Thumping Our Way Through Disneyland. Mickey's NOT so Fun Wheel!!!

[nebo]

Hey man, great chapter, mean it! Wish I knew a better way to pick a few things out of here;

Originally Posted by Thumper_Man

Cue music from the movie "Halloween." Anyone ever seen Bill Cosby’s comedy "Himself" and how he explains what a conniption is and how his wife had one? If you've never seen it, click HERE to watch it (at 7:50 into the video). Anyways, it was my turn to see one. I knew I needed to run and hide when they asked if they could deliver it tomorrow. I didn’t want to be the witness to a murder. Better yet, I didn't want to be the one murdered. Needless to say, Lady H finally got her bag back. After coming out of hiding, Lady H didn’t have me break out the bleach to clean up any blood evidence, so I’m guessing the SW employee made it out alive. Maybe she played it smart by ringing the door bell, dropped it off and ran.

Bill Cosby was brilliant in "Himself"

. And around each bag is a tie down strap to make sure they didn’t open. No one is there to claim the luggage. Then there they were, like a group of army ants. Oriental people. All ladies. And like a group of army ants, they worked fast to get the luggage off the conveyor belt, turned them over on the side with the wheels and marched them away in a single file line. A convoy of suitcases was all you could see.


Ok, hold it. Oriental, army, marched in a single file line. You talking about the Bataan Death March?



“Oh look. There’s the bag that has all our shampoo and stuff. At least we’ll be clean.”

And the people cheered!

“Here comes my bag. At least we know we each have some clothes.”

And the people cheered!
Again.



On top of that, I needed the restroom really bad. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten chili the night before.

Has anybody told you athat sharing is overrated? Oh, wait, I did a whole chapter about this, didn't I? Never mind.

And for the record, I looked for the 36-pack now that we got back home, can’t find them anywhere. Wonder if they’re specific just to California.

nope, never heard or seen a 36 pack case. And just how many did you have before you thought you saw one?









Ok, ok. Just trying to have some fun with this TR, geesh. Give a bunny a break will ya.

Good idea, where would you like it? You know, the place looks really nice from the pictures so far.





“At this resort, they offer free breakfast in the morning with a brief 45-minute presentation.”

uh oh

Oh Larry, you didn’t just go there did you? We were laughing and having such a good time at Moe's and Curly's expense. Why did you have to go and ruin it?

Isn't it amazing how good they are at that? Almost magical.


Here’s a few things we saw on our exploration.



Obviously you’re not here to look at resort pictures and hear about Larry. I'll post a link to more resort photos later if you really want to see more. You want to find out about our time at Disney. We’re getting there. For our next stop is:

DISNEYLAND!


Disneyland Hotel that is.

NO, we started out just looking for stuff on Disneyland, now we are reading for stuff on Disneyland, and the Thumpers! The more you know someone, the more interesting the report gets.

[smidgy]

resrot looks great.. was that a timeshare also? how far a walk to disneyland?

SO funny about Larry. just last night saw a King of Queens episode where they went on a "free" ski weekend, and they had the salespeople masquerading as guests.

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Originally Posted by Thumper_Man

You mean you could hear Lady H to?

Hey now...I've told you a million times I don't know how that bear keeps getting into our room, but it's him, not me!

Originally Posted by Thumper_Man

What address? I never received any address from you. Well not from you directly. And I never got a PM from the owners.

Lady H, you deleted Ponzi's PM with his address already right?

And I officially have written consent from the owner herself.

Nope, I still have it in a secret hiding place in the off chance that he's driven us to the point of crazy by the end of this TR and i need to send him a bill for the psychiatrist.

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Originally Posted by smidgy

resrot looks great.. was that a timeshare also? how far a walk to disneyland?

I'll tell you my pretty...and your little Nebo too ...All in good time my dear, all in good time.

You think I've watched Wizard of Oz a little too much?

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Originally Posted by nebo

Ok, hold it. Oriental, army, marched in a single file line. You talking about the Bataan Death March?

