3 Girls, 1 Chicken: Disneyland Trip Report with pics! DONE 11/27

[Philadisney]

I have never posted here before, as I am a WDW girl - I worked there as a CP at Epcot when I was in college, and have taken numerous trips, including two in 2006. I have only been to DL twice, the last time being 5 years ago. My mom has a conference in San Diego next week, so I am coming along - San Diego is a mere 90 minutes from Anaheim, hooray! Plus, my friend Sam recently moved there - she was a CP at Epcot with me, and I haven't seen her in years. So the three of us will be taking a day trip to Disneyland! I am delighted for rides we don't have in WDW, like the Alice in Wonderland ride and the Matterhorn. I don't know if we'll make the California Adventure, but we'll be spending a day hanging out by the castle for sure!
I mention a chicken in my title because I have a little stuffed chicken, Mr. Vacuum, who comes on all my trips (just last week I took him to New Mexico!). You can read about his other Disney adventures in the links in my signature.

As you can see, he is a big Disney fan as well.

 

[tinkermell]

Have a wonderful time! When are you coming??? Over the Holidays?? Or next year? Be sure to ask lots of questions on the Disneyland board.

 

[Philadisney]

i'll be there this very weekend! yay!

 

[Msslaydbug]

Can't wait to read your trip report and the chicken's of course !

 

[Minniespal]

Can't wait to read your trip report.

 

[Philadisney]

thanks everyone! now i'm off to the train station! TTFN!

 

[Philadisney]

So on Sunday morning my mom & I got up bright and early, and waited for Sam to pick us up at our hotel. the drive to anaheim from san diego was a bit long, but lovely, a beautiful day! we stopped in downtown disney to pick up a friend of Sam's who works at the Grand Californian, Art. He was going to hang out with us for a few hours at our first stop...the Magic Kingdom!

The castle was decked out for the holidays already. I know its smaller than WDW's castle, but I love that it is pink! I also thought this thing was pretty cute.

We headed straight to the left

As I was eager to get on my favorite ride, Splash Mountain. I liked it a lot - I was amused at how Brer Fox looks different here than at WDW. He had little white tufts of hair on his face.
A bit tired out from the drive, we stopped at the Hungry Bear for restrooms

and got some french fries before continuing on to one of the things about this day that I was very most excited about...the Haunted Mansion... NBX style!

I love, love this movie and had never seen the ride with the NBX themeing before. Soooo neat.

 

[Philadisney]

Next we wandered back towards the castle, stopping for POC. Art told us about the story behind Disneyland's POC ride - how the old man sleeping at the beginning of the ride is an old retired pirate, and the ride is his dream. You 'fall' into the dream, it starts abstract with misty images, then slowly develops into a more concrete story, like dreams do. At the end when your boat climbs back up out of the ride, that is waking up.
We stopped by the castle for some pictures

Art, can you get the rest of them to look? Thank you....

I loved all the statues

so did mr. V!

Then it was lunchtime at Pinocchio's.

This was a little disappointing as I ordered the kids meal mac n' cheese, and i specified the regular meal, not the toddler one, but i think they gave me the toddler one anyway. look how tiny this cup was

Oh well, it meant that I had room for a mickey mouse ice cream bar afterwards!
We had one more stop in Fantasyland before heading over to the California Adventure....the ride for my favorite film, Alice in Wonderland! I went a little picture crazy here.

We headed out of the park, stopping for a picture of the Christmas tree

I'll update again later, as we headed for my first time at DCA!

 

[Philadisney]

whoops, almost forgot to add my favorite picture from Alice in Wonderland...the bathrooms! the bathrooms were one of my favorite things about the park, unlike in WDW where they all kinda look the same, each one was unique and had awesome themeing.

 

[Philadisney]

So although we hadn't done everything in MK by a long shot (never even made it to Tomorrowland or Toontown!), we headed over to DCA around 1pm because I was eager to check it out, having never been! We said goodbye to Art, who had to go to work, and beelined for one of my must-do's - Monsters Inc!

I thought this ride was cute, but nothing amazing. Roz commented on Sam's pink pirate Minnie ears at the end, which made us giggle.
We did a bit of exploring

And headed over to the Grand Californian to check out their menus (we were starting to think a TS dinner might be a fine idea), and to drop off my mom. She was getting very tired and wanted to sit at the bar for a bit while Sam and I continued running around the park.

Having both been fans of the Kali River Rapids at Animal Kingdom, we made sure our next stop was the Grizzly River Run, which was FANTASTIC. we loved how the rafts spun around. And we didn't get too wet. Next we stopped for a pretzel and wandered around Paradise Pier, I really wanted to go on the roller coaster or ferris wheel, but Sam wasn't up for it - there was quite a wait for both anyway. So we went on the Orange Stinger, which I loved, and the Golden Zephyr, which was allllright.
We had a great time exploring Flik's Fun Fair, and went on the Chew Chew Train, which was so incredibly tame but also amusing. We love Heimlich! Made sure to stay away from the 3D show though - I have been jabbed in the back by bee stingers one too many times at Animal Kingdom, thank you.
We hooked back up with my mom, who had made us dinner reservations at the Wine Country Trattoria, neat! We grabbed a Soarin' FP and were on our way.

I had the Lasagna Rustica - sausage, ricotta, parmesean...it was so, so very delicious. We attempted to shovel down some dessert too - the orange sorbet and the fantastic chocolate creme.
While we waited for our FP time to arrive, we caught the tail end of the Block Party, then headed on to Soarin! This was nothing new as they recently opened it in WDW too, but we love it, and Sam had never done it before.

 

[Philadisney]

There was still some time left to go back to MK, so we headed out of DCA. I don't like using a flash and didn't want to make Sam and my mom wait while I stopped every ten feet, so the many pictures I took are a bit blurry!

Back to the castle for some more nighttime blurriness!

I wanted to do Winnie the Pooh because I knew it was different than WDW's Pooh ride, so we hopped on that - no wait! It was great fun. Sam was fond of the little woozle bugs on the back of the cars, so I snapped a less-than-great picture of one

We headed back down main street for snacks and shopping

but decided not to stay for the fireworks, because we were pretty beat. We made one last pit stop in WOD, where I found this lovely lady

Then it was time to head home on the tram. We were so extremely exhausted

I wish we had a couple days at DLR, but as it was, we got a TON of stuff done and the crowds were not bad at all. Plus it was just beautiful out. I do declare that a fantastic time was had by all!

 

[Alex2kMommy]

OMG, I took pictures of the Queen of Hearts bathroom, too! I was all set to get a really cool picture with all the doors closed, when a woman walked out of one of them. WHOOPS! (She looked a little weirded out.)

Then a bunch of other people were coming out, so I waited until the bathroom was nearly empty, but then the doors were open...Not nearly as cool as it coulda been!

I took photos in several bathrooms because I thought the theming was so cool, but about half of the bathrooms we used were very blah, I was so disappointed. Why can't they theme them all? Is this a new thing?

 

[KimAshton]

Love the pictures.