TR - A Gregarious Ghostly Gallivant - Final Thoughts Finally Posted!

[travelmel]

Hello from your neighbors in the north (Portland, not Canada!)

great tr.

 

[mnmrmustard]

Hello from your neighbors in the north (Portland, not Canada!)

great tr.

Well hey there! Always happy to have another DIS friend along for our journey, and a Oregonian to boot! The past week got away from me, but I promise an update sometime soon

 

[mnmrmustard]

Sorry that this update took a week - hectic times around here!

The wheel kept on turning and we got a shot of the screamers screaming by

Got a really good view of all of the plumbing from way up there

And a nice shot of ToT

And Mickey smiled down on us

By the time we got off our FPs for Cali Screamin' were up so we zoomed our way over there and took a ride. It was my first time on it and it was quite a blast. Very fast coaster for sure and it was a great sunny day for it, and I liked the music. Still like RockinRollerCoaster better though ;-]

Mickey smiled at us as we left Paradise Pier

We strolled around Grizzly Mountain and decided to stop in and see It's Tough To Be A Bug. On the way down I said 'hi' to one of my favorite villians :-D

It was a fun show as usual and Kris hadn't remembered it from when he was a kid so the effects caught him off guard pretty well ...hehehe. After that we headed for the mountain!

Heading there I snapped a pic of the map of the "new" CA.

The old mill

...and the obligatory shot of the mill and the mountain

I was running really low on energy and the sun was really getting to me. So I bowed out of making the run myself. I took a couple of pics while I waited to see them come around.

A little bluegrass group struck up a chord across from the Grizzly giftshop.

They were a lot of fun and got some park guests into the group. I kept looking over the edge next to the gift shop and finally saw the kids come by

I don't know what exactly was going on, but Pumpkin Girl said the little girl across from here was very annoying and wouldn't stop talking - lol

They did their ride and I unfortunately did't get pics of them coming down the big hill, but I was ready at the bottom of the stairs when they came out. The funny thing was that the girls saw me right away (I was sitting on a rock wall) but Kris was oblivious.

Then he finally saw me - lol

Pumpkin Girl gave him quite the look while Bean showed me how wet she got

 

[lovebuzzandwoody]

All caught up! Wow, they got soaked! Too fun!

We just got back from WDW last night. My dd Abby really wanted that Jack hat like Kyra's but I was a meanie and didn't get it for her. I did get her the gloves though!

 

[kaoden39]

Kacy never goes on Grizzly River Run, she hates to get wet, so like Splash Mountain I have never done the ride. Another thing I will remedy next trip.

 

[mnmrmustard]

All caught up! Wow, they got soaked! Too fun!

We just got back from WDW last night. My dd Abby really wanted that Jack hat like Kyra's but I was a meanie and didn't get it for her. I did get her the gloves though!

Yay for being caught up! Yeah, they got a good soaking

Awww, no hat? Oh well - she'll enjoy sporting the gloves anyways. Plus she's gotta know that you have to save SOME $$$ for Christmas presents

Kacy never goes on Grizzly River Run, she hates to get wet, so like Splash Mountain I have never done the ride. Another thing I will remedy next trip.

I don't blame her - I've never been on it either. It was a good hot day for it, but honestly doing California Screamin' really took the wind out of my sails that day. I was all thrill rided out and feeling sick/weak. Maybe next time I'll take the plunge. And hopefully you'll get to try both of them yourself!

 

[mnmrmustard]

Well after showing off how wet they were, I told the brood that it was time to head back to the hotel and get some lunch. We strolled back past Candycorn Acres

…and under the bridge

On our walk back through DTD we saw the cutest little police car

The Villains were still grinning down at us

I was really running out of energy, so it was good to see DLH up ahead

We made it up to the room and Roxy was still snoozin’. We did our best to stay quiet while we made lunch. After our food had settled I let the kids go down to the pool while I rested some more. I laid down and took a little nap and then headed down to the pool myself. The kids were having a BLAST on the water slide, going down it over and over. I settled into the hot tub and just relaxed for a while.

