PTR: Our First Family Trip to Meet the MOUSE!! *Finished Mini TR 8/26*

[Mommy2LittleVols]

Day Three - 8/4/09
Since our first couple of days had been kind of boring, I decided that it was time for Sarah Kate and I to hit the town. So I had the concierge call and set up a tour for us, and we headed to Hollywood! It was a really great tour! The bus picked us up at the hotel and we drove downtown and saw the Nokia (where they film So You Think You Can Dance, among other things), the Kodak (American Idol and the Academy Awards), and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Then we headed over to Hollywood Blvd and they let us get out and shop/sightsee on our own for about an hour. Here are some pics from there.

MJ's Star on the Walk of Fame (Tim - Too bad your pal MJ wasn't with me! Haha!!)

Sorceror's Apprentice Mickey

Grauman's Chinese Theater

Jimmy Kimmel Live (don't know why I took this other than it looked cool, LOL)

The Hollywood Sign!!

The only thing I saw being filmed while we were there

Harry Potter stars hand prints and foot prints in front of Grauman's

"Marilyn Monroe" at Madame Tussaud's

"Samuel L Jackson" at MT's

After we left Hollywood Blvd, we drove into Beverly Hills and did a drive-by of some star's homes. I don't remember all the ones that the driver pointed out, and I didn't get any pics, but I do know that we saw the house where MJ died. After we saw the star's homes, we drove up Wilshire and saw Rodeo Dr. and after that I fell asleep! By the time I woke up we were on our way back to the hotel.

When we got back to the hotel, I put Sarah Kate down for a nap and picked up the hotel room a bit (I don't mind a mess at home, but I can't stand a messy hotel room!!) and waited for Darren to finish up his workday. When he got off, we decided that we were sick of having to take cabs or walk everywhere, so we went to rent a car. After we picked up the car, we drove out to the Santa Monica Pier. It was sooooo beautiful!! Some pics from there:

I wanted to ride the ferris wheel sooo bad, but DH wasn't up for it.

This was some kind of trapeze school. Very cool! My nephews would have loved it!

The sunset was GORGEOUS!

We had dinner at Pizza Hut on the Pier (real adventurous, I know! ) and then headed back to Torrance. We wanted some dessert and I decided to try Pinkberry since I have heard so much about it and we don't have them back home. OMG, YUCK!! No offense to anyone who likes it, but it was so not my thing!! After we that we made a quick stop at B&N and then back to the hotel and bed.

Up next - DOWNTOWN DISNEY AT DISNEYLAND!!!!!!

 

[Simba22]

Hi Julia! I followed your link from Jordan's PTR and wanted to stop by to say hello! I haven't gone through the whole thing yet but just wanted to pop in! You have a beautiful family! Your DD looks so dang cute in that UT dress! LOL And at 26 years old, I find MYSELF glued to MMC! I swear, the Disney Channel is part of only a small handful of things that are actually worth watching these days!

Your ADRs look great! We had dinner at LTT and LOVED it, and we had dinner at Tony's once and didn't have to great of an experience. But I've heard that lunch time there is better than dinner so hopefully you have a better experience than we did. We've eaten at Crystal Palace a couple of times for the character breakfast. This will be our first trip in 3 years without it so I'm worrying now that I will miss it! We traded CP for Kona Cafe... hope that Tonga Toast is worth it!

I have a feeling that once you all do WDW the RIGHT way (ie with ADRs and an actual plan) your DH will start to like it a bit more. And seeing how happy it makes you and your son will definitely make him like it!

We are checking in to POP on 10/23. It will be our first time staying and everyone who has been there has loved it so I'm looking forward to it! After today I'm down to 63 days! MNSSHP is a BLAST! We don't have any kids but we liked it so much when we went in 2007 that that we booked it TWICE for our upcoming trip!

 

[Mommy2LittleVols]

Hi Julia! I followed your link from Jordan's PTR and wanted to stop by to say hello! I haven't gone through the whole thing yet but just wanted to pop in! You have a beautiful family! Your DD looks so dang cute in that UT dress! LOL And at 26 years old, I find MYSELF glued to MMC! I swear, the Disney Channel is part of only a small handful of things that are actually worth watching these days!

Your ADRs look great! We had dinner at LTT and LOVED it, and we had dinner at Tony's once and didn't have to great of an experience. But I've heard that lunch time there is better than dinner so hopefully you have a better experience than we did. We've eaten at Crystal Palace a couple of times for the character breakfast. This will be our first trip in 3 years without it so I'm worrying now that I will miss it! We traded CP for Kona Cafe... hope that Tonga Toast is worth it!

