Happy New Year Trip

[RI Disney Star]

Actually we arrived home early Saturday morning. Been busy, catching up on sleep, etc. since then.

Here's a few pictures of the activity book I made for JC. It really came out nice and he loved it.










There are a lot more pages, I'll post the rest if anyone wants to see them.

I'll try to post our travel later on tonight.

Beth

 

[DizNee Luver]

Actually we arrived home early Saturday morning. Been busy, catching up on sleep, etc. since then.

Here's a few pictures of the activity book I made for JC. It really came out nice and he loved it.










There are a lot more pages, I'll post the rest if anyone wants to see them.

I'll try to post our travel later on tonight.

Beth

What an awesome book!!! Love it!! (and so would the kids)

 

[RI Disney Star]

What an awesome book!!! Love it!! (and so would the kids)

I can email the file to you. It's a PowerPoint file. Some of the pages are pdf files that I couldn't copy into the Powerpoint file. I bought the Pro-Click presentation binder kit from Office Max. Here is the link: http://www.officemax.com/office-supplies/laminating-binding/binding-covers/product-ARS24891.

You just print the pages, they are precut to go in the spines, put them in the spines and click them together. It was very simple, cost $8.

 

[RI Disney Star]

Woke up Monday morning all excited to go. We left early because you never know what the traffic is in Boston. Turns out there was no traffic. We got to the airport and it was a mess. Because of the storms in the Midwest, there were many delays, they kept announcing gate changes.

So we waited. First we were told that the flight crew couldn’t get there from the hotel…what? We managed to get there from another state, the roads were clear…we did have a storm 2 days before but that should not have prevented them from getting to the airport.

The crew arrived…minus a pilot. We were told he was flying in from JFK. So we waited some more. Finally he arrived and we took off 1.5 hours late.

Here’s a picture of JC in the airport.



Favorite Southwest announcement while we were waiting: "paging John Smith, Mary Smith, please report to Gate E1D, the door will be closing in 1 minute…we love you…but we’ll leave you!”

 

[RI Disney Star]

Finally we take off, the flight was good, really smooth. 4 hours later we arrived in Kansas City, just a stop-over, we didn’t get off the plane. It was just a quick stop, people off…people on. Took about ½ hour and we were on our way again. Knowing that we wouldn’t be getting off the plane in KC and we would only get snacks from Southwest we packed sandwiches. We ate them once we took off. 3.5 hours later we arrived in LA.

It was now 9:20. We got off the plane and headed to baggage claim. Jessica went to claim the luggage while I went outside to see about the Disney Express. By then it was 9:29. I talked to the driver and he told me he couldn’t wait. He would get fined if he did. I can understand it was his job and I didn’t want to get him in trouble. Unfortunately, he was the last bus. 9:40 our luggage came out. 10 minutes too late! UGH!

We decided to take a taxi as it had been a long day, although it was 9:45, it was really 12:45 to us, we had just spent 8 hours on a plane, we were exhausted. We just wanted to get to our hotel. It did cost us $100 but in my opinion it was worth it. The driver was Jake and he gave us a lot of info about the area as we were going. It took about 45 minutes and we got to our hotel…Best Western Stovalls Inn. It was right on the corner of West Katella and Disneyland Dr.




Checked in, went to our room, and crashed. We were exhausted.
Woke up Tuesday morning and went to the buffet breakfast. It was a typical hotel free breakfast, cereal, bagels and muffins, grits, pancakes, scrambled eggs, bananas and apples, coffee and juices. The scrambled eggs were cold so we watched for them to bring out a fresh batch and those were pretty good. I didn’t have the pancakes, Jessica said they tasted like McDonald’s pancakes. JC liked them.

 

[DizNee Luver]

OUCH on the taxi bill......but sometimes, it's just worth paying the extra money to go straight to the motel.....especially when you're exhausted from the all day flight. Excited to see your park pictures!!!

 

[RI Disney Star]

After breakfast we checked out of the Best Western and walked to the Paradise Pier, our home away from home. It took 10 minutes.

Here's the view from the parking lot of the Best Western. Not as far as I thought it would be.


Checked in, room wasn’t ready so we left our bags with bell services. Took a little tour of the hotel and checked out the gift shop. Before we left they called and said our room was ready. I headed to the room to wait for the luggage while Jessica walked around with JC. We had a plan. I was decorating the room to surprise JC. His birthday was the week before but we were celebrating his birthday at Disney.

Pictures of the decorations.

 

[RI Disney Star]

OUCH on the taxi bill......but sometimes, it's just worth paying the extra money to go straight to the motel.....especially when you're exhausted from the all day flight. Excited to see your park pictures!!!

It was a big ouchie, but well worth it. At that point we just wanted a bed. And the taxi driver shut off his meter when it got to $100, just before we got to the exit so it could have been more.

 

[DizNee Luver]

It was a big ouchie, but well worth it. At that point we just wanted a bed. And the taxi driver shut off his meter when it got to $100, just before we got to the exit so it could have been more.

That was nice of him!

Cute birthday decorations!!!

 

[RI Disney Star]

JC's excitement when he sees that it's still Christmas in Disney. He ran around the tree!


Sat in Santa's chair.


Under the sea, under the sea. . . . the decorations were just awesome!!

 

[mumto2]

These photos are great! They are really getting us excited for our trip!

Thanks for sharing.

 

[RI Disney Star]

These photos are great! They are really getting us excited for our trip!

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for looking. When is your trip? I'm excited for you and wishing I could go too!

