First Disneyland Trip with a Little Work Thrown In

[David G Farr]

Hello all. WDW couple here who lives in the southeast, but due to a work function in Irvine my wife and I were able to squeeze in some time in DL. We only live about 7 hours from Orlando so are way more familiar with WDW, although we don't go there all that often, with our last trip being in 2022. I'm a nurse practitioner in urology and there is a device company based in Irvine that invited me out to their facility for some training, so when I looked at the dates it lined up perfectly to attend Oogie Boogie Bash and then a couple more days in the parks before we had to fly home and take care of our children. It ended up being a great trip and we were able to do everything that we wanted to.

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Here we are. This is my beautiful wife. She's a Disney fan, even more since we got married almost 5 years ago. She tagged along to WDW when we were dating and I was "attending" a conference. This was our 3rd Disney trip since we've been together. We took our kids to WDW over spring break in 2022. She only went to WDW once as a child. She had previously been to DL about 14 years ago when visiting family in San Diego. She's a nurse in an OB/GYN clinic.

I'm the planner of the group. I went to WDW as a family once as a child, then for just day trips over church camps while growing up. The Disney bug hit me 7 years ago when I took my son for his 5th birthday. I got obsessed with all the planning and details. He's turning 12 in two days. I've now been on 4 Disney trips in the last 7 years (I know, not many compared to most), and will be returning to WDW in Jan 2025 for another "work" trip.

We were in the parks for a total of 3 days. We attended OBB on 10/3/24. I was working on 10/4/24 so DW just hung out by the hotel pool. We attended DL on 10/5 and part of 10/6. We stay the night of 10/5 at Pixar Place Hotel to get the full immersive experience.

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[KenyaSierra]

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. DLR is my home resort but I love WDW and usually visit at least once a year. I think it’s like having two kids- you love them both but for different reasons!

 

[KenyaSierra]

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts. DLR is my home resort but I love WDW and usually visit at least once a year. I think it’s like having two kids- you love them both but for different reasons!

 

[David G Farr]

Day 1: Travel and Oogie Boogie Bash​

We woke up bright and early at 3:45am to get ready and get on the road. We live <90 miles from the Atlanta airport, but we have to account for the time change from cst to est. Thankfully, we don't actually have to go through Atlanta to get to the airport, so the ride was easy and uneventful. We found our remote parking lot, got on the shuttle, and were off to the terminal. We have precheck so security took all of 15 seconds this early in the morning. We made it to our gate with about 30 minutes to spare before boarding. It was time for breakfast so we just got some chikfila biscuits. My mother would have a heart attack if she wasn't at the gate 2 hours before boarding. We were flying Southwest. We usually fly Delta because Atlanta is their hub, but the SW ticket was cheaper, and it had a layover in Denver where my wife's sister lives.

Leg #1 of the flight was easy. Had around a 2.5hr layover in Denver. My stomach was growling so we decided on lunch. It was only 10:30 in Denver, but my stomach said it was 11:30, and I hadn't eaten since about 5am. We ate at The Great Divide, which is a local brewery. My wife and I talked to a guy who lives in Nashville while at the bar. We had just been in Nashville a couple months prior for a concert.

Nothing like a good airport beer at 11am​

We boarded the second flight at around 12:15. Once again, it was uneventful and we were in Orange County by 1:45pst. There was a car service waiting to take us to the hotel that the medical device company was putting us up in for the night, so we hopped in and were at the hotel in no time. This is where we crashed. We could have changed into our costumes and Ubered to DCA to get in at 3pm, but sleep was calling our names. We had to get a nap if we were going to enjoy OBB that night. We woke around 3pm and started getting ready. I think we got in the Uber around 4pm, so right when traffic started. The ride from Irvine to Anaheim is only like 15 miles, but that's 45 minutes with traffic. We made it to DCA at around 4:45p and entered the park shortly after.

 

[David G Farr]

Day 1 Part 2: Oogie Boogie Bash​

With this being my first time to DCA and my wife's first time without a 4 year old, we focused on attractions and not so much the characters and candy. We have no clue if/when we will ever be back so had to hit all the major rides. Thankfully, during a party is the best time to do all the rides with minimal waits. We were still able to do some of the characters and see the Headless Horseman.

My wife and I love the movie Up. I actually just watched it on a flight not too long ago and was crying on the plane. We decided to dress as Carl and Ellie in their older years. I already have the grey hair for the costume anyway! I'd have to say our costumes were a hit! We had other visitors and multiple cast members tell us that our costumes were their favorites. Heck, I even had a little kid call me Mr. Fredricksen just going through the turnstile!

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Towards the end of the night we were walking through one of the shops over by Pixar Pier and came across a sketch of Carl and Ellie in their older age. We decided we had to get it as our souvenir from this trip. I don't have a picture of it because it is currently getting framed at the framing shop.

We ended up not staying until park closing because we rode everything we wanted to multiple times, and despite our afternoon nap, our bodies were telling us it was close to 1am our time and not 11pm California time. We took a much quicker Uber ride back to our hotel for the night and crashed. Unfortunately for me I had to be downstairs for breakfast at 7am for my work function, so sleeping in wasn't an option.

 

[KenyaSierra]

The Carl and Ellie sequence in Up makes me cry every time. Love your costumes.

