We Need More Cowbell! Aug 2012 TR *NEW*10/15 - Last Day & Wrap Up 4 NEW POSTS!

[khertz]

Oh gosh, I hope things didn't get too bad with DS! That is one of my big worries when I leave Everett!

It seems like you had a great start to the trip! Sorry your in and out burger experience wasn't great, but I agree that 5 guys is the way to go!

I've always wanted to go to the Disney Soda Fountain, epecially since they have such great pins! The ice cream didn't look half bad either!

Well, unfortunately, I have to say, Paxton did not have the best weekend while we were gone...

We were kicking ourselves for not just stopping at 5 Guys, but we decided not to since they are building one locally and we knew we'd be able to get it a lot more often. Oh well, live & learn. No more In & Out Burger for us!

I loved the Disney Soda Fountain! It was such a cute little place and the ice cream was fantastic. I do remember seeing a lot of pins there, and there was some pin release happening the next day, if I'm remembering right!

So, I'm not caught up on the pictures but enjoyed reading about the beginning of your trip.

I hope DS does not get sick. Oh No! Please tell me he's fine. I always worried about that when my kids were little.

Now tell me the truth - is it going to be hard to give up those premium APs when they expire? I am going to have a funeral for my AP when it expires in December.

Oh, I wish I could say he was fine, but he came home on a LOT of medicines! I'll give the rundown in the next update...

I think I'm going to pretty much cry my eyes out when those passes expire!! October will be our very last trip with them. And not only will I miss whipping out those pretty golden passes, but we are definitely going to miss the free parking and discounts! Hopefully we will be AP holders again one day, but I doubt if we will ever have these wonderful Premiers ever again. A funeral is a great idea, I might have to do that one myself. I'm going to be so sad!!

I guess I'm a little late to the party since you apparently added the link to your post 2 hours after I'd already read it.

You didn't include Chuck Norris in your TR. He allowed you to be a part of his. Sorry... can't resist a good Chuck Norris reference.

I like the tour of Hollywood before hitting the parks. Neat to see all of that stuff.

Looks like the trip is off to a good start aside from some green crud back home.

Haha sorry I snuck that in after your reply! I just didn't want to make another new post.

I almost threw in a random Chuck Norris fact...Chuck Norris can speak Braille. Chuck Norris won the Kentucky Derby on a three legged donkey. Chuck Norris can rip a phone book in half with one hand. Oh did DH and I used to get a kick out of those!

The tour of Hollywood was great! I have always wanted to see more parts of California, so hopefully this is just the beginning. I would love love love to visit San Francisco one day!

Ready for more!

Hopefully I can make another post later today! I wanted to right now, but photobucket is not working for some reason?

 

[ash-n-brensmom]

I'm here!! Can't wait to read more!! I was having trouble with photobucket today too....

 

[khertz]

I'm here!! Can't wait to read more!! I was having trouble with photobucket today too....

Apparently Photobucket is doing site maintenance that is severely interfering with my TR updating!!

 

[tofubeast]

Joining in, yet again! You are so prolific with TRs!

Wasn't the Soda Shop awesome? I grew up in Hollywood. I wish it existed when I was a kid. Heck, when I was little, you drove down Hollywood Blvd. You only walked outside the Chinese theater to 1. see a movie 2. show your friends/family who were visiting. Times sure have changed.

 

[disneyismyheart247]

Yay, another DL trip report! Those "characters" on Hollywood and Highland are so hilarious. I live in Los Angeles and one time I went to Hollywood and I saw the most ridiculous Barney costume. The Jesus people are always there and I can never understand what they're saying either! I couldn't stop laughing! It looks like you enjoyed your time in Hollywood and the Disney Soda Fountain is so good! Score on the 35% discount!

I'm very sorry to hear about little Paxton! Poor little dude, I hope he's doing much, much better now!

 

[khertz]

Joining in, yet again! You are so prolific with TRs!

Wasn't the Soda Shop awesome? I grew up in Hollywood. I wish it existed when I was a kid. Heck, when I was little, you drove down Hollywood Blvd. You only walked outside the Chinese theater to 1. see a movie 2. show your friends/family who were visiting. Times sure have changed.

I absolutely LOVED the Soda Shop! DH had visited there when he was in California for work a year ago, and it was something I really wanted to do on our family DL trip in May. But we sacrificed that for extra time in DL. I'm really happy we were able to do it this time, and all of the other time in Hollywood. Now that we have done it, we were both happy we were able to do it just the two of us...it just wouldn't have been as relaxed if we had DS along! Much as we love him, he does add some stress to traveling.

