For the first time in like ever I'm going to Disneyland a Nov 14 TR... updated 8/17

petals

Irish Princess because Cinderella said so!
Joined
May 18, 2010
Also could be known as the Disneyland til you drop trip because I was sick the entire trip boo hiss!

So I've been to WDW in Florida 5 times and Disneyland Paris 3 times but never Disneyland. Last year when Momma started talking about holidays of course I said Disney but she didn't want to go to Florida or Paris again so I suggested Anaheim. After a quick research of what else there was to do in the area I convinced her to try California and so we had picked the destination. For more ramblings on our plans getting ready for the trip see my pre trip report here

The When:
We've seen both Florida and Paris parks during the Christmas season and love the decorations and those castles all lit up so I wanted to see Disneyland during the holidays as well. I'm not allowed holidays in December from work so we looked at dates in November. We decided on the 17th until the 27th of November and we were going to be staying off property at a hotel called the Castle Inn and Suites.

Who are we then?
Well there's me. 29 year old Disney addict from Ireland. It's my happy place. I love so many characters Stitch, Olaf, Baymax, Tigger, Dumbo.. I could go on.

Momma comes with me on my trips and every trip is the last time she's going. She likes Disney and enjoys the parks but not as much as I do. Her favourite characters are Dopey and Grumpy.

Then I always bring a little trip mascot with me that I call Angel.

Angel is the only one that will appear in photos on the trip report.
 


Let's get this show on the road then!

Sunday, 16th November 2014.

Two weeks before our trip Momma decided she wanted to stay in a hotel at the airport the night before. Our flight wasn't until 11.30am but she wanted the plane to be the first travelling we would have to do that morning so we booked into the Maldron Hotel at the airport. So when we got up on Sunday threw the last few bits in the case and I did my Disney toe tails:

Momma's friend lives in Dublin and he had been staying in our house so she went off with him for a while and took the cases with her. The man from the kennels came for the dogs at 12 ish and again the older one was happy to go but my small dog kind of stopped outside the door to have a think and seemingly decided he didn't want to go and tried to head back in to the house. Once they were all sorted though I got ready and headed to Dublin. There was a Christmas Market which was new so I wanted to check that out on the way to the airport. There were little huts all lined up along the road and they had everything from jewellery, decorations, clothes, handmade items, toys and food.



After that I went in to the Disney store for a browse. They had Olaf, Anna and Elsa back in their window for Christmas.

On the other side though they had a life size figure of Sven. Love it:

They've also added a third level in there of boys stuff and have figures from Star Wars and the Marvel characters down there.


I got my nephews Christmas present and the holiday Minnie Mouse before I left. I wandered around Dublin for a bit taking in all the Christmas decorations.



(Nollaig Shona Duit means Happy Christmas in Irish for those wondering)
Next I headed over to a shop called Pennies. It's like target without groceries I guess but they have a tonne of cheap Disney clothing and stuff. I got an Olaf t-shirt, slippers and pj's!


This was the top of another cute pj's I saw there:

They were turning on the Christmas lights on the street where Pennies was and there was a band and Santa and stuff nearby so it was a tiny bit packed there. I wandered looking at more decorations for a bit.



After that headed for food in Burger king and got the bus out to the airport. I got off the bus at terminal 2 and could walk to the hotel from the bus. On the way I spotted a load of rabbits playing at the side of the road.

We had booked the hotel online or so we thought, they asked for a credit card number when you book it so one would presume that meant they were charging you for it on their website. So I had the print out of our booking and went up to check in with what was possibly the most unfriendly receptionist ever! She wouldn't let me check in. Said that she needed a credit card to pay for the room. I pointed out we had paid online and she was like no that was only to secure the room they don't charge you on the website. It does not say this when you're booking it at all! I rang Momma and she came down to check in as her friend lives nearby.


Cool picture of one of the bridges and convention centre in Dublin on the wall:

Once they dropped the bags in the room, they went off for dinner and I went to bed to watch X factor and take a flu drink. I could feel the hint of a cold coming on and wanted to try stop it before it came up properly! Mother came back at 9 ish and her friend took my nephews birthday present with him so I wouldn't have to take it to California with me. Once she was back we both went to bed excited for the trip to start.


