The Tuesday after Christmas, December 27th was like any other day. Tom went to work, I took the kids in to get flu shots and did laundry and other things around the house and with the kids. But that evening we had a fun date planned.
Tom came home and we loaded the boys and their stuff in the car and the girls and their stuff in the van. Tom took the boys over to Bryce and Sara's house where they would be staying with their cousins for the next four days. And I took Lily to her friend, Sammy's house and Sophie to Maren as she'd be staying with her cousin, Charlotte. On the way to Tom's parent's house (that was to where we were meeting up), I swung in and picked up a foot long sandwich from Subway for our dinner. We gave the van and Sophie to Maren and picked up Tom's brother, Eric and were off to the airport! Eric dropped us off and we headed in to do the usual airport routine. We got through security quickly and found our gate, where we settled in to eat our sandwiches.
It was exciting to be at the airport, just the two of us. Soon it was time to board the plane. We flew the hour or so flight to the Long Beach airport where a shuttle picked us up and drove us to our hotel. We could see the fireworks from Disneyland off in the distance as we drove along the freeway (ironically, that was the only time we saw the fireworks the whole week. We must've been on a ride or something when they were going off while we were in the park). We got to the Travelodge around 10pm and went to bed shortly after settling in.
The next morning came early. We got up around 6:20am and got ready, ate a continental breakfast and then started our 20 minute walk to the Disneyland Parks. We were surprised there wasn't more of a line to get into Disneyland.
It was only 7:30am and the park didn't open until 8am. The ticket guy told us to just use our magic morning and we could get in right away, and still use it again another day. We weren't planning on that, but it was nice to walk past the crowd waiting to get in and just go right in ourselves.
Usually we do Adventure Land first, but since that wasn't open yet, we went straight to Fantasy Land and got in line for the Peter Pan ride. It was only about a 15-20 minute wait, so we felt like it was a good choice. After that ride, we went over to Adventure Land about the time the park was really opening, got Fast Passes for Indiana Jones and jumped onto the Jungle Cruise. In fact, we were able to do six rides all in the first two hours and we were surprised there wasn't more of a crowd. (Being the week between Christmas and New Year's we knew it was the busiest time of year and were expecting crowds). Sadly, we'd gotten a call that morning from Eric saying our furnace wasn't working. We felt bad for him, but we were grateful he was house sitting for us and was able to tell us then, instead of coming home to a freezing house later. Tom was Face Timing with him trying to figure out the problem as we were walking around the park.
By about 10am, the crowds seemed to appear. There were people everywhere and we were watching the wait times of rides increase rapidly. This picture doesn't do justice, but you can see all the people.
We didn't mind though, we were there together, without kids (who would've been complaining about the long lines) and with two of us, we could get through the lines sometimes faster. The weather was perfect too (low 70's)! In fact, we were getting quite hot while waiting in line for the Matterhorn for nearly 45 minutes.
It was worth the wait though. And we realized they had a single rider line, which we took advantage of later on (if you've never been on the Matterhorn at night, I highly recommend it).
The worst was trying to go anywhere when the parade was about to start, because so much much of the walk-ways were closed and you literally had to wait in line just to walk somewhere. Our app said the crowd capacity reached 96% that day.
One of our longest lines was for It's a Small World (which I love at Christmas time). We waited for an hour to go on it. But, again, it wasn't bad. We ate the snacks we'd brought in as our lunch, listened to a marching band, people watched, checked things on our phones and just visited.
Our friends had told us about "The Little Man at Disneyland" and so we had bought the book a few months before and then found his house while we were there.
That afternoon it was still hot, we were starting to get tired and still a bit hungry, so it was the perfect time to stop at the Enchanted Tiki Room and grab a Dole Whip.
We were smart to use fast passes and did a few more rides. Our longest line we waited in that day was for the Finding Nemo Submarine, 65 minutes. We again, played games and checked out social media on our phones (we had an portable charger, which came in handy). We had pushed ourselves most of the day, but had done a lot! Even with the crowds.
But we were getting hungry (We hadn't had a real meal since breakfast at 6;45am), so around 5pm we decided to get dinner. We went to the Plaza Inn because they give you a lot of good food, so it's worth the small fortune you have to pay to eat in Disneyland. We were so hungry and had just sat down to eat, but right after we snapped this picture, I felt something wet land on my head. Yep, we were sitting right under a tree full of birds! After cleaning up the bird poop in my hair, and moving to a spot away from trees, we enjoyed our meal (even though my appetite had been tainted a little from the incident).
We then enjoyed just wandering around main street. We looked at the gift shops, saw the giant Christmas tree and took a relaxing break in the Mr. Lincoln exhibit.
I'm too much of a cheapskate to buy anything in Disneyland, but it was fun to window shop.
We thought the crowds would start dying down that evening, but oh no, it was still packed! We were so grateful to have Fast Passes for Hyperspace Mountain (which I really liked the Star Wars theme, by the way). You can't see it very well, but the stand-by line at 9pm was 170 minutes! We only waited about 25 with our Fast Passes and felt bad for those in the three hour long line.
One of the Disneyland secrets is go on Splash Mountain at the end of the day. We went both that morning and again that night (about 11:30pm) and had hardly any wait either time (which was awesome after seeing the wait on Hyperspace Mountain).
But we were tired and knew we had a long walk back to the hotel. So we left a few minutes before the park was to close at midnight. As we walked back, we realized how hungry we were, so we found a yummy pizza joint on the way back, that was still opened, and got a slice before getting back to the hotel and going to bed. We got another text from Eric, and despite him getting the furnace to start working again earlier that day, it was now out again. It would've been 1am at home, so we told him to grab a space heater and blankets and we'd talk to him in the morning.
My feet were so tired, and I could tell my legs were going to be hating me the next day, but we still had a few more days a head of us. We were still excited to get up and do it all over again the next day. We are a little crazy.
