So with our California/Seattle trip starting exactly six weeks from today (!!), I thought I'd detour from WDW plans for a moment and share the DL plans.
I still don't have an official calendar for our entire week, but I can pretty much guess the park hours for our dates based on the weeks before. We will be there a Monday thru Friday, so it looks like our hours will be
Disneyland 9am-9pm every day, and California Adventure 10am-8pm every day. With our quick commute to and from the parks and ease of park hopping between the two, I'm definitely not going to be as rigid with our schedule as I am with WDW, but I do have an idea of where we will be and when. The one glaringly bad thing about our dates is that DL is only doing Fantasmic and the Magical Fireworks show on Fri-Sun, which means we will not be able to see either one of them!
I was pretty disappointed to see that, since I was looking forward to at least seeing Fantasmic, and I LOVE me some Disney fireworks. But despite that small disappointment, I'm really excited about this trip!!
Monday May 14th
We'll be up early to get to the airport around 5:30 am, and grab breakfast there. Our flight leaves at 7:05, so we'll make sure to bring plenty of snacks to hold us over for the 4.5 hour flight!
Our arrival time at LAX will be 9:18 am. It will be getting close to our lunchtime, so I'm making sure to bring something that DS can have for lunch, possibly that I can feed him while DH picks up the rental car? I know it will take us at least 45 minutes to get to the resort if there isn't much traffic
laughing
, so I'd like to have at least his lunch done before we hit the road if possible. Hopefully I'll be allowed to bring milk for him or at least purchase some on the plane or something.
We will go straight to Wyndham Dolphin's Cove Resort to check-in.
On the off chance that our room is actually ready that early, I'd like to unpack and do a grocery run to stock up on breakfast foods, milk for Paxton, and some snacks and food for him, and whatever else we need. If the room is not ready (the more likely scenario), I'm thinking we will just leave our bags with the resort and go straight to Disneyland!
I'm hoping, of course, that DS will have gotten some sleep on the plane and/or the car ride to the resort, but if not, I'm sure a nap in the stroller will be in order while DH and I explore and more than likely, get ourselves something more substantial to eat since we'll likely be starving by that point!
We probably won't spend very long there, because I'm sure we will all be exhausted and out of sorts with the time change. So after a few hours at the park, we'll make our grocery stop if we haven't already, then spread out at the resort. Maybe grab something quick and easy to fix for dinner at the resort and spend some time in the pool?
Tuesday May 15th
Tuesday is a Magic Morning at Disneyland, so we may take it slow and easy that morning and give California Adventure a try that day after breakfast and some playtime at the resort for Paxton.
We don't really have any top priorities for this park, so we can take the morning to explore and have some lunch there. I'm going to
try to stick with Paxton's home schedule while we are there, which means one long afternoon nap from about 1-3 pm here. But, I know if he's cranky or tired in the morning, he might catch a nap in the stroller, so we'll have to adjust our plans accordingly. So depending on the time of day, we might go over to DL for a bit or just stay at DCA until we head back to the resort for DS to nap.
After our break, I'd like to go back to DL for the afternoon/evening so we can see Mickey's Soundsational Parade at 7 pm and possibly stay for The Magic, The Memories, and You! show at 8:30 pm. I didn't really get to see this show all that well in WDW, but I think it will be neat to see it projected on It's a Small World instead of the Castle!
Wednesday May 16th
Up and at 'em early for a Rope Drop at DL! Do they do a show like they do in MK? Show or no show, I'd like to be there for when the park opens this morning. Since we might like to see World of Color twice on our stay, if DH is feeling up to it, I might send him over to DCA when it opens to snag some FPs for the show that night at 8:45 pm.
We will probably spend a majority of the day at DL, both before and after his nap, then head over to DCA a couple of hours before the show to do some more attractions and see WoC.
Thursday May 17th
Since we will have a late night the evening before, we'll probably have another take it slow morning and go to DCA for when it opens.
Depending on how it went the night before with Paxton seeing WoC, we may grab some FPs for it again to see this night. But if it was too rough, we'll just be happy we got to see it once.
Since I have no idea how much we will actually want to do at DCA, we'll play it by ear for most of the day as to whether we stay there most of the day or go back to DL for awhile. But I do want to spend the late afternoon/early evening checking out the shops at Downtown Disney.
Friday May 18th
Our last day in DLR, and DH's birthday! What better way to end our trip than how we started it...at Disneyland! Unless we feel like there is more we wanted to do at DCA, I imagine we will spend our entire morning here.
