Originally Posted By familyguy Well, the anticipation is over. The day is finally here. After all the countdowns I'm finally typing this from my hotel room after the first part of my day here at Disneyland. We boarded an Amtrak train in New Mexico last night and arrived in Los Angeles this morning at 8am!! (on time BTW) After getting our rental car (which was a bit of a fiasco) We went for an early lunch at In N Out! Gotta get the double double, fries (aniimal style), and a chocolate shake. Maybe you're wondering how we could eat lunch so early. Well, by the time we got there it was a little after 10am, which is still early, but we weren't the only ones. The place was packed. We wanted to eat an early lunch to make sure we were nice starving for our Goofy's Kitchen reservations at 6:50. After In N Out it was still too early to check in to the hotel so we hit Disneland for a few! Definitely a different approach than we normally take. We usually don't go our first day because we have hoppers and we didn't want to waste one of our days only going a half day. Well, this time we got AP's so it didn't matter! The moment we walked through the gates I let a sigh of relief as if I was home. Right after walking through the right tunnel we got the kids autograph books (first time) so we figured that today would be a day that we would just casually walk around and visit characters and maybe get on a ride here and there. Met Mickey and Donald right away on main street! Walked into adventureland and caught the Aladdin show where they met Al and Jasmine. (My 4 year old son was called up to play Jaffar - He was so excited!) Next as we're going over to see what's going on they got to meet Captain Jack. He was pretty funny. Had a lot of the mannerisms and stuff down pretty well. That was fun. He really interacted well with us. Then over to HM and Winnie the Pooh. Before we left that area we had to grab a turtle from the candy shop right outside of the Pooh ride. (yummy) Well, we hadn't done much but we were already getting tired after a long train ride with little sleep, but we wanted our 4 yr old to ride the ride that he had been so looking forward to for his very first time - Star Tours (or as he calls it - Star Wars Ride). He is just barely 40 inches so we were praying they would let him and they did!! He loves the movies and you should have seen his response to the ride. It was priceless!!! (He started clapping and in his cute 4 year old voice said "that was awesome!") Well, after that it was time to go check in and clean up and get ready to go to Goofy's Kitchen for dinner (another first time experience). That brings us to where I am now. (I'm next in the shower) After dinner we'll head back to the park for a couple more rides and hopefully (weather permitting) check out the fireworks. Our official first day at the park (rope drop) will be tomorrow when we will go pretty non-stop and hit all the sweet rides like Indy and SM and BTMRR, and the rest! Hopefully I'll be consistent with giving you guys a day to day report. But, because I'm rarely consistent with that type of thing, we'll see how it goes. If I get some replys in this thread and people seem to be interested, it'll probably motivate me to be more diligent with this. I hope some of you will enjoy this...I'm thinking about all you LPers that wish you were me right now. I would wish I was me too...heck, I'm at Disneyland!
Originally Posted By LPFan22 Sounds like you're off to a great start familyguy. I'll think of you and your family when you have your dinner at Goofy's in about 45 minutes. Have fun and eat till you pop! =)
Originally Posted By ncnike7 Sounds like you guys are having a blast! Keep on posting, I love trip reports!!!! If you get one, will tell me how much the churros cost now, please?
Originally Posted By familyguy Ok, so my very first "Goofy's" experience totally exceeded my expectations. That place rocks! The food is sooooo good! We loved everything we ate and the kids loved being able to have tons of characters coming up to the table and chatting them while we ate. My little 4 year old is such a funny guy that the characters would send other characters over to our table to laugh and play with him...it was fun. After tons of yummy food and desserts (OMG so good) we went over to DCA to ride soarin and TOT but the lines were too long on both so we just hit Monsters Inc. and then went back to Disneyland and caught the fireworks at IASW and rode Matterhorn, Alice, Pinochio and Snow White. (all the darkrides that don't have long lines) Now, it was finally time for my first trip on Pirates!!!It was a walk on at this point. No line at all. It was really nice. By this time we were all getting tired and decided that wewould quickly hit BTMRR and then leave. Unfortunately the line for BTMRR wasn't as short as I thought it would be after riding Pirates with no line at all. AS we were about to walk away and call it a night a guy walks up and asks if we wanted to ride and how many were in our group. I said 6 (pretty big family) and he gave us 6 fast passes that he wasn't going to use. How cool! I know it was just another guest like me, and not the dream squad or whatever, but I felt like we had a little dream come true at that moment. We had a blast riding Big Thunder at night and then headed back home. This has been a great first day at the park. Still got 6 more days to go!
