magic of Disney. :) I loved being there with Mitchell too. We spent all that time together, planned rides and meals and didn't get into a single argument. We didn't even get frustrated with each other secretly. It was perfect!

We stayed in the Holiday Inn that was on the corner of the Disney property and only had to walk about half a mile to get to Downtown Disney and into the park. 

Day One was spent at Disneyland which is EXACTLY like Magic Kingdom in Disney World. A lot of the same rides, Main Street, castle, etc. Although I do have to say that Cinderella's Castle in Disney World majorly trumps Sleeping Beauty's in Disneyland. 

Starting each day off right with a healthy breakfast!

Decorated for fall!

I'm so excited!

Classic pic at the entrance to the park

Walt & Mickey!

See the tents and lights behind Walt & Mickey? Well the next day they were filming a parade and concert for Christmas Day! There was even a celebrity coming! So if you have the TV on on Christmas Day, tune into Disney's Holiday Park Parade!

Let the rides begin!

Space Mountain! 

About to hop on and not a bit nervous!

So we hopped on Space Mountain thinking it was just going to be your average roller coaster in the dark. Well they still had the Halloween edition of Space Mountain going called "Ghost Galaxy" and there was like this demon fire man on the walls grabbing at you as you swirled around in the dark. Creepy! Obviously we didn't like it at all if you look at our faces in the picture!

Here's a cool ride only at Disneyland: Finding Nemo! You climb down into a submarine and go around to the world of Nemo. My favorite little kid quote of the weekend was on Nemo: "We were so deep it got scary!"... You never fully submerge, they just make you think you are. Haha!

Looking out my port hole!

Getting ready to go blast away Zurg on Astro Blasters with Buzz Lightyear! I love how Buzz's face moves all around and talks but when I took this picture, he was looking at the camera... or the goober posed in front of him! ;D

Our one character meet of the trip: Wreck it Ralph! "I'm gonna wreck it!"

They even had Fix It Felix for you to play for free!

We decided we would walk through Toon Town just to check it out since it's a small world was closed. :( We ended up riding Roger Rabit's ride in that area. I was just impressed with the backdrop they have set up that makes it looks like there's hills in the background... only Disney!

I have to admit that I've never ridden the tea cups so since the crowds in Fantasyland were still light, we hopped right on!

Like I mentioned, Fantasyland (kid rides) was pretty empty so we decided to get some of those rides out of the way. So far I was kinda directing which rides we rode and we weren't having to wait in hardly any lines. Mitchell saw Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and suggested we ride that one. The line took forever! We both agreed that Mr. Toad's Wild Ride was our ONE mistake we were allowed for the day and so neither of us were bitter about it. Haha, check out the pic below.

After refueling ourselves at lunch, we headed over to Frontierland and rode several rides, one of which was the Haunted Mansion. That weird Tim Burton movie Nightmare Before Christmas had taken over the mansion. The sign in the pic below switched from saying Merry Christmas to Scary Christmas.

No trip to Disney is complete without authentic, park quality Dole Whips! Ahhhhh! We got our Dole Whips and sat down to eat them on Main Street and watched Mickey's Soundsational Parade.

You have to take a pic in front of the castle!

Mitchell was not interested in riding Splash Mountain because of how wet you get but I insisted because it's a classic and you just have to ride Splash Mountain! Well...

... we had a Splash Mountain fail! Check out the pics below! We were both soaked and Mitchell lost his hat sometime immediately after the picture above was taken. Plus the sun was setting soon and it was about to get cold. So we walked back to the hotel and got changed into warm clothes.

Once back in the park we had some dinner at the French Market in the New Orleans section of the park! It was so yummy and got to listen to this lovely jazz band play while we ate.

Mickey shaped beignets!

After dinner we rode a few rides and then found a spot to watch Fantasmic! We were tired after that and the park was so crowded, even at 10:00 at night! We walked back to our hotel satisfied with Day One of Disneyland and excited about Day Two!

Day Two - California Adventure!

Mitchell had a great idea to run back to the brand new Cars Land first and ride those rides before it got too crowded. Brilliant! Because later in the day the line for this ride was 2 hours long! We hopped into the single rider line and were through in a breeze! Radiator Springs Racers is an awesome ride!

Clearly I had fun! :)

After Cars Land we went over to get Fastpasses for Tower of Terror but realized that the line was only 13 minutes long so Mitchell wanted to go ahead and ride it... gulp! I hadn't worked myself up for it yet and started getting nervous as soon as they take you into the room and make you watch the movie about the Twilight Zone! Haha, check out the picture below. We are front and left!

Mitchell LOVES the Muppets so we had to stop and see Muppet Vision 3D!

Beautiful place for pictures with Paradise Pier behind us! The lady who worked for Disney that took this picture was from Houston! Cool!

Ahhh, I love the Little Mermaid!

Cars Land is behind us! See those mountains? Fake. Good job, Disney!

We didn't get a picture in front of California Adventure so we did it on the way out.

California Adventure was cool and we enjoyed it but it didn't really have enough to keep us entertained for the entire day. :-/ We went back to Disneyland for dinner, Captain EO and got a Fastpass for Space Mountain again then went back to CA for their awesome show, World of Color.

Castle in Disneyland at night!

Main Street at night!

After World of Color, we went back to Disneyland and rode a few more rides to soak up as much Disney as we (I) could. We left even later than we did the first night but we left feeling satisfied in Day Two of California Adventure/Disneyland. 

Sunday morning we enjoyed the extra hour of sleep, had a late breakfast and then walked to Downtown Disney to see Wreck it Ralph. It's a great movie!

After lunch we had to get our last vacation splurge and got this massive Mickey shaped cookie. I forgot to take a picture before we dug in. :)

OH no! The Hulk got Mitchell!

After spending time at Downtown Disney, we made our way back to LAX where we started to feel sad about leaving our fabulous vacation time! Don't make us go home! :)

We had a great time at Disneyland and we are so very thankful that we were able to go. We look forward to our Disney World trip with Mitchell's family next year!