So on Tuesday, we all woke up at about 815 or so. Every day we planned on getting up and being ready by 830, so we could get to the park at 9...Did this ever happen? Not once. But it was nice to dream. Anyways, the hotel we were staying at, The Holiday Inn Express at Garden Grove, was pretty nice.
The beds were comfortable, the pillows really nice, and most importantly, they had a hot breakfast. It wasn't the best food I've ever had, but hey, I'm not complaining...they had cinnamon rolls, eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits...it was great. I also enjoyed the fact that they had a workout room! Anyways, after eating breakfast and what not, we made our way outside, and finally set out on our first adventure in Disneyland! We parked in the "Mickey and Friends" parking lot, and fortunately there was a free tram from the parking lot to the front gates of Disneyland. 
Here we are on the tram, only minutes away from the happiest place on earth!
After a short ride on the tram, we finally made it into the gates of Disney! I only have a handful of pictures of all four of us because one of us was usually taking the picture. These first few pictures of us inside the park are no exception!
When we first got to Disney, we went right away to get our fast passes for Splash Mountain (one of our favorite Disney rides!), and after seeing we wouldn't be able to get on until about 1, we decided to go find some rides with shorter lines. The wait for Haunted Mansion was only a 10 minute wait, so we jumped right in! I remember this ride scaring me half to death (I was just four! :-D), so I was expecting a thrillingly scary ride. Instead, it was a pretty entertaining ride, with lots of spooky music and 999 different ghosts! It was a nice sitdown ride in an airconditioned builiding, so I'm definitely not complaining :-D
Right across from the Haunted Mansion was the "Pirates Lair", and there was no wait there either! So we boarded onto rafts, and sailed over to an island taken over by pirates! There was a cave called Dead Mans Grotto, so we went into that first. Because of that experience, i don't think I'll ever want to go in a small, cramped cave ever again! I felt like I was giong to pass out. I was thrilled when I saw the light at the end of the cave, and I was finally able to get some fresh air. Despite the cramped space in the cave, it was pretty neat! The picture to the left is inside the cave at a sign "warning" us of dangers!
After finally escaping the cave, we came to a fun part of the island that had a lot of fun things on it! There were these really neat bridges that we had to cross to get to other places on the island...ya know the old rickety ones that you sometimes see in movies? Anyways, I definitely reccommend visiting this island! It's a lot of fun to explore.
If you like animals, Jungle Cruise is a must! Although there is obviously no real animals on this ride, there are a ton of different animatronic animals that just about seem real! We had a lot of fun on this ride, especially because of our witty tour guide...or so he thought ;-)
After walking around for awhile, we spotted this rifle shooting range. It was only 50 cents, so we figured, why not! I must say, after my dad showed me how to aim, I was quite amazing ;-)
My mom and dad's friend, Kathy, was out at disneyland this week as well because her granddaughter was doing a dance performance...so we went and watched that before we went to use our fast pass. It was a pretty fun performance. And like my mom said, it was nice because all the songs they danced to were short, so if you didn't like on of the songs, it was over pretty quickly!
Finally, it was time for Splash Mountain! Back when my family was in Disneyland 14 years ago, this was quite a bit of trama about going on this ride. You see, Daniel was sobbing because he didn't want to go...and I remember clearly thinking , "well if daniel is scared, this MUST be a scary ride, so i better cry too". Fortunately this time, there were no tears when it came time for us to get on! Using our fast passes, we went to the front of the line and waited only a matter of minutes before getting on our log. It sure did beat standing out in the hot sun for 110 minutes!
Here we are waiting to get on the ride! Here's one of those rare pictures of all four of us that I was talking about :-D
Yay! Just about to get going down into the world of "Song of the South" and to get soaking wet! And just to let you all know, my hair is not normally that frizzy (I'm sure there will be many more pictures that show my hair being all frizzy)..For some reason the california climate makes my hair frizzy...I couldn't even straighten my hair! I just wanted to clairfy that :-D
Right by Splash Mountain is a Winnie the Pooh ride..It was so cute! Little kids would love it :)
We finally ventured out of adventure land over to tomorrow land. I was sad to see that fast pass distribution for space mountain was done for the day, but we had fun looking at all the different things this land had! We went to the 3-D show of "Honey, I shrunk the Audience". You wore these snazzy yellow glasses, 
and it brought the show alive! It was pretty funny...and you never knew when a mouse might scurry up your leg ;-)
I couldn't resist putting this picture up! I'm sad to say, my dad did NOT buy that hat, despite how nice it looked on him!
