Day 2, the 6th!
Well, let me digress a bit...I was reading other trip reports, and noticed that someone had spotted Gwen Stefani on the 4th. Can I tell you how painful it is to think I was just a day and a half late to maybe see her in person? I adore her and her music, and would have loved to spot her. Oh well.
Back to the 6th.
DS slept 10 hours, all through the night. Yay, little one!
We got to the park and headed straight for the stroller line. While in the long line, I was spotted...I don't know the exact username and I forgot the name-name, but she was lovedisneyland, or iluvdisneyland? She recognized us from my avatar...probably helped that I was holding DS and therefore we were posed almost like the avatar picture, LOL. It was fun to see a Dis person, even if our placement in the lines made it hard to have an actual conversation.
Decided at the last moment to get a length of stay stroller pass. It doesn't save you money, but it saves you time, because you just waltz up (yes, you have to *waltz*, you can't just walk
), give them one of the slips of paper they hand you in a little envelope, and take a stroller. It's even faster if you kept your name"tag" from the first day, like I did. If you know you're going to need a stroller for more than just one day, it's worth it in the time-savings.
I don't know what I had planned, but DS refused it all. Sigh.
So we headed out to ToonTown, thinking he'd love Roger Rabbit, since he loved it in September! I forgot that TT doesn't open with the rest of the park, and we had about 10 minutes standing in a stroller-filled crowd outside the gates.
Parked the stroller and headed into RR, but Eamon just flipped out. We were in front of a family with a littler girl, and they totally understood that kids change their minds AND that sometimes it's OK to keep a kid in line b/c you know they'll enjoy it...and they tried to get him excited for the ride, but that queue is long even when empty, and NOISY, and by the time we were almost to the ride vehicles, he was almost screaming, there was an easy way to exit right there, and I just left. With him, of course.
He decided that he would much rather mess around with the various noise-making things outside, so we spent about an hour with him pressing doorbells, opening the door to the power plant, trying to pick up the dumbbells, getting into other peoples' pictures in the "jail", and so on.
Went into the gift shop to check out their Mr Potato Head selection. ooh boy is it pathetic, compared to EnginEars! Along with wrangling Eamon away from all the souvenirs I wasn't going to buy him (at least not that day), I bought a gift card. Not for anyone else, just for me...both as a souvenir and as a way to sort of budget myself. It worked out pretty well, using the giftcards, though in the future I would make sure I only had one "going" at a time. Maybe buy them ahead of time in maybe $100 increments (I like the different cards you can get, otherwise I'd just get one huge one), and if I run out of money on one, supplement with another...and so on.
Decided to go to Minnie's house, and it was very cute!
He had a blast, especially in the kitchen, twisting knobs and making the dishwasher go, causing the cake in the oven to fall, and so on.
We left there at long last and went to Mickey's.
We went to Mickey's in September, and on that day (which was MTTMM, so that might be the reason for the difference) they had MANY characters throughout the house, and I actually thought that's the way it would be this time!
But nope, this time the house was much more obviously a queue, and we ended up in that screening room with the old cartoons playing. The CM at the exit to the room didn't believe in speaking up, so even though she did her spiel 3 times while we were in there, I never actually *heard* what on earth she was saying. They let people through the exit one small group at a time, and even when she was letting us know that we would be the last of the next group and was right in front of me, I still had to ask her to repeat herself, b/c she had such a tiny little voice.
We were finally let through (she had actually told us we would be first in the next-next group, but then when we got there, she let us in last ahead of that), and it turned out to be a "private" meeting with Mickey. Since we were last in, we were last to have pictures, and the Photopass guy got some cute pictures of Eamon and Mickey. I especially like the one where Mickey had the two of them touch noses.
I can't wait to get in and start messing with the Photopass pictures, but I did something very very stupid with one of the cards (re-used a card, which is OK, but it was linked to the sept photopass "share" account that is NOT my own account, so the site won't accept it...I have an email in, and if they don't reply in 4 business days thanks to bradK I have their phone number to get it moved off of that now-defunct account) so I don't want to edit ANY of my pictures just yet. But even without editing, we already have 40 photos without that other card, so I think I'll get my money's worth with the pre-purchase of the photopass CD!
We left there and went to....chip and dale's treehouse.
Oh. My. Buddha. I had read disparaging things about it. I had I had! But I, for some reason, thought people were wrong. Thought "what could be so bad? Treehouses are fun!" Oh man I was wrong.
You walk up narrow spiral stairs (DS liked that), you go out, and then you go down, either a ramp or stairs, I don't remember, and that is IT. There isn't even a place to play, or a place to hang out like in Donald's boat. You just go up, and then down. Even DS, who is easily amused by the simplest of things, had no urge to go back through, and walked easily and quickly away from it. It is soooooo ridiculous, and now I understand the disparaging comments!
I tried to get us to leave at that point, but he desperately wanted to play at Goofy's, so, OK, fine, we went. And the kid just went nuts in there! He loved the piano in there, and I had to work all my diplomacy skills with the other kids that he kept asking to leave b/c they were interfering with his piano-playing.
He takes turns, in general, better than the only children I knew while growing up (sniffle sniffle, I don't
want him to be an only), but when it's something that he LOVES, I gotta step in.
Got him out of there (I know, I know, I must find a way to be more Zen at
Disneyland, but
I am so stinkin' excited to be there that it's
hard to meet both of our needs, ya know?) and he ran and ran and ran around the outside area. He made a friend with another kid, and they chased each other. The other mom didn't seem to care that they were running, but I don't like it when DS runs into other kids, so I looked like the worst helicopter mom ever, trying to keep him from slamming people to the ground. The other kiddo was a bit older, so steadier on his feet, and not in as much danger of doing harm to others... So if you saw me, I was trying to keep *other* kids safe, not DS (the kid can hurt himself while trying on clothes, literally, we got an ambulance trip to the ER from trying on gloves and a winter hat, so I know that it's almost impossible to keep *him* from hurting himself, LOL). I'm hovering over
your kids.
We finally had enough of that land and went to a favorite of both of ours....It's A Small World!
I think I'm running out of smilies for this post, so I'm going to end this reply here and continue in another.