I have a feeling that once you all do WDW the RIGHT way (ie with ADRs and an actual plan) your DH will start to like it a bit more. And seeing how happy it makes you and your son will definitely make him like it!

We are checking in to POP on 10/23. It will be our first time staying and everyone who has been there has loved it so I'm looking forward to it! After today I'm down to 63 days! MNSSHP is a BLAST! We don't have any kids but we liked it so much when we went in 2007 that that we booked it TWICE for our upcoming trip!

Hi and Welcome!! I have heard so much about that darn Tonga Toast. I hope it's worth the hype! I agree about DH liking it once we do it the right way. I think he's more excited than he is letting on. He LOVED Downtown Disney at Disneyland. We spent over an hour in World of Disney, and I was not the only one running around going "Oooo look at this! Oooo look at that!" Your trip is getting close - only a little over 2 months away!!

 

[Simba22]

Hi and Welcome!! I have heard so much about that darn Tonga Toast. I hope it's worth the hype! I agree about DH liking it once we do it the right way. I think he's more excited than he is letting on. He LOVED Downtown Disney at Disneyland. We spent over an hour in World of Disney, and I was not the only one running around going "Oooo look at this! Oooo look at that!" Your trip is getting close - only a little over 2 months away!!

OMG I just typed up this whole big long drawn out "I'm totally bored at work" response and I got logged out and lost the whole thing!

In a nutshell:
I spend way too much money at WoD stores. We live about an hour long train ride away from NYC and spend way too much time/money at the WoD store there.

Your pics from LA were great! I like Madame Tussaud's in NYC. It was fun and made for some great pics! Wasn't Marilyn melting out there?? I wish I had some kind of mini-trip coming up to break up the waiting until WDW but nothing planned and we don't have a lot of money with which to do anything anyway. Waiting stinks!

 

[shordiebecka]

SoCal looks so fun! I have always wanted to visit there, just to see what it was like. Your trip is getting really close. I love Old Navy's clearance section too..their clothes are already so cheap!!

 

[that's nice]

Thanks for the shout out!!!!

WOW your pictures have brought back some memories. On our honeymoon we stopped in LA for 3 days on the way home from Hawaii. We went to Jimmy Kimmel and sat in the second row. We took 3 pictures of the stars- Bob Barker DW loves him, Rodney Dangerfield.. he passed away the day before we got there, and guess who?.... Michael Jackson! I'll see if I have some pics on this computer.

EDIT:: I found our pics... we had 1 more star. The mickey mouse star with the wannabe mickey! LOL

Here are the pics.....

 

[KathyRN137]

Hi Julia!

Great mini-trip so far! So Cal has so much to see and do! Glad you had fun and I'm not-so-patiently waiting for the DL post!!


Kathy

 

[jordanyosh]

okay. I think I'm caught up.

 

[Mommy2LittleVols]

OMG I just typed up this whole big long drawn out "I'm totally bored at work" response and I got logged out and lost the whole thing!

In a nutshell:
I spend way too much money at WoD stores. We live about an hour long train ride away from NYC and spend way too much time/money at the WoD store there.

Your pics from LA were great! I like Madame Tussaud's in NYC. It was fun and made for some great pics! Wasn't Marilyn melting out there?? I wish I had some kind of mini-trip coming up to break up the waiting until WDW but nothing planned and we don't have a lot of money with which to do anything anyway. Waiting stinks!

I am so jealous that you live so close to the City! I <3 NY!! We didn't go in MT's, and I didn't get too close to Marilyn. To be honest, wax museums kind of freak me out!

SoCal looks so fun! I have always wanted to visit there, just to see what it was like. Your trip is getting really close. I love Old Navy's clearance section too..their clothes are already so cheap!!

It was wonderful! You should definitely visit if you ever get a chance. ON is the best for cheap clothes!

Thanks for the shout out!!!!

WOW your pictures have brought back some memories. On our honeymoon we stopped in LA for 3 days on the way home from Hawaii. We went to Jimmy Kimmel and sat in the second row. We took 3 pictures of the stars- Bob Barker DW loves him, Rodney Dangerfield.. he passed away the day before we got there, and guess who?.... Michael Jackson! I'll see if I have some pics on this computer.

I actually took a pic of the Mickey Mouse star, too! It wasn't a good pic though....my shadow was over the star. LOL!

