This comment almost had me spraying milk out of my nose!! OK... her nose itself is the Hidden Mickey. The exact words in The Book are "On the ceiling, Mara's giant nose is a classic Mickey." So it's that whole shape of the outside of her nostrils and the tip of her nose. Kind of stretching it, I thought.
In it, on it....perhaps if we stretched it....
And a few more...
These gingerbread men were cute and scary to me all at the same time!
Well, the parade was over. It was a fun parade. Too bad DS3 slept through the whole thing! When he saw some of these pictures, he was wondering what they were from. I told him there was a parade while he was sleeping. He said, "Yeah, they were trying to wake me up but I was still sleeping."
OK, time to hop to DCA for the last couple of hours...
SNA is John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana. I meant to comment on it in your TR when you were talking about your experience at LAX on your way home. That just sounded so crazy! Anyway, just to give you an idea of the easiness of it, we were picked up at our hotel by SuperShuttle on our last day at 3:55 pm. We were dropped off at the airport, through security and all checked in and waiting at the gate by 4:30! Sheesh, if we had known it was going to be so smooth maybe we would have stayed in the park a bit longer!
Moving on...
I realized that Hyatt picture I posted was not from our arrival. It was gray and cloudy when we arrived, so this photo was most likely taken on our last day. Check-in was smooth and we were glad that a room was ready so early for us. We headed on up to the 15th floor (of 17) and I snapped some pics before our stuff got scattered around.
It was actually a 2-Queen Standard room that came with our Yahoo Travel booking. We could have upgraded to a King for a fee, but we weren't interested.
There wasn't a fridge or microwave. I believe we could have gotten them for an extra fee. Again, not interested. We were only going to be there for 2 nights. Here's the view from our 15th floor room:
It was around 10:40am by the time we got to our room and I wanted to catch the 11:00 shuttle to Disneyland. I snapped these pics while waiting for the shuttle in front of the hotel.
The shuttle to the park runs every half hour on the hour. It is shared with Crowne Plaza across the street. When I had called about the shuttle before our trip, I was told they share it with a 3rd hotel as well, but that wasn't the case while we were riding. The shuttle was right on time at 11:00, we stopped at Crowne Plaza, and then we were off to Disneyland! We were dropped off about as far as possible from the entrance, in the Silver area if that means anything to anyone. It's right on the other side of the bushes from the city bus stop on Harbor, across from the Tropicana area.
No wait to get through security. Next stop, the ticket booth to redeem our Last Minute Travel voucher for the 3-day hoppers. No wait there, either. We had our actual tickets in hand within 2 or 3 minutes -- I would definitely use this company again. Our tickets were a great deal. Now on to the turnstiles. Again, no wait. Yay!
It's sinking in that I'm at Disneyland again...
Now I really know I'm back!
More later!
Thank You! I think you will see that Picasa does some of the work. Here are many of the pictures you asked about -- straight from the camera with no editing at all. You can see for yourself the difference. Sometimes the difference is small, sometimes it's a bit more drastic.
) Sometimes I use the "Tuning" feature and change the lighting a tiny bit. Sometimes I click the "Saturation" button, which will brighten up the colors. There are more features and effects, but these are the ones I use most often. When I finish, I click on "File" in the upper left corner of the screen, then click on "Save a Copy." That way I still have my original, and a copy of the edited photo as well.
The answer is... Patton Oswalt. He played "Spence" in the Kevin James CBS sitcom "The King of Queens" and was also the voice of the rat in "Ratatouille." And if you google him to see what he looks like, you will find that he looks NOTHING like John Stamos!
Very un-Disney!
GRRRrrr I'm mad at the JTA chick who stopped Chief from defeating Darth Maul. Of course at that point there was nothing you can do.
I can only imagine the highs and lows of that experience for Chief (getting picked, doing his training and then having a cranky monster rudely shorten his time) I was reading the trip report first very happy for Chief "Oh good, he got picked!!" then to hear of the experience
Hope the day trended up....
I meant to take pictures of the same ones later -- in the daytime -- but it never happened. So here are some signs of Valentine's Day...
