Disneyland

Wow, what a great time we had! We arrived in Santa Ana without any problems. When we got to our hotel it had all kinds of construction barriers that we couldn't find the entrance. We actually had to call the front desk to let us in and even then we still couldn't figure it so we went in a back door. The room was nice and it had a fridge which I was happily surprised about. We noticed that we didn't have any hot water so we called the front desk about that.

The next day we had breakfast in the hotel and went to the gate to wait for it to open.

We got an early entry and headed straight for Nemo's Submarines. We went on a few more rides in Fantasyland and then I told the others to go to ahead of me while I get Fastpasses for everyone for Space Mountain. I went through Sleeping Beauty's castle and some employees were handing what looked like badges to everyone who passed them. When I got up to them they handed one to me and explained that it was a Fastpass to any of the rides (that have Fastpasses) at any time we wanted. Basically we could get to the front of the line whenever we wanted. Very cool. :)

It turned out to be a very light day because most the wait time for lines were only 5 to 10 minutes. We easily got in 30 rides that day.

I had mentioned in an earlier post that Grace and Adam were nervous about going on the "scary" rides. David and I could tell they were still apprehensive because they would walk a little slower then us and not excited. Each time they went on what they was going to be a terrifying ride they got off going "Oh, that wasn't so bad." Once they got through all the scary rides they were skipping a laughing the rest of the day. :)

Obviously they got over it.

Our walk home from the park to the hotel every evening because a bit of a tradition with stopping off at the 7-Eleven for some dessert. It just ended up being so convenient to have a convenient store there. :)

Friday was little bit more crowded, but not terrible. At the head of Main Street they had stage half assembled and cameras being set up on dollies. Apparently, they were setting up for the Christmas special they were going to be filming the next day.

We basically stayed on the same schedule as the day before. Saw the parade and all that jazz. I lost my SD card that had most of the pictures from the first two days on it, so I don't have many to show here.

On Saturday I got up earlier then everyone. Nobody wanted to go to the park yet so I went to the park for the early entry alone. (I was mostly going to see what exactly they were going to be filming).

They had the Jonas Brothers performing (don't worry I don't know who they are either) .

And Ryan Seacrest hosting.

Peter and Wendy had to patiently wait in the 85 degree sun in the back of the parade line.

So, I guess this will be airing on Christmas Day. Maybe we'll be on TV. :)

With the filming going on the lines for the rides were literally non-existent. I was able to get about 5 rides before meeting up with everyone. Since it was our last day we decided to just ride our favorites as many times as possible and get pictures in with the characters.

When we were winding down at California Adventure for the day we decided to go to the Tower of Terror one last time. David, Adam and I put all the slack we could on the seat belts, so when we fell we would get a better falling sensation. When we fell people would remain in their seats, but we ended up being about 2ft off our seats. This worked for about 2 falls and then right when we thought we were going for a third fall they stopped the ride. They pulled it into a the station and pointed at me and David to come with them. Busted. They gave us a warning and told us we could ride it still if we seat belted ourselves properly. Which we did. :)

We decided to head back to Disneyland and get a few more rides in. Our final one was Space Mountain which was still a 20 min wait with our Fast Pass. We went back to the hotel happy, but exhausted.

We got up the next morning and called a cab to come pick us up to go to church. We we got outside we had to wait a few minutes before we saw the cab pull in. We climbed inside and then another cab pulled in and started yelling at our taxi driver that he was stealing his fare. They went back and forth with a shouting match and the 2 cab driver even opened the door telling us to go with him. Excuse me? Even if he was our driver I would not have gone with him.

He kept insisting we were going to go to Los Angeles and we told him no we are just going 2 miles down the road. We finally convinced him an we were on our way.

After church we got back to the hotel and check out. During our stay there we had all kinds of issues due to the construction. We had no hot water when we got home at night, so we couldn't take a shower, but that wasn't nearly as bad as waking us up at 6:00am with noisy construction work. We complained to the Front Desk, asked for a different room away from the construction, but the were unable to comply. David talked with manager before we checked out and got us a full refund on our stay.

We got home without any event (except I realized I lost my SD card). Thus concludes our epic vacation to the Happiest Place on Earth.

Christmas here we come! :)