Summertime and Disneyland .Oo-De-Lally!!

[thornton0511]

First... Sept? WDW? Dates? (Just curious of course. )

WOW... $400 for a week????? I think I paid $184 tax in back in 2012, so this really shocks me. Yikes.

OK seriously?? You would have to drive back to LAX just to rent the same car? Hello... Logic??? Bueller??

Oy LA freeways. Yeah, a little culture shock there. You're description is bang on.

YES... WHERE WAS YOUR FIRST STOP??????

Ha! As of now we are going to be there Labor Day week, but we always seems to move dates around a bit lol.
Yeah the rental prices really really shocked me. I know for a fact that they are not that much in Orlando so not sure what the deal is for CA?
Ugh....yeah the back and forth thing was super annoying but what do you do??
THE FREEWAY!!!!!
Ha doing next post now

 

[thornton0511]

So glad y'all made it safely! Though that is frustrating about the rental car.

I am terrified of driving over there which is why I'm thinking of using other means of transportation. I don't like my DH's driving where we live....I can't imagine how nervous he'd make me over there.

Very interested to see what else y'all did besides DLR. There's so much I want to do also. I know we'll be doing Legoland for sure for my DS b/c I can't work Legoland FL into our October trip. I also want to do the San Diego Zoo. There's so much to do but so little time.......and money.

Ha! Well we actually went back and forth with getting a rental and doing other things with Disney included or just doing a quick trip to DLR and taking a private shuttle. The driving did sound scary too. Honestly though after like one day it did not seem near as bad as the first day and DH felt more at ease with it. There really was so much to do!

 

[thornton0511]

Long Beach California


Ah yes Long Beach California. This would be our stop for the first two nights of our trip. This is also where I worked a little budget magic once again. We had decided to get a Hyatt CC earlier this year because we love Hyatt and we always try to stay at one when we travel if at all possible. I found that if you sign up and charge $$$ within the first few months you get 2 free nights at any Hyatt worldwide. Plus you get platinum status and they wave the annual fee for the first year. And every year on your anniversary you get a 1 night stay up to cat. 4 hotels, which more than covers the price of the annual fee, so it's a great CC for us to have. And I never ever carry a balance on any of our cards so we never have to mess with interest on anything. So anyways when planning a light bulb went off in my head and I figured that the beach in Southern Ca would be close to LAX and Anaheim and we could use our two free nights there. YAY!! That being said Long Beach was not my #1 choice but the place I wanted was only available on Sunday night so I used one free night for Long Beach and we were going to pay OOP for the second night. Oh another thing with the card is you automatically get 15% off of rack rate all the time, so we got a great deal for the one night here that we had to pay. The only issue I ran into with this is I had waited so close to when we were leaving that the only room available for the two nights was a handicap accessible double queen, but I did not think that was a big deal and booked it anyways. Then I received an email saying that with our status we were eligible for a club level upgrade if it became available at check in, only we wouldn't know until we got there if we received the upgrade. Fingers crossed people.

We pulled up to the front of this amazing hotel. I found that valet parking and self parking were listed as the same price at $24 a night. Not sure if it was a typo or if valet is the only option. They just came and grabbed our keys and took off with the car so I am guessing its valet only. Which I was not complaining about anyways.

The kids and I waited around while they loaded our luggage up for us. I really tried to imagine what the beach weather was going to feel like here. I am only used to Texas and Florida where in the summer it's like 100 degrees and 200% humidity. It baffled me that the weather averages in the 60's in the morning and evening and the highs are usually in the low to mid 70's. And like zero humidity?!!! I can tell you it was AMAZING!!! I can usually gage how much humidity is in the air too by the level of poof in my hair. I'm not kidding you guys. Humidity is like kryptonite to my poor hair. I was so relieved to get out of the car and not have to automatically pull my hair in a bun to control it. Very awesome!

So we walked into the lobby and the first thing I noticed was this super cool wall of windows they had that was stained glassed with like a forest tree thing? I dunno but it was really neat.

Anyways walked up to check in and the nice lady informed us that we had received the club level upgrade! Woohoo!!

We then followed the nice bell hop guy with our luggage to our club level room.


