~*~ Christmas in California ~*~
(My not-so-mini trip report......with pictures!!)
To get you in a California state of mind, I found a song that I heard at
Disneyland on
Youtube. This song, which is performed by the Cheetah Girls, is called "Christmas in California". It's pretty appropriate, don't you think?
Please click on the link below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z98FjhCDJSY
All right, now we're all ready to do this thing-- west-coast-style.
It'll be, like, totally cool! Let's start at the very beginning (it's a very good place to start).
My family and I had been wanting to go on a trip for a while. It has been a pretty rough year for all of us and we knew that we just needed some time to relax and have some fun. We considered several places for our trip destination and finally settled on California. Fortunately, we were able to find a great airfare deal. We decided to split our time between Los Angeles and San Francisco, spending most of our time in SanFran. We lived in California for several years and we were really excited to go back and see our old stomping grounds.
We flew into LAX last Thursday (December 18th). It was nighttime when we arrived, so you could see all the dazzling LA city lights from the plane. You could also see the bumper-to-bumper traffic on all the major freeways. Niiiiice. Yup, we were definitely in LA. When we got our luggage, we caught the shuttle to the rent-a-car place. While riding in the shuttle, we passed through the famous LAX welcome lights. It's really neat because they change colors constantly. They changed from blue to purple while we were riding past them in the shuttle. I kid you not! It was so cool!! Somebody must have known that a Unicorn had arrived in town.
I would have liked to have gotten a picture of the lights, but I didn't get a chance to. To make up for that, I decided to find a picture of the LAX lights on the web. (Just to make it clear, this is not my own picture.)
After we rented the car, we picked up some dinner and went to our hotel. The hotel had gorgeous Christmas decorations in the lobby. I took some pictures of them before we left. Here are a few of them.
The hotel was really nice and the lobby smelled like gingerbread.
Who could ask for anything more? We didn't want to leave, but, unfortunately, we had to. We only stayed there for one night. Since we were able to include Disneyland in our schedule, we drove down to Anaheim the next day, stopping at some of our favorite places in the South Bay area on the way. When we finally got to our hotel, we got some dinner at a nearby restaurant and settled in for the night. We wanted to get lots of rest so that we'd have enough energy to go around the park the next day.
For some reason, I had trouble sleeping that night. It's probably because I was so excited about going to Disneyland.
Unfortunately, I only got about 4 hours of sleep, so I prayed that God would give me strength to make it through the day. We planned to get to the park close to opening time (8 am) and we intended to stay for the whole day. Fortunately, we stayed at a hotel that was right across the street from Disneyland, so we could easily come back for an afternoon rest. When the alarm clock went off that morning, we got up, showered, dressed, and went to the breakfast area in the hotel. We were told that they had a very substantial continental breakfast. They lied. After taking one look at the corn flakes and dry pastries, we knew that we'd have to come up with a plan B for breakfast. We're originally from Hawaii; danishes and muffins don't cut it for us.
We wanted to have a nice, savory, filling breakfast, especially since we were going to have a long day at the park. At first we considered going to the McDonalds down the street, but then we thought, "We're at Disneyland. We should have breakfast in the park!" We had never eaten breakfast at Disneyland, so we figured this would be a great experience, even though it would cut into our park time. So, off we went!
My very first Disneyland picture of the day was of the Disneyland sign. Pretty appropriate, don't you think?
Here's a picture of the Christmas tree on Main Street.
After taking in all the sights on Main Street, we headed straight for the Carnation Cafe. We've never eaten there before and we were looking forward to trying it. I forgot to take a picture of the outside, so I "borrowed" a picture of it. I repeat, this is NOT my own picture.
Fortunately, we were able to get a table really quickly. There were quite a few good breakfast choices on the menu, but we all decided to get the same thing -- the Oscar special with a glass of orange juice. Fortunately, I remembered get a picture of our food like a proper DISer should. (We DISers are a crazy bunch, aren't we? I feel so sorry for our families that have to put up with our insanity.
) I whipped out my camera and took pictures of a couple of the plates as quickly as I could. Since we had already started eating before I remembered my DISer duties, I had do some food styling.
The Oscar special (with bacon)
The Oscar special (with sausage)
Orange juice with a lovely carnation on the side.
We all really enjoyed our breakfast. I highly recommend the Carnation Cafe. We saw that someone at another table had ordered cinnamon roll french toast. It looked soooo good! I think I may have to try that on another DL trip. When we got up to go, we saw a long line of people waiting to get a seat at the Carnation Cafe.
We were so lucky to have been able to walk in and get a table so quickly.
Properly fueled with a hearty breakfast, we were ready for some rides! Which ride did we go on first? Well, you'll have to wait till tomorrow to read the rest of the story. Yeah, that's right! I'm leaving ya hanging!
I did say that this was a "not-so-mini trip report".
Hee hee! Cruel, aren't I? Seriously, it's getting pretty late and I've got to get to bed. Tune in tomorrow to read about the rest of our day at Disneyland. This is Tiggerfan1 wishing you Dole Whip wishes and Mickey bar dreams.
Good night!
Well, at least you've get to hang out on the DIS!
That would be amazing if we really could do that. Virtual Unicorn parties are cool, but real parties are better (especially if you can invite real, live hot guys instead of just having pictures of them 
Just in time for New Year's! 
) Ta ta for now!
That's interesting that you heard that POTC was longer at DL. Personally, I've never noticed the difference in length. All I know is that there is an extra drop in Disneyland's POTC, so watch out! You've been warned!! 
