California Day 5!

Sorry I didn't post yesterday! I was on an amazing youth conference (we went white water rafting...there will be a blog to come!), and didn't get home til late, and I wasn't in a blogging mood, and I wasn't yesterday either.. I'm back though !

We had finally made it to friday! Unfortunately, the week was going by far too fast. We decided to spend most of the day at Disneyland, and hit up all the rides that we wanted before we left. We got there, and went right away to get a fast pass for Splash Mountain (you can't just ride it once!)

After getting that fast pass, we noticed that the projected wait time for pirates of the carribean was only 10 minutes (turned out to be a little longer, but not too bad). Note in this picture that my face is fairly red and sunburned...remember that when you look at the next picture.

So i realize that this is a really unnattractive picture, and pretty much looks like a mug shot, but I had to include it. While we were standing in line for Pirates, I started getting really light headed and naseous feeling...I honestly think it was almost the sickest I ever felt. Luckily, when we got into the airconditioned building right as I thought I might pass out. I started feeling better. But if you look at this picture, my face is completely pale and drained of all the color that was in it..thats how my mom knew i was actually sick :( We figured that I was really affected by the heat, and the fact that i only hate like half a muffin for breakfast might have contributed to feeling so sick..haha.




So here we are standing in line (still) for pirates of the Caribbean! I didn't really get any pictures of anything from this ride, but I really liked it! They added a lot of stuff from the movies, including Jack Sparrow. I love the few drops that you go off of while your on the boat, especially the ones in the pitch dark! I've had this recurring nightmare since I was 4 about this ride, I'm not sure why! I love all the special effects though! I kind of got a headache at the end when there were fake guns giong off right by head!


There is a train that goes all around the park, so we decided to ride it from Frontierland over to Tomorrow land! It was a nice leisurely ride, and we got to see parts of the park that we hadn't yet been too. We passed by "it's a small world", which sadly wasn't open due to renovations, but it looks like they are redoing the whole thing! I definitely enjoyed riding the train because it was slightly less hot!





So after we rode the train to tomorrowland, we bought one of those spray water bottles (definitely would have been nice to have at the beginning!), and then went back to Splash Mountain! I didn't notice this sign during our first time through splash, but I loved the quote when I saw it, so I had to take a picture :-D






Ha ha I love our picture from Splash Mountain! It's even funnier in real life..I think Michael is hilarious :-D Can you tell I knew exactly where the camera was?!













We got totally soaked this time around! I'm not sure why this picture turned out so bright..hmm

Right as we were getting out of Splash, we noticed that there were characters from Winnie the Pooh! Michael and I went to go stand in line to see Tigger, Pooh, and Eeyore. I gotta say, Pooh was so creepy looking! If I was a little kid, I would probably have cried. Eeyore definitely had to be my favorite...haha. He hit me in the face with my little brother's autograph. It hurt! Here he was trying to make up for it by hugging and kissing me. That was interesting.

Time for lunch! We went to this cute little cafe, I think it was called the Carnation Cafe, or something like that, and it was yummy! We had read a lot of reviews about Disneyland and that all the food wasn't very good, but I beg to differ! Even though it was real expensive, it was definitely very good! This place had sandwiches and soup. I got this really good chicken sandwich on a croissant with fresh fruit. My parents got this really good baked potato soup! It was a nice place to cool off as well :)

















So definitely one of the highlights of my whole trip was being serenaded by the Dapper Dan's quartet on Disney's main street. We were just watching them singing, and one of the looked at me video recording them, and was like "Hey, do you want to get a picture with us." Of course I said yes! And I was absolutely THRILLED when they said they were going to sing to me! They sang to me "Let me call you sweetheart" which is one of my favorite quartet songs, and I was just about in cloud nine! They had me play a "game", where whenever they stopped singing, I was supposed to fill in the word "you". Boy did I feel silly! It was awesome though :-D




The line for the matterhorn had been pretty long every time we passed by it, so when we saw that the wait was about 15 minutes long, we jumped right in it! Well, my mom and dad did. Me and michael ran over to get fast passes for space mountain, and by the time we got back, it was almost our turn! Unfortunately, the ride got shut down for about 15 minutes due to 'techincal difficulties', but we just waited, and finally we got on! This ride is so cool! It kind of freaked me out that it was completely dark, especially when we were getting pulled up to the top, but it was really fun! The yeti wasn't nearly as scary or intimidating as I seemed to have remembered! he he.


















So I think the most popular ride at Disneyland is Indiana Jones. Last time we were here, I wasn't tall enough to go on it, so my mom and i spent a lot of the day in Mickey's Toon Town, but I'm pleased to say, i was definitely tall enough now! Once again, we used our wonderful fast passes, but we still had to wait about 15 minutes. Not too shabby though, considering the standby line was over 100 minutes! This is definitely one of my very favorite rides of the trip! It's pretty exciting, but bumpy. Not a ride for the faint hearted. At the end of the ride, tragedy struck. Not really, but when it was pitch dark and we went down a hill type thing, I flew forward and somehow hit my nose/mouth on the seat in front of me. It hurt so bad, I was really thinking I might either have a bloody nose, or a broken one! ha ha. None of those two things happened, but it definitely hurt for about 4 days afterwards!



There was this weirdo fortune telling machine on main street that we kept passing by! The manquin person inside was really creepy. Michael got a fortune from her...However, I don't believe it has come true yet!





















So we went back to the hotel to rest for awhile, and to have dinner (I won't be talking about the place we went for dinner. All i can say is...I really don't like when salad and spaghetti are sitting on about an inch of water!). We went back to the park to watch the spectacular fireworks show! It was so cool! The program was narrated by Julie Andrews, and there was a lot of really cool music and special effects! My favorite part was when tinker bell came flying out. It was an actual person, attached to a wire. It was SO cool! I just love fireworks :-D


Our fast pass for Space mountain wasn't until 930 at night, so after the fireworks, me, my dad and michael headed over to get in line (my mom opted out of this one..she'd been a good sport on gone on every ride, but she really didn't want to go on this one!). This is SUCH a neat ride! You had no idea where you were going, and there were stars everywhere! It's a really cool indoor rollercoaster, and it definitely jolts you around. I really wanted to go again, but it didn't work out. I would post the picture of us on the ride, but it really distorted what we looked like, and I most definitely would never put it online for anyone to see!





While we were on space mountain, my mom got in line for Finding Nemo Submarines. So this ride always had an extremely long line. Even at 1030 at night, it was about 60 minutes long. At different points during the day it got up to 2 1/2 hours. I gotta say..It's totally not worth more than a 20 minute wait. I felt so claustrophobic in the submarine, and I almost fell asleep as well! It was pretty much just watching the movie Finding Nemo underwater. Little kids would probably like it, but I really don't think i'll ever wait in line for this ride again! And Diana, the sign that is in the picture here, reminded us of you. Can you guess why?! ha ha

We ended up leaving the park around 1130, and we were exhausted! It was a very fun last full day in California :)

California Day Two!

Thanks for the overwhelming response to my last blog. Well, thanks to my sisters and mom...they are such loyal commenters :-D

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!