Long Overdue Disneyland Recap Part 1

So, as most of you know, we spent a week on the west coast...spending the first few days in California to visit my brother Ryan and my sister-in-law Amanda, then driving from LA to Las Vegas to visit my Dad. All-in-all, it was a great trip, you should have already seen the pictures I put up a few weeks ago. I wanted to focus on the Disneyland portion, long story short, I thought it was great. Obviously, it is much smaller than WDW, but they packed a lot into that area...

We parked in the Mickey and Friends parking deck...which was well signed...



As I look at the pictures now, it should have been easy to remember where we were, but since we got there at closet to opening and left at closing...I am surprised we made it back to Hollywood in 1 piece. After leaving the parking deck and taking a short tram ride to the ticketing area, we were ready to make our decisions. Ryan and Amanda were going to be making the purchases due to they are CA residents and get the CA discount. The question was how we get in the both parks (Disneyland and California Adventure) for the cheapest amount of money...we made our purchases...2 park hoppers for the kids, and a separate CA Adventure ticket for Karen and I...wasn't the cheapest, but they would not let us upgrade our free tickets that Amanda got us...we still saved close to $150 rack...which is always nice...



Once in the park, we got to take in Main Street...THE Main Street, the one that Walt walked up and down regularly. I normally take pictures of the Main Street windows...and I am pretty sure I did, but as a I roll back through my photos, I am not seeing any of them, I guess they will show, anyhow...after picking up a coffee for Aunt Amanda, and some breakfast for the girls, we were off to see the castle. Before hitting the castle, we took several pictures of the Partners statue...



Then the castle...



After we took all of that in, it was time for some rides...we started with the Matterhorn, mainly because we were not sure we would be able to talk the girls into it later. After they saw a few cars come out and heard the screams, they had some big eyeballs...but I calmed them down with stories of the basketball court inside the mountain and whatnot...



Well, we got in our course, Claire opted to ride with Amanda, while Karen and Bella rode together...Ryan and I took our own cars. The minute we started the ascent, which was in the dark, I thought holy crap, the girls are going to be so pissed. For me, it was a great ride, kind of jerky, but it is an old coaster...it is to be expected. After Matterhorn, we pow-wowed to decide what we wanted to make sure we got to...BTMR, of course, Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Haunted Mansion, POTC, all had to be done...I am also a sucker for the dark rides...One of the things that I wanted to get to was all of the Fantasyland dark rides that they do not have at WDW, Pinochio, Alice in Wonderland to name a few...unfortunately, due to time, we were not able to get on those...this is the closest I was able to get to AIW...



From there, we decided to get fast passes for Splash Mountain and then go get in the standby line for BTMR. BTMR and Splash MTN are the girls favorites from WDW, so we were very excited about both of them. One thing we noticed about the rides at DL vs. WDW was they were much shorter (not less fun, of course!!), but just shorter due to the space they have in the park. BTMR went fast meaning it was a shorter ride and much faster than its WDW counterpart. I am accustomed to taking pictures and video while riding the WDW version, but I was not able to do that this time. Here is a picture of BTMR, along with #1 Dad, didn't tell you there was celebrity sightings, did I?



This is all I have right now...Part 2 will come tomorrow, starting with Splash Mountain...