For Christmas, we surprised our kids and told them we were taking them to Disneyland!
At first, they weren't as excited as I was hoping they'd be. Especially considering we were flying. But after the excitement of Christmas ended, they started to get more and more excited. Sophie one morning said "Mom, I'm excited to go to Disneyland. But I'm REALLY excited to go on the airplane". It made me happy the kids were getting more eager the closer the trip came.
Well, they didn't have to wait long.
Day 1
On the evening of Saturday, January 13th, we picked up some fast food for dinner, picked up my step-brother and then he dropped us off at the airport.
Lily and Jeff hadn't been on an airplane since she was six and he was three. Cedric flew once, when he was three-months-old, and Sophie had never been on a plane. So they were thrilled when we got to the airport.
Soon the excitement turned into impatience as we had to sit and wait to board.
So while we waited, we read the book "The Little Man of Disneyland".
Soon it was time to board.
Everyone found their seats and got settled.
Sophie kept asking if we were flying yet. I told her she would feel when we took off. It felt like the longest time between boarding and take-off when a six year old is sitting next to you. She hated how the pressure "hurt" her ears, but soon got used to it and enjoyed the rest of the flight.
We had a hotel with a regular room, with two queen beds and a bathroom. Sophie got a queen bed all to herself. There was an adjoining room with bunk beds, where the boys slept, and a fold out couch where Lily slept. They also had a bathroom in their room.
By the time we got into Long Beach, took a Lyft to our hotel, and got everyone ready for bed, it was 11pm! We had very noisy floor boards, and the neighbors below kept coming up and telling us to be quiet. Luckily, they were leaving the next morning.
Day 2
After a quick night sleep, we got up around 6am and got ready for the day, Sunday January 14th. The kids were so cute and they were really good kids the whole day. We had to walk about 20 minutes to get to the Parks, which didn't seem too bad in the morning when they day was new and the energy was high.
When we went to get our tickets (we'd bought them beforehand and just needed to pick them up), the lady said we had to print something off and she couldn't get them off our phone. Tom started to have a panic attack. A little PTSD from the last time we took the kids to Disneyland and they travel agent hadn't sent us all our tickets. But while Tom was all shaky and pale, about to pass out, the lady figured out how to retrieve our tickets via our email and all was well.
We got into the park just after it opened at 8am.
Jungle Cruise is always our first ride.
We found the home where the Littel Man of Disneyland lives.
We bumped into a few characters too. Gaston was hilarious! I asked him if we could get a picture of him with Lily and this is how he posed.
He was so cocky, and said such funny things!
We also met The Queen from "Snow White". She was fun as well.
We seemed to just go from ride to ride, with hardly any wait.
Because Lily is 14, she could ride with Sophie on the rides (if you're under 7 you have to ride with someone 14 or older).
So Tom and I took advantage of going on rides together when we could.
The weather was perfect that day. It was mid-high 70's and we were loving it!
We didn't really have lunch that day. Instead, we'd brought snacks from home: beef jerky, fruit leather, granola bars, nuts, etc. While we watched the Farytale Theater, we ravenously ate our snacks. Later that day, around 3:30, we had dinner at the Golden Horseshoe. It was so good because we were so hungry!
Sophie really wanted to go on the carousel, but was mad that we sat right in front of the band, because it was too loud.
We hardly waited in any lines, despite the weekend. This was due to the fact that we'd purchased the new Max Pass. For $10 per day/per person, you could get all your Fast Passes on the Disney app and didn't have to run all over the park. We never waited in a line for more than a half hour that day (if the line was too long, we just didn't go on it that day and went later in the week). Most of the Fast Pass lines were 0-10 minute wait. They have more rides with Fast Passes now too, such as It's a Small World.
We had some fun in Toon Town.
The Max Pass also included all of the professional photos as well. Such as this picture with Mickey.
Such good kids!
The kids were such good troopers and Sophie did great without a stroller.
Because it was January, it'd start to get dark around 5pm. We'd bought the kids LED necklaces before the trip that they'd turn on whenever we were walking between rides to help us keep an eye on one another. I'm happy to say, we never lost any children, even for a short time, on this trip.
It's a Small World was still decorated for Christmas. Which was fine with me, because it's my favorite ride during the Christmas season in Disneyland.
We needed a break from rides for a bit, so we went and watched "Mickey and the Magical Map". None of us had seen it before and it was PHENOMENAL! It was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. You can see how enthralled everyone was.
We spent the end of the day in Tomorrowland. We had a Fast Pass for Space Mountain at 10pm, so we were trying to make it until then. Sophie was starting to get very tired.
So was Cedric.
But they made it! We finished the day with a ride on Space Mountain before we headed home around 10:30pm.
We'd been in the park for
almost 15 hours that day!
The 20 minute walk back felt like 20 years. We stopped in at Subway and split a foot-long among all of us (other than Jeff, who just ate chips), since we had dinner seven hours earlier. Sophie barely ate her two-inch sandwich, she was so tired.
Needless to say, the kids went right to bed after our VERY long, and VERY fun day.
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