Originally Posted By familyguy So, after closing down the park last night (midnight) we got up early this morning to grab our continental breakfast and head back to the park. Got there right at opening (I would have liked to have been there a little earlier) and headed straight over to Peter Pan and Mr. Toad. Peter Pan is definitely my favorite darride with Monsters inc. at a close second. Then we hit dumbo whime the line was still almost non-existant. Then it was over to Space Mountain for my son's first ride on it! (lots of firsts for him this year) Sad thing was it was down for a bit. No problem, we just jumped on Buzz!! I was an L-3, 73000 points or something...as you can see I'm not a good shot. Checked on Space and it's still down so it was about time for Autopia. This I rode with my older son (7) who isn't tall enough to push the pedals so I was on the gas. This kid is wierd. He doesn't even try to steer correctly. He likes the rough ride that goes along with the car being steered by the track. I'm like "whatever floats your boat, kid". Just let him have fun. As we're getting off Autopia we see that they're now letting people on Space!!! Yes...perfect timing they just opened up. 10 minute wait tops! My little guy was pretty tripped out. He said it was fun, but he's not real excited about going on it again. Time to head over to DCA for opening and get my son on (yet another first) Soarin. The line was already at 30 minutes (so the sign said...we waited maybe 20). We asked to wait to be top center and it rocked. My little buddy was so excited. That is probably one of his favorites now. He wanted to ride it again right away. As much as I wanted to stick around and continue enjoying the parks, our bodies wouldn't allow it. (The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak) It was time to go get some lunch, and then catch a swim and a nap before coming back to the park later. After the long day and little sleep yesterday we are pretty wasted today. Had to hit up Taco Bell for lunch since Goofy set me back a pretty penny last night. (party of 6 - yikes!) Ok all, it's nappy time. I'll let you guys know how our night goes...should be pretty fun...it IS Disneyland after all.
Originally Posted By KCCHIEF okay keep going.....you are getting me excited about my trip in 18 days....
Originally Posted By ncnike7 yeah keep up with the reports, you're getting me even more excited for my trip in 6 days!!! By the way, how's the weather?
Originally Posted By iamgoofy Wow getting me excited too. It has been 7 years since my last visit to the magic place. Last time I did DL it was from open to close at mid summer. Back then I was a bit younger and still barely made it. I think this go around (hitting DL late August) I will follow your lead familyguy and do DL in the morning, nap in the afternoon (recharge) and back in the evening. Soul is willing, mind is willing, body is falling apart…lol. Breaks are required.
Originally Posted By CoolHand Great for you and your family. I just returned from 9 days at DL this morning and we are already plotting our next trip. Enjoy every day, they are all magic and end to quickly. DL is home as you said in your earlier post, and the magic for me is seeing it through my kids' eyes. Have a great time!
Originally Posted By liveforvacations Loving your trip reports! If I can't be in Disneyland, the next best thing is reading about someone else having a great time there! Keep writing, please!