After I was boiled pretty well I got out and walked up the stairs to the landing that arcs over the water slide. From there I had a pretty good view of the kids going down the slide. All I had with me was my phone, so I took a couple of vids with it. Still need to learn how to imbed videos into DISboards – lol Oh, and you'll need Quicktime player to view them ;-]

http://ronin.roguecc.edu/Disney2009/images/Bean-Kris-Slide-DLH.3g2

While I'm posting that I'll post a couple of others from the trip.

Panning shot of the Neverland Pool from the same spot

http://ronin.roguecc.edu/Disney2009/images/Neverland-Pool-At-DLH.3g2

Bean dancing (from day 1) at DTD

http://ronin.roguecc.edu/Disney2009/images/Bean-Dancing-DTD.3g2

Me acting like a complete goofball on day 3 I think - heading back on the monorail to the hotel to meet the Vons deliver guy. Made up my own song, ain't I a natural - lol

http://ronin.roguecc.edu/Disney2009/images/My-Own-Monorail-Car.3g2

And since this is a bit of a scattered post, we also got in our Photopass CD. We didn't use photopass as extensively as we did at WDW, but it was still worth purchasing the pics. Here are some favorites:

Bean with Dopey

Another with Dopey

Pumpkin Girl takes her turn

A spirited conversation with Pocahontas

And now posing with her

And here comes Pumpkin Girl (Bean always seemed to be first in line for the characters - lol)

The rest of the photopass pics were from the ToT party, so let's just make that a separate post

 

[mnmrmustard]

Well it was finally time - the big event we had been waiting for.

Mickey's Trick or Treat Party!!!!!!

Well almost time, anyways. I went back up to the room and rested a bit longer and had set 5pm as time for coming back up to the room to eat/get ready. Roxy was up but still not feeling too good. She was a trooper though and finished putting together some custom halloween candy bags for the kids (need to gather them together and take a pic of them - they are very cool).

We ate and slowly got dressed, getting all of those accessories together and playing the "where's my ...." game for just about everything. But we were finally ready and were going to head out. Roxy still wasn't feeling too good so chose not to leave with us, but promised that she would try and join us a bit later.

The lines for security and to get through the gate were pretty long, but we shuffled through just fine. There were several other groups of pirates waiting so we had plenty of "arrrrggghhhhsss" and "aye, me hearties" while we shuffled forward.

Finally we were through the gates and were heading for the plaza

I wrangled them for a minute and took a pic

Bean played with her bag

Then we headed up to the big candy corn where they were dancing and singing and generally having fun

I took a couple of shots of the sun with Jack's face grinning on it

We had enough fun with that and decided to follow the map on around towards the pier. But first we made a stop at Soarin'

Lookie, no line!

Pumpkin Girl reading the map while we waited

It was great fun as usual, but I did have issues in that my pirate hat would not fit in the underseat storage - just had to hold on to it. There was a dad and son next to me, the boy was 5 or 6 and it was really cute watching his face and how amazed he was by the experience.

We got off and got back on the trail of goodies, the kids keeping a quick pace

I thought the Mickey ghost lights were great

We hit several candy stations in quick succession, the CMs doing a great job of keeping the lines moving.

They had a VERY cool spider web design over the mountain

We were near the pier entrance and they had some cool dancing jack o lanterns spotlighting on the ground

Mickey's Fun Wheel looked Spectacular in the dark

The kids had hit several candy stations and decided it was time to ride another ride. They jumped on the Zephyr and took a spin.

The Mailboomer wasn't open, but it still looked cool in the dark.

While the kids were on the zephyr Roxy tried to call them. They couldn't hear her so she gave up and called me. I heard the phone (the second time) but couldn't hear her very well.

Was she coming? Was she still in bed? Would the whole family get to enjoy Mickey's party????

Tune in next time and see!