I wish we would have taken pictures of this...It was hilarious. Picture about 6 or 7 petite oriental women rushing through the crowds to get to their luggage. and then proceeding to pick it up (which took at least 2 of them per bag) and set it on it's rollers, and then roll it to the next oriental in line, and that one would run it (literally) over to the nearby seating area, where a line of other oriental women would be waiting to roll it down their line until all luggage was accounted for.

[nebo]

Originally Posted by Thumper_Man's Wife

I'll tell you my pretty...and your little Nebo too ...All in good time my dear, all in good time.

You think I've watched Wizard of Oz a little too much?

That's good stuff, I could not begin to count the number of times I have used a quote from that movie. My favorite "Oz-ism" was when we had to get up reall early to catch the boat from Beach Club to early entry at the Studios, and a rabbit ran in front of us on the path.
I did my best Scarecrow impersonation: "Look, he's come, to take us to Dorothy!"

And Smidgy responded with a verb, and the word, "Dorothy."
She's not a morning person.

Originally Posted by Thumper_Man's Wife

I wish we would have taken pictures of this...It was hilarious. Picture about 6 or 7 petite oriental women rushing through the crowds to get to their luggage. and then proceeding to pick it up (which took at least 2 of them per bag) and set it on it's rollers, and then roll it to the next oriental in line, and that one would run it (literally) over to the nearby seating area, where a line of other oriental women would be waiting to roll it down their line until all luggage was accounted for.

Cool. Synchronized baggage!

[Thumper_Man]

Originally Posted by mmeb144

He looks so nice! I'm glad you warned us to watch out for him.

Of course he was nice. He wanted to sell us something.

He really was a nice man though. As I mentioned, he was fun to talk to and really made us feel welcome from the start. I know he was just doing his job. We've experienced some that can get really put the pressure on you to attend, to the point we've had to walk away.

[Thumper_Man]

Originally Posted by nebo

Cool. Synchronized baggage!

That's exactly what it was. If they had an olympic event for this, I bet they could win the gold medal.

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Originally Posted by nebo

That's good stuff, I could not begin to count the number of times I have used a quote from that movie. My favorite "Oz-ism" was when we had to get up reall early to catch the boat from Beach Club to early entry at the Studios, and a rabbit ran in front of us on the path.
I did my best Scarecrow impersonation: "Look, he's come, to take us to Dorothy!"

And Smidgy responded with a verb, and the word, "Dorothy."
She's not a morning person.

Now I'm not a morning person either, so I hear Smidgy there...but that was good ! WoO is one of my all time favorites. There are some pretty good lines in that movie.

Originally Posted by nebo

Cool. Synchronized baggage!

That's exactly it! I was expecting music to come from somewhere up above as they did this. Cue Mission Impossible Theme or Circus music...

I told T-Man yesterday that I really wished we would have thought to have taken video or even a picture of it, but as he mentioned, we were so enthralled watching and trying desperately not to laugh out loud that we didn't think about it.

[cjlvsccm]

Originally Posted by Thumper_Man's Wife

That's exactly it! I was expecting music to come from somewhere up above as they did this. Cue Mission Impossible Theme or Circus music...

Musical accompaniment would definitely have sent it over the edge!

Holy cow! I forgot to thank y'all for the postcard!! We both just love those image-shifting-3d-ish scenes... and DH fondly remembers taking them apart as a child to see how they work. Thanks for brightening up our fridge, which is where it's now hanging under a Mickey magnet.

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Originally Posted by cjlvsccm

Holy cow! I forgot to thank y'all for the postcard!! We both just love those image-shifting-3d-ish scenes... and DH fondly remembers taking them apart as a child to see how they work. Thanks for brightening up our fridge, which is where it's now hanging under a Mickey magnet.

I'm so glad you liked it! We had so much fun picking out the postcards and then deciding who would get what. They actually had a nice selection to choose from. And how else would you display a DL postcard but with a Mickey magnet?! Sounds like a perfect match to me

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

OK all (I say all like there is a whole stadium full of people reading this )...Starting to work on the next chapter. I have to remember where T-Man left off and then try to remember what all we did. Hopefully we can get this TR moving a little and not bore you to tears .

[jcc0621]

Originally Posted by Thumper_Man

Cue music from the movie "Halloween." Anyone ever seen Bill Cosby’s comedy "Himself"

Actually have the ahem album. CHocolate Cake for Breakfast is one of my favorites.