I tried to snap pictures of this place as we were walking but I also did not want to hold up the nice guy helping us with our bags. But this place was so amazing you guys. GAH I wish I could have captured it better.

We got to our room which was on the 16th floor. I was a little hesitant about how high up we were only because this is sometimes an issue with my DH. He has a thing with hotels and being really high up. But for club level he would have to suck it up lol. The bell hop guy unloaded our stuff and did his thing and we graciously thanked and tipped him and he was on his way. Now for the room….

So when we first walked in there was a little entrance way with some kind of wall art thing.

Close up of the wall art. I don’t get it but oh well.

To the immediate left we had a closet with a safe and other normal hotel closet items

To the right was the super nice bathroom. I kind of have a thing with hotel bathrooms and feeling comfortable in them so this was a plus for me.

The shower was also equally pleasant and I was a happy camper!

Then you walk into the main part of the room which had two very comfortable beds. I think they were queens but I cannot remember exactly. Super nice room!

Across from the beds we had the TV with drawers and a connecting desk area with a chair. WIFI was also complimentary.

And on the other side of the beds we had a sitting area with two swivel chairs and a table. This room was very roomy and I really did like the modern scheme too…..minus the weird wall art in the entrance way lol. And now for the best part of it all…..the view

Ahhhhh. It's okay just stare and it for a moment and soak it all in. Needless to say we were very very happy with where we would be staying for the next two evenings. It was nice to finally and completely relax after our traveling. And a great way to start a vacation too!
​

 

[thornton0511]

Club Level Baby!

So after settling in a bit the plan was to walk across the street to the pier and have dinner. This was before we knew that we were getting the upgrade. So we had to stop and make a detour to see what evening yummys they were offering.

As we were walking down the hall I noticed that someone was having a nice room service treat. The cake looked so delicious too. It was then that I remembered that it was after 7:00 LA time and other than airplane snacks the last meal we had was fried rice in Dallas at noon. And 7:00 LA time meant for us 9:00pm Texas time. Cue the rumbly in the tumbly.

We walked in and there was no one else there lol. 8:00 was the time when they take away the evening servings and replace them with evening desserts so we apparently were catching the tail end of this one. No worries! This was the main room with seating and TV. The seating to the right by the window became our favorite.

In the fridge here they had a limited selection of pepsi (who drinks pepsi?) products, soda water and ginger ale, assorted juices, and bottled water which became a blessing for us. We are big water drinkers and having access to free bottled water 24 hrs a day is amazing.

On the counter they had an assortment of cheese, veggies, and dips

Please excuse the lack of abundance of items since it was so late in the evening lol.

Above they had a few more veggies and breads. Always room from bread!

Moving along they had a juice machine of sorts and my new best friend, a coffee machine that made lattes …..thank you, thank you!

The one thing that was not included without price was the boos. Whomp whomp whomp. They sure did have an open bar though and no one around so not quite sure how this was supposed to work? This picture however gets me to my next item which was the amazing view from this room.

The bay was breathtaking! And if you will notice on the left side there is a very famous ship. The Queen Mary! Yes sir the sister ship to the ever famous Titanic. Totally cool. And creepy.

We sat for a spell and had a soda and snacks. This was in no way satisfying our hunger for a meal. About this time the nice club level Hyatt lady came around to inform us of the desserts that she was going to be setting out soon. We regretfully informed her of our plans for dinner and that we would not be back in time to partake in the nightly desserts and she was nice enough to go to the back room and grab a few selections to go for us to take to our room for later. How awesome is that? She soon returned with two plates full of goodies and we thanked her and took our yummies back to our room before heading out. It was time for dinner!

​

 

[thornton0511]

Dinner at the Pier


We headed down to go across the street to dinner. The cool thing about the location of this place is that it is conveniently located right by the pier that is full of places to eat and hang out. We literally walked across the street with no worries. There is also a bridge that you can take if you do not wish to cross the street but it seemed a bit sketchy to us so we opted for the street instead.

This was the entrance into the pier area.

We made our way down the boardwalk type walkway which I loved and it reminded me of Disney.