 

[DizNee Luver]

I had some catching up to do, but glad I got back over here to do so. I am really enjoying your TR & pics!!! It's still a bummer that you & Roxie both got sick during your trip but the kids still seemed like they had a blast!! Great Job to both of you for making that happen!!!!!

I always wondered if anyone rode the rides during the Trick or Treat party & now I know....very cool!!!

 

[Trentmom]

Hey Mustard

All caught up

Sorry to hear Roxy and you were still feeling bad.

The halloween decorations at party look so cool

love all your costumes. Looks like you all were having a blast

Hope Roxy made it

 

[mnmrmustard]

I had some catching up to do, but glad I got back over here to do so. I am really enjoying your TR & pics!!! It's still a bummer that you & Roxie both got sick during your trip but the kids still seemed like they had a blast!! Great Job to both of you for making that happen!!!!!

I always wondered if anyone rode the rides during the Trick or Treat party & now I know....very cool!!!

Hey Laurie! Good to hear from you and glad you're enjoying the TR! Hope you and your fam's holiday is shaping up well

Oh yeah, the sickies were not fun, but we got through it and the kids didn't suffer from our suffering - lol

Yup! We rode several rides in full costume

Hey Mustard

All caught up

Sorry to hear Roxy and you were still feeling bad.

The halloween decorations at party look so cool

love all your costumes. Looks like you all were having a blast

Hope Roxy made it

Yup, cool for sure - they do a good job with the theming and there are lots of characters to see and candy to eat Thank you about the costumes - we had fun wearing them.

More to come now as we wind through the rest of our Halloween evening!

 

[mnmrmustard]

Well it turned out that Roxy hadn't wanted to call me. She had wanted to get ahold of one of the kids and find out where we all were so she could come down and suprise me :-]

But since the kiddos weren't hearing the calls she ended up having to let me in on it and I guided her down to where we were. While we waited the kids hit a couple more candy stations and we had a Woody sighting

Soon after that Roxy was there and Kris was the first to give her a big hug and I caught a pic of them

We all headed for Cali' Screamin'. I sat the ride out with all of our Piratey accessories as once was enough for me that day. I was there to get pics when they got off

We had a little snafu trying to get out of there. I was trying to keep Roxy from having to walk stairs so we took the elevator ...which took us up! She said forget it and we ended up walking down 2 flights of stairs instead of one. Oops :-[

We made it down the ramp but had missed their pic being posted on the ride photos screen. But we then ran into a mom with a little boy pirate who thought we were the coolest and asked if he could have a picture with us :-D

We said sure and she snapped a shot, I then had her use my camera to take a pic of the fam together. Turned out a bit fuzzy but was still nice

We walked up the ramp from there and got out of the flow of traffic to decide our next move. Kyra was a bit bored and started spinning around a light pole

And Bean was just getting tired

We realized we hadn't eaten dinner, so started heading up the ramp and out of the pier area. I made the mistake to stop and take a couple of pics of the wheel and told them to keep going and find a place to eat.

I had thought they would take the immediate right down into the pier's restaurant area, so I took my pics and then headed down there. It was a very cool spot with both classic Peter Pan pirates and the PoTC pirates and several food vendors to choose from.

Unfortunately Kris said he knew where to go and they went trekking back towards the entrance of the park. I tried calling and when I finally got through they were at Test Pilot Grill :0

I was bummed to miss out on all the Piratey action ...and seeing the Wicked Stepmother and Sisters who were near the entrance to A Bug's Life, but sometimes that's the way it goes, aye?

We had a quick meal of burgers and fries and strolled out towards the parade route. It was still a bit before the parade so we checked out the big Disney store for a while. Soon enough it was time for the parade, it was short but still pretty cute.

Here came the lead float - nice candy corn

Some colorful witches

Here comes the Army Men

And there's Woody and Jessie

Rolling candy pumpkin and more Army Men

Another bunch of happy witches

Here comes Mickey and the gang!

more coming right away!

