Palm Springs - Day 4 - Disneyland

DISNEYLAND DAY! 

We all got up in the morning and started getting ready for our day trip to Disneyland.  Get yourself ready, get the kids ready, get the food and snacks ready, and get the vehicles ready.  I'm really not sure who was more excited - me and Jeff or our kids?  Maybe we were thinking back to when Jeff was a senior in high school and I was a in ninth grade when our parents took us to Disney World or maybe we were really just that excited to go see Mickey Mouse and go on rides! 

Jeff - Ready to Go!

Taryn - I got the navigation - Let's Go!

Dan unfortunately didn't have the best seat in the van for the 2 hour trip.

The kids are ready to go!

We piled into the vehicles - me and my dad and the 4 kids and Dan in the van and Jeff, Tonah, my mom and Landon in the car.  We were ready for the 2 hour drive.  Our goal was to be there at 10am when the park opened.  It was a pretty fun ride considering it was 2 hours.  The kids kept us pretty entertained in the van and we were able to text back and forth with the other car.  I was a little crazy as well and was answering emails for work along the way, but hey its all about getting things done when you can!  We finally reached the park and found a place to park and realized that we had to hop on a shuttle to take us over to the park.  We had packed our lunch, snacks, and clothes thinking that we would be able to get to our car quickly, but soon realized that we were very wrong.  We also realized that my mom had bought 2 tickets that we didn't need - kids 3 and under were free and we had two under the age of 3 (Junior 3rd bday wasn't until the very next day).  I tried to entice some fun out of everyone on the shuttle bus and pulled up the Mickey Mouse club house theme song on my phone and turned it up loud.  I thought everyone would be as excited as we were and would get our shuttle bus excited and everyone would be singing - M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.  This was not the case and I think I embarrassed my kids instead.  I sang out loud and didn't care!  We got in the park and were able to turn back in the two tickets that we didn't need.  Which was great because they were expensive!

Grandpa, Junior, Riley, and Grandma

Greyson and Tonah

We did get in a few minutes later than the park opening so we didn't have the initial rush to run into the park, but it worked out just fine.  We walked in and immediately found Mickey Mouse and were able to take pictures with him.  The other Disney characters were also around the same area, but it didn't take long for the lines to start forming.  We skipped out on most of them because we only had one day to get a lot of rides in.  

I had downloaded an app on my phone for Disneyland wait times and had been checking it periodically before our trip to see which rides had the longest wait times.  After we took pictures with Mickey we walked by Star Tours (star wars ride) and I noticed the line was not too long and said we should jump on this ride quick before we have to wait an hour.  Jeff and I grabbed our two oldest kids because they met the height requirement and Grandma and Landon and got in line.  My dad isn't much for rides so he was staying back with Junior and Tonah stayed with Greyson.  This may have been our first mistake of the day.  Once we were in line and in the building it was decked out to star wars and had people, characters, and robots in the room and on a movie type clip of how to get on the ride.  Katelynn immediately was not happy and thought the characters would be sitting next to us on the ride.  Riley after awhile was not happy about being in there either.  We got up close to getting on the ride and the kids had tears in their eyes, poor things.  We calmed Katelynn down and Jeff told Riley we just had to go through these doors on this ride to get back to mommy.  We get in and put on our 3D glasses and the ride takes off and neither kiddo were happy.  Katelynn and Riley were squeezing our hands so tight.  Katelynn eventually put her head down and had her hair covering her face for the rest of the ride.  The adults of course loved the ride.  We got off and went to find our crew.  Our next ride we jumped on was the Buzz Light Year ride and it was so much fun.  Poor Riley was still so upset that he wouldn't go in.

