TheMaxRebo
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2008
- Messages
- 27,672
Chapter 1: Introduction
Welcome everyone!
As the title of this trip report suggests, this trip was the first for our family to the original park – the one Walt built and walked in, but we are veterans of Walt Disney World.
We just got back from a week in California and was anxious to get this trip report started. We had a great time – though not without a few hiccups. I did consider some other titles, including:
- There has to be an easier way to travel with 3 car seats
- Riding luggage is a new Olympic sport
- All aboard the suitcase express!
- We have double brunch coming up today and you are currently eating cookies? This really is vacation!
- This place is dangerous – there are too many things I want to drink!
- Well, at least one of our kids is fine, physically speaking
- If this is a crowd level 4 I don't what to see what a 10 looks like!
Speaking of the pre-trip report, it can be found here if you want to read up on how this trip came to be and how the planning went for someone used to booking a Walt Disney World Trip (i.e., I was ready with my spreadsheets way earlier than dining booking at Disneyland opened up).
Below are the details of the trip and a brief background as to how it came to be for those that don't wish to read the entire pre-trip report:
Dates: October 10-17 (with a day on either end for travel to the in-laws)
Locations:
- Part 1: San Diego (Oct 10-13) – staying at Embassy Suites in La Jolla (which, for the record, is pronounced La Hoya, not La Joe-la .... we had to go to Youtube to confirm that)
- Part 2: Disneyland (Oct 13-17) – staying at Howard Johnson Anaheim Hotel and Water Playground
Reason for trip/how it came to be:
We typically do a trip to Walt Disney World every other year but wound up doing one in back-to back years (actually within about 10 months) and so Judi (my wife, you'll meet her in a future post) though maybe it was time for a break from there. But I then found a loop-hole: Disneyland isn't in Disney World! Plus, I included that we could spend a few days in San Diego to meet one of her friends, and she was in! (To be honest, didn't really take much convincing)
So that, plus the 60th anniversary events had me intrigued - I was pretty well sold when Kevin on the DIS Unplugged Podcast commented "If you were ever thinking of visiting Disneyland, this is the year to do it!"
So now that we had "where" we were going, we needed to determine when. I do all I can to avoid the high crowd levels so given that, summer was pretty much out. In the past we have gone to Walt Disney World in October around Columbus Day which has worked out well as weather is a bit cooler, crowds are a bit lower, and it is Food & Wine Festival season. Now, Disneyland doesn't have F&WF, but figured the first two still applied, so we went with that.
One hesitation I had was that this would require taking Olivia (you'll also meet her soon) out of school. She is in first grade and while not junior year of high school or anything, is still our first time taking one of our children our of "real school" and I wasn't sure how her teacher would react. Fortunately she was totally on board and basically said that Olivia is doing great and to have fun. (side note, She didn't give us any work to have Olivia to do while we were gone, but Olivia now has extra work to make up now that she is back – but still not too bad)
I will cover details and reviews of the hotels selected and other details as we get to them, but I think this covers most of the basics about the trip. So if you enjoy fun family fun with lots of food and drinks and characters and animated gifs – then I encourage you to read on!
Or, as Walt would say: "To all who come to this happy place: Welcome."
TTFN
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Wow! 