 

[RI Disney Star]

Luggage received, decorated room, surprised JC, now time to go to the parks. We left Paradise Pier and headed to the Grand Californian Hotel. Lobby is just beautiful. Christmas tree still up here also. Beautiful!



We continued thru the lobby to the entrance of California Adventure. Not a very long walk. We brought a stroller for JC. Even though he is 5, it was the best decision. I would recommend it for anyone going with preschoolers.

First thing we see is Minnie Mouse in her Fly Girls Charter Airlines outfit. Did I mention that JC was extremely shy. Well. . . he wouldn’t go near Minnie. He did reluctantly take a picture with his Mom in between them. Remember this for later, you’ll see an amazing transformation.



Next up, our first ride, Soarin’. There was a 10 min. wait so we got in line. The wait was actually more like 6 min. This was a common theme, only a couple of rides did we wait more than 10 min. JC loved this ride, he was lifting his feet like he was gonna touch things.

Redwood Creek Challenge was closed for refurbishment. We were really looking forward to this since UP is one of our favorite movies.

Moving on, we head to Buena Vista St. The Red Car News Boys were going by singing. They were great.

 

[RI Disney Star]

Next we headed up Hollywoodland. The Disney Jr. show was starting in 30 minutes so we went to the animation building.

Turtle Talk with Crush was beginning in 5 minutes so we went inside. I sat in the front row while Jessica and JC sat on the floor over to the side. Crush comes on and it was the cutest thing. He picks JC to talk to first, very shy JC. Very shy JC came out of his shell here. Crush asked him his name and he told him. Then crush gave him a turtle name…Jamaica JC, taught him some turtle (totally, dude, etc.), asked him what his birthday button was, asked him what he got for his birthday (a puppy) and then sang him the “I’m so glad you hatched” song. It was the cutest thing.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the record button set right on the camera until the end so I didn’t catch the whole thing on video but I did get the song. Can you post videos on the dis? If so I’ll try to figure it out.

JC is the one with the Goofy hat on (all you can see is his hat).


After Turtle Talk we walked thru the sorcerer’s workshop. JC did the "what Disney character are you" on the computer. . .


. . .He was Jack Skellington.


Then we went into the character closeup room. I didn’t get the Zoetrope (spinning thing) with the toy story characters. It made me dizzy watching it.

Time for the Disney Jr. show. JC loves all the Disney Jr. shows so he was super excited to see the show. Again, Jessica and JC sat on the floor and I sat on the benches in the back. I thought the show was kind of lame but all the kids really loved it.

Gold doubloons from Jake and the Neverland Pirates


Princess Sofia (it's snowing)


After the show we went to Starbucks for lunch. Pluto was outside so we got in line to see him. After JC not going near Minnie earlier we didn’t think he would go up to Pluto but he surprised us and had a little bit of interaction with him. He wouldn’t touch him but he talked to him.

 

[DizNee Luver]

Love the expression on his face.......pure joy!!

 

[RI Disney Star]

Love the expression on his face.......pure joy!!

It truly was pure joy...what a difference from a few hours before when he was terrified of Minnie.

 

[RI Disney Star]

We ate at Starbucks. I didn’t take any pictures of food on this trip and we really just ate on the run most of the time.

After lunch we went to the Aladdin show. We loved it. It was amazing. We initially sat down at the bottom but JC couldn’t see. The front row in the second section was available so we moved up there which was perfect. Especially when the cast came across the aisle right in front of us. The elephant was crazy with Aladdin on it. This was one of the best shows.





Don't you love the elephant!



Aladdin and Jasmine get married!



Next up was Tower of Terror.



We had fast passes that had expired about 20 minutes before. Since we weren’t sure if they stuck to the times, I went and asked if we could still go in. Of course we could. Jessica loves all these rides and is determined to make JC like them too. Well, when he heard it called Tower of Terror, he immediately associated it with the Halloween show, Toy Story of Terror and kept calling it the Toy Story Tower of Terror. Nothing we said would change his mind. So we get on our elevator, mind you, I am terrified but do not want JC to know that. We sat in the last row on the right. We held JC’s hands. He really grabbed on when it got dark. He never made a sound during the drops but when the ride was over he announced loudly to everyone that he did not like that ride. He was not afraid, just did not like it. Everyone on the ride was laughing at that.

Look at how terrified I am!

 

[DizNee Luver]

This girl does not do Tower of Terror!! Props for you & JC getting on it......I haven't even done that once!!

I love the Aladdin show.....it's so well done & the Genie is always so funny & current!!

 

[RI Disney Star]

This girl does not do Tower of Terror!! Props for you & JC getting on it......I haven't even done that once!!

I love the Aladdin show.....it's so well done & the Genie is always so funny & current!!

I was terrified but it really wasn't that bad. This girl doesn't do roller coasters.

The Genie was awesome with his jokes. Most of them went over the kids heads but the adults loved it.

 

[RI Disney Star]

Bugs Land was next. The crowds were so low here that we were done riding all the rides in less than 1 hour. Most of them we walked right on, except for Heimlich’s train, we probably waited about 15 minutes for that one.

Here are some pictures from the rides.

Francis' Ladybug Boogie


Tuck & Roll's Drive 'Em Buggies


Heimlich's Chew Chew Train




YUK! Brussels Sprouts


YUM! Cupcake




Flik's Flyers



What luck, we walked into It’s a Bugs Life just as they were opening the doors to the theater. The show was good but scared the kids. JC ended up taking off his 3D glasses. He didn’t like the show at all.