Next we saw the Peter Pan ride and decided to hop in line for it.  This was probably the longest line we waited in all day.  We had talked Riley into going on another ride as well and then didn't realize that the Peter Pan ride was in the dark and you were flying in a little ship and looking at Neverland and such.  Nobody unfortunately was too impressed with this ride.  We made a quick stop at the carousel next to get the kids all back into the riding mode - everyone loves the carousel.  We walked down to Toon Town and grabbed some lunch.  Dan took the kids into a store after lunch and Katelynn got her pair of Mickey ears and Junior picked out a hat with Mickey ears.  The one cool part about Toon Town is the City Hall and you start hearing noises and eventually the doors open and out pops one of the characters to go and walk around the park.  We got some pictures quick with Donald Duck before he had to keep moving to his spot.  In Toon Town right before we ate we also hit the Who Framed Roger Rabbit ride.  We didn't think it would really be that bad of a ride since it was in Toon Town, but as we were winding through it was apparent that the kids were not going to like this one and Dan took Katelynn out and I made Junior ride with me anyway.  At the end of the ride Junior looked at me and said, "that ride was scary".  

We were off and running again with no real direction.  It does get a little chaotic with no plan and as many people as we had.  Landon and I took Junior on a little roller coaster in Toon Town after that and then we made our way around to some other attractions.  Junior loved all the cars in Toon Town.

It was not as nice of weather at Disney as it had been in Palm Springs and Dan eventually bought us all matching Disneyland sweatshirts since he was freezing.  The sweatshirts kept us going until later which was good because the we would have had to take the shuttle all the way to the vehicles for our jackets.  My dad and Jeff eventually broke off from us and took Landon over to some of the bigger rides in the park.  We walked around and took the kids on the Winnie The Pooh ride which was cute.  When we got off the ride Tiger and Winnie the Pooh were right there for pictures.  Then we did some shopping and went to go meet up with Jeff and the others.

We had to keep a move on in the park and rides since we had the Hopper pass we still had to make our way across the street to the other park, California Adventure.  We made sure that my mom got on her favorite ride, Space Mountain, and made Dan get on it too.  Gotta love that ride!  We were all together as a group again and were walking towards the Haunted Mansion.  It looked neat so we were going to go and then Dan stayed back with Katelynn. I was pretty sure she would have nightmares for months from it!  I took Junior with me though.  He thought that one was scary too, but what a little trooper!  We did wait in line for the Dumbo ride too, figured we better hit that one.  

Katelynn had seen the Alice in Wonderland Tea Cups earlier in the day and we promised her that when we came back through that we would ride them.  It was so great everywhere we went to that there were hardly any lines at all and we walked right on most of the rides.  On the Tea Cups it was Jeff, Riley, me and my two kids.  My side was spinning the cups and spinning them and loving it and Jeff was too at first.  Then he started saying - stop spinning, not so much spinning, it was hilarious!

 Eventually it was decided that it was time to go and grab the stuff from the car.  The first decision was that the guys would go to California Adventure and we were taking the kids with us.  The decision ended up changing at the end and me and Tonah were going to get everyone's things and bring them back.  The plan was to meet at the big circle in between the parks.  Me and Tonah took off and jumped on the shuttle.  We changed quickly and grabbed everyone's things including a bunch of baggies with snacks and such and through them into the backpacks.  We were probably only gone 15 to 20 minutes and was much faster than we anticipated.  As we were on the shuttle and I was digging into my purse I realized that I had Katelynn's ticket.  When it was decided originally that the kids were coming with us I gave Dan his ticket and kept Katelynn's.  Well, we thought maybe they would let her into the other park since the rest of our group had their tickets and she had a stamp on her hand.  We also figured that they would be waiting for us when we got back.  We walked to the circle and looked around the park and saw no one from our group.  We called Jeff's cell phone and he said that him and Landon were in California Adventure and going on rides and that my dad was supposed to be standing out there waiting for us and had promised that he wouldn't move from his spot.  I asked where Dan was and Jeff said he wasn't with him.  I called Dan and he said he was in California Adventure and sitting by the Little Mermaid stuff and hadn't seen anyone since we had left for the shuttle.  Now we were very confused and Tonah and I had to just stand there waiting.  We couldn't go into the other park because I had Katelynn's ticket.  We tried to call my parents cell phones and no one answered.  We continued to call Jeff which really didn't do us any good.  Dan eventually got mad and said he was going to the vehicles (with no keys?) and we saw him when he was trying to leave the park so he stood and waited with us.  Eventually after probably 45 minutes of standing in between the two parks here comes 2 grandparents and 4 grandchildren as happy as can be coming out of Disneyland.  They had decided to go on a train ride around the entire park and it took slightly longer than anticipated.  We immediately ran into California Adventure since it was now dark outside and we were running out of time!  We had planned to attend the parade in Disneyland and then go back to California Adventure for the water show.  We walked into California Adventure and went straight to see Lightning McQueen.  Junior was ecstatic!  He had to wait in line for pictures and he actually ran out to the car while it was someone else's turn - oops.  When it was their turn he immediately ran over and tried to open up Lightning McQueen and thought he was going to jump in.  He couldn't. We took some pictures and then our entire group was back together again.

