Hello all!
Just walked back in the door from our "California trip" (must say in a voice like Arnold!).
Disneyland was wonderful. We spent 2 1/2 days there and stayed at the Grand Californian Hotel. This hotel was designed by the same person that did the Animal Kingdom Lodge and the Wilderness Lodge.
The first day (after an exhausting double flight from St. Louis through Dallas to LA), we made it to Disney around 1:00 pm. Our room was not ready yet, so we had lunch at the quick service place at the hotel. My brother, his son, my brother's girlfriend and her daughter met us (Me, my DW, my DD, my DMil and DFil) and we went first to view our new brick we bought in front of the main gate. After a couple pictures, we entered Disneyland. My DMil and DFil were tired and decided to go back to the hotel to wait for the room to be ready. The rest of us ventured on through the crowds (busy!). My brother's girfriend's daughter qualifies for something called a "guest assistance pass" which pretty much got us through the lines with little wait. It was nice as, for the small amount of time we were in the park that day, we got to go on Buzz Light Year, The new Nemo Submarine ride, Space Mountain, It's a Small World (Holiday Edition), the Matterhorn and the Haunted Mansion (Holiday Edition). The only problem was that my brother is not really a Disney fan and really pushed the limits with the special pass (sometimes too far). My DW and DD (who is 3 year's old and looks like Shirley Temple) were tired ad went back to the room and I went with the rest of the group to dinner at Goofy's Kitchen at the Disneyland Hotel. Shortly after that, I "conked out" for the night. We had VIP reserved seating for the fireworks, but no one made it to 9:25 pm.
The next morning, after a nice night's sleep, our group (minus the visitors) had breakfast at Storyteller's Cafe with Chip and Dale. We were very excited that we happened to get the same waiter, Daniel, from our trip in June. If you ever go to Disneyland, I highly recommend this restaurant and Goofy's Kitchen as being the better of the buffet style places to eat. The manager came over and put our daughter in the dance parade with the characters around the joint. She had a great time. Anyway, we had a VIP tour scheduled at 9:00, so there was no time to dilly dally. I had this tour scheduled for 4 months and even had a specific tour guide requested and fully confirmed. As I walked to the area where we were going to meet up with "Rebecca", I was surprised to see a different guide there. Her name was "Cathy". After the initial mix up, we ended up spending the day with her. She turned out to be great! We focused on Disneyland and went on Snow White's Scary Adventure, the Carousel (did you know that carousels go counter clockwise and merry go rounds go clockwise?), the storybook land boat adventure, It's a Small World Holiday Edition (this is a terrific change from the normal show as the entire ride is changed into a christmas theme. The song has the traditional small world music intertwined with jingle bells and other holiday tunes), the many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Pirates of the Caribbean, The original Tiki Room, the Haunted House Holiday Edition (all done to the Nightmare before Christmas theme. This was great as it is no longer "scary" in this mode and our daughter loved it. It combined her two favorite holidays, Halloween and Christmas. I wish they would do this and holiday small world at WDW). We also went on the big paddle boat ride and I got to captain the ship from the wheelhouse atop the ship (which meant I wore a hat and got to ring the bells and blow the big steam whistle). It was a blast (OK...that was a bad pun.....). We did not get to ride on the "Lilly Belle" (Lillian Disney's private train car) as they did not have it hooked up that day. Our tour ended around 2 pm and we headed back to the room to relax before dinner.
That night, we met a vendor of mine and his wife for dinner at the Napa Rose. The meal was wonderful (but not as good as when we went with them to CLub 33 in June). My wife, DD (who fell asleep after dessert) and DMil went back up to the room after dinner. My DFil, my vendor, his wife and I went to where the VIP tour had us scheduled for our special seating for Fantasmic and the Holiday Fireworks show. Of course, when we got there, they had no idea where we were supposed to be. The stage manager / director for the show, James, overheard us talking with the security guard and after checking our printed reservation sheet brought us over to an unused section about 10 feet from his main controls. He even spent valuable time finding us chairs so we would be comfortable. Now that is Disney service. Here is the guy who is responsible for the entire production and minutes before the show he was most worried about taking care of us! Its not like there wasn't about 50,000 people crammed in around the lagoon for him to worry about. It was a wonderful show and after Fantasmic ends you stay put as you can view the main fireworks show from there. At the end of the fireworks, they had it snow around the entire lagoon area and throughout New Orleans Square. We were walking back through Adventureland and were passing by the Jungle Cruise. A cast member waived us in and said there was absolutely no wait for the last few boats of the night. I have done Jungle Cruise many times before, but it is soooo different when it is completely dark out. It was a wonderful end to a great evening.
The next morning, we got our things together and went down to breakfast at Storyteller's cafe. Everything as usual was great. We went back up to the room, showered and then checked out of the hotel. After sending our bags away with Bell services, we headed for a few short hours to California Adventure. The only main thing we had planned was VIP seating at Playhouse Disney. We did that, I went on the Tower of Terror and then we took it easy and did a little shopping. Unfortunately, we would have needed and extra day to take in that park, but we had no time.
We battled the LA traffic to get up to my Dad's house on Tuesday. We took him to Palm Springs (where my sister lives) on Wednesday. We had a wonderful couple of days there with the entire family. The dinner was wonderful (and the desserts weren't bad either). This morning, we got up early and drove back to John Wayne Airport and started the flights home to St. Louis.
And there you have it.......my quick trip report....
Now, I can't wait as a week from tomorrow we fly to Orlando with our group of 5 to meet up with my wife's aunt and uncle to start our next Disney adventure!
Can't wait to see all of you!
and welcome back to 3LVDisney - thanks for the trip report!!!
it!!!
