Disneyland, California

Posted 13 years, 17 weeks ago.

This post could be called “Anaheim, Caifornia” but the real truth is, we barely ventured outside of the park except to sleep and then there was that one time we ate dinner. Therefore… DISNEYLAND.

Day 1

One of the best things about landing at LAX was the familiarity. We landed in the same terminal as we had been in before, so it was almost like coming home. Oh right… and then there was the whole thing where both of our bags actually got delivered to the right city, and both on the same plane, too. That was totally cool.

After collecting our baggage, and taking a moment to be amazed at Delta’s ability to actually get it right for once, we headed outside to catch the shuttle to our Anaheim hotel. That bus ride was possibly the scariest half hour or so of my life: the driver didn’t seem to like travelling in any single lane, preferring instead to travel all over the road. It was truly terrifying.

When we eventually did arrive at the hotel (unscathed, amazingly, though the therapy will go on for years), we found that we were unable to check in, so we decided to head over and check out Downtown Disney. We got some lunch and hit up the World of Disney merch store before heading back to the hotel. Still unable to check in, we hit the pool until our room was ready, and then we went up to the room and relaxed for the afternoon.

Day 2

At around 10am, we headed over to Disneyland Park, the original and best Disney theme park. We spent a really long and tiring day here… leaving just before midnight. We took the day easy, going from ride to ride and resting when we started getting tired, or when our feet began to hurt.

At first we were concerned that our problem with rides that seem to scary might haunt us a little, but we soon figured out that all the rides were tame compared to some of the ones at Universal. Rides like Indiana Jones, the Haunted Mansion and even Splash Mountain were easily conquered by us, even if at first we (by which I mean Mel) were worried that it would be too much. Honestly, the only ride that either of us chickened out of was me from the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad (I can’t handle coasters with lots of twists and turns).

In the afternoon, we were joined by Courtney (a friend we’d seen the previous day for dinner). for a few hours, and she joined us for a few rides. After she left, we caught the Soundsational Summer parade and then lined up for Splash Mountain, which was by far the longest line we had to deal with in Disneyland (maybe an hour). The photo we got from that is kinda priceless: the look of sheer terror on our faces as we came down the big slope part is great.

We soon headed to Main Street to catch the fireworks above Sleeping Beauty’s castle, which was fantastic. We followed that up with a ride on Star Tours before heading back to the hotel to sleep.

Day 3

Around 11am or so we headed to Disney’s California Adventure park, which is a second park that is a part of the greater Disneyland resort. The first thing we did was line up for FastPasses to the World of Colour show that happens nightly.

We then wandered around the park and caught some of the rides, including a Monsters Inc. ride and Turtle Talk with Crush. We then grabbed lunch before heading to the Grizzly River Run, which ended up being our favourite ride of the entire resort. Ass soon as we got off it, we grabbed single rider passes and got straight back on. It was fantastic. After some more rides, we headed out of the park and back home for the afternoon to rest for an hour or so. We then headed back into the park to grab some dinner and then headed to get a seat for World of Colour. World of Colour was fantastic: essentially it’s a show made from jets of water that spray into the air, and lights which display images and turn the water into a rainbow of colour. It’s all set to music and is a fantastic show.

After World of Colour we headed out of the park via ElecTRONica, which is essentially a Tron themed night club that sets up in a section of the park after dark.

Highlights

For real, the best thing was the sheer amount of Stitch merch. HOWEVER THERE WAS NOT NEARLY ENOUGH. I ended up with two plushies (one big one and a small one), a Stitch themed game of Trouble, and a little Stitch pet thing (like those Littlest Pet Shop toys, which I ironically used to play with in 4th grade because I’m so cool).

Disneyland was all around a wonderful place to visit, the staff were all stupidly friendly, and the weather was spot on (hot, but not Florida hot). We would have loved an extra day or two to visit some of the stuff on Main Street and possibly see some more of the big shows, but all in all it was really great.