I stopped for a moment to snap a few pictures of our surroundings. It was so nice a peaceful. Within a few minutes of walking we had arrived at our dinner location for the evening.

Bubba Gump Shrimp Co! This meal was also going to be working into my budget plan. DH and I both signed up for the Landry's Select Club years ago because we love to eat at the Rainforest Café as a family (it reminds us of Disney lol) and since both of our birthday's are in June we each had a $25 credit on our cards to use this month. You can use the credit at any Laundry's owned restaurant and I had noticed that Long Beach had a Bubba Gump. We had eaten here once before in Florida and remembered it being pretty yummy and when you add a free $25 on top of that, well it was a no brainer for us lol.

We checked in and were seated right away. Another cool thing about having the card is you get front of the line seating without a reservation. This comes in very handy when we want to eat at T-Rex Café in DTD in the evening where the wait times without a reservation can be incredibly long. It's kind of like a fastpass for eating.

Our first official sit down meal of vacation yay!!! Our awesome server took our order and also quizzed us on our Forrest Gump knowledge. If you have never eaten here before it basically revolves around the movie and the restaurant that Forrest and Bubba might had opened together. Needless to say it has been a long time since we had watched Forrest Gump and did not get all of our servers questions correct lol. Gave it a good try though.

Another cool thing that they do here is having these license plates on the table. One says run Forrest run, and the other says stop Forrest! So basically if you need something you leave it on Stop and if you are fine you put it on Run. This lets the server know if you need something. Ha, what a concept. You have to remember to change it back after flagging your server down for something though, as you server will kindly remind you to do so if you forget lol. Now on to the food!

Sydney had the kids pepperoni pizza with fries. They serve the kids meals in cardboard type shrimp boat and all meals are also served with jello. Yum!

Cory went with the kids chicken strips with fries. You can see the blue jello in his boat.

DH went with Shrimper's Heaven which consisted of hand breaded coconut shrimp, chilled peel and eat shrimp, fried shrimp, and Japanese style tempura shrimp. Also served with fries.

Lastly I went with what I had remembered from the last time I had eaten here. "I'm Stuffed" Shrimp. Large shrimp with crab stuffing, baked in garlic butter, and topped with Monterey Jack cheese. Served with jasmine rice. Nom Nom Nom.
Total bill with tip came to $40.00 not bad at all with the reward included! With our bellies full and our bodies tired from our long day we headed back to our hotel to get a much needed good night's sleep. I was so thankful at this point that we had decided to not just jump in with Disney from the get go and that we could take it easy and sleep in a bit in the morning.

Before going back to our room to settle in and eat our goodnight snacks we stopped at the window by the elevator on our floor to admire the wonderful view of the bay and Long Beach. This place was really really wonderful.





​

 

[ProudMommyof2]

Signing on! I can't wait to hear about your trip!

 

[petals]

That makes me sad. I cannot believe that you had to experience all of that awful in one trip good grief! It would be hard to keep the magic going in that situation. I wish that there was a way to keep stupid and mean people out of Disney. That would probably help with the rude CM situation as well if everyone was nice and happy and had common sense

Maybe we got it at a bad time but when you're only there for like 4 or so days and there's that many rude people it did really destroy the magical feel. We still enjoyed ourselves but it wasn't WDW!


Long Beach looks nice.. I think I need to win the lotto and tour America from coast to coast with a few hundred disney stops along the way

 

[BellaBaby]

We flew into Anaheim and rented from Alamo. Closer to our trip I was able to get the Alamo member's rate for our car which was $186.oo for the week for a full size and they gave us a Passat. I think I had a entertainment coupon of $25 off as well. Yes, I do believe the rentals are less expensive in FL. Usually we rent a mini van, and I do a lot of research to find the best price, but we have had them for less than $300 for 10 days before. We always use Alamo or National cuz I love not having to check in at a desk with someone!! I was disappointed we had to do that in CA! Anyway, that stinks that you had to go back the next day just to sign papers! ITA--common sense is lacking!!

That's awesome that you got the club level upgrade!! Glad you really liked the room and the view!! And that you were comfortable w/ the bathroom--wouldn't want to go get locked in or anything!! Yes, I read your last TR. Very enjoyable read BTW!