Originally Posted By familyguy All rested and ready to go we went back to the park right about 5:30. Just in time to grab some fast passes for TOT and head in to the 6:00 performance of Aladdin at Hyperion Theatre. It was our first time seeing it and we were very impressed! Lemme tell ya, that show is pretty smokin! I definitly reccomend it and we're hopin to see it one more time before we go. We'll have to try to catch it on Friday with some friends of ours that are meeting us out here on Wednesday. (I'll mention more about that later) Anyway, once we got out of the show we hit TOT. Still just as amazing as we remembered it. (that is one of our very favorite rides of all time!) The little guy and one of our older daughters (10) can't muster up the guts to get on it so the wife and I take turns getting on with the ones that do like it, while the other one takes the fradey cats to Monsters Inc. (It's ok cause we love Monsters Inc. too) After that we took the little one to Jumpin Jellyfish. That ride was kinda lame, but the view from the top was pretty cool. The little guy liked it so that's all that matters. Now for the moment my 7 year old was waiting for since day 1 - California Screamin! He wanted to ride it so bad last year and was too short. This year he was tall enough and so excited about it. (The 7 yr old is our fearless one) He loved it!! I have mixed feelings about that ride. I love it while I'm on it but I feel green in the face right afterwards. I get motion sickness pretty easy especially when flipped upside down. (If I do a flip in the swimming pool I'm gonna be messed up for a while) It's kind of a bummer. Oh well, got to do with my boy for his first time. It was fun. We had just enough time after that to head over and check out Disneyland's Mainstreet Electrical Parade. (I know it's not called that anymore but whatever) It was a cool way to relax after my nausiating experience and I have a special place in my heart for that parade since I loved it as a kid. My kids love it as much as I do. Now back to Disneyland. One of the frustrating things about Disneyland at night is if you aren't gonna watch the fireworks for whatever reason, it's so hard to get anywhere with all the re-routing of the park. We wanted a dole whip with a Tiki experience since we hadn't done that yet, but were routed to Tommorowland. No worries, the little guy wanted to do Buzz again anyway. I'm gettin better...L-4 this time!! (could have been a result of the ride stopping for a few moments and me unloading on a target repeatedly - but probably not) Got off just as the fireworks were ending so we fought our way over to the Tiki room and those Dole Whips were like heaven at that point. We had been waiting for one of those for a good while. Good times with Jose. Grabbed some popcorn to munch as we waited for Haunted Mansion (since pirates was closed due to technical difficulties) and that was the end of our day. Since we have so many days to go this year we're taking it a little easier than we normally do. We really enjoy the park more when we do it this way instead of trying to go open to close 3 days straight. We were thinking about doing our early entry tomorrow (We've got 5 day hoppers that we will convert to AP's after we use EE), but we're tired and we figured we'll use it on Tuesday since the park closes earlier on Monday so it'll be an earlier night. (That's if the wife and I don't decide to make it a later night at Downtown Disney) Anyway, that was our second day here. Lots more fun to be had so we're pacing ourselves. We're still outlasting our kids so we feel pretty good about that. We'll see how long that lasts. Time for bed...see ya on day 3!
Originally Posted By nevadarebel thanks for the great reports. I look forward to reading the rest and it sounds like you are having a wonderful time!
Originally Posted By abandbelsmom familyguy- glad you are having a good time. I also asked this on a different post, but this might be a more appropriate place. I'm curious about Splash Mountain. We will be there on Saturday, and stay for about a week. It's my favorite ride and I'm hoping it's up. Some people say it's still down, but others say they have ridden on it. Thanks and continue having a good time!
Originally Posted By familyguy I'll post my about my day later (too tired now), but a quick response. Splash is still down although the refurb walls were down today. It's supposed to be open some time soon, I know that, I just don't know when. Don't worry, it's one of my faves too, but we're still having an awesome time. You'll only miss it a little bit if it's not open when you get here. The rest of the parks offer so much to keep you enteretained.
