Our Great Aussie Family Trip - May 19 to 23, 2007

[TrixieBel]

So, finally I've had time to sit down and do this... Firstly, I want to apologise to WVNative - I didn't get to meet you at the "meet". As you'll see, further down, we had to make an emergency trip back to our room to get our son changed out of his clothes after Splash, which meant that time was tight to get Rachael to High School Musical... :-(

We drove from Las Vegas to Anaheim on Saturday the 19th of May. With Jennifer driving (Tony seems to be a better "side seat" passenger than Jennifer...), we managed to navigate our way into Los Angeles and along it's freeways - only hitting 2 traffic jams along the way.

Got to the Disney Paradise Pier Hotel and parked the car, and checked in. Well, we'd booked a "carpark" view room, with all of us in one room (ie: 2 queen beds and a rollaway), BUT the hotel upgraded us into a 2 room suite, with access to the 2nd floor Concierge Lounge! Greg also received a birthday button (I had mentioned to them that it was his birthday a couple of weeks ago).

(this is Rachael at check-in)

So, we made our way up to our 10th floor suite (with views over the park and the lights at night!), and then visited the 2nd floor lounge. They have breakfast available in there every morning, snacks available throughout the day, drinks eg: water, that you can take away with you, and between 5pm and 8pm they have savoury dishes, cheese platters, desserts, vegetable sticks with dip, and wine/beer available - all with NO CHARGE!
Considering, that we had already on our trip, as you do, spent a bit over our budget, this was a definite blessing! Here's the view from our room...

That first night, I had booked us into the Rainforest Cafe in Downtown Disney - it was VERY busy, so a booking was good - we only waited about 5mins for a table, but some people had been waiting over an hour, and we heard them being told that they would probably need to wait another half hour! Tony realised, very quickly, that the hours that I spent on the internet learning about Disneyland had PAID OFF - and it definitely continued to pay off for the rest of our visit. Tony and I got the flashing Mai Tai glasses (with Mai Tai included!) The animals in this restaurant "come to life" every now and then, and every half hour there's a lightening and thunder storm!

Disney Morning... Day 1 - Sunday 20 May
We were up bright and early. Well, Tony and I dragged the kids up bright and early!

It was hard getting up so early, especially since I woke up at around 11.30pm when the fireworks started. They were the fireworks at the end of the Pirates of the Caribbean premiere, and they were pretty spectacular. I tried to wake everyone else up, but although Greg did get up and look, he didn’t remember it in the morning.

We rolled up to the main gates about 10mins before the main gates opened, and it didn’t take long until we were in Main Street.

We spent the morning following our PLAN out of The Unoffical Guide to Disneyland, which took us to our first ride – Indiana Jones Temple of Doom – which scared pretty much all of us! We then took off for our second ride, which was…. Winnie the Pooh – which didn’t scare any of us!

We also did: Splash Mountain (Greg got so wet that he had to make a trip back to the hotel to get changed); Jungle Cruise; Pirates of the Caribbean; Haunted Mansion. We loved these rides so much that we re-visited all of them again the next day, except Jungle Cruise. We made sure we had our rain ponchos for our 2nd trip down Splash Mountain - and we had learnt where the photo is taken, so all tried to at least keep our eyes open and a smile on our faces...

We finished off our morning at Disneyland with our pre-booked brunch at the Carnation Café – the kids loved the Disney shaped waffles, and after he saw the “standby” line, Tony loved the pre-bookings for food!

Disney Afternoon - Day 1 - California Adventure Park
After our brunch, we charged over to the other park at Disneyland - Disney's California Adventure. We had to be there by 1.15pm so that we could see the High School Musical Show. Rachael is a HUGE fan of High School Musical, and this is the one thing that she had been waiting for. We made it over there, and we were the first family waiting for the show to arrive at the allotted point.

We knew that part of the show was the characters picking people out of the audience to join in the dancing, and sure enough, from our front position Rachael was chosen. Actually, it wasn't only Rachael, but Melissa, Greg, and ME!

While we were in this area we went on the Sun Wheel (a ferris wheel where a small number of the cages are fixed in position, and the rest roll around!); as well as making it into the Monsters Inc ride.

Disney Day 1 - The End

Our first Disney day ended with the Parade of Dreams, followed by a ride on Space Mountain (pretty much everyone's favourite ride in Disneyland!), and then we found a position out the front of the castle and watched the fireworks spectacular - and boy do they know how to make it spectacular!

We got back to our room to find that Tinkerbell had left us some Mickey shaped rice-bubble treats for supper...

 

[TrixieBel]

Disney Day 2 - Early Entry, Toontown Morning Madness
Day 2 was always going to be our busy day at Disneyland. We had no plans to visit the California Adventure Park on this day, as it was all about Disneyland! We had to be up early again - and I've got to admit that I was getting very tired of being the one to have to wake up all these tired people - but it HAD TO BE DONE!