 

[mnmrmustard]

Chip and Dale were keeping watch at the rear of the float

Pinoccio

Gepetto

And Alice followed

A last line of witches

And the last float

The parade finished and we made a bee line down towards ToT before the lines built back up. On the way down we saw another character interaction. While we waited in line we took in another cool haloween projection

Kris had the camera and took a pic of Pumpkin Girl and I

And of a shiny fire hydrant that he thought was pretty cool

I don't know who Pumpkin was giving a look to, but it was a good one

I went up first and got a couple of shots with Snow White and Dopey

And then I got the whole fam to come up

The kids moved up ahead around the bend towards ToT. looked to the left and saw the line for Mickey and Minnie - it was waaaayyyyy too long to try for.

Caught a shot of ToT

The kids went on the ride but Roxy and I were wiped out. So we had a seat on a bench outside the ToT gift shop. There was a mother and grown daughter in cool witches costumes sitting on the other bench who we talked with for a bit. Soon enough we realized we were sitting right by the exit area for the characters at this end of the street.

First came a big Little Einstein

And what do you know - the Mouse and his Miss came by!

Roxy's stomach wasn't feeling too hot, so she asked if I could find her some kind of bread product to settle her tum tum. I zoomed back around the corner and lo and behold - the Wicked Queen was there with no line!!!!!

I was able to jump in and get a couple of quick pics. She was not impressed with my apple, said it was the wrong color - lol

It was almost 10:30pm (closing time), so everything was starting to close up. I ended up having to go all the way back to the rail car shops, but I found a big croissant for her. I made my way back and by that time the kids had finished up on ToT. Bean was unhappy because they only rode it once and even though there wasn't a line, none of the other kids wanted to ride again. So we made a couple of purchase at the ToT gift shop and started walking. I turned and said a final goodbye to the tower

We strolled back towards the entrance and made some more purchase at the big gift shop near the bridge. We left the park around 11pm and shuffled our tired feet back to the room for showers and sleep.

The next day was Friday, our last day in the parks. What to do, where to go? And who would be awake enough to live the adventure? Check back in a bit later and we'll see!

 

[mnmrmustard]

Day 5 Part 1 - Who's Ready For More?!?



Day 5 dawned, our last day in the parks. The fam was dead to the world after the early day park hopping and the ToT party. I however was up with the sun. I still had a bit of a cough but I was feeling the call of the Magic Kingdom. I showered and dressed and grabbed some food from the cabinet and fridge. Bean stirred a bit and I told her that whenever they were ready, I would come back and get them. She said 'okay' and turned back over to go back to sleep.



I walked out the door and down the hall. While I waited for the elevator I took in the sunrise over a very smoggy Disneyland

The sun was still peeking through the trees as I left the Wonder Tower

All was still quiet at the Rainforest

I went to the monorail station not long after it opened ...and yes, I got my own monorail car again :-D As I glided in I caught a couple of great shots of the Matterhorn

The morning dawned over Tomorrowland

As I came around the other side of the Matterhorn I caught some other early risers going on the Alice ride.

I got off of the monorail took a shot of my fellow passengers as they disenbarked

Strolling along I took some random shots through Tomorrowland

I had been making my way towards the center of things to visit the man who started it all. And there he was with his our favorite mouse, pointing towards the future and welcoming all who came to share in the magic.

For Halloween they had made up jack-o-lanterns representing each land. Buzz for Tomorrowland

Roger Rabbit for Toontown

Tink for Fantasyland

Pooh for Critter Country

Woody for Frontierland

Jack for New Orleans Square

Tarzan for Adventureland

My leisurely stroll through Disneyland continues in my next installment.

 

[kaoden39]

I love to leisurely stroll through Disneyland. There is so much to see that way.

 

[Trentmom]

I enjoyed the rest of your pics from Halloween party

Glad Roxy was feeling somewhat better and was able to join you.

Great pics as usual

you took a lot of great shots strolling through DLand

Love all the pumpkins for each land

 

[mnmrmustard]

I love to leisurely stroll through Disneyland. There is so much to see that way.

