For anyone that had talked to me in the planning phase of our trip, you know that Disneyland was not my first choice of a family vacation. My kind of vacation is Yellowstone or Oregon, more nature-like. Of course, I would have felt like a horrible mother if we had never taken our kids there, so the planning began.
We decided to leave for our trip on Friday night, the 19th, at midnight so the kids would sleep the majority of the way there. We planned on stopping in Las Vegas for breakfast. So, Les came home from work early and went straight to bed while I packed the car and got everything ready to go. I kept the kids up until we left by watching Disney movies. Everyone was super excited to get on the road and we headed out the door just after midnight. Unfortunately, a few of the kids and I had picked up colds before we left, so sleeping on the road wasn't working out very well for us. Also, just outside of Filmore we ran into some horrible snow and the plows hadn't made it out yet. We were traveling about 25-30 mph along the freeway and trucks were pulling off left and right to put on chains. We made the decision to pull over in Filmore and get a hotel for a few hours so we could get some much needed rest and let the plows get a chance to clear the roads a bit. We slept for about three hours and were on the road again by about 8AM. We grabbed breakfast at Burger King and were on our way. The rest of the drive was pretty uneventful and the kids tolerated it quite well. Let's just say that the idea to leave at midnight seemed good at the time, but in hindsight was probably a really bad one, but live and learn right?!
We arrived in Anaheim at about 5 and checked into our hotel. We stayed at the Homewood Suites and were very impressed. The rooms were great and the service we received was wonderful. I would highly recommend this hotel to anybody going to Disneyland! There was an L-shaped couch in the room that folded out into a bed and Kaden found that once the bed was pulled out he could stand the cushions up next to it and make kind of a fort out of the rest of the couch. He chose to sleep there the entire trip, it was pretty funny. Cody loved it because he got the whole sofa bed to himself. We tried to research different restaurants before heading to California to get an idea of where to eat. We ended up eating at a local Italian restaurant called Carolina's that was just down the street from our hotel. We were able to walk, which was a nice break after being in the car so long. The food was pretty good, but our service was horrible. I'm not sure that I would really recommend it to anybody, but it was a fun experience.
On Sunday, we spent our day at Huntington Beach. It was kind of chilly and it looked like it was going to rain, but the weather held out for us and we had a great time. We built sandcastles, flew kites, and just ran around and had fun. It was definitely nice to get away from the Utah snow and have a fun day in the sun. We decided that a burger sounded good for dinner, so we researched good burger joints in Anaheim and ended up at a place called Paul's. Well...it was pretty much just Crown Burger with a few extra things on the menu, so nothing really special, but it was good.
Monday was our first day in Disneyland. We decided to drive instead of using a shuttle bus since for our family it was the same price and we liked the idea of having our car to come and go as we pleased. Disney parking is awful!!! They have people directing you to the spot they want you in and we ended up in the furthest spot from the little tram that takes you to the main entrance as possible. We were only able to make it through Tomorrowland and Fantasyland that first day as there ended up being a lot more people there than I thought there would be in February. We had a great time and the kids absolutely loved it. We took a break midday for lunch at the hotel, we had bought the stuff for sandwiches and chips. We ended up staying at Disneyland until almost close and went in search of a place to eat. We had wanted to go to PF Chang's, but the wait time there was about an hour, which just wasn't going to cut it with a bunch of tired and hungry kids. We walked down the street and ended up at Bubba Gump's. Any fan of Forrest Gump should definitely hit up Bubba Gump's sometime, it was a pretty fun atmosphere. The food was pretty good, but nothing spectacular. It was freezing cold in the restaurant though. Our table was the closest one to the door and they kept the doors wide open the entire time with a cold breeze coming through. We headed back to the hotel exhausted and ready for bed, and also looking forward to another fun day ahead.
On Tuesday we decided to take our hotel shuttle bus to Disney. This was a slightly better option than driving, but again we were dropped off at the furthest point from the main entrance and our driver was awful. We spent most of our day in California Adventure. We had watched the news that morning and found out that Captain EO was reopening and there were people that had camped out overnight just to see it. We wanted to avoid that mess as much as possible, so California Adventure it was! There's a lot of construction going on at California Adventure right now and really there aren't a lot of rides over there. We were able to get through all of it in one day with time to spare. Kaden and Brooklyn really enjoyed Playhouse Disney Live and Cody and Kenzie really liked the faster rides they had over there. Kenzie's favorite was Tower of Terror and Cody's favorite was California Screamin'. We made the mistake of taking Kaden on Tower of Terror and the name fit his reaction, he was terrified! I felt so bad. He ended up questioning every ride that Brooklyn wasn't allowed to go on after that just to make sure it wasn't too scary. Brooklyn didn't feel good most of the day and I don't think she remembers much about it at all. For dinner, we ended up at the Rainforest Cafe. I wanted to have one night that we went to a themed restaurant for the kids. This was the perfect place to keep them happy. The food was pretty good, nothing too special, but the atmosphere was a lot of fun.