Hi Julia!

Great mini-trip so far! So Cal has so much to see and do! Glad you had fun and I'm not-so-patiently waiting for the DL post!!


Kathy

I'm about to start on the DL post!!

okay. I think I'm caught up.

Hi Jordan! Thanks for stopping by!

 

[Mommy2LittleVols]

Day Four - 8/5/09
Although I tried VERY hard to convince DH that we needed to visit the Disneyland parks, I was only able to get him as close as Downtown Disney. (I'm going to go ahead and apologize for the picture quality in this post. I had a baby strapped to me all night, LOL!)

Sarah Kate and I spent the morning resting and recovering from the busy previous day. When Darren got off work, we hopped in the car and headed to Anaheim. I made Darren listen to Disney music the whole way there. And then once we got off the highway, I saw this:

I was so excited!! And you know what - DH was, too. I swear, the pixie dust kicks in once you get within 50 miles of Disney property. We followed the signs for Downtown Disney parking.

Parked the car and headed Downtown. Now, DTD at DL is nowhere near the size of DTD at WDW, but I still missed out on about half the stuff I wanted to do. Mainly b/c we got trapped in WoD right after we got there.

This is the only "good" pic I got of the exterior of the store. You can't see very well, but it's a giant eye and Donald is sitting on top of it bending down to look at it.

I know we spent well over an hour in there and still didn't see everything. LOVE IT!!! Here we are totally NOT acting our age:

DH as Grumpy

Me as Princess Minnie

DH as Indiana Jones

Our hosts for the evening

Don't know why that one is so dark.

After we finally made it out of the store, we decided to eat at Catal. I highly, HiGhLy, HIGHLY recommend it!! I had the Bucatini Pasta and DH had the [FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Rotisserie Roasted Half Chicken. I wish I had taken Food Porn pictures, but I didn't think of it until we were about 1/2 way through dinner. It was sooo good, though! We ate outside on the balcony and had an excellent view of the fireworks, though I missed the first half b/c Miss Sarah Kate needed a diaper change.

After the fireworks, we hit up Marceline's Confectionary and I got DS a Mickey Head rice krispie treat dipped in white chocolate. And for me, I got [/FONT][FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]some kind of peanut butter and chocolate bar that was sinfully delicious! YUM!! Wish I had one of those right about now.

After that, DD was getting cranky so we decided to call it a night. I was a little bummed that I didn't get to see Sleeping Beauty's castle or Summer Nightastic! but I am so glad that we were able to visit DTD! It was definitely one of the highlights of the trip for me, and got me even more excited for our upcoming trip to the World!!!

Oh, I almost forgot to post the pics of our purchases at WoD! We tried not to go too crazy, but we had to get the kids some souvenirs, of course!

DS got a shirt, a Mickey Mouse that says "I'm A Mousekedoer" on the shirt and the bullhorn says "Meeska Mooska Mickey Mouse", and a Disneyland football. (Hmm, do we see a pattern that the kid gets a LOT of balls? LOL!!) DD got a "My First Minnie Mouse" that is suuuper soft and cuddly and a DL waterball w/ the castle and 3 princesses in it. I wanted something for her that she could keep forever.

So that wraps up the DL portion of this mini TR. Up next - the Bandslam premiere and more Hollywood!
[/FONT]

 

[jordanyosh]

Too bad I didn't know you were going to be at DTD....I live like 10 minutes away.

I'm also in Torrance all the time because my cousin, Wendy lives near there. You probably were at the Barnes and Nobles at Del Amo Mall.....

 

[Mommy2LittleVols]

Too bad I didn't know you were going to be at DTD....I live like 10 minutes away.

I'm also in Torrance all the time because my cousin, Wendy lives near there. You probably were at the Barnes and Nobles at Del Amo Mall.....

I thought of you while we were in Cali! I knew you lived in SoCal, but I wasn't sure where. Next time we will have to have a DISmeet! Yes, that was the B&N that I lived at that week.

 

[KathyRN137]

Hi Julia!

So... you didn't make it to either of the parks, you still got a Disney fix!!

Sarah Kate is just precious; she must be a very good baby... well, except for making a dirty diaper at the start of Wishes... but that's really not her fault now, is it?

Love the pic of DH as Grumpy... don't most of us here on the DIS refer to our husbands as "Grumpy?" I wonder why...


Kathy

 

[jordanyosh]

I thought of you while we were in Cali! I knew you lived in SoCal, but I wasn't sure where. Next time we will have to have a DISmeet! Yes, that was the B&N that I lived at that week.

