The Long and Winding Road....

[splash5]

Cast of Characters

Myself (43) Disney Fanatic (been to the park over 100 times since age 1)
DH (42) Disney Fanatic by marriage
DS (14) Born and raised Disney Lover

This trip was planned very quickly. The idea was conceived on a walk that my DH and myself took one evening. It started with a brief mention that I would love to sneak away to Disneyland for a quick trip before school starts. (I work at a school, so I have the summer off, as does DS). We also bought annual passes in May because we planned to return for Spring Break 2009.

DH surprised me when he said- If you would be willing to cancel the plans for Great Wolf Lodge (1 night ressie we had made), then I would be in to going to Disneyland. We also decided to make it a surprise for DS. So, I made a quick check on the internet to see if we could cancel without a big fee and we could. Then I launched into the airfare aspect (flights were spendy, as we were only planning about 3 weeks out) That's when DH drops the bomb.....(suspenseful music plays in the background) "We could always drive down......" I chime in with "It's a 17 hour drive - ugh" The idea takes root.

I keep checking airfare, while DH keeps talking about driving. Finally, I am convinced (DH tells me it will be an adventure...)

All of the plans fall into place and I am having a hard time holding off on telling DS. As the plans are to tell him the night before we leave- something along the lines of...."Well we better start packing......" "Packing for what?" "We are leaving tomorrow to go to Disneyland!" "Oh, and we are driving...."

I was worried that he would be all grumpy about driving (we are hitting the teenage stage of grouchiness.)

Somehow, I managed to hold out. While I snuck away to make phone calls to DLH (scored the AP7 rate), and drove myself crazy on the boards....

So, it was finally here. The day had arrived. DS heads out to his friends house for the evening (I was afraid he would call and ask to spend the night). He came home around 8:30 and we sprung the news.....


Tune in later for the next installment

 

[heatherleigh]

I'm looking forward to reading the rest. I can't wait to find out what his reaction was!

 

[reyasmommy]

Can't wait to hear more!!

 

[splash5]

And so it begins.....


When we left off, we were on the verge of telling DS (14) that we are leaving in the morning for Disneyland..

It goes something like this.....

Zac walks in the door from his friends house at 8:30 pm - I say "Well, we better start packing!" He picks up the comment in a way that only a teenager who filters out the important parts of a conversation can and says "Packing for what?" DH says, "We are leaving early in the morning" (this is anything before 10:00 am for a teenager- in reality it turned out to be 8:30 am) DS says (predictably) "Leaving for where?" Both DH and I respond "We are going to Disneyland"

Pause for effect...... Waiting for DS's reaction to the exciting news that I have been holding onto for 3 weeks.

DS responds (wait for it....) "OK" (Wait, this is his reaction to such exciting news?) Oh, I've forgotten (for a teen boy, this translates to "Oh my god, I am so excited by this that I can't believe it!!" However, being a teenage boy, he is too cool to give me the satisfaction of freaking out over the news. (this is another aspect of the teen years, never give mom the reaction she wants...)

He does however, race to his room to begin packing. He isn't even grumpy about the drive. Go figure.

I finally feel like I can take a deep breath again. Who knew keeping a secret from someone could feel so exhausting.

So, we packed up our stuff (DH and I had a head start as we packed while DS was at his friends house). I always take forever to pack as I can never decide what to wear, how much to take, etc...

That night, it wasn't easy sleeping, but somehow we managed to make it to the morning. We had planned to leave around 8:00, but actually left about 8:30. That was the good thing about driving as opposed to flying - we were on our own time schedule (we could stop anywhere or do anything we wished).

That first day took us into 3 states. We live in Washington and are only about an hour away from the Oregon border. We crossed into Oregon and continued to Cottage Grove (about 4 hours) where we stopped for lunch. The original plan was to grab food and keep driving, but the boys decided on KFC. Since I was driving, I didn't think it would be very easy to eat mashed potatos and gravy, coleslaw and chicken while driving (so we ate in the parking lot) Lunch was about $16 for the 3 of us.

A couple of hours later, we were driving through the Rogue Valley (Central Point- where DH and I grew up) It is near Medford, OR if that makes it clearer for anyone. I always get nostalgic here, but we buzzed by it on the freeway and continued on.

Once we got past Ashland (where we stopped for gas) and into the Siskiyous, there was a lot of smoke from some forest fires near there (so that was a bit of a gross smell for awhile until we got into the Redding, CA area.