That's great to know about the Landry's card, we like to eat at TREX, and the Rainforest Cafe and judging by the looks of your food, Bubba Gumps looks tasty as well!!

 

[luulu1999]

What a great start!

 

[thornton0511]

Signing on! I can't wait to hear about your trip!

YAY! So happy to have you aboard!! Welcome

Maybe we got it at a bad time but when you're only there for like 4 or so days and there's that many rude people it did really destroy the magical feel. We still enjoyed ourselves but it wasn't WDW!

Yeah I get that. Still does not help when you have bad experience after bad experience

Long Beach looks nice.. I think I need to win the lotto and tour America from coast to coast with a few hundred disney stops along the way

Ha! You and me both There really are so many great things to do in the USA, the problem for us is that they all seem to be an airplane trip away from us! We find Texas to not really have much that WE want to do lol

We flew into Anaheim and rented from Alamo. Closer to our trip I was able to get the Alamo member's rate for our car which was $186.oo for the week for a full size and they gave us a Passat. I think I had a entertainment coupon of $25 off as well. Yes, I do believe the rentals are less expensive in FL. Usually we rent a mini van, and I do a lot of research to find the best price, but we have had them for less than $300 for 10 days before. We always use Alamo or National cuz I love not having to check in at a desk with someone!! I was disappointed we had to do that in CA! Anyway, that stinks that you had to go back the next day just to sign papers! ITA--common sense is lacking!!

Wow that's a really good deal!

That's awesome that you got the club level upgrade!! Glad you really liked the room and the view!! And that you were comfortable w/ the bathroom--wouldn't want to go get locked in or anything!! Yes, I read your last TR. Very enjoyable read BTW!

Bahahahahaha! I did not even think about that when I wrote this post! Thank you for reminding me of my not so great luck with the bathroom. I don't want to spoil thing but I almost had a similar experience on this trip too lol!
That's great to know about the Landry's card, we like to eat at TREX, and the Rainforest Cafe and judging by the looks of your food, Bubba Gumps looks tasty as well!!

What a great start!

Yes it was quite tasty! The atmosphere is not as great as the TRex or Rainforest so not sure if we would ever eat here without the reward. It seems to be a little more pricey than the others. I would definitely recommend the card! We have also used it for Yak and Yeti at AK!

 

[thornton0511]

A Morning Stroll With No Plans

Despite our busy traveling day and getting to sleep fairly late the day before, because we were on Texas time, our internal alarm clocks still went off super early. Well mine did anyways. To the tune of 4:30am (which is 6:30 my time and also when my alarm usually goes off to get the kids ready for school and me for work). Thankfully after looking around a bit and realizing where I was, and that there was no school or work to get up for, I had no issues closing my eyes and drifting off for a bit longer. By 6:30 pacific time, however, my body was screaming for me to get up. Ugh. So I did. And went into the usual vacation morning routine in which I am the first one up and I get myself ready, and then get everyone else up. This actually works out pretty good, especially when we are all sharing one bathroom.

Sydney's puppy Rupert, who has been her best companion through thick and thin since she was a baby, apparently was just returning from an adventure of his own this morning by means of a shrimp boat lol. Once I was ready I somehow managed to get everyone else up and moving and we proceeded to get some breakfast down the hall. This morning's selections were great and there was a lot to choose from.

We had a few cereals to choose from.

And a choice of toppings too!

An array of fruits and pastries could be found in this area

More fruits

Hard boiled eggs, bagels, and salmon? I believe filled this counter space.

And of course this little beauty that was about to make me a latte….mmmmmm. Apparently I did not include a pic but along with sugar and creamer they also had cinnamon and a few other yummy choices of flavor to put in your coffee.

And life is perfect

We found what was to be our favorite eating spot in the room and enjoyed our breathtaking view of the bay/harbor while we ate.