Originally Posted By familyguy One thing about the short park hours during off season is that it makes for a very long day. You're thinking, how can shorter park hours make for a long day? Well, with shorter park hours there isn't enough time to really leave for a break and then come back in the evening. If we did we would all rested and refreshed only to go back for maybe two hours. So we pulled close to an all day experience. (our first in a long time)Wow, I didn't know how valuable those mid-day breaks actually were. Anyway, the day started very similar to yesterday being that we got to the park about 5 minutes to opening time and headed straight to Indy for our first ride of the trip. The little guy still isn't tall enough for that one so my wife took the other three and him and I hit Jungle Cruise and Pirates while we waited. DS4 said to the Skipper during his spiel, "You're funny....everyone here is funny". The boat laughed and the skipper came back without missing a beat with "That's what they pay me for kid, I'm just very rarely any good at it". It was cool. Anyway we took a little too long on both of those rides because the wife and other kids had been waiting a while for us to come back after getting off Indt. (Pirates is a longer ride than I thought...) So instead of using the switch pass and having them wait for me to go on Indy we just decided to move on and I saved the pass for later. (Still got it BTW - Are they only good same day? Do they use different colors each day?) The little guy wanted to go hit Pooh Bear again so we hit HM and Pirates again (the Indy crew didn't get to go last time) on the way. Noticed that the refurb walls on splash were down today. Dare I hope for an early opening before we leave? (I better not...not gonna happen) Headed to Toontown next. Rode RRCTS and the go-coaster and let the kids play around there a bit. (pushing buttons, checking mailboxes, opening doors, etc.) Not much to do here so we left rather quickly. Decided to drop in on the Princess Fantasy Fair as we headed out of Toon Town. We must have stopped in at a bad time...it was lame. Pretty much nothing AT ALL going on. There wasn't a princess in sight. Maybe we'll try again another time. After that we were ready for lunch. The park was amazing today by the way. Crowds were very managable. We loved being able to leisurly walk around and get on rides with little to no wait all day long. It was sweet. So we took our time stopping in and out of shops on main street (window shopping), made our way down DTD and stopped for lunch at the Rainforest Cafe where we had a great lunch. By this time we really needed some time re-energize. I think someone asked about how the weather has been. Lemme tell ya, it's been great, but today was pretty hot. I heard it was about 90 and tommorrow it's supposed to be 95. So the heat was slowin us down a little, but after lunch we were ready for round two. Now we decided to head over to DCA where we ended up spending the rest of our day. First thing we did when we got there was head over to the rapids, being that the heat was so bad we wanted to get soaked. (We actually hit Soarin with no line on the way) The rapids were down (bummer) so we went over and checked out "It's Tough To Be A Bug" for the first time. I don't know why, but we had never bothered to stop in and see that show. It was AWESOME! The only thing is that I wish it was a little longer, but other than that, it was a great show! If you are like me and haven't stopped in there, please do so. You won't be disappointed. After that we went to the Animation Academy and learned how to draw one of our favorite Disney characters - Winnie The Pooh. (He' just so cute) This is also some fun stuff to do in the heat of the day. Stop by...it's cool! While we were there we had a little fun in the Sorcerors Workshop. After that the kids were ready for something a little more exciting so my wife took the brave souls to TOT while I took the fradey cats to Muppet Vision. (The little guy loved it - Me? Well, it's ok...after the Bug's Life show, this one was kinda lame) Once we met back up the wife and the brave crew hit Screamin and I took the fradeys to Bug's land and did all the kiddie rides. It's just fun to see them have fun and the castmembers in that area are great! We were starting to be torn down by the heat again at this point, so we grabbed aquick tortilla at Mission (amazing fresh tortillas- another first for us) and headed back to the rapids to see if they were open yet. The answer was yes, but everyone else in the park was in the same condition we were I guess. The line was about as intense as the heat. It was 5 and Disneyland closed at 8 so we took a vote and called it day so we could go back and swim. All in all, this was a really good day. We spent more time at DCA then Disneyland today, which is rare, but we were trying new things and had a blast. (Just wish we could have hit those rapids - we'll try again in the 95 degree heat tomorrow) We've rested, swam, showered, and now we're ready to go out for dinner. Not sure where we'll go or what we'll do, but I'm sure it will be wonderful because I'm with my 5 favorite people on the earth. Whatever I do, as long as with them will be killer! Sorry if I have been a little long winded. I appreciate you all taking the time to keep up with the FamilyGuy and His trip. (I just spoke in the 3rd person...that's awesome) See you cats on the flip flop. PS - I'm too tired to go back and proof read this and I always make tons of mistakes...hopefully it will all make sense in the end...lol
Originally Posted By liveforvacations Your family sounds like you are all having a great time! I liked the part about your son talking to the Jungle Cruise Skipper. They say such cute things at that age and they don't even know it. Your writing is great considering it is not proof read-it all made sense to me. I for one cannot wait to hear more!