We were up, had breakfast in the Concierge Club (part of our upgrade - free food!), and were the first ones in line at the Monorail Station in Downtown Disney. As part of our Disney package we were entitled to early entry on each day that it runs (Monday & Tuesday for us), as well as being able to attend a citizenship ceremony in Toontown.

I knew that, if you ask, you are sometimes able to sit in the drivers section of the monorail - so I asked - and we got to sit there!

During the 1hour early entry to Fantasyland, we managed to go on every ride in that section: Peter Pans Adventure, Dumbo, the Matterhorn Bobsled ride, Alice in Wonderland etc etc. It was fun, and we were all pretty impressed that these original Disney rides are still so much fun to ride 50 years after their creation.

We then strolled over to Toontown and were probably the 3rd family in the gates of this section. We were able to ride the little rollercoaster; visit Mickey & Minnies Houses, and have a good look around, before the Toontown Morning Madnesss Citizenship ceremony commenced at the Town Hall. We had a "front row" table, and it was a lot of fun.

When that finished, we had a bit more of a wander around, and then headed out the gates and did MORE rides in Disneyland - it was nice being able to be there when it was still pretty quiet.

We managed to get on It's a Small World, the Matterhorn again, and a few other rides, and a few picture moments... before heading back to the restaurant at our hotel, where we had booked a Lilo & Stitch character brunch.

We had a great time at brunch. It was a little quiet, but we did know that 10.50am (the time we arrived) was the latest that they would seat people for this. There were a lot of choices in food, and Lilo, Stitch, Pluto, and Minnie Mouse were all in attendance in the dining room.

Greg was wearing his birthday badges and he was presented with a birthday cupcake and a birthday song from all the serving staff and the characters at one stage! NOTE: when we had arrived at the hotel, and Greg was presented with a birthday badge, he had been a little "dubious" about wearing it. By the end of our stay, he was quite relaxed about everyone saying happy birthday to him, and he'd been sung to, and presented with, 2 birthday cupcakes along the way - he was pretty happy about it...

Stitch managed to totally scare Melissa, by creeping up behind her and trying to steal her crown! Pluto engulfed Greg and Rachael during their hugs (after all, he is a bouncy dog!).

Lilo was really sweet and curtseyed to Melissa and I (because we were wearing crowns, she knew we HAD TO BE royalty!). As well as that, she insisted that Greg wasn't eating enough, and personally fed him some of his sausage. Rachael was able to impress Stitch with her "trick" of being able to touch her nose with her tongue (you see, Stitch does that in the movie!)...

Disney Day 2 - the afternoon finish
Headed back to Disneyland after our brunch. We continued on with our planned rides etc and managed to get everything done, and head back to the hotel by 6.00pm. There were no fireworks or anything on this evening, so we just enjoyed food in the Concierge lounge and relaxed in our room. It was the first time we'd really had any "down time" in days...

 

[TrixieBel]

Disney Day 3 - California Adventure...

We planned to spend the day at Disney's California Adventure Park today. We made our way to the private entrance at the Grand Californian Hotel. You can only use this entrance to the park if you are a guest at one of the Disney hotels, and I don't think that a lot of the guests realise this... I had heard that if you turn up at this entrance, you will be let in 1/2 hr earlier than at the main gates, and this information was correct. The park didn't open until 10am officially, but we were let in at 9.30am.

They only had a few things open at this time, and the main thing was the ride, California Soaring. We were the first people to enter it for the day! It's a great ride. Tony really love it. You sit in seats under what seems like a giant hang glider, and when the ride starts you are swept up in the air and you fly over a film of different parts of California. It was very spectacular and realistic, they even pump smells through the room at different points ie: when you're flying over the orange groves you can smell oranges!

The 2nd thing we headed for was the Tower of Terror. I really hadn't been looking forward to this ride. You travel in a lift in an old run-down hotel and enter the "twilight zone", which basically means the doors to the lift open a few times and you see ghosts etc, THEN you DROP in the lift shaft! I actually didn't think it was too bad, but Rachael very definitely did not like it...

We did some of the other rides. Melissa really liked the little rollercoaster called Mulholland Madness. We also went on the swings inside the giant orange, and the boys went on the bumper cars - which turned out to be VERY SLOW, not at all what they had been expecting...

The other really great thing we did was to visit Turtle Talk. Again, from all my research prior to our visit, I knew that we needed to get the kids sitting on the floor in the front row, and we did manage that.

Crush (the turtle from Finding Nemo) comes swimming out in his "tank"and talks to everyone. He picks people out of the audience to talk to, and then asks for people to ask questions. He picked Rachael out to talk to, and she did a great job of answering his questions. I kept sticking my hand in the air when he asked for more questions and he did pick on me too. I asked if his shell grew with him or if he had to get a new one - the answer is that it grows with him! Rachael was particularly amazed at this - I mean, how does he talk???? lololol.