On Wednesday, we decided to take Anaheim Resort Transit to get to Disneyland. This was such a better way to go. The route is #1 which meant you were dropped at the closest possible stop near the main gate and it also ran every 20 minutes. We finished the rest of Disneyland that day. The crowds were gone and we were able to get on every ride almost immediately. We had been trying to get Brooklyn over to see the Princesses since we got there, but the line was always at least an hour wait, so first thing Les grabbed her and ran over to get in line while I took the other three kids to do the rest of the rides. Brooklyn was able to meet three of the princesses and on their way back to meet up with us they ran into Jesse and Woody too! She was a very happy girl that day. The kids and I went on Big Thunder Mountain, Haunted Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean while we waited for them to finish. It was a lot of fun. We ended up back at California Adventure for a little bit catching a few more rides and watching the Pixar parade and then decided to call it a day a little earlier than we had been. For dinner, we ended up driving a bit north to catch a BBQ place we had read about online called Lucille's. We had thought it was a local restaurant, but apparently it is a chain restaurant that we just don't have here in Utah. The food was great!!! Unfortunately our service was awful. I'm glad we tried it out, but it would have been nice if our server remembered we were there!
On Thursday, we rode a few of the favorites at California Adventure and finally road Soarin' Over California. It was pretty busy the other days, so we got in line first thing to be able to do it. Kaden was convinced that it was going to be scary and cried the entire time we were in line. It took a lot of convincing to even get him buckled in, but he finally gave up and ended up enjoying it. We also made it over to catch Captain EO at Disneyland. We were going to avoid it like the plague thinking it would always be really busy and they weren't offering Fast Passes for it, but we tried it out and we actually only had to wait about 15 minutes, not too bad. Once we saw it, I asked the kids if they would have been willing to camp out overnight to see it and they said absolutely not!! I'm sure we must have thought it was the coolest thing back in the 80s, but really it was so dumb! We wrapped up early again and decided to head out to the beach again to catch a sunset. There is a restaurant at the end of the pier at Huntington Beach called Ruby's. It has the coolest views and we were able to catch the sunset right from our booth. The food and service were excellent! We all got shakes to end the meal and they were fantastic. This experience was definitely worth every penny (which was quite a bit). One of the pictures below is Les's cherry Coke, which he said was the absolute best he had ever tasted!
On Friday, we spent time in both parks trying to finish up things we hadn't done and riding on a few favorites. We were able to catch the street party at Disneyland and the Aladdin Musical Spectacular at California Adventure. We were hoping to catch the fireworks that night as it was the only night they were going to show them on our trip, but they were canceled due to weather, what a bummer! We did get to see Nicolas Cage at the exit of Indiana Jones, but we didn't have our camera with us and decided we didn't want to be all weird and go bug him for a picture with our phones.We had a lot of fun trying to track down the characters while we were there. We ended up having better luck at California Adventure than at Disneyland because of the crowds. Every character had a line just to be able to get a picture, but the lines at California Adventure were much shorter.
Here are a few of the fun photo ops we just had to take advantage of. We are such tourists!
We ended our trip with a night in Vegas. That was such a bad idea. Kids on the strip at night is just not good at all. I had this great idea to take the kids to a bunch of the free stuff to see on the strip and then eat at a buffet. Unfortunately, the atmosphere in Vegas is much different now than what I remember when we visited a few years ago. We did end up seeing the lions at MGM, M&M World, the fountains at Bellagio, and the statues at Caesar's. We ate at the Planet Hollywood buffet. The food was mediocre at best and there were just too many people to feel comfortable with the older kids getting their own food. Of course they loved the dessert bar, so I guess all wasn't lost. We decided to forgo the breakfast buffet we had been looking forward to because we really never want to step foot on the strip again, it was just nasty! We ate breakfast at our hotel on Sunday morning and then we were on our way home. We stopped in Salt Lake for dinner at Roman's Macaroni Grill and had to laugh when we got our bill as it was half of what we spent on dinners in California, and we even got dessert! Crazy!!!
I would say our trip was a great success! We all had a lot of fun. Even I enjoyed it despite all the crowds. I miss the warmer weather and wish spring would hurry up and get here.