Originally Posted By ncnike7 I LOVE your trip reports, so keep on reporting! It sounds like you're having so much fun!
Originally Posted By Autopia Deb FG, if you take Harbor Blvd toward Fullerton (other side of I5 from DLR), after a couple of miles on your right, IIRC, is a place called The Spaggetti Factory or something like that. Excellent food at good prices. I'm sure someone at your hotel can give you better info.
Originally Posted By familyguy We ended up going to Joe's Crab Shack last night. I don't know how you guys feel about that place but we really liked it. Got a calimari appetizer and I got some snow crab thta was really, really good. Everyone was happy with their order so it was good times. There was also a guy walking around the restaurant making ballooon animals and stuff for the kids, so they really enjoyed that. This guy was awesome - he made stuff I had never seen made with balloons before. (mermaids, monkeys on trees, etc.) Anyway we went to bed not as early as we would have hoped after all was said and done, but regardless it was early entry day today. Finally we got to the park at the time that I wanted to get there. (30 minutes prior to opening) We were probably in the first 100 people there so we were feeling good! As we were waiting outside the gates the castmember comes out and yells "GOOD MORNING!". So we yelled back "GOOD MORNING". (You guys know how that goes) WE countdown and then we're in there! It's Matterhorn, then to the darkrides, teacups, rocket jets, and then Buzz. (For some reason Star Tours wasn't open. Is it never open during early entry?) By this time it was about 10 till park opening so we went to wait over by Adventureland so we could get on Indy! (I still hadn't been on it yet although the rest of the family had) We get there early and fight the crowds over to Indy only to find out that Indy was down!!! (Man, so close...) That's ok...we'll just walk over to Jungle Cruise....down too!! (what??) There appeared to be camera crews there. Even though they said they were both down due to technical difficulties, I think there was something else going down. Anyway, we went over to Big Thunder! Finally an attraction that was running! It was a blast. Then we got a Dole Whip and went over and rode Pirates, Haunted Mansion, and Winnie the Pooh. You can probably tell these are some of our favorite rides. (Not to mention the fact that you can always get on them rather quickly) By this time my wife tells me that she was falling asleep on Pirates (what??) and she really needs a nap as she's starting to loose steam and we still have all the way through Saturday to go. So on our way out of the park to gp get lunch and then take an after noon nap (this was exciting for us) we stopped and converted our park hoppers into our very first annual passes!!! We have never had AP's before and we're so excited to be able to benefit from these this year! My wife and I are leaving the kids with grandma and coming back in November for an "adult trip" with another couple we know that also shares the love for Disney. We will also plan next year's trip a little earlier so we can still use these passes next year too! We're excited...we'll get to use our passes for the first time when we go back tonight! How fun. Anyway, we went to lunch at Del Taco and then took a nap. It's time to back now so we'll have a short time at the park and then we'll let our oldest daughter (14) watch the kids while we go have a little fun at Downtown Disney tonight. It should be fun. Hope you all are doing well and if my trip reports get boring or repetative, please let me know and I'll shorten them and leave out some of the details. (One detail I forgot to mention is that when we got off Pooh we stopped into Pooh's corner and got Tigger Tails, Chocolate & Carmel covered marshmellows, and other yummy sweet snacks) We are walking a lot out here so that's how we justify it. (what? Don't judge me... I'm not fat it's just all this skin that makes me look poofy) TTFN!