Yay, another DL trip report! Those "characters" on Hollywood and Highland are so hilarious. I live in Los Angeles and one time I went to Hollywood and I saw the most ridiculous Barney costume. The Jesus people are always there and I can never understand what they're saying either! I couldn't stop laughing! It looks like you enjoyed your time in Hollywood and the Disney Soda Fountain is so good! Score on the 35% discount!

I'm very sorry to hear about little Paxton! Poor little dude, I hope he's doing much, much better now!

The characters cracked me up, but I think even more ridiculous were the people paying to take pictures with them!! DH reminded me that if DS were with us and crying for a picture with Elmo, despite how sketchy he looked, we would probably pay to do it too.

Paxton is back to his usual 100% now, despite the rough weekend he had at my parents' house.

 

[Leger13]

Ok I've decided to come over and read here before I get far behind like I did with your May DLR TR. I'm SO jealous you got to go to El Capitan and the Soda Fountain Shop. I mean seriously, SO jealous!!!! They have the best pins at the soda fountain! Anyways, I couldn't really see all of your pics since I'm on my phone and every time I click to make a pic bigger it says connection error so I'll have to come back and look at the hollywood stars better later but how neat that you were there! That's one of the things on my bucket list along with visiting NYC. I just have to drug DH enough to fly 'cause going w/o him isn't an option. Blah! Anyways, great start to your trip

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[Leger13]

I forgot to say that I'm sorry that Paxton was sick while you were away that's almost worse than having him with you and being able to take care of him yourself on the trip. Almost

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

 

[khertz]

Ok I've decided to come over and read here before I get far behind like I did with your May DLR TR. I'm SO jealous you got to go to El Capitan and the Soda Fountain Shop. I mean seriously, SO jealous!!!! They have the best pins at the soda fountain! Anyways, I couldn't really see all of your pics since I'm on my phone and every time I click to make a pic bigger it says connection error so I'll have to come back and look at the hollywood stars better later but how neat that you were there! That's one of the things on my bucket list along with visiting NYC. I just have to drug DH enough to fly 'cause going w/o him isn't an option. Blah! Anyways, great start to your trip

Sent from my iPhone using DISBoards

The Soda Fountain was one of the top reasons I REALLY wanted to spend time in Hollywood. The rest was just bonus! I already had a T-shirt from there, so actually getting to visit it myself was even better. Plus, the ice cream was awesome after being out and about in the heat all day.

Hopefully you can get your DH on a plane...a little Xanax works wonders!!

 

[tinks_1989]

Subscribing for research purposes and because it looks like fun

 

[khertz]

DAY 1 Continued: Friday August 24th

So I must apologize because this update is out of order! DH had never set the date and time correctly on the point & shoot camera, so I had a heck of a time reordering all of the pictures correctly, and apparently when I did, I got the order of how we did things confused. The Soda Shop was the last thing we did before going back to the car, but before that, we stopped in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater to check out the handprints!

Creepy Cookie Monster hanging out in front!

Bumblebee!

This was the very first one we came across, so of course DH needed a pic!

Might be hard to read, but it's Clark Gable's handprints. I'm a HUGE fan of Gone With the Wind!

Captain Jack Sparrow himself, Johnny Depp!

This one came out too bright, but it's the star for Mickey Mouse.​

We were pretty close by to where we had parked, so we went back to the garage to get our car. I talked to my mom again while waiting and she had called DS's pediatrician and gotten him some drops for pink eye. Yikes! The other medicines the doctor suggested were what we already had been doing for him at home for a stuffy/runny nose, Mucinex in the morning and Benadryl at night, so no biggie. But for the sake of probably not remembering when everything happened, he ended up waking up the next morning with green crud coming out of his nose, so another call to the ped later, he was on a different kind of Mucinex and amoxicillin! After finishing out the meds at home, he luckily got rid of everything within a couple of days.

Anyway, moving on...our next stop was to see the famous Hollywood sign before going to the resort for check-in. It was about 2:30 pm by the time the heat was just getting to us and we were ready to start moving on. DH had printed maps from google that were supposed to get us to a little dog park that has a nice view of the sign, so we started driving and ended up going through the Hollywood Hills. We saw a lot of nice, and strange, looking houses! I wonder if any of them belonged to any celebrities?

Off in the distance, but we wanted a closer view!

We made it to the very top of the Hills to where you couldn't go any further instead of to that dog park DH was talking about. There were signs everywhere saying not to stop your car for anything, so I was nervous about it but DH convinced me to hop out for some quick pictures!

First attempt..."DH, your head is in the way."

Second attempt..."DH, now you cut off the sign! Hold the camera higher!"

There we go! (We actually took WAY more messed up shots than that but I didn't want to bore you lol!)

One more up close!

A cool garage painted like a library. I saw it on the way up and remembered to snap a picture on the way down.