Our family were pretty much done with California Adventure by lunchtime. We stopped for lunch in the park (the first time we'd stopped and bought a meal that wasn't pre-booked or gone back to the Concierge lounge). We had mexican, and Tony was able to get a beer and I was able to get a margarita!

After lunch, we all headed back to Disneyland and redid a few of our favourite rides - Indiana Jones etc. Then Tony headed over to California Adventure with Rachael, to catch the High School Musical Pep Rally again. Melissa stayed with Greg and I for another go around of Pirates of the Caribbean, and then she headed back to the hotel, and Greg and I redid Buzz Lightyear and Space Mountain one last time. Greg and I got back to the hotel at around 6pm.

Goofy's Kitchen - Dinner Day 3
We had a booking for our final character meal, Goofy's Kitchen, at 8pm, but we got the Concierge to change it to 7.20pm for us. We strolled over to the Disneyland Hotel for this and had a nice relaxed meal with Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Cinderella, and Chip (or was it Dale) dropping by our table at various times.

Greg was presented with another birthday cupcake and a song - he'd had so many birthday cakes in the past few days that he couldn't even eat this one!

We all headed back to the hotel at around 8.30pm and straight into bed, having had a really great time at Disneyland in the past 3 days.

The next morning, we collected our rental car (green Toyota identical to our car in Australia!) and headed off around Los Angeles, before our 11pm flight back to Australia.

The End ....

 

[Tink33]

What a fun report to read. I especially liked the photo with the fake scared faces outside the Tower of Terror. That would make a great Holiday card.

Care to share some highlights from the rest of your vacation?

 

[TrixieBel]

lolol. Not sure that anyone really wants the whole trip report! We started off in Hawaii, then to San Francisco. Drove to Santa Cruz and then Las Vegas. Then, finally did the trip to Disney...

We had a great 2 weeks. Very tired by the time we got home though. That day we left Disney we drove down to Newport and then over to Hollywood/West Hollywood (managed to walk äcross"the red carpet that was out for the final of American Idol!), then to Santa Monica (3rd St Promenade) and then to LAX for our 14hr flight home...

It's been back to work/school for all of us - definite Disney withdrawals here.. I WANT TO WEAR MY CROWN AGAIN!!!!!!!!

I do have a trip report written for the rest of our holiday/vacation, so will endeavour to get it into the other areas trip report section soon for you

 

[bjsmom]

Great trip report! I loved reading about all the magic.

 

[deletedpenguin]

Looks like a great trip! It makes me excited about my next trip down in August.

Off topic, I'm moving to your neck of the woods in September.

 

[wvnative]

So, finally I've had time to sit down and do this... Firstly, I want to apologise to WVNative - I didn't get to meet you at the "meet". As you'll see, further down, we had to make an emergency trip back to our room to get our son changed out of his clothes after Splash, which meant that time was tight to get Rachael to High School Musical... :-(

Ah, no big deal! There were lots of other people at the meet and being our last day, we were kind of on a mission anyway. Teenagers to keep happy ya know.

Sounds like you all had a great time!

 

[TrixieBel]

Looks like a great trip! It makes me excited about my next trip down in August.

Off topic, I'm moving to your neck of the woods in September.

Moving to our "neck of the woods" is a BIG move! You definitely won't be able to just pop down to Disneyland anymore I'm guessing it's work that's bringing you to Australia? It will be nice to know that there's another DISer at least in the same country. I've only seen 1 other poster here from Australia.

Maybe we can even try and organise a green meet!!!!! I'm easy to spot now - I'm driving my little blue Citroen with the red sparkly Mickey ears and the Mickey transfer on the back window....

Regards

 

[Alex2kMommy]

I loved this trip report! And your photos are great! My photos from Pooh were very blurry, I have no idea how yours came out so well, good for you!

Thanks for sharing your trip. You have a lovely family, and it sounds like you had a fantastic time.

 

[TrixieBel]

I loved this trip report! And your photos are great! My photos from Pooh were very blurry, I have no idea how yours came out so well, good for you!

Thanks for sharing your trip. You have a lovely family, and it sounds like you had a fantastic time.

Thanks for the compliments I took A LOT of photos inside rides during our trip (always with the flash OFF...) and most of them did not turn out, but a few, like the one of Pooh, did. I know that I've got a very steady hand (maybe I should have been a surgeon...) so I'm always the one that gets handed the camera when we need a steady shot...

Yes, we had a GREAT time! Still trying to figure out how to get back soon (it was 20yrs between visits for us...).

Regards

 

[LITTLEKID58]

Love it .........TFS

 

[blackjackdelta]

Great report, thanks for taking the time.

Jack