A fuzzy, close up of the Queen Mary. At this point we somewhat discussed what our plan for today would be. Originally we had assumed that no plans would be needed for beach days and that we would spend these days entirely on the beach and swimming. That all came to an abrupt halt when we arrived in CA and experienced the weather first hand. Top that off with knowledge that the Pacific Ocean is always cold, well let's just say that it's not what we are used to with the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. And we did not have wet suits either. We did play with the idea of taking a tour of the Queen Mary but we were not sure how bored the kids would be with that and a tour for 4 people did not come at a cheap price. Plus DH reminded me that we (or he) had to be back in LA to sign the papers with Alamo at 11am. Ugh. With no real decision made yet we decided to head down to the pier at least for a morning stroll.

With the temp in the mid 60's this morning the pool looked lonely and sad. And unfortunately very un inviting.

We made our way to the pier and decided that our goal was to walk over to the lighthouse island that we had seen the day prior. Eh why not.

We stopped for a quick photo and then continued on ahead.

As we got closer to our destination we noticed a local high school band playing. Well the drummers anyways. Cory is in percussion with his middle school band so he found this very cool. We stopped for a few minutes to watch. We also noticed a lot of people headed in the same direction as us in groups and they were all wearing matching shirts. This sparked our curiosity a bit and we decided to see what was going on. We got to the entrance of the light house area and found a police officer. He informed us that it was a 5K run event and you had to pay to get on the island with the light house today. Meh. This lead us to have to really make a decision on what to do today. The decision finally came down to all of us driving back to the car rental place and touring LA a bit. Why not? We headed back to the hotel and up to our room to get everything we would need for the day. We had no idea exactly what the day would hold for us, but no worries because we are on vacation in sunny…and cold…California!

Bring it on LA!

​

 

[DisneyKid4Life]

Oh my yes, the weather in So Cal is pretty amazing. People always think I hate the heat which is incorrect. I hate humidity.

Ah Score on Club Level!!! That's awesome!!

Wow, that is a lovely view.

Oh wow the Queen Mary. If I had the extra time I totally would have done the tour. I know they have a haunted tour which I would for sure love.

OMG those little boxes of cereal. I was crazy about those when I was a kid. My own personal box of cereal. Somehow they just taste better.

OK, NOW I'm curious what you did in LA????? Hollywood (Ugh)???

 

[thornton0511]

Oh my yes, the weather in So Cal is pretty amazing. People always think I hate the heat which is incorrect. I hate humidity.

Ah Score on Club Level!!! That's awesome!!

Wow, that is a lovely view.

Oh wow the Queen Mary. If I had the extra time I totally would have done the tour. I know they have a haunted tour which I would for sure love.

OMG those little boxes of cereal. I was crazy about those when I was a kid. My own personal box of cereal. Somehow they just taste better.

OK, NOW I'm curious what you did in LA????? Hollywood (Ugh)???

Yes the weather was awesome! I do wish that it would get a little warmer in the beach areas in the afternoon than it does. It was definitely warmer the more inland we went! Ugh humidity and hate....I am the president of that club! Texas is not as bad as Florida but its still bad enough, especially after it rains. It feels like living in a rainforest...bleh.
Yes we really were in awe of the view from the hotel. We really did almost do the ghost tour on the Queen Mary but it was a bit expensive for all of us and it was also 3 hours long and we knew we had to go do the stupid car rental thing so it just did not work out this time. However if we do ever decide to go back and spend more time in LA we will definitely get the LA Go card that let's you do a whole lot of stuff like this and you pay per day. I think that if you do 3 days or more they throw Universal in there too.
Little boxes of cereal lol I know right?! Favorites!

 

[thornton0511]

The End of Route 66 and my Bucket List


At 9:30am we called down from our room to have our car ready for us. Hey when you are paying $24 a day for valet parking use it for its benefits. It was really nice to just take the elevator down and have your car waiting out front for you….I'm not going to lie. We hopped in and set out on our day's adventure, which meant back on the freeway….bleh. Fortunately heading into LA this time of day proved to be a good thing and the freeway was very manageable.
Signing the new contact with Alamo was very uneventful and it was a relief to have that done knowing that we would not have to come back until it was time to go home. Since we had no freeway traffic we ended up getting to Alamo way before 11am and thankfully having no issues with doing all of his nonsense before 11am. Thank goodness! We were out of there by 10:15am and headed to our next destination….Santa Monica Pier!

