Disneyland Trip Report - Day 1

May 28, 2013 ... Alarm buzzed at 4am. Whoa, that came fast when you didn’t fall asleep until after midnight. But the adrenaline started pumping and we were awake in no time. I woke Sean up at 4:15 from a dead sleep. He quickly came to life, though, once he realized why I was waking him up in the middle of the night. A big smile spread across his face. We grabbed a quick breakfast, and were out the door by 4:45am. Drove out to Prospect Hts to pick up Grammy & Grampy so they could drive our truck back to their house. 

We arrived at O’Hare by 6:30am, security lines were non-existent which was nice, and we were to our gate by 7am. 

Our flight took off on time at 8:19am – Sean had the window seat, I was in the middle, and Jeff had the aisle. The flight was uneventful except I got kinda sick midway through. It was the weirdest thing. I was reading a magazine and had a hard time focusing. I thought I was just tired so I put the magazine away and rested for a minute, but I was feeling worse. Nauseous and feeling REALLY lightheaded. Spots in my eyes. The whole shot. I started to get panicky – was I going to vomit? How could I make it to the bathroom? I’m going to faint! I finally told Jeff I wasn’t feeling good, and he put my seat back down and redirected air on my face. Within a minute I started to feel better. And the weirdest cooling sensation of my arms, chest and face. Within 10 minutes I was sound asleep. And no worse for wear the rest of the flight and day.

We landed at 10:41am PST, and headed down to find our luggage and find the Super Shuttle stop. We didn’t have to wait long for either and were on the road by 11:20ish. We were the last three people to get on the shuttle so we couldn’t sit together but the ride was uneventful and we were the first dropoff. We arrived at Disney’s Grand Californian by 12:15pm.

Photo courtesy of Disney's Photopass+

Stained glass front doors at Grand Californian Hotel

 We all really liked the resort, and the service was really good. The cast member who checked us in said “Welcome Home” which always brings a tear to my eye. He was able to sell us our park tickets which was nice. Although it’s odd you can’t add your park tickets to your room key in Disneyland. So I put Jeff in charge of holding and keeping track of our park tickets the whole time.

The theming was Arts & Crafts style which was right up our alley, but it’s not our favorite Disney resort (i.e. Wilderness Lodge lobby has it beat hands down in our eyes). The pools (three in total) were nice, plenty of chairs, three hot tubs that we counted and a decent water slide (but nothing to write home about). Jeff and Sean went to the arcade one afternoon, but didn’t stay long – they weren’t impressed. The location was AWESOME – resort entrance to Downtown Disney, and then about ½ mile walk to both theme parks. The resort also has an entrance right into Disney’s California Adventure park. We would love this resort for this perk alone!

Photo courtesy of Disney's Photopass+

  

Our room was ready when we arrived. Yippee! We stayed in a DVC studio villa – room 4504 – which means it had a queen sized bed, a pull-out couch, and a small kitchenette with a small fridge, sink, and toaster. The last few trips to Disney World we’ve stayed in a one-bedroom villa which offers twice the space and a full-sized kitchen. Sean was definitely spoiled because the first thing he said when we entered this room was “it’s so small!”. But honestly, for just the three of us a studio was all we needed. The best part about our room was the view. Check this out! A perfect view of Disney’s California Adventure’s (DCA) Paradise Pier. We sat on our balcony most nights watching the World of Color show, and taking in the atmosphere.

The view from our balcony. AMAZING!!

When we walked into the room, Jeff’s cell phone rang and it was Von’s delivery. We had ordered $50 worth of groceries (free delivery on your first order of $50 or more!) – milk, yogurt, cheese sticks, apples, grapes, peanut butter, English muffins, cereal, and cookies. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. They were about 20 minutes early but we had just gotten to our room, so Jeff turned around and went to gather our groceries from bell services. We put the groceries away, dropped our luggage, then went to explore and grab lunch in the resort at White Water Snacks. I ordered the grilled chicken sandwich with guacamole, Jeff grabbed the cold chicken Caesar salad, and Sean ordered a grilled cheese with fries. It was all yummy but we would have eaten anything, we were so hungry! After lunch we went back to our room to unpack and chill out for a few hours.

We headed over to Disneyland at 3pm. Jeff and I have both been here before in the 90’s (before DCA opened), but it had been a while. We took our time walking down Main Street and soaked up the magic. To me, Disneyland Main Street feels more authentic and intimate. Sleeping Beauty’s castle always looks teen-tiny which goes to show how many times I’ve been in the Magic Kingdom. 

Photo courtesy of Disney's Photopass+

I stopped in the photo center and picked up our Photopass+ card that I pre-ordered before our vacation. For $70 we’ll get all photos taken by Photopass photographers, all of our character dining portraits, and all ride photos. I’ll share both Photopass photos as well as my own with you.

We made our way back towards Fantasyland and staked out a spot to see Mickey’s Soundsational Parade on the terrace across from It’s a Small World. It was a good location, and they ended up opening part of the reserved section five minutes before the parade so I was able to claim a spot right up front easily. 

The parade started about 15 minutes late which was nearly the undoing of Sean. He was tired, hot, dehydrated and wanted to have fun. All this to say he was whining. Ugh. Once the parade started he calmed down. The parade was fun but in hindsight I wish we would have seen it on a different day when we weren’t so tired.