Next up: California here I come
 
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I like your TR already. :goodvibes I enjoyed the site around Dublin. That little Minnie you got for a gift is adorable!!
 


Looking forward to the rest of your report (we leave for DL on 12/12). Thus far it makes me want to go to Dublin :)
 
I like your TR already. :goodvibes I enjoyed the site around Dublin. That little Minnie you got for a gift is adorable!!
The Minnie is for me :goodvibes I have the holiday Minnie for the last three years so decided to get this years... if you spent so much you got her for a third of the price as well. I got something else for my nephew. Won't post it on the off chance he sees the picture

Looking forward to the rest of your report (we leave for DL on 12/12). Thus far it makes me want to go to Dublin :)
Welcome. You should come visit Ireland but bring a coat and warm clothes it's freezing over here!
 
Joining in! Loved the Christmasy pictures from your wanderings. Can't wait to hear what you thought of Disneyland Resort!!! :goodvibes
 
Finally getting over here.

I love all the stuff you already bought. How fun!

That is typical for a lot of hotels to just secure with a credit card, but many you can't tell online if they are charging you or not. Marriotts typically don't unless that particular hotel states it as booking it. But many other chains don't tell you and I often call if I am not sure...I prefer to not be charged...or at least want to know if I am ahead of time. if it's several nights I want to see how many nights they are charging me and if I can pay on it before hand.
 
Finally getting over here.
Welcome :flower3:

I love all the stuff you already bought. How fun!
Thanks. I do love my Olaf pjs :goodvibes

That is typical for a lot of hotels to just secure with a credit card, but many you can't tell online if they are charging you or not. Marriotts typically don't unless that particular hotel states it as booking it. But many other chains don't tell you and I often call if I am not sure...I prefer to not be charged...or at least want to know if I am ahead of time. if it's several nights I want to see how many nights they are charging me and if I can pay on it before hand.
I think they should say on their website because it was ok for us one Momma arrived with her card but I was watching a couple from England trying to check in while I waited and they didn't have any Euro on them so had to try convert pounds to euro before they could pay for the hotel and this was 7 or 8 in the evening
 
Well and truely back to normality today kind of.. Back to one job at least although I was teaching at the weekend. Still can't get rid of the cough I got on holidays and not back to my own lessons but sure.

Tonight though two of the people I know from the musical society I'm in got engaged but he took her to Disneyland Paris and proposed in front of the castle there :lovestruc

Hoping to get another update done as soon as I decorate my Christmas tree.. I'm very late getting it done this year. Normally all the decorations are up and finished by now.

Oh yeah and I ordered photopass plus before I went away and had until today to claim my photos. When I went on though one of my magic shots was missing a character and I have some random family's photo of pluto and not mine. I mailed them and they said the magic shot would be there within 24 hrs.. it took 2 days. They also said they can't find my pluto shot. So sad because the one the cm took on my camera is all blurry as well. Personally I reckon they just can't be bothered looking and that if I have a picture of the family before me that my picture is most likely on the card of the person after me. Anyway on with the report:

Day 1: Monday, 17th of November.

Normally I don't like this day as one of my gorgeous doggies crossed the rainbow bridge on the 17th of November 2008. Today though I was excited. I had very little sleep the night before between the heat in the room, pain from a lump in my ear and a few other things so at 5am I gave up trying to sleep and got up to start getting ready. Momma got up at 6 and we had breakfast in the hotel before heading over to the terminal to check in.

We got through security no problem and wandered the shops for a bit to kill some time. They had started putting up the Christmas decorations in the airport:

This dude was in one of the sweet shops:

We stopped for Momma to get tea and I got white hot chocolate. Momma rang her friend to say goodbye and then we headed to the US customs clearance area, omg we had to have gotten the grumpiest police officer than morning. We were giddy and he didn't even crack a smile I almost burst out laughing just at that. Once we were at the gate Angel and I did a bit of plane spotting

and checked on the weather we were heading to:

I'll take it. It was 9 degrees and due to rain at home!
Soon enough they started boarding our flight and it was so long Ireland for ten days:

The in-flight entertainment had its own Disney section:

This made me happy and I watched Planes 2 first because I hadn't seen it yet.

While I was watching that they came around with drinks and snacks. The cute flight attendant guy gave me extra peanuts!