We stopped at a rest area down in CA somewhere, can't remember, and got out to stretch, then back to the car. I should mention that our goal was to get to Stockton (about 11 hours down the road the first day).

We were driving by Sacramento and saw an exit with an In and Out burger, Panda Express (DS's fav) and some other restaurants (It was right by the ARCO Arena) and decided to get some food. At this point we were only about an hour away from Stockton.

DH and I got In and Out Burger $7, and DS got Panda Express $7 (cheap eats the first day). We ate in the parking lot again. Did I mention that it was in the mid 80's? Weather was getting warmer.

I have been driving the whole day, I can't believe I did that (but I'm starting to get tired now). We head out for Stockton. We get off at he exit where we stayed last time we drove (about 7 years ago), it's either March or Marsh? Anyway, the hotels look a little creepy and rundown. We spend a little time cruising the road to see if we find anything nicer. We had already said that we didn't want to stay in a Motel 6, but wanted something a bit nicer. No luck here, I guess it is back to the freeway.

Now I'm really tired and I'm thinking "I don't care how much we have to pay, I want a nice room!" (getting a little slap happy here now.)

We drive a bit more and start seeing signs for a couple of motels at the Louise St. exit. We take this one and see a Best Western (it had a really cool fountain out front of it) and a Hampton Inn and Suites. DS votes for the the Best Western, but it is farther down the road, so I pull into the Hampton.

I run in to check on the room rates and availability. Double queen room, premium bedding, and free continental breakfast in the morning with AAA rate was $94, so I jumped on it and we lugged our stuff inside. We watched some of the Olympics and conked out...


Up next......Welcome to Anaheim!!!!

 

[heatherleigh]

This sounds like how our drive goes. We drive about the same distance (maybe slightly shorter) on our trips to DL. I never reserve a hotel in advance (the one we have to stay at on the way) because we never know how far we're going to go.

We had a terrible time last year when we drove to Kingman, and there were no hotels available. By pure luck, we happened to get a Hampton Inn room at 2A. The hotel clerk told us that all the hotels there are booked up every single night because it's a thoroughfare for truckers. This time, I may reserve a place in Flagstaff just to be safe. You never know how tired you'll be or how far you'll wind up going though!

"That was the good thing about driving as opposed to flying - we were on our own time schedule (we could stop anywhere or do anything we wished)."

This is one of the best things about driving!!

 

[PirateFish989]

DS responds (wait for it....) "OK" (Wait, this is his reaction to such exciting news?) Oh, I've forgotten (for a teen boy, this translates to "Oh my god, I am so excited by this that I can't believe it!!" However, being a teenage boy, he is too cool to give me the satisfaction of freaking out over the news. (this is another aspect of the teen years, never give mom the reaction she wants...)

My brother is 14 and this is basically a perfect imitation of what they are like. Silly teenage boys.

At this point we were only about an hour away from Stockton.

Did I mention that it was in the mid 80's? Weather was getting warmer.

This made me laugh because mid 80's in the Central San Juaquin Valley (I live about 3 hours south of Stockton) is like a cold day in the summer. You were lucky it was that cool! We beg and plead and do the cool-weather dance daily to the weather gods to get a day like that.

I can't wait to read more! I'm having major Disney withdrawls and have to live vicariously though other people who go to Disneyland to get my fix.

 

[splash5]

PirateFish989, I'm sure the heat thing is funny (we had come from upper 50's to low 60's) I admit, I have become a bit of a baby over the heat.


Day 2 of the Adventure begins.....

We got up the next morning around 7:30 or 8:00 and started getting ready. We went downstairs to partake of the free breakfast offerings. The hot entree was biscuits and gravy (didn't have that). We hit the danishes, fruit, yogurt and english muffins. It was something to get the day started. Afterwards, we packed it up and headed out.

I knew the car was pretty low on gas, but it was kind of expensive there and we decided to go farther. Little did we know that this area is a bit unpopulated. So we drive and I keep worrying about running out of gas before reaching civilization (we didn't though). We ended up stopping at Shell in the middle of nowhere (I think the gas was around the same price as where we had been), I was just glad to fill up again (note to self- don't let the car get below 1/4 tank). Picked up some ding dongs, zingers and candy bars and left after spending about $73 (gas included)- we have a minivan.