That morning we will have to check out of the room and take our stuff with us because we won't have much time in the park.
We will really only have time for maybe one or two attractions before we have to hit the road for LAX. And we may not even venture to the park this day at all, but I can be optimistic.
Our flight out of LAX to Seattle leaves at 12:45. For any of you DL travelers, is it realistic at all to think we will be able to visit the park that morning? How much time should we give ourselves to get to the airport? And how early should we plan on getting there?
We will land in Seattle at 3:10 pm where DH's aunt and uncle will be picking us up and bringing us to their house in Camano Island, WA.
Saturday May 19th &
Sunday May 20th
Not sure what, if anything, DH's family has planned for us for our weekend in Seattle. His grandmother's birthday is Sunday, which was the reason for this trip in the first place, so we'll let them direct us and let us know what they want to do. Ideally, I'm thinking it would be best to spend Saturday around their house visiting and catching up, and spend Sunday in the Seattle area.
Since it looks like flying home to Lafayette from Seattle is just not going to happen (the airfare has gone up to over $400!), we have come up with a new plan of attack. Since flying straight home is not an option, I really wanted to try instead for an earlier flight and an earlier arrival time in New Orleans since we will still have a 2 hour drive home from there. The reason we had not been considering that was because DH's aunt lives 1.5 hours from the airport, so we'd be leaving her house somewhere between 3:30 and 4 am for a 7 am flight. So instead, I thought that if we did things in the city Sunday afternoon, we could stay at a hotel near the airport with a shuttle on Sunday night and take an earlier flight out on Monday morning. That lets us get in early without having to inconvenience anyone (DH's aunt & uncle, OR Paxton!) to get us to the airport early in the morning.
I think I have found the perfect place too! The
Homewood Suites by Hilton is an all suite hotel with a free hot breakfast and cribs available, plus a 24 hour shuttle to the airport. We can get a 1 bedroom with a king sized bed for a total of $142 if we pay in advance! I was looking for cheap, but DH made a good point that if it had everything we needed with the convenience of getting to the airport, we could spend a little more. That will give us some space so DS can be somewhat separated from us and we won't all be hearing one another's every shuffle during the night. Other hotels were cheaper, but didn't offer both breakfast and a crib, or they looked a little
too cheap, ya know? This place looks so nice I'm almost wishing we could spend the whole weekend there!
The flight we will likely end up booking is with United, and departs at 7 am from Seattle, landing in New Orleans at 3:22 pm. My parents are going to bring our car to the airport the day before for us so we can just get our stuff and go rather than needing someone to pick us up and take us to my parent's house to get the car. It gets us home much earlier than we had originally planned on, which sounds much better to me, although I'm still not crazy about having to confine DS to his car seat for so many hours that day. He is really going to hate that!
So that's the itinerary. Sorry it was kind of long!
One last thing. Yesterday, I took Paxton to the mall to meet the Easter Bunny, and then we had an appointment at JC Penney's portrait studio to take some more Easter pictures and some 18 month old portraits. He absolutely LOVED the Easter Bunny and didn't want to leave when his turn was over. While we waited for the family in front of us to order their pictures, he sat in his stroller and kept waving at the Easter Bunny. It was so cute!
Despite his melt down for Santa Claus, this makes me think he will be okay meeting the characters in DL in just a few more weeks!!
After that, his portraits were kind of crazy. The photographer and I made the mistake of doing his Easter pictures with his Easter basket first, so when we tried to take it away to do some 18 month portraits, he was NOT happy! So we only got one picture.
But the Easter pictures came out really cute, and once DH saves them to the computer for me, I'll be sure to post my favorites.
Characters for entertainment is always helpful too.
He didn't eat much in the way of table food on our last trip, but now whatever we have, he wants. I can't wait for him to have his first Mickey waffle! 
I was getting especailly excited about the Nemo Subs when I read into them and found it is really very similar to the old 20,000 leagues ride. That was such a favorite of mine as a kid - I never even got to take DW on it, even back in our first trip in 1997, the lagoon was still there but the ride had already been closed. That's going to be our first ride on the first MM morning. The rest is remarkably unplanned.
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And I'm looking forward to seeing all the attractions that WDW doesn't have, even the smaller attractions, like Alice in Wonderland & the Pinocchio ride. I'm just really excited about the opportunity to try out so many new or different attractions! And I'm excited about the fact that there are different little areas of the park compared to what they have at WDW, like the Bug's Life area, and the different Toontown. 