Here's a video montage from the parade (it's flash so may not appear on mobile devices):

After the parade, Jeff beelined it over to Critter Country to get fastpasses for Splash Mountain. Meanwhile Sean and I moseyed over to Toontown to explore Chip & Dale’s treehouse, Donald’s boat, and Goofy’s Playhouse. Sean was finally in his element and loved it all. His favorite, of course, was Donald’s boat. Anything related to Donald will be an instant hit with Sean! 

Jeff met back up with us and we jumped in line to see Mickey’s house and to meet the mouse himself. 

Photo courtesy of Disney's Photopass+

Photo courtesy of Disney's Photopass+

The wait was about 20 minutes which wasn’t bad – the posted wait time was 30 minutes. Mickey’s dressing room in Disneyland is MUCH smaller than in Florida. There wasn’t much space for everyone in there! Then the photographer took a picture of our photopass card instead of scanning it. I asked him about it and he said, “this will work.” Well, don’t ya know? No Mickey Mouse pictures in our photopass account. I sent in a search request, and they replied a few days later saying, "sorry, we couldn't find them. oops." UGH!! So, I emailed them back saying I didn't trust that photographer when he said it would be fine, and that I wouldn't be pre-order Photopass ever again. 

Well, don't ya know it? They found them. 

We then headed over to Minnie’s house and were just about to get through the line and into her house when a cast member told us that we needed to evacuate Toontown. Huh? I really didn’t hear her because she was telling the family in front of us in line. I thought maybe they were cutting off the meet & greets with Minnie for the night. So, I asked the family in front of us what she said and they repeated it. Weird. I didn’t think much of it at first, but then it started to sink in. Something rather big must have happened for them to evacuate an entire section of the park. Jeff quickly moved into boy scout mode and had a plan B, C and D already in place for whatever may occur. The evacuation was pretty calm, but efficient. Cast members were nice yet firm with getting people out of Toontown. Cast members kept saying they didn’t know what was going on, just that they were told to evacuate all guests. Jeff called his mom to see if something bigger was going on in California or the nation. Nothing. Nada.

About an hour later Jeff’s mom called us back to tell us there was a small explosion in Toontown. We never heard anything, nor was there anyone panicking. Here’s an article on what happened. And nope, I don’t see ourselves in either of the pictures. Bummer. I could have been famous.

http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Disneylands-Toontown-Area-Evacuated-After-Loud-Explosion-209275801.html

So what was plan B? Head over to New Orleans Square and get in line for Pirates of the Caribbean! The wait wasn’t very long – maybe 20 minutes at most. We immediately started to see one of the big differences between Disney World and Disneyland. Most of the Disneyland queues are outdoors with little to keep your interest. It was reminiscent of Six Flags queues where the most interesting thing to observe while in line were the people you would pass going up and down and up and down the queue. I’m guessing they can get away with the outdoor queues in California more easily than in the Florida heat and humidity. We didn’t find this in DCA so perhaps it’s simply the age of the Disneyland park?

Pirates was awesome. And so much better than Florida. It’s longer and more intimate. Loved it.

Photo courtesy of Disney's Photopass+

Photo courtesy of Disney's Photopass+

We had dinner at the Hungry Bear counter service restaurant. It felt good to sit and rest for a bit. Jeff and I both ordered Big Al’s chicken salad and that was a mistake. We would not recommend it. Perhaps it was the pickled red onions? Then again, the rest of it was really blah. I’m pretty sure anything else on the menu would have been far better than those salads. We also ordered the bumblebee cupcake and chocolate pie, and those did not disappoint. Very yummy. Which was good, otherwise we would have felt dinner was a total loss. Sean ordered the chicken nuggets with apples & carrots and a chocolate milk. I had a bite of one of his chicken nuggets and it tasted like heaven… but be warned, my salad really sucked so anything would have tasted good.

Next up was Winnie the Pooh which was nearly identical to the ride in Florida (sans the interactive queue which Sean was hoping for). Oh, and you ride in a beehive instead of a honey pot. The line was so short we actually rode it twice!

Family selfie!

We finished the night on Splash Mountain. One of our favorites. As we were getting in position to load into the log, a boy about 12 years old was in front of me. He looked at me with an anxious smile and said, “this is my first time on this ride” Oh boy, did the mama in me want to wrap this boy up in a big hug. I smiled instead and said, “you’re going to be just fine. You’ll love it. I promise” He said he heard you can get soaked. But I said down in Florida you only get sprayed a little bit. Then added, a little water won’t hurt us! Well, I was definitely wrong. One of the small drops inside the mountain ended up dumping a rather large wave over the right side of our log and my entire side, leg and shoe were soaked. Squish. Squish. Yet I didn’t melt and luckily we were on our way back to the resort.

Photo courtesy of Disney's Photopass+

Photo courtesy of Disney's Photopass+

We hopped in line to get our attraction photo, and along the way we saw the young boy who rode with us. He was talking to his mom (who was waiting with a baby), and then turned to me with the biggest smile on his face and said, “I’m going to go on it again!” Disney magic right there, my friends. Magic. I stayed and talked to his mom for a minute, telling her how friendly and brave her son was. Then I asked for her email so I could send her this picture. 

Priceless.