After buying and enjoying some delicious frozen lemonade, we went off to fantasy land! This is the land that contains most of the original rides of the park! We went on this cute little boat ride around Storybook land. It was actually pretty fun...there was lots of displays from everyones favorite disney movies, Like Aladdin
.
My friend Cortney told me that I had to go on Mr. Toad's wild ride...so we did! It was pretty interesting...I actually don't think I've ever seen or even heard of this movie until this ride, but it was fun. The ending is especially exciting. But I'll leave that a mystery for all of you who haven't experienced it yet ;-)
This picture isn't the best quality, but it has kind of a funny story to go along with it...So Michael and Mom got off the ride first, so I gave michael my camera and told him to take a picture of us in the cart...well, I guess once you get off the ride your not really allowed to come back into the area..the ride attendent yelled at michael that he had to get out! But hey, at least he got the picture!
During the day at disneyland, they have a contest to see who can pull the sword out of the stone..well we were never there for the actual contest, but we still had fun pretending to take it out! Despite all of our best efforts..no one could do it. Maybe next time :)
Here we are at Snow White's wishing well...its really not very deep, probably like 2 feet? The first picture here is my attempt at "I'm dreaming of a handsome prince!" look...but I kind of just look like I'm staring at something in the sky..haha.
As you can tell, the heat and all that walking was getting to me! (I'm actually not asleep :-D...since I'm sure I convinced all of you). It was nice to lay down though...until some guy told me i shouldn't lie in the grass because kids go to the bathroom in it...Yeah..right, especially since this was right by the bathrooms.
Another fun ride we went on was Autotopia! Unfortunately, me and my dad got stuck in a traffic jam! Someone thought it was funny to stop every like 10 seconds..it kind of took the momentum away from driving fast! Fortunately, they gave that up after awhile, and it was fun! Even though we were driving, I couldn't help but take some pictures :-D I like the one of my dad...that traffic jam was long enough for him to take a nap!
Our last ride of the day is one of my personal favorites..Star Tours! This is one of the rides I distinctly remember from when I was four because, before you get on, they show you safety rules, and in the video they show aliens sitting next to you. Now, in my four year old mind, I believed it all, and I was SO scared. I remember making sure that my dad was sitting next to me! It jolts you around a little bit, but its lots of fun! What a great ride to end the day with!
After leaving Disney, we went to Mimi's cafe for dinner, which was really good! I think we have some here in Colorado, but I've never been, so it was nice to try something new. The food was realy good! I got a soup/salad dinner, and it was super good! It was pretty obvious that we were dehydrated, because me and my mom both drank four or five glasses of water each..and thats saying something, considering I usually drink one glass of water, MAYBE two, when out eating. After dinner we went back to our hotel, and fell asleep quite quickly :) It was such a fun day, and I definitely couldn't wait until tomorrow, when we would try out California Adventure, which would be a totally new experience :)
Oh and just as a side note...look what happened to Michael's feet! He was wearing crocs, and he got sunburnt through the little holes! At first we thought they were welts because his shoes were too tight or something..but then we realized that it was a sunburn! isn't that so funny?
Heh, this is really long, but considering the fact I don't really keep a journal, this will be nice to have someday!
5 comments:
Wow--another great day! That was so much fun!
That picture of Michael's feet is just hilarious!
kristin.
hahaha that pic of mikey's feet made me laugh so hard, I ran to get AJ to look at it..haha I love looking at allt he pics and remembering when we were there. I have pics of AJ shooting at that rifle thing and with mr. toad. We didn't go on some of the rides you talked about, I am so mad now!
I absolutley love all of your hilarious commentary. You did such a great job of capturing all of the fun things that you guys did. I can't wait to read about day 3!
It was so fun to read about your 2nd day! You look so good in every single picture! Did you really work out at the hotel? I can't believe that you remember so much from when you were 4...I don't remember hardly anything from when we went except for star tours...now that you reminded me I do remember Daniel crying about getting on the ride. GOing with little kids definitely must be different than when you're older. :)
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