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View Full Version : Our Disneyland Trip: Day 1 May 16



angel8783
05-20-2007, 08:48 PM
Cast of Characters:
Me (Laura)-23 years old, LOVES the Disney parks. I went to Disney World in 1999 with my parents at the age of 15 and fell in love with the parks, the dining, and especially the planning. I have been back to Disney World 6 times since then, and have a trip planned for October of this year. I hate amusement parks, but Disney theme parks, now that’s another matter!! I am the master planner.

DH- 26 years old, also loves Disney and the parks, but his love doesn’t really show itself until we get there. He will tolerate my planning talk, but doesn’t really understand the thrill I get from planning. However, once we get there, he is happy as a clam and is as much of a Disney lover as I am. He is also slowly decorating his office with Disney stuff and Stitch has become his favorite character. (I think I am converting him, but keep that between you and me)


Day 1-May 16th
We woke up very early at 5:00am. We had an 8:25 flight out of Houston Hobby airport (which is 30 miles and on the opposite side of the city from us). We were flying out of that airport because that is the one Southwest flies out of in Houston. We parked at The Parking Spot (you know, the yellow busses with the black spots) because they were a decent price and the busses were easy to find. They took us to the airport and we jumped into the A boarding line after a quick breakfast at the Wendy’s in the airport. We got onto the plane and departed on time! The flight to California from Texas was great. It’s about 3 hours and 20 minutes long nonstop and then accounting for the two hour time change back, we landed about 9:45am in LA. We quickly got our luggage and jumped on the Enterprise rent-a-car shuttle. When we stepped out of the airport, we noticed the lack of humidity and how cold it was!! To our southeast Texas bones, it was chilly! We waited in a quick line and picked up our little silver Chevy Aveo with absolutely no bells and whistles, not even a CD player. It didn’t matter because we didn’t have CD’s anyways. My husband had to drive because I am not old enough to drive a rental car. We are from Houston, so we are familiar with freeway traffic in a big city and had no problem navigating ourselves to Anaheim. We got to our hotel very quickly and had checked in by 12:00 pm. We got into our room, changed some shoes and got our park things together and we were out the door and walking to Disneyland!!

Now, I have been to Disney World many times, and know a lot about it, and therefore, I also knew a lot about Disneyland before we went as I stored little nuggets of knowledge away. So, we entered the park and we admired the detail of main street in town square first. My DH reminded me of the light in the firehouse (because I had been educating him as well). We stopped to look around us and marveled that this park had opened in 1955 and Walt had actually gotten to walk around in its “finished” state. As we began to round the corner, I reminded my DH of the smaller but still charming castle. He looked at it and said “Wow, it is smaller”. I agreed but then we both decided that it was really wonderful!! Once we got to the hub I really understood how Disneyland has much less walkway and the space is much better utilized than in Florida. The entrances to Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland were so close together!! We were very hungry and I had a plan. DH loves corndogs and they have some great corndogs in DL, if you know where to find them. I located the Little Red Wagon and we got him a corndog. Then, we walked over to Adventureland and to Bengal Barbeque and got ourselves a Coke to share and I got two of the yummy skewers and breadsticks. After eating, we walked over to Indiana Jones with only a 15 minute wait. This was a fabulous ride! I have ridden Dinosaur in WDW several times and so I knew it was the same ride technology, but I liked this ride so much better! It is well done and my DH loved it because it is one of his favorite movies. The effects were very convincing and we walked off that ride more happy than ever to be in DL!

After our first ride, we headed over to Pirates of the Caribbean. This ride is so good in DL!!! I just can’t express how wonderful it is except to tell you that we rode it 3 times while we were there, and it might have been as many as 5 if it hadn’t been shut down twice while we were there. My DH and I still wonder if it was shut down because certain stars were in the parks that weekend due to a famous movie premier. Might they have been riding their own private ride? After exiting Pirates we wondered around New Orleans square a little bit. They had the bleachers set up for the big pirate premier that would take place on the day we were to leave so you could not really see the river. That was a little disappointing, but we lived with it. They had the traffic through that side of the park routed differently because the bleachers take up so much room. We really loved the detail in New Orleans square. We have not been to NO, but I believe that it must be a close replica to the real thing. We found Haunted Mansion and got into a short line. I really loved this attraction better here also. You do actually go downward in the stretching room and there were a few different things in this ride as I remember. Also the sound seemed in much better condition. We jumped off that ride and walked back to Adventureland to Jungle Cruise. This ride was good, the castmember was not the funniest I have had before, but then the guests we were riding with didn’t exactly help her either because they had little reaction. They are very funny in the line for this ride however. There becomes a point in time when you have to pick a side because they split the line in two and the castmember on the intercom system said something along the lines of “pick the shorter line if you want to wait less time, and pick the longer line if you have time to spare”. I heard other funny things coming from that ride intercom system when we would walk by it later in our trip. On our way out of Adventureland, we stopped at the Tiki Juice bar so I could get a Dole Whip. I really, really, loved how it didn’t melt right away the way they do in more humid Florida. I actually enjoyed a cold, non melted Dole Whip all the way to the end! We walked through Fantasyland and into Tomorrowland and went to Honey I Shrunk the Audience. I have seen this in Epcot as has DH. We both agreed it feels outdated to us and we do not like the mouse tails effect.

After this, we grabbed a spot on Main Street to wait for the parade. We had a long time to wait, so we shared a cookie from the Blue Ribbon Bakery. Finally about 7:20pm the parade made its way to Main Street. It was really wonderful! Not the best Disney parade, but really good. In DL they really focus on Walt and his “Welcome to this Happy Place speech” which is really inspirational, especially for a Disney fan like myself. The floats were great, the characters were very interactive and really awesome.

Note: The general castmembers in DL are not as into their job as the ones in WDW. They were friendly, but you easily remember that they are there doing their job. Also, the castmembers cycle through different rides and multi train for lots of jobs. At the end of the day, I saw Indiana Jones castmembers on Main Street helping with flow of traffic before the parade. In WDW I find that I hardly think about the castmembers as employees because they are so much in character.
However, the performers in DL are better to me because I imagine that performing in DL is another way to help some to stardom, or at least perform even if they never become a star.

After the parade, we left DL and jumped into our car to go to In and Out Burger for dinner. I had always wanted to go here and the burgers really are very good!! (and cheap). We bought t-shirts here as well. We were very cold at night and wanted some jackets, so we tried to find some at Target, but it is not jacket season I guess. We went back to our hotel tired and cold, but happy, and went to sleep!

ChipnDaleGal
05-21-2007, 06:03 AM
Since you have these reports in the Disneyland Trip forum I am going to close them out here.