We are on our way now, not knowing how far it is (guessing at around 5 1/2 hours or so.

The heat begins climbing into the upper 90's. When we stop for lunch (right before the grapevine) it is about 104. We hit an area with lots of restaurants and ended up at the Panda Express again (love the orange chicken and DS loves this restaurant).

We begin up the Grapevine and note the sign that says to turn off AC so the car doesn't overheat. On the side of the road are cars that are overheated. We turned it off at first, but then put it back on and watched the engine heat. We never went above the 1/2 mark between hot and cold. So we kept air on most of the way. We hit a little traffic here, but not too bad.

Smooth sailing into Anaheim, except about 15 minutes from our destination there was a major slow down. A few minutes later, we realized it was from everyone rubber necking at an accident in the Northbound lanes.

We ended up at the DLH at about 3:00 (check-in time). I told the desk clerk we were celebrating our Anniversary (22 years) and was there any possibility of an upgrade? We had paid for standard view. He upgraded us to pool view on the 4th floor. We were in the main building (Magic) - I wouldn't recommend it. The room was smaller than those we have had in the other two towers. Also, it was more worn and beat up. We had some other issues with the room, (sheets with holes in them, ripped on the sides, many big smears of handprints on the sliding glass doors, mold in the shower, and dirt behind the toilet in the grooves of the tile) I kept thinking that housekeeping would take care of it, but they didn't and I never thought of calling the front desk to ask for another room (naive, I guess). Sadly, when I did call the hotel to complain after we had come home, they said they were sorry and we should have said something when we were there. Not a very good way to treat customers.

Despite the room issues, we did have a good vacation.

We headed into downtown disney for dinner and ended up at Naples. I had a great pizza margherita, the boys had raviolis and a chicken dish. DS said the Raviolis were good, but the portion wasn't very large. I also got a piece of Tiramisu.

We decided to avoid the parks that night and get a good nights sleep to hit the ground running the next day.

We had a really good view of people walking to the parks and the activity at the pool.

It's hot, but we're here!!!!

Tune in for first day in the parks........

 

[splash5]

Coming Soon.....

 

[splash5]

A quick backtrack first, we did go into the parks on the first night. We had purchased our annual passes on line and decided to go the park to check out how long the AP redemption line was. It wasn't long and we were able to have our pictures taken and get our passes - woo-hoo!!

First Day in the Parks

I think that we arrived around park opening that day and headed for Fantasy Land to ride Peter Pan (one of our favorites)- when we got there, wait time was already about 10-15 minutes. We also hit Mr. Toad and the Matterhorn (nicknamed the Splatterhorn by our family) then headed for Adventureland where we got fastpasses for Indy and Splash and rode Haunted and Pirates.

Then we headed over to check the wait times on Big Thunder. I decided to stop at the restroom in the tunnel by Rancho Del Zocala (sp?). (I tell you about the bathroom break for a reason so please stay with me dear reader) When I entered the tunnel, there was the dream team handing out dream fastpasses (I told them there were 2 others in my group and they said they had to be there to receive them) so I ran out and got the boys and wah-la we are sporting Dream Fastpasses (we didn't need to use them this day because it wasn't that crowded). Nice way to start the morning.

We did Big Thunder, Indy, Splash and hoped the train at New Orleans station to ride over to Tomorrowland. While there we rode Buzz and the guys got FP's for Space Mountain (I can't do that one, it makes me feel really off balance and sick - not the ideal way to experience DL). We also hit ToonTown to ride Roger Rabbit.

Details blur for me now as we are about a month away from when we took the trip. Suffice it to say, we did all the rides we wanted until around 2:00 when it got hot and crowded. We did manage to grab a bite at Bengal BBQ. We really went through the water on this trip, let me tell you!!

We decided to go back to the hotel for swim and rest. DS had a headache so we ended up staying in the room that day. I fell asleep for awhile and we read and watched some TV.

Around 6:00 we were back in the parks. I finally got the boys to do the full circle train ride (I like the train- I think it is something from my childhood days). We still had some fastpasses from earlier and used them (I think Splash our 2nd one for that- blame me, it's my fav!!!) We stayed in the parks until around 9:00 I think as we wanted to get up to do early entry the next day at 7:00.

So it's back to the hotel. I believe we took the monorail back to DTD that night. It was the new Red one. Back to the hotel full of Disney magic!!!

Coming Soon EE