​

We jumped back in the car and turned around to start driving back down the hills. Let me tell you, that was a seriously nerve wracking experience!! The streets were so narrow and curvy and there were always so many cars parked on the side of the street that only one car could fit at a time. I was always so nervous we were going to plow into an oncoming car on one of those turns. And so many street signs were hard to see because they were obscured by plants and other things.

We were just planning to go to the resort from there, but we spotted a sign that directed us to a scenic lookout spot to see the sign. We made it to the dog park! A couple guys were getting out of their car just in front of us, so we offered to take their picture if they took ours.

Continued in next post...

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

I couldn't decide what was more creepier about that Cookie Monster on the street. The "cookie" he's holding which looks nothing like a cookie, or the tiny preschool size lunch box with Elmo on it he's holding on his other hand!

So I have to ask after seeing the narrow winding dirt road I saw in the background of your hill photos. What kind of car did you rent?

 

[khertz]

DAY 1 Continued: Friday August 24th

After seeing the Hollywood Sign and getting enough pictures to satisfy us and prove we had been there, we got back on the Interstate headed to Anaheim! With traffic, it took us about an hour to get there. I may or may not have dozed off in the car a little.

Our home for the next 3 nights, The Peacock Suites​

Check in there was a breeze, and soon we were handing off our keys to the valet and making our way up to room 128. We were a little disappointed to find it was right across from the elevator and we worried about noise. But with the way the room is configured with the bed being furthest away from the door, and the fact that most people didn't seem to use the elevator because it was slow, noise never ended up being an issue.

The front door. I found the set up of the room a little strange, because you basically walk right into the bathroom/vanity area.

View from the doorway.

Toilet/shower separated by a door immediately to the left as you walked in.

Into the living area/kitchenette

And lastly, the king bedroom.​

We began unpacking, and I noticed we had no wash rags, only hand towels and bath towels. A quick call down to the front, and within 10 minutes, housekeeping had brought us some. We experienced really great service here!
This was were I had my first experience of my incorrect timing. I had realized on the plane that when I filled out our paperwork at the lot where we left our car that I had put we would be getting in at 12:30 am on Monday. Not correct! Yes we were flying home Monday night, but when we got in it would actually be 12:30 am TUESDAY. So I had to make a call to get that straightened out. Although from the guy I talked to on the phone who seemed thoroughly confused by what I was telling him at first, we might have been fine just to leave it. lol

After we unpacked, we took few minutes to FaceTime with Paxton at home, which warmed my momma heart. It was pretty funny because he sure did not know what to make of seeing us on Poppi's phone! Eventually he became bored with us, so we said our goodbyes for the day since it was nearing time at home for him to get his bath and get to bed. But our evening was just getting started!

We jumped in the car and went around the corner to Von's grocery store for a gallon of water to fill our Hydroflask with and some disposable razors for me. I had gotten mixed information of whether I could bring them in the carry-on bag, so I decided I'd just get them there. I cheaped out on the single blade ones and OUCH! Never again! They tore my legs up good that weekend. The lines to checkout were long, but a very kind lady saw we only had 2 things and let us jump ahead of her, so we were out of there in no time and on our way to the Mickey & Friends Parking Garage!

We were directed to park all the way up on the roof, which was new for us. We took the escalator down and walked right onto a tram. Once we got to through bag check and into the plaza, we hooked a left for Disneyland!

As we passed under the train station, we heard loud music and realized we were coming in during the parade. We got stuck by it for a few minutes until a CM let a bunch of people cross the street between floats, so we snapped a couple of pics.

The first thing on our minds was FOOD! So we hurried up Main Street behind the parade crowd and broke off into Tomorrowland. The first place we could think of where we could get a quick bite was Redd Rockett's.

We each got a slice of pizza and shared a large drink. It seemed like we were done in no time at all! We forgot what it's like to eat quickly without trying to get a toddler to eat a satisfactory amount of food.

Once our food was scarfed down, we were ready to hit some rides!! We decided to stick close and ride Star Tours since we were already in Tomorrowland. The posted wait time was 30 minutes and we waited about that long. I used the opportunity to take pictures through the queue.

Look at all that luggage!

Yeah, I'm a rebel, I put my flight glasses on before they told me to!​

I know we got Darth Vader, Hoth, Princess Leia, and Naboo with Jar Jar. I think the only thing new for me that ride was Leia delivering the message.

After Star Tours, we didn't have much time before we wanted to go find a spot for MM&Y, so we looked to see what would be a logical choice on the way to It's a Small World. Of course, the Matterhorn! DH had ridden this on his first trip to Disneyland solo, but it was down for refurb during our May trip, so it was totally new for me. The line moved pretty quickly, and we were on our bobsled in 20 minutes. The ride itself was fun, but that Yeti was pretty silly looking!