Originally Posted by Thumper_Man

And for the record, I looked for the 36-pack now that we got back home, can’t find them anywhere. Wonder if they’re specific just to California.

Nope, can get them here in Philly!

THe pictures are great. Looks like a really nice place

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

Originally Posted by jcc0621

Actually have the ahem album. CHocolate Cake for Breakfast is one of my favorites.

"Dad is great! Give us the Chocolate Cake"

We have the video ourselves and will occasionally watch it, even though we know it pretty much by heart. My favorite is bath time.


Ok, now that T-Man's team has officially slaughtered my team, I can get back to work on the latest chapter. I should hopefully have it up by tonight.

[Thumper_Man's Wife]

In the last episode we left you with some wonderful pictures of the resort after narrowly escaping The Resort Host from H…I mean, the gracious, pleasant, and witty resort host Larry. He explained that at 3:00 that afternoon there would be a wine and cheese social at the club house, which was where he explained to us that if we had a little too much to imbibe at the whine and cheese social (see what I did there? Haha…*cricket cricket cricket*) that the luggage carts could be used to cart more than said luggage. Evidently an elder couple used this trick once before when the wife had a few too many wine samples and the husband couldn’t carry her all the way to the room. We stored the information away for later, since we already had a 36 pack of beer in the SUV that was calling our names.


Before leaving for Anaheim, the ever so thoughtful husband found some great coupons at Restaurant.com for certain percentages off at places like Johnny Rockets and Buca Di Beppo. So naturally, having a Johnny Rockets close to home, and never having been to Buca Di Beppo, we chose Johnny Rockets for lunch.

Actually, we didn’t want to eat too much as we had reservations for Steakhouse 55 at 7pm, and not really knowing what their portions were and knowing full well that we would, if nothing else, have steak, and that in itself can be filling, we wanted to eat something light and familiar, and early enough, so we would have an appetite later.

We headed to Garden Walk and after getting turned around only once, were able to find the parking structure. Garden Walk is your typical outlet mall of sorts, 3 or 4 stories of shops and restaurants all with an outside walk way. I saw a few shops that looked promising, but we were on a mission to find lunch, not souvenirs, so on we went. And on, and on and on…Where was this place? Honestly Garden Walk didn’t seem like it was that big, but goodness, we’ve walked around the whole ground floor, and nothing. We find a “You are here” map and see that Johnny Rockets is on the top floor, so off we go again in search of an escalator.

Finally, on the top floor, clear on the other side, we find Johnny Rockets.
We love this place back home because of the fun the employees have. Certain songs that the customers play on the tiny jukeboxes on their tables will get the servers to bust out in spontaneously choreographed numbers in the middle of the joint. Of course, when we got there, we still had NO CASH, therefore, no change, in order to play anything on our mini jukebox. But it may be all for the better, the employees all look like they can barely speak English, let alone break out into a spontaneous dance. Plus this place is really small compared to the one we have back home. So with a slight disappointed sigh, we grab a menu.

Both of us were undecided about two different burgers that they had. One was the “Houston”, which was the spicy burger, with Jalapenos, pepperjack cheese, and a spicy sauce, which I believe was pretty much a spicy aoli. The other, was called the “Route 66” which was your typical mushroom, swiss burger, with grilled onions and mayo.

So, being the smart ones that we are (I’m setting myself up for something here aren’t I?), we ordered one of each, and decided to split them, that way we each got a taste of both burgers. We also ordered the Bacon cheese fries, thinking we would share them as a side (little did we know that we should have specified that to the waiter, as it seems he thought only one of us wanted to substitute the fries that come with the order for bacon cheese fries, and the other plate should come with a heaping pile of fries that could feed an army!).

Unfortunately, this was the second fail of the trip so far…No food porn pictures of our lunch. But the burgers were good. We have never had mayo on our burgers before, usually opting for mustard or spicy mustard, but were pleasantly surprised by how well the mayo went with the burgers. The spicy burger was just that, spicy, but tasty. The mushroom burger was good, after I was able to pick out all the onions (blech).