 

[David G Farr]

Day 2​

Day 2 was me going to my work function, and my wife hanging out at the hotel pool. Once I was back from the work thing, there was a cocktail hour that the company hosted at the rooftop bar of our hotel, so we did that for a couple hours. We then took an Uber from Irvine to the Marriott by the convention center. Since I was extending my stay the company couldn't pay for the extra hotel days, so we moved to one closer to DL for tonight. We got checked in and walked to a Mexican restaurant in the Garden Walk area. We went to bed relatively early because we were still jet lagged from the day before, plus we were getting up early to check out of this Marriott and check in to our room at Pixar Place and get into DL for the EE hours.

 

[David G Farr]

Day 3: The First Day at Disneyland
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We woke up early the Marriott and packed up and walked to Pixar Place. It was less than a mile and the weather was beautiful, plus I didn't want to pay $12 for a short Uber ride. We walked through where the D23 convention is held and down to PP.

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We got to the hotel, and at 6:50am we weren't expecting our room to be ready, so we dropped our luggage off and headed to the Grand Californian to go through security for EE.

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Soon, we were through security and walking through Downtown Disney on our way to Disneyland!! The lines into the park were much shorter than I had expected. As soon as we tapped in I bought LLMP for the both of us for the day. This is much more functional in DL vs WDW. Since we did everything that we wanted to do at DCA during OBB we weren't park hopping.

We headed straight for Fantasyland to do things that are only in DL. I think we started with Mr. Toad's, then Alice, and then after that I can't remember. I did remember to get in the VQ for HM, and for our first LL we did Indiana Jones since that's not in WDW (yet) and it is supposed to be one of the hard LL to get. We had time to kill so we did Jungle Cruise standby and only waited about 10 minutes. Since we had purchased LLMP we stopped for photos throughout the park. We ended up eating breakfast at Jolly Holiday bakery. Well, my wife ate there and I got the bacon blueberry corndog from Little Red Wagon.



I was trying not to be on my phone the whole time, so all the details get kinda blurry. We did Pirates, Matterhorn, Big Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Pinocchio, Snow White, Smuggler's Run, etc. We did all the things. We hadn't planned on even going to Galaxy's Edge as they have the same stuff in WDW, but with LLMP I was able to LL Smuggler's. We got call for our HM VQ after 1pm or so. I was kinda glad I got to see the limited Halloween/Christmas overlay, but kinda bummed I didn't get to see the original how it normally is. I've never actually watched "The Nightmare Before Christmas" (not a huge Tim Burton fan) so I'm sure some of the decor was lost on me. After that we decided to back to the hotel for some pool time. On the walk back we got pizza from Napoli. It was pretty decent. We hung out by the pool for a couple hours. DW said I was snoring, but she lies. After pool/nap time we changed back into our clothes and headed back for the evening. Here are a few more pics from our morning.

 

[alohamom]

Oh my goodness, your Carl and Ellie costumes are brilliant!
I

 

[David G Farr]

I finally got my wife to upload her photos to our shared album, so here are some candid shots from the first couple of days.


I like a good dad joke so I actually laughed at the "your cheese, nacho cheese" joke while in line for MMRR. We had a pretty good spot for the parade during Oogie Boogie Bash. While I was stopping to eat my first Californian churro Jasmine just came walking around the well area to the right of the castle, so my wife snapped a quick pic with her. We also got to see the Halloween/Christmas overlay of HM.

 

[hootey]

great trip report!
you have to keep an eye out for Jasmine, she just shows up, out of the blue, so to speak

 

[David G Farr]

Day 4: Only a couple hours before we have to fly home
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On our last day we only had a few hours in DL because we had planned on leaving around 11-11:30 to get to the airport and catch our flight. We went through security at The Grand Californian without any issue. DW wanted to get breakfast before going into the park, so we got some from Earl of Sandwich. Nothing special.

Once we tapped into the park we decided to do things we hadn't done the day before. We didn't get LLMP today because we were only going to be there 3 hours. We started with Peter Pan since we hadn't done this the day before. I'll say, the queue in WDW is a lot better, but there's no way to make a queue like that in DL because of the lack of space. Speaking of space, Space Mountain was showing around a 30 minute wait, but it might have been 12 in total. SM in DL is tons better than WDW.

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We ended up doing Roger Rabbit in Toon Town. I need to re-watch that movie. I haven't seen it in years. From there we just meandered around. We got a couple pins to put on our "free" lanyards that we got by booking a Disney hotel package. We walked through the tour of Sleeping Beauty's castle.



Walked past the Mary Poppins show.

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Before leaving we had to get an early lunch, so we headed to the Tropical Hideaway. We hadn't had dole whip yet. I got a bao bun. DW got lumpia. We both got the classic dole whip. We were more than satisfied with the food, so we sadly headed out of the parks.



We waved goodbye to DL and walked to Pixar Place to get our bags and get in the Uber for the ride to the airport. We arrived about 30 minutes before boarding. Our flight to Denver was uneventful. DW's sister and her husband live in Denver, and he works for Frontier Airlines, so he got them some "complimentary" tickets so they could get through TSA and into the terminal and meet us for lunch since we had a 2 hour layover. It was good to see them since we might see them once a year. They were nice and bought our lunch from the same place that we had eaten at on our way out to California. We said our goodbyes and boarded the last leg of our journey back to Atlanta. Thankfully, travel went much smoother than the last time we flew. We were caught up in all that Delta computer glitch mess in July and had to spend an extra 36 hours in the Tampa airport coming home from a family cruise.

Ok folks, that's all I have for this short trip report. I'm just glad that I actually finished it.

 

[KenyaSierra]

Thanks for a great report!

 

[LKing]

Sounds like a great trip! Thanks for sharing.

 

[buteraa]

Thanks for sharing!