Once our ride was over, we made our way over to It's a Small World to stake out a spot for The Magic, The Memories & You!

UP NEXT: A Dancing Wolf

 

[khertz]

Subscribing for research purposes and because it looks like fun

I hope you enjoy it, we certainly had a lot of fun on our trip!

I couldn't decide what was more creepier about that Cookie Monster on the street. The "cookie" he's holding which looks nothing like a cookie, or the tiny preschool size lunch box with Elmo on it he's holding on his other hand!

So I have to ask after seeing the narrow winding dirt road I saw in the background of your hill photos. What kind of car did you rent?

It cracked me up to see what they used to keep their money. I'm pretty sure we also saw a Spiderman wearing a fanny pack!!

We rented a Nissan Altima, which suddenly felt as big as a tank driving on those streets!

 

[DaveinFallsChurch]

Suite looks great! So nice to see the first batch of your Disney photos - and Star Tours!! Made me get more excited about my trip.

Look at all that luggage!

Hey, I think I see my luggage that United lost in that pile!

Loving your TR! Keep the updates coming

 

[khertz]

Suite looks great! So nice to see the first batch of your Disney photos - and Star Tours!! Made me get more excited about my trip.



Hey, I think I see my luggage that United lost in that pile!

Loving your TR! Keep the updates coming

I was ready to get to the Disney portion of the trip! I know that's what everyone is most interested in. I have to say, I do enjoy Star Tours but I was pretty surprised at our choices for first and last attractions of the trip.

Oh no! Well, that droid sorting the luggage did not seem to competent, so I'm not too surprised yours got lost.

 

[Leger13]

OMG what an amazing hotel that is!!! Goodness what a great trip already! I'm so glad you got to talk to Paxton and that he would be feeling better in a few short days. I still haven't ridden the new ST. It's on my Must do list for December. Oh and I LOVE your pictures of you guys in front of the Hollywood sign!

 

[MEK]

Great update. I love reading about places I have never been too, so thank you for the pictures of Hollywood Hills and all the interesting houses. Imagine painting a giant bookshelf on your garage? Crazy!

Your room is really cute. How far where you from the parks?

I love the lost luggage room on Star Tours.

I really want to ride the Matterhorn.

More please.

OH - glad Paxton was OK, but ended up with a sinus infection. Poor little guy.

 

[khertz]

OMG what an amazing hotel that is!!! Goodness what a great trip already! I'm so glad you got to talk to Paxton and that he would be feeling better in a few short days. I still haven't ridden the new ST. It's on my Must do list for December. Oh and I LOVE your pictures of you guys in front of the Hollywood sign!

The rooms were REALLY nice, and it wasn't horribly expensive either compared to some other places we looked at.

Thank God for FaceTime, I don't know how we would have made it through the whole weekend without it! He always wants to grab the phone when he sees you on it, but he doesn't like to talk. It was much better to be able to see him on the screen. He kept covering his mouth and laughing like he was embarrassed, and then he kissed the screen when we asked him to blow us a kiss. It definitely made the time away from him more bearable.

I always enjoyed the old Star Tours, but this update is such a huge improvement! I'm not even much of a Star Wars fan (I had to find some kind of SW wiki page to tell me which planets I went to on the ride ), I have seen the movies once and that's it, but the experience of not knowing what you're going to see is so cool! I think now I have seen all of the possible scenes, so from now on it'll just be which combinations I will get!

Great update. I love reading about places I have never been too, so thank you for the pictures of Hollywood Hills and all the interesting houses. Imagine painting a giant bookshelf on your garage? Crazy!

Your room is really cute. How far where you from the parks?

I love the lost luggage room on Star Tours.

I really want to ride the Matterhorn.

More please.

OH - glad Paxton was OK, but ended up with a sinus infection. Poor little guy.

I thought the bookshelf was SO funny! I thought my aunt would enjoy it too because she and I share a love of reading. I don't think either of us would go for that painted on the garage, though!

The hotel was not far at all from the parks. Maybe an 8 minute drive? No traffic to speak of at the times we were coming and going either. That is the great thing about DL, there are so many nice hotels so close to property!

The Matterhorn was fun, but pretty rough! There are two tracks and we actually compared them later in the trip, and one was only slightly less rough than the other. Oh, man, if you ever get to ride it though, whatever you do and whichever track you ride, DO NOT sit in the last seat!!!

Yeah, my little guy had a rough weekend. We won't be leaving him for that long again for a LONG time!

 

[Moodyzblu]

We're doing Disneyland in a few weeks and are thinking about renting a car one day to go over to Hollywood and the beach. Is it easy to find parking ? How expensive is it ? That's really the only thing that makes me nervous is driving around not being able to find parking !

I love your pics ! My dd would be thrilled to see Hollywood !