Once lunch was over and we had given Jose (This is the name I so distinctly gave our heavily accented waiter) the discount coupon for 20% off, and paid our bill, we were off once again to find our vehicle and the grocery store we saw on the way to the resort.

Grocery shopping was pretty blasé. The only good thing was that we went while we were full, and not while we were hungry, which probably helped in the long run. We always manage to get way too many snacks and then never eat them while we are in the room. We did manage to find a package of onion dip that T-Man just HAD to have, and then almost forget the sour cream that was needed to mix it. I had to run through the store while Mike stood holding our place in line.

Now, the Albertson’s grocery stores in our neck of the woods, does not do discount cards, they used to, but did away with them and now go by the, “we always have low prices for our customers” way of thinking. I think it’s one of the very few places that does not do it in NM. But of course we are now over the rainbow and no longer in NM, and this Albertson’s does have discount cards. So the lovely lady at the register asks if we have a card. We tell her no, we are just visiting her fine establishment and will only be here for a short time. So of course she asks if we want a card. And again we tell her we are just visiting and won’t be around long enough, and don’t need it. We mention that we had one a long, long, long time ago, and now she is practically begging us to give her a phone number that she may be able to look up in her database. I’m very close to telling her that the possible phone number that the card could have been under is a phone number that I haven’t had or used in at least 10 maybe 15 years and is no longer in service, and I can barely remember what I had for breakfast, let along what my number was back in the days…but before I could get all that out, a wonderful, thoughtful, and sweet lady behind us, took out her savings card and handed it to the cashier and told her to go ahead and use it. We thanked her at least 10 times, paid for our groceries, and left the store.

It’s a little after 4:00pm now as we load the car with groceries. T-Man left his phone in the car charging while we were in the store, so naturally he missed a call. There is a voicemail from the resort saying our room is ready.

As we are driving back to the resort, we are thinking about all the baggage…let me rephrase that…All the luggage, we have, plus the groceries that we just bought, and hoping and praying that we get a room on the ground floor.

Each section of the resort has a block of probably 10 or 12 rooms, and two floors. The problem was there are no elevators, or escalators. There are stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. So of course, with 4 bags, plus our carry-ons, plus the groceries, naturally we would be in the very back, and on the 2nd floor.

Here’s what our room looked like.









Oh look a hidden Mickey!




After about 30 trips up and down stairs and to and from the room, we are finally settled in. I throw a few beers in the freezer to cool down while we unpack and situate ourselves, and then we are strategically placed on our balcony, overlooking the courtyard, with an ice cold beer in hand.

This lasts all of about 30 seconds before we have to start scrambling to get ready for dinner.

Now of course we don’t go all out on our appearance for the evening. I’m wearing a cute sundress that of course I cover up to hide the fat complimented by a pair of sandals. I left my hair down; this is a huge deal to me. I hardly ever leave my hair down because it’s long and will end up bugging me within a span of about 10 minutes. But T-Man loves my hair long and so, I deal. I believe T-Man was wearing jeans and a black polo.

We take the stairs, because that’s all we have. Jump into the SUV and head to Downtown Disney.

T-Man is paying attention to the other woman in his life, the GPS, as we make our way to the DtD parking lot. The good news is we get to park for free for the first 3 hours.

We get a pretty close parking, and head on over to the Disneyland Hotel. Since we have never been here, we have no idea where the restaurant is, so we choose the first door we come upon and enter.

Magically we are transported to another dimension. It’s a Disney-esque version of Gullivers Travels. Everyone around us is as small as ants, and yet, we are normal sized. Or maybe the ants are normal sized and grew, like Alice in Wonderland when she took a bit of that cake?!



Alright, alright, that was just a scale model of Big Thunder Mountain that we came across as we walked through part of the hotel.

We then walked right out of the hotel.

Now I’m pretty good with directions. I can remember how to get in and out of any casino or park, and will more often then not, be able to tell you where we parked in a sea of thousands of cars. But now, right here, I’m lost. We walk out of what seems to be the ballroom part of the hotel, and start wondering through a courtyard. Here there are signs pointing the way to every destination possible, we see the sign we need and head in the direction it tells us to.