Did you get a chance to go into the Huge Crate and Barrel?

 

[Mommy2LittleVols]

Hi Julia!

So... you didn't make it to either of the parks, you still got a Disney fix!!

Sarah Kate is just precious; she must be a very good baby... well, except for making a dirty diaper at the start of Wishes... but that's really not her fault now, is it?

Love the pic of DH as Grumpy... don't most of us here on the DIS refer to our husbands as "Grumpy?" I wonder why...


Kathy

We sat there after dinner for probably 10-15 mins waiting on the fireworks to start and then I heard her little toots and I was like "CRAP!!" I knew as soon as I went inside to change her, they would start, and sure enough....

Did you get a chance to go into the Huge Crate and Barrel?

I didn't make it in there. It was on my list and I just ran out of time.

 

[Mommy2LittleVols]

Day Five - 8/6/09
We found out that there were going to be two movie premieres that night - GI Joe at Graumann's Chinese, and Bandslam at Mann's Village. I really wanted to see what a movie premiere was like with the press and the red carpet and everything, but we didn't want to be in a huge crowd with the baby and everything, so we opted to hit the smaller one - Bandslam. We stood across the street in front of California Pizza Kitchen (where we also ate dinner - YUM!) and had a pretty good view of the celebs as they came off the red carpet. Also, some celebs actually came in through where we were standing, although I didn't realize who they were in time to get pics of most of them. I know David Henrie (Wizards of Waverly Place) was standing like 10 feet away from us taking pics with fans and I had no clue who he was. All I knew was that all of a sudden a bunch of teeny-boppers were going nuts and I looked over and saw some kid in a hat, and then he walked across the street and I heard someone announce who he was. Oops! LOL I did recognize Nicole Gale Anderson (Macy on Jonas, and she's also been on the ABC Family show Make It or Break It) and got a couple pics of her, one before she crossed the street, and one after. She was super cute.

I got a pic of Meaghan Martin (Camp Rock and ABC Family's 10 Things I Hate About You) coming across the street to meet someone who was attending with her. She was really cute, too, and so tiny! (Well, all the stars were.)

And here is what Sarah Kate thought of the premiere (she was unimpressed)

After the red carpet stuff was over, we ate dinner and then decided to drive around since DH hadn't gotten to come on the Hollywood tour with me. We pretty much took the same route that I had taken before, with the exception of Hollywood Blvd since it was blocked off for the GI Joe premiere. Then we drove up Laurel Canyon and up to Mulholland and I can sum up the view in one word - WOW!!!!!! It was so beautiful. Twinkling city lights for as far as you can see. Even DH, who is such a country boy, thought that it was beautiful. I tried to take pictures, but none of them came out well. It is definitely something that I will have to see again sometime!

Day Six - 8/7/09
I guess I'll just go ahead and finish up this Mini TR. DH is a huge Braves fan, and they just happened to be playing the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium on Friday night, so we decided to hit that up! I'm not really a big sports fan, but even I had a good time at the game.

We had great seats!

Go Braves!

This was cool

The funniest thing was that we were talking on the way over about one of our friends from college that was a huge Dodgers fan, and how he would be so jealous if he knew we were there. And then when we were walking to our seats, we ran into him!!! So funny that we can fly all the way across the country and still run into someone from back home! Here we are with our friends.

So that wraps up our Cali trip! We had soooo much fun and I can't wait to go back!!

 

[that's nice]

Looks like you had a great time!

How crazy you saw people you know across the country!

I think I've said this before but your DD is so cute!

 

[Mommy2LittleVols]

Looks like you had a great time!

How crazy you saw people you know across the country!

I think I've said this before but your DD is so cute!

Thanks about DD! Yeah, I thought it was nuts that we ran into them.

 

[ladybugmom]

Hi Julia!! I'm all caught up! It looks like you had an incredible trip to California!! Things have been crazy busy here with my dd starting Kindergarten, so I'm trying to get back into the swing of things here on the DIS.

 

[Mommy2LittleVols]

Hi Julia!! I'm all caught up! It looks like you had an incredible trip to California!! Things have been crazy busy here with my dd starting Kindergarten, so I'm trying to get back into the swing of things here on the DIS.

Welcome back! I totally understand the back-to-school craziness. How is your DD liking school so far? Oh, this is totally random, but I LOVE your DDs outfits in your signature!! Where did you get them?