I continued my Disney watching and watched Phineas and Ferb, Dog with a blog and Rio, that's not Disney but I liked it. At some point they came around with dinner as well. The choice was Pasta or Sweet and sour chicken. I went with the chicken:

After Dinner Momma got up to go to the bathroom and Angel stole her seat.

Before we landed they went around asking everyone if you wanted an egg sandwich or a turkey sandwich but there was a chicken fajita in my turkey sandwich lol! I only ate the shortbread and ice-cream because it said the sauce on the 'turkey sandwich' was fish sauce ick!

Soon enough it was nearly time to land in New York. Look how far we travelled from that first red dot on the right hand side of the screen and we still had to go to the other side of America:

Landing in New York:

Once we landed we headed straight to the gate but I spotted these along the way.

I found Disney sweets:

At the gate we tried to sort out the fact we didn't have any seats on this plane. They said they wouldn't be able to do it until they were starting to board. Momma was in a bit of a panick about this especially after a lovely American lady told her how they overbook the flights so we might end up having to stay in New York if they have no seats for us. I would have been major annoyed if we had to stay in New York. When we booked our flights in the first place we booked Dublin to Atlanta and then Atlanta to Orange County because it's the closest airport to Anaheim. During the summer though Delta decided to completely cancel the Dublin to Atlanta flights for the winter so we had to change our flights to Dublin to New York and then New York to Los Angeles instead. That was fine but then two weeks before our flight they changed the time of the first flight by half an hour and our travel agent was afraid we wouldn't make it on time for our second flight so changed the time on that as well but it was so close to the flight date she couldn't book seats on it. Turned out that we would have made the flight we were booked on anyway because we got off the plane at the gates for the next one more or less.
Anyway while we were waiting at the gate Momma had tea and a hot dog and Delta people came around with biscuits and water for everyone. The girl handing out the water saw Angel and said he was really cute.
As they started boarding the plane we did get seats on the flight together in the very last row. Momma wasn't happy about this but I convinced her the turbulence wasn't as bad at the back and on the wings so she went to sleep. On this plane you had to pay for everything! I was amused by the fact they had internet on the plane though. Who wants to go on facebook at 10,000 ft in the air lol!

I tried to sleep on the plane but would start choking coughing so I just gave up and watched Bad Neighbours on my ipod and did some crosswords and stuff to pass the time on this plane. They did give us water and peanuts for free but any other food you had to pay for. Coming into Los Angeles it was dark so all we could see was lights.
Almost there:

Los Angeles by night:

It was about 8 when we landed and by the time we figured out where the baggage claim area was our bags were some of the last on the carousel in fact they'd already taken Momma's off as unclaimed but I just went over and grabbed it while the security guy was talking. We got a bit confused looking for the super shuttle stop as well but I found another security guy and he pointed us in the right direction. We left LAX at 8.37 and by 9.14 we were stopping at the first hotel in Anaheim. Our hotel, The Castle Inn and Suites, was the second stop. The hotel reception was a lot smaller than the pictures online make it look but it was nice enough. This dude was in reception to greet us.

We got checked in. I was amused by what I thought was Halloween directions in reception but I'm guessing they were actually meant to be for thanksgiving either way it was Disney stuff.

Once check in was all sorted we headed to our room
The beds were huge:

We got a towel animal as well:

We got all settled in and went straight to bed.

At this stage I had been up for 25 hours and had very little sleep on the plane but I was excited to get to Disney the next day.

Next up: Breakfast with some Grizzly bears
 
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Great updates Emma.

The first part of the fight sounded great, but sorry about the second part and the worry of seats. Yes, nothing is free on our flights anymore (unless you are in First Class).

I LOVE Angel checking out the planes and stealing Mom's seat.

:woohoo::woohoo::woohoo::woohoo: you've arrived and you are going to Disneyland the next day.
 
Super update...:yay:

We are enjoying traveling with you... Tell me more..!!:thumbsup2
 
Checking in. The Christmas decorations in Dublin look nice. I am glad that you had a relatively smooth travel day, but I am sorry that you have been unwell right from the beginning.

I am in the process of checking my Photopass photos and have a few Magic Shots minus the Magic. What information did you have to provide to get this put right?

Corinna
 

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