On our way there I noticed quite a few people outside this donut place. When I got home some google research told me that this is Randy's Donuts and apparently a pretty popular stop in LA.

The next cool thing we noticed on our way were these cool red lights that let one car at a time onto the freeway. Listen we are from a small east Texas town so it does not take much to amuse us.

Finally we had made our way to Santa Monica. It was only about a 30 minute drive from the LAX area. We wanted to park in the short term parking area but alas there were no spots available. We opted instead for regular beach parking, which I believe we had to pay cash for and I do not remember exactly how much it was, but I think I remember it being around $10 or $11 for the whole day.

This beach is what I see in my head when I think of California beaches. We could not capture it with our phone cameras but the hills in the background of this part of the ocean were beautiful! I could not get over how beautiful certain parts of LA were. Certain parts anyways lol. The rest of it scared me. Just being honest.

We made our way up to the pier and the kids tried to look extra bored while we took pictures and video like any good tourist would.

After that the first order of business was to find the end of route 66.

Found it! Mark that off the bucket list!!

We then headed towards the very end of the pier, just because. I could not get over how incredible the scenery is here!

We made it to the end of the pier and took a look around. Then the kids were like, okay done, now what? Lol

Obviously we had not driven all this way to walk to the end of a pier, no matter how famous.

We had a good idea what these two wanted to do next.
​

 

[catherines_mama]

As far away from Cali as one can get. Those crazy red lights at the freeway are for traffic calming. I had to go to SF Bay Area for a work trip and was out in the valley not the city and they made me drive. Oh it was crazy. Those lights tripped me out. Being from coastal NC I was so confused at 1st. I think I blew thru my 1st one. Whoops but then I had the hang of them the rest of the week.

 

[thornton0511]

As far away from Cali as one can get. Those crazy red lights at the freeway are for traffic calming. I had to go to SF Bay Area for a work trip and was out in the valley not the city and they made me drive. Oh it was crazy. Those lights tripped me out. Being from coastal NC I was so confused at 1st. I think I blew thru my 1st one. Whoops but then I had the hang of them the rest of the week.

lol that is too funny! It was such a new concept for us! I would have never thought of something like that but I guess when you have soooo much traffic it makes sense. I was so glad that I had my DH there to do the driving because there is no way I would ever drive in something like what we experienced in CA. I won't even drive in Dallas though lol.....I am very sheltered and I hate to drive.Seriously I won't even drive on the interstate.

 

[rteetz]

I thought those lights were common in most places we are in Milwaukee which is a big city but not nearly as big as LA, Chicago or New York. We have all the way out in our suburbs too so that why I thought they were common, thats so funny. Looks like a fantastic trip so far! Disneyland and LA are on my bucket list.

 

[thornton0511]

Pacific Park


We knew that the kids would enjoy the rides here and how can you go to Santa Monica pier and not ride a rollercoaster over the ocean? Seriously. BTW I hope you all enjoy my finger in the above picture.Your welcome.

We were on a mission for unlimited ride wristbands. We knew the kids would want to ride several of the rides but the only one that DH and I really wanted to do was the iconic rollercoaster. So we bought unlimited bands for the 2 kids and a single ticket for DH and me. This brought our grand total to $62. It would have been closer to $100 if we had all bought bands so this definitely seemed like a better way to go for us. Once we had made our purchase the deal was we would all ride the rollercoaster together and then the kids could do whatever they wanted. This was because Sydney was a little timid about it and we knew that it would be better to get it over and reward her bravery with the freedom to do whatever afterward.
I am surprised I have no picture to prove it but we all did survive the rollercoaster. Sydney hated it but she did it and I was very proud of her for that. Cory ended up going back and riding it several more times before we left lol.

So anyways after that we stuck to our word and let the kids ride whatever. This thing was up first. It kind of vaguely reminded me of the flying tires at DL….a little bit.

The kids had fun bumping into each other at any rate and they really did have some get up and go to them so I will give the ride props for that!

Up next was the Scrambler. If you have ever been to a fair in your lifetime then you know exactly what this is. And you either love it or you hate it lol.