This is what was left after we finished our cupcake-fest:
) and we planned out the rest of our evening. It was 6:15-ish and the park would be closing at 8:00pm. We decided to head over to the Matterhorn first. The idea of riding that really gave Chief the second wind he needed to enjoy the rest of the night. According to my camera, we were sledding around the mountain at 6:37, cruising on Autopia at 6:58, and searching for Nemo at 7:15. Not bad in the wait department! We finished our evening with 2 more rides on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. 
Just a perfect way to end the night.
I didn't finish the soup. Too sausage-y and not enough beans. Chief and my sister both fell asleep at the table. We are talking totally out. For some reason my soup was brought out later than the others' food, so they were done eating by the time I got mine. And all I got was soup. Then it took forever to get the check. We were just so exhausted by this time and couldn't wait to get to bed. Sleep came really fast that night. I woke up a few times (can't remember why) but I always went right back to sleep. That's not usually the case at home, so I was glad that I got my sleep. And that brings us to the end of Day 1!
Glad Chief was able to follow up the JTA with a free Disney tatoo. Can't get those just anywhere.
LOVED "Cupcake-fest" LOL
I hate having a disappointing meal after a long day at the park. How hard can it be to bring out a bowl of soup....was kind of hoping for a headless pic of your mates slumbering at the table....I'm just sayin'
Looking forward to more. When you trip report ends I may start mine...
rotfl2 pics wouldn't be much to see if they were headless. Suffice it to say that my sister's mouth is really droopy and if we'd been there much longer it looks like it would have been sporting some drool.
Not to mention convenient -- right outside our door. Anyway, Chief and I headed over to the breakfast area, which is also right outside our bottom floor door. He had an oatmeal packet, cold cereal, and hot chocolate. I had a banana, a pastry and hot chocolate. They actually had more choices than I was expecting. There is a small breakfast room right behind the office. You don't have to go through the office to get there. There are quite a few gates that let into the pool area, and you can go in from there. Most of the food and a few tables are in the breakfast room. Just outside in the pool area they have a cart set up with cold cereal/milk. Of course there are more tables and chairs outside as well. We never had trouble finding a place to sit, going in January and all. But I can see it being extremely crowded in peak season. There is a tray in your room that you can use to take food back to your room if you want to go that route. (I would rather see that old chocolate chip cookie asteroid flying around myself. Still miss that thing.) 
They just kept walking, off to a tea party I'm sure.
Finally, it was our turn to ride. After a wait of 35 minutes! Our longest wait of the trip...
And I absolutely love all your photos. Thank you for taking the time to do this! Your report has made me even more excited for my trip to Disneyland in a few weeks--and I didn't think it was even possible to get even more excited than I was.
I just have to say that you write an amazing trip report!
scared1 in line for Storybook Land Canal Boats, which Chief wasn't too thrilled about riding in the first place, and sailing through Storybook Land, we checked the time to see if we'd be able to keep our appointment to watch the first Billy Hill and The Hillbillies show of the day. The 12:15 show. We had about 6 minutes 'til showtime. Seeing as how it was lunchtime I wasn't sure if it would be worth rushing over there. We decided to give it a try and headed over. We walked in and saw one empty table on the floor (left side). My sister grabbed that one and I went upstairs to see if there was anything better. There was one available table by a group with lots of young children. They were super loud so I bypassed this one and kept looking. We found another table up top so we sat down and then quickly got back up. There was a reason it was empty. The view was a big pillar. So Chief and I headed back down to the table that my sister was saving. It was actually a pretty good spot, and we got there with a minute to spare. Whew!
-- the one with the teeth! I think he is more entertaining than the other one. Now Chief saw the Billies during his first trip and really enjoyed them. But this time...not so much. He said the show was MUCH shorter this time around (it didn't seem like that to me) and he was really disappointed that he didn't do the one with the bow going up his nose -- "you won't find this in a Disney brochure" joke. 
He spent a lot of time with us during our recent visits. (He even checked my finger for a ring back in October! ) I was looking forward to chatting with him again.
When I explained it was supposed to be like that -- it was toasted -- then he enjoyed it. Now he wants to toast our hot dog buns at home.
Chief then exercised a bit of independence and went to the lockers to stash the spoons, then met us back at our table. (I washed the spoons when we got home. So far they haven't made it past sitting on Chief's desk. )
