|
My trip started early, early, EARLY Saturday
morning… ok, so not too early but it was early for a Saturday.
I left my house at 5:30 am and headed over to pick up my two friends
Christina and Kendra. Off we went to the airport… and that
was pretty uneventful. (other than having to take off my belt
at the checkpoint) We got there just in time! We got into LAX
at about 8:30 am and went straight to the Rental Car Place. The
service at Thrifty was awesome. I had signed up for their rewards
program and so we got to bypass the line and pretty much go straight
to our car. They gave us a 2 door Sebring (even though the lady
looked at us and said, 4 door, right?) and it was awesome. I have
a 4 door Sebring, but man, I think I really like the Coupe! For
the whole trip, the rental car only cost $34… not too shabby.
Off we went to Disneyland!!!
My annual pass had been renewed by mail but I had not yet received
it by the time we left so I had to go stand in the VERY LONG ticket
line once we got to the park and get some silly kind of ticket.
We finally got in the park, and I had to go bang on another window
to get a card with a barcode on it so I could use the fast pass
machines. Silly silly silly! OH, and I had to pay for parking,
and then they would reimburse me… super crazy!
We headed straight for Buzz…
how awesome! I made it to level three,
Planetary Pilot! What a great ride, and the wait was only
about 20 minutes. Then we headed over to the Matterhorn, and although
the park was super crowded, the tomorrowland
side only had about a 20 minute wait. While in line, we met up
with my friends Caleb and Adrian who were also there for Mouse
Adventure. We all went on the matterhorn
and decided we were hungry, so off we went to Pizza
Port… We met up with Kevin and Tina, and her god daughter
Melissa… Kevin came and ate with us… Countdown Chicken…
YUMMMY… I cant do a Disneyland
trip without having that once! That stuff is so good. Judi met
up with us and her, Kevin and I decided we would go do the arts
and crafts tour of the Grand Californian.
We went and signed up for the tour, and Robert met up with us.
The four of us did the tour and found out really neat stuff about
the hotel. If you ever have an hour to kill, take the tour. Did
you know that any of the poppies they have worked into the motif
that will be touched by the sun will be open, but if they will
never see sunlight, they are closed?
Off we went to check in to the hotel. Kevin
took his stuff over to the Red Roof
Inn, and then Kevin and Robert met up with me at my hotel,
the Holiday Inn on Manchester.
The hotel was very nice… pretty new… and we were on
the top floor which was awesome! The rooms were good sized (not
huge) and the bathroom was WONDERFUL… I really liked that
they had three large mirrors in the room… and lots of plugs!
We paid $69 a night for the room, and it was well worth it, even
though it wasn’t super close to the park. Driving TO the
hotel was quicker than going to the park because of the one way
street, but it was not too bad at all. We headed back over to
the park and got stuck on the Top level in the back corner of
the parking structure… icky!
While waiting for the tram, I saw my friend
Matt who was coming to meet me, and I let out this scream and
Kevin and Robert didn’t know what was going on… hehee…
it was nice to kinda catch them off guard. Robert and Kevin went
back into the park to meet up with Tina, and I waited with Matt
so he could get signed in. Once that happened, Matt stayed in
Disneyland, and I went and met
up with everyone who had been over waiting for Aladdin.
While waiting in line, there was this guy in front of us who didn’t
have his tickets… he had his two kids with him too…
he kept saying, well I have my hand stamped! He didn’t understand
that it didn’t matter and the poor lady was trying her hardest.
She asked him to move to the side so that the rest of us could
go in, and he refused. After calling for help and getting no response,
she started letting the rest of the line in through the stroller
gate… There were two leads off to the side so I went over
to tell them what was going on and they ran to her aide…
I hope that guy felt bad, but he probably didn’t. We watched
Aladdin and it was great, of
course… Then BACK to Disneyland
for the Tiki Room! Matt met up
with us again, and we grabbed Carla and her husband on our way
over, so there were 12 of us! IT was so much fun and the new sound
system is great, and the lighting on the fountain is so much better…
Then we were off to dinner at the French
Market. I splurged on the strawberry cheesecake… woohoo
it was yummy. Fantasmic was going on so we decided to go on the
Haunted Mansion… The line
was long considering Fantasmic
was running, but it was worth it. I got to see all the new changes
and I love it!
Well that was the end of day one… well
kinda… we got back to the parking structure and went to get
on the escalator… do you remember what I told you before??
Top of the parking structure… sixth floor… and the escalators
WERE NOT WORKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The line for the elevator was a mile long so up we went…
way way way up… holy crap… I have horrible Asthma, which
is aggravated by anything that gets my heart rate up too high
and makes me breathe deep, so by the top, I was laughing at myself
because I had to take a breath after every other word… ahhh…
oh well… off we went for a good nights sleep to rest up for
Mouse Adventure on Sunday!
We arrived at Disneyland
right at 8 and waited for our whole team to get there… It
was fun to people watch.. Oh, and I had to go back in the silly
line and get a silly ticket, again, and get my parking money back,
again… sheesh.. .anyway, I am going to do a separate thing
about mouse adventure but just know that we walked ten miles for
this thing!
After Mouse
Adventure, we met up with Gavin (of Mickey News) and
Donna (kevin’s cousin) and just kinda sat for a while. We
all pretty much parted ways and then met back up for the awards!
After the awards were over, everyone but Robert and I headed for
the bar at Ariels Grotto…
you will have to ask Kevin about that one… hehehe… Robert
and I just walked for a while… sitting was bad, very bad…
We did go get me a sweatshirt because it was cold… and we
went on pirates, and umm oh, the monorail… and we rode in
the back and the guy almost forgot to get us out… it was
funny! We had dinner inside the Golden
Horseshoe and I had chicken strips… it was great…
no one was in there so it was quiet and we could put our feet
up. We also had to take my friends back to the hotel because they
were tired… Robert and I couldn’t believe what we were
hearing… Tired before 8? Are you kidding me??? Anyway, yeah!
We ran into Kevin, Gavin, Gavins son, Donna, Tina, Caleb and Adrian
in Fantasyland and then said
goodbye to everyone but Caleb and Adrian… we went with them
up on the bridge to watch Fantasmic.
Robert and I were done… we drug ourselves back to our cars
and called it a day.
I woke up this morning at 4:30 and we
were out of the hotel by 5:30… and off to LAX…
the return of the renal car was uneventful and we were ok for
our 7:30 flight… we pulled up to the terminal at about 6:40
and our jaws dropped. The security line was literally close to
a mile long. We knew we might miss our flight. As we stood there
in the slow moving line we hear this guy with a megaphone…
saying, “Any flights 7:30 or earlier, over here” so
we went to this other walking line, and they checked our tickets
to make sure we were early fights,a nd they pushed us all through
security quickly so we could catch our flights… there were
about 200 people in our line… We got to our gate and were
missing passengers still, and there were people from the earlier
flight that had to be put on standby because of the long security
line, and our flight was overbooked. Luckily they were able to
squeeze them on but there was not an empty seat to be found. It
was a bumpy landing because it was so windy in Sacramento,
but oh well. We got back to my car and I realized that I had forgotten
to lock it…. OOPS… nothing was missing thank goodness!
Once I got home, I took A NAP… and I am still sleepy, but
oh well… it was well worth it.
|