My kids love it! We noticed when they were loading this ride that DS kept messing and tugging on his ear. I remembered that he was complaining quite a bit on the airplane that he was having an issue with his ears popping and it hurting him, but that seemed to all go away once we had landed. And not a peep otherwise since then. We asked him about it when the ride was over and he said that they were kind of hurting him and it felt like he had water stuck in his ear. Ugh. He had just been at camp for a week and they do a lot of swimming. I started to wonder if the combination of that and the airplane had caused a problem for his ears. I offered for us to leave but he said that it was fine and he wanted to stay and do more rides so we just decided to keep on but also keep a close eye on him to see if things would change.

The kids decided on this one next and I could not get a really good picture but it basically just rocked up and down and kind of side to side.

Weeeee! There you go. I am afraid that is as good as it gets guys sorry. Cory decided to part ways with his sister at this point and have a few more go's at the rollercoaster.

Sydney decided to have a go at the kiddie rides lol

This thing just kind of went around in a circle and bopped up and down lol.

Okay I have to show a bit of my stupidity here now. I noticed when I was taking pictures of the ride signs that it had this warning. I swear to you guys when I read it I thought that it said "Suffer from arachnophobia or vertigo" and I thought well that's a bit odd and funny. Why would a ride have a warning for people who are scared of spiders lol. So when DH and Cory met up with us I pointed it out to him and he could not stop laughing. Then I took a closer look at the sign and felt stupid. Doh. It was bound to happen at some point on this trip y'all. I am surprised I lasted this long. Yes I was made fun of for the remainder of this trip. Lol. Seriously.

So at about this point in the day Sydney was riding her last ride and we could tell that Cory's ears were hurting him big time so we decided to call it quits and leave. Google maps said that there was a drug store across the street from the pier and we were just about as far away from walking to our car as to the street so we opted for the walk to the store…..google maps was wrong. Ugh.

So we made the trek back down to our car. But not before capturing another iconic picture.

On our way down we saw a lot of things like this. Strange. Not something you would necessarily see right outside WDW but then again we are not in WDW so……
We finally made it back to our car and poor DS was really not feeling well at this point. We loaded some info into our GPS and found that there was a CVS not far from here so that is where we headed. Again no pictures but I suppose my mind was more on Cory at this point. We headed straight for the pharmacist to ask if there was anything over the counter we could drop in his ear to relieve the pain and she said no. Her advice was to give him some advil and take him to the doctor. Well I already had the advil in my hand but we decided to go look for ourselves. And low and behold on one of the medicine isles we found earache drops. They were almost $15 too! Hopefully they would work. We went back to the car and first gave Cory the advil. Then we put the drops in his ear and let him lay there for a few minutes. All I can say is that this stuff must have some magical powers because within a few minutes he had instant relief and felt better. Thank goodness!! I was really worried that I was going to have to find an urgent care facility in LA and I was hoping it would not come to that.
Now that we had succeeded in making DS feel better the realization that it was now 1:00 had us a bit hungry for some lunch. I knew exactly where to go too. We plugged the address into good ole portable GPS and headed for the Grove.




​

 

[petals]

Luvin your DD's hair do. Hope you managed to get something to help your DS with his ears as well. I always get bad pains in my ears landing on airplanes.. there's usually tears

 

[thornton0511]

Luvin your DD's hair do. Hope you managed to get something to help your DS with his ears as well. I always get bad pains in my ears landing on airplanes.. there's usually tears

Thank you! 2 things I always said I would do if I ever had a daughter and that is let her have long hair and know how to braid it! Plus her hair has some curl to it and can get out of control pretty fast so braids have become a blessing lol. Sorry to hear that you have an issue with planes and your ears. The fact that it makes you cry sounds awful. It was the weirdest thing though because my kiddos have flown enough times now and never have they had an issue with their ears. Of course we have always flown to Florida and CA was a first for us so I don't know if that makes a difference. I would think not but this was also the first time that to and from our destination almost all of our toiletry bottles in our checked bag exploded and that has never ever happened before. I talking shampoo, conditioner, and even toothpaste all over the place lol. Who knows.