Along the way we see the Disneyland Hotel pool, and another restaurant that looks quite interesting, with tiki torches all along the outside perimeter. I bet that looks awesome once the sun goes all the way down.





We finally see another door leading to what we now hope is the restaurant and YES! Jackpot!



We walk up to the counter and T-Man gives them our names and reservation time.

“Happy Anniversary Mr. & Mrs. Sandoval”

Huh? How did they know? I look over at T-Man with a quizzical look, and suddenly he has amnesia. Can’t figure out how they would know that we are celebrating our anniversary. Uh huh…Sure you don’t remember.

They are still working on setting up our table, so they usher us into their bar area to wait. We begin to look at their drink menu and just as we order, our table is ready.

I got a Godiva Chocolate Martini,


and I think T-Man got a Hurricane or Mai Tai.


They give us the opportunity to pay for and receive our drinks before being carted away. And off we go.

The first thing you notice when you walk into the restaurant is the huge black and white photo of Walt Disney in the archway. This looked like a perfect place to take a picture. Which we did…right after we ate.

We are seated in a booth towards the back of the restaurant, in front of us, is a 6 top, with what looks like a triple date going on. They are quite animated and interesting to watch. We laughed when they were finishing up, because one guy kept going on and on about how full he was, and couldn’t eat another bite, but yet, kept eating until they finally brought over to go boxes and started packing it up for them.

Our waiter comes around with menus and takes our drink orders. Since we already have adult drinks, we order Iced Tea as well and begin to look over the pricey but delicious menu. This is where we saw the Sustainable Fish item and thought of Nebo and our disboard friends.





I order the 8 oz Filet Mignon with shrimp scampi,



and T-Man takes the Bone-In Rib Eye with the Signature Steakhouse 55 Rub and scallops



and a side of the Yukon Gold Garlic Mashed Potatoes.


Dinner was delicious. I know for certain that I was able to cut my steak with my fork. That is how tender it was. Perfectly cooked and I ate every bite. I believe at the end of it all, we left about half of the mashed potatoes, that serving could have served the table across from us.

Our server came back and showed us the dessert menu. We looked it over to be nice, but really we didn’t think we could handle dessert, so politely refused and asked for the check. It was taking him a while to get our check out to us, but it gave us time to finish our drinks. We weren’t in too much of a hurry at this point.

About 15 minutes later (maybe it was 10, I wasn’t really counting) out comes our waiter with this.



He said that it was our anniversary and he couldn’t let us go without at least a little bit of chocolate. A man after my own heart!

We devoured it. It’s a good thing we were so full from dinner right?

After paying the insurmountable bill, we ask for roll out service. Waddle over to the picture of Walt and take our pictures.





and then one of the hostess’s offers to take a picture of us together. Awww…



We decide it would be better to walk a little of the food off, otherwise we may go into a food induced coma before making it back to the hotel and of course we still have about another 30 minutes or so before our 3 hour limit is up on the free parking, so we take advantage.

We stop in one of the cute souvenier shops and pick up a few postcards for later. T-Man thoughtfully asks about stamps and we are directed to the Paradise Pier Hotel for those (We decide to go tomorrow to pick those up) and off we go to DtD to get a feel of the land.



Waddling through DtD, there are a multitude of shops, restaurants, and people. The World of Disney shop takes up about half of the right side, but of course we have to go through and see what there is. We see many possibilities and agree to come back closer to the end of the trip for souvies.

We notice the entrance from DtD to the Disneyland and California Adventures parks at the end of the walkway and there are quite a few people coming towards us, so we turn around and hurry back the way we came, in hopes of not being caught up in the barrage of people leaving the parks.

As we are headed out of the area, we hear the loud boom of what we can only think is a bomb. They’re bombing us! At Disney! What the…then I look up in time to see the beautiful colors of the fireworks display from Disneyland.

We watched for a little while before realizing the time and hurrying back to the car.

As we work our way through the traffic to the pay booths, we see a speed limit sign that strikes me as odd. Now I’ve seen speed limit signs for 10 mph, 15 mph, but never one for ...

Yup, that’s right, 14 miles per hour people. Not 13, not 15, but 14.
Nowhere else but Disney right?

OK. I think I will leave it at that for now, if you are still awake that is...