Jeff and Landon had ran around and done all the big rides and Jeff said that we had to go on the Tower of Terror.  I had reservations on going on this ride from the start.  I have avoided the towers at all other theme parks that I have been too.  I always think that I am not afraid of heights and can climb ladders and such, but something about this ride always freaks me out.  Jeff also said that Katelynn would be fine to go on the ride and that he had seen other little kids on it so Dan and her walked with us to go on it.  As soon as we saw the ride and got up close I decided there was no way that Katelynn was going to be able to do the ride so her and Dan waited outside for us.  I was glad that we didn't bring her in.  You are taken into a room and shown a video from the Twilight Zone and that would have been enough to scare the crap out of Katelynn.  I freaked out the entire ride because it doesn't just drop you one time, it teases you all along the way if its going to drop or go up or what?!  I got off this ride and I thought my legs were going to give out they were shaking so hard.

 Of course when we got off the ride Dan and Katelynn were gone.  Nobody ever stayed where they were supposed to.  We met them in bugs life and there were a ton of kiddie rides in there.  We met up with everyone else in there and the kids had a blast.  We decided to skip the parade and just keep doing rides.  Landon and I eventually split from the group and headed over to the big roller coaster.  I freaked out on that one too.  This one has a countdown at the beginning and then launches you at 60 mph.  My dad eventually found us because he wanted to see us get launched.  We then had to try and catch up with the rest of our troops.  We were one step behind them everywhere.  We walked by the Little Mermaid ride and I made my dad and Landon get in a seashell with me.  That set up was amazing for the Little Mermaid.  My dad laughed the entire time at me as I sang every song to him from the movie.  We caught up with our crew and Katelynn found a ride that she wanted to go on.  Junior unfortunately wasn't big enough for the ride so Dan took him on a different one.  I hadn't realized that it was another roller coaster because it was called, Goofy's flying school or something.  I thought Katelynn would get scared on it and she ended up loving the roller coaster.  She jumped off and grabbed Landon and got right back on and then grabbed her dad and went again.  We hit the last of the rides for the day before they were shutting down for the water show.  We did a little shopping and Landon got his Mickey ears and I got some as well.

We headed off to watch the water show and there were all of the sudden a million people around everywhere.  You had to pay to get up close and get the good seats.  We stayed for a little while and watched the show, but everyone was exhausted so we headed out before it ended to get on the shuttle and find our vehicles before the mad rush.  

Oh so tired!

What a great day, but exhausting.  Hitting 2 parks in one day was a lot, but I would do it all over again.  We also realized as we were leaving and grabbing snacks for the 2 hour ride home that our great planning and packing in the morning had not gone so well either.  We had everything to make sandwiches for lunch, but no had had packed the bread.  Can you imagine if we had went back to the car and got all ready to eat and then no bread.  Good thing we ate at the park. Fabulous, fabulous time! 

(I didn't have my big camera with me, but my brother did.  So I took some pictures with my phone and another camera, but left most of the picture taking to him for the day).