It was the first time I had been able to do it. I'm looking forward to doing it more often, that's for sure! Cheers and hope you had a great Christmas

I enjoyed the rest of your pics from Halloween party

Glad Roxy was feeling somewhat better and was able to join you.

Great pics as usual

you took a lot of great shots strolling through DLand

Love all the pumpkins for each land

Thankyee! I figured I should at least finish the Halloween pictures since Christmas was here Yes, Roxy was on the mend - just needing more rest mostly.

It was a nice day to take pictures, sunny blue sky day. Actually started feeling a bit like Florida, humidity started cranking up. The crowds were pretty light to begin with too.

More to come - Happy Holidays!!!

 

[mnmrmustard]

It was Friday morning and I had finished my visit with Walt and Mickey and had taken pics of all of the custom pumpkins.

There was a Photopass guy there and I couldn't resist getting my pic taken with Walt and Mickey

I then took pics of the little statuettes that surround Walt's statue

First the Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland

Chip and Dale

Donald

Minnie

Pinnocchio

Dumbo

and finally Pluto

the park was still still pretty quiet as this empty car can attest to

The horse drawn trolley was parked by the statue so I said 'hi' to the horse :-]

and there went the double decker bus

Meanwhile families were making the pilgrimage to Fantasyland

I moved away from the crowds and headed over to the grotto. Not a soul over there - it was very peaceful and shady. Hello Mr Bunny rabbit

The castle looked very majestic

And the grotto was very ...uh, grotto-ish ;-]

And a wishing well to make that special wish

And back to Snow White and her deer

Her and most of the crew

And there's Dopey

Turrets against the blue sky

I started strolling back towards Main Street and ran into a flock of guides learning to guide ...hehehe

Halloween Time banner

More coming right after this picture limit break!

 

[mnmrmustard]

Main Street was lookin' good

The pumpkins in the windows were cool

Down one of the alleys there was an open upstairs window where you could hear piano lessons going on

And howls from the "painless" dentist - lol

I actually took pics of all of the windows, but I won't bore you with them. It was interesting to google some of the names to see what great works they had done - some amazing people.

My next stop was Disneyland - The First 50 Years. The full exibit wasn't open, but there was still some very cool stuff to look over. First was a great pic of Walt walking through Snow White's castle

Below the picture was a bench ...a very special bench

There was a great model of Snow White's Castle

Next was Inspirations and The Dream Begins:

Then more sketches

And a painting of Disneyland as it looked right after it opened

More sketches

And Disneyland Grows Up

And A Golden Age For Dreamers

Then A New Generation of Dreamers

There was a cool model of Splash Mountain

Walt and Mickey

Some info about Walt's Apartment

Darn, ran out of room just as I was finishing the tour - be right back!

 

[mnmrmustard]

Just finishing up in the Disneyland - The First 50 Years.

Last image was some pics of Walt's Apartment above the Firehouse - here's the info that went with it:

Next was a full model of the Disneyland park

And the oh so famous quote - still affects me a bit to read it

A copy of the Disneyland Newspaper from opening day

They still had a montage up from Great Moments with Mr Lincoln

Then some great shots of Walt in the park

They were showing a cool video narrated by Steve Martin if I remember correctly. When the video was over it showed a cool screen saver of the castle at night

Next door there we some great paintings on exibit

I walked out and looked across the square and took a quick shot of City Hall

The train station was closed down with the trains getting their yearly maintenance

I turned around and who walked out - Mickey!!!!

I then got in line to get my picture taken in front of the giant Mickey Jack-o-lantern. By then it was starting to get really hot and humid and every moment in the shade was golden.

After my momen in pumpkinland my eyes fixed on something I had seen many times but had never taken the time to explore. Ye Ole Firehouse

I finish up the firehouse, hit some shops, and then on to The Pirate Lair! I'll get that rolling sometime tomorrow ;-]