Road Trip Catch-Up: Making tracks

June 20, 2018 | Stacy

We rose early on June 20 and started snaking our way back east and north through Southern California, Nevada, and lots and lots of Utah.

We took a quick zip through Las Vegas, with emphasis neither on the work quick, or zip. It had changed remarkably since my last visit 18 years ago, and it was every bit as congested as you can imagine. While I had thought it would be fun to show the kids the colossal hotels with vivid theming, we were all hard pressed to actually even see the monstrous hotels. Two decades ago, these resorts stood deep off the strip with lots of room take in the opulence. Now, the once-open spaces before the hotels were jam-packed with every business imaginable and entertained all the traffic that would go along with that.

We found some snacks near the north end of the old strip, filled up with gas, and moved on through the endless dessert.

You may not believe my van could actually move that quickly…

We finally arrived to the south west region of the Great Salt Lake, and found ourselves a Dickey’s BBQ Pit that had NOT run out of food.

We ate every morsel. Well, maybe not the nasty “ice cream” that they offer.

We checked into the Staybridge Suites with an indoor playground and made the most of it. The water was too cold, and the hot tub was too hot. The kids enjoyed it.

Road Trip Catch–Up: Last Day in Cali

June 19, 2018 | Stacy

June 19th, 2018
As mentioned before, our family somehow failed to see the great logic in adding a day to our 4-day Disney passes for only $10/person. (It’s still killing me two months later. Move on, Stacy; move on.)
So what exciting thing did we do instead?

If you guessed nothing, you’d be absolutely correct.
Wait – we did throw out food, pack clothes, and John took the six kids to see “The Incredibles” – which almost cost the same as adding a Disney day would have cost.
After they got home, we took one last run to Downtown Disney

I will certainly miss this California sky.

We ate lots of leftovers and headed to bed early.
All good things must come to an end.

Last Disney Day

June 18, 2018 | Stacy

Well –the title of the post gives it away, but when the day dawned, I thought it would be our second-to-last Disney day. This is not going to be an easy entry to type… but here goes.

I made a list of what we had not yet done at the two parks and it certainly seemed like we had enough room to spend two more days there.

Our morning routine was down to a science by now, and I no longer fretted about not being first in line for rope drop.

As a matter of fact, this morning they let us all in early, and had us queue up near the castle and did official rope drop from inside.

We were so well positioned we easily could have ridden Peter Pan again without a wait, except that the lead walker in our party Got Confused and –just like that- our window of opportunity shut and it remained a one-Pan-trip.

We broke into two groups, and my group hit up a number of Fantasyland rides without waits.

The girls and John ended up getting off Dumbo one ride cycle before Nan and I . And from the air I could see my family getting this cool interaction with Captain Hook. Katriel especially has a fascination with Captain Hook. Thankfully, John whipped out his phone and recorded this encounter.

We turned around to go over to Storybook Canal for another ride, when we saw this group out together. I have never experienced anything like this before. They stayed out and played for such a long time that WE ended up walking away before they did.

We rode the Casey Jr. Train (which was adorable – and LONG).

The view from the train was pretty. The park was still empty and had the fresh morning feel.

We did a few more rides in that area, and we met up again with Marie and headed over to queue for Moana. She is the only Disney princess we had never met before. There was some confusion after talking with a cast member and we were actually lined up in the wrong spot. We figured it out and headed to the proper spot, just around the corner. Three young women were already in line. They said that they had seen us where we’d been queuing and knew we’d been there before they arrived and offered us the head spots in line. Now – there were NO other people there, so it most definitely wasn’t necessary to insure that we’d meet Moana, but it was very kind. We ended up chatting with these three sisters from Northern California and before the princess ever arrived Katriel was hugging them like they were her new friends.

Moana was late. Like, by 10 minutes. She arrived in a bit of a rush, but fully in character. The girls liked her a lot.

We found the boys and headed over to DCA.

I honestly can’t say exactly what we did each bit of the day, but we chipped away at our list bit by bit. And the boys were definitely teeming with signs of having entered the “age of unbelief.”

By lunch time they were lobbying to NOT return the next day.

We rode Guardians a few more times, and John and the younger girls did Radiator Springs Racers again. We had some cool meet and greets with Marvel characters, and missed others in what would amount to my biggest regrets of the trip.

We watched the full Frozen show, which was outstanding, and the little girls enjoyed some of Bugs Land with Nan.

We did Turtle Talk with Crush, and visited Sorcerer’s Workshop.

Everyone but mom and Nan watched the first 15 minutes of The Incredibles 2 in the theater.

We had a neat (but time consuming) lunch where we ate from different restaurants on the Pacific Wharf section of the park. John spent almost an hour going back to the van to collect a wire for me to recharge my phone with.

We finally got to ride the Monsters, Inc. ride as a family.

Having gotten to see all three of the nighttime entertainment offerings, we’d decided as a family that the one we most wanted to enjoy again was Fantasmic. John had gotten us FastPasses in the morning, so we left DCA around dinner time having done a lot, but not having “done it all” and I will say there was an undercurrent of stress. Some people were in better moods than others and some people were showing more grace than others, and that’s all I’m going to say.

We went back to Disneyland for dinner and had another knock-it-out-of-the-park meal. This one was at Red Rose Taverne, and it was so good that Nigel quipped, “I’d come back here tomorrow just to eat this again.”

But – actually – this was the time of the night we had to decide if we were going to turn our four day tickets into five day tickets. The boys really didn’t want to come back, and Nan was tired. We opted not to turn them into five day tickets, and as I type this a full month later I can tell you I regret it as much now as I did a month ago. Three thousand miles away from home and we didn’t add a day. It was stupid.

We enjoyed Fantasmic one more time, as well as another ride or two.

And we headed to our van, saying Goodbye to Disneyland resort.

Father’s Day

June 17, 2018 | Stacy

Plan A for Father’s Day had included a drive to San Diego to attend services at Dr. David Jeremiah’s church, Shadow Mountain Community Church.

After experiencing driving in Southern California, John was not so sure he wanted to spend Father’s Day that way. Then, after the later-than-expected night last night, he was sure that was not our best plan.

Instead, we let people sleep a little, and we decided to visit San Juan Capistrano. We hoped to visit the mission there and explore the town a little. What we failed to realize was that there was an entrance fee to the mission. Oops. We were feeling a little spent out, so we instead just wandered around the town a bit and did some window shopping.

We stopped at a Walmart and bought a few sand toys and some things we needed for the house and then used a website that we’d found the other two beaches and located one not too far from where we were. Crescent Bay Beach was wonderful.

We parked on a little one-way side street near tiny homes that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Zillow tells me those <1,000 sq. ft. bungalows cost more than $1,000,000.

With a view like theirs, it might not be as overpriced as it sounds.

It had a tiny beach house with essentially no where to change, but we made do.

The waves were FEROCIOUS and the lifeguards on duty were working hard.

The little girls had none of it (which I was happy about) but they enjoyed the sand tremendously.

The waves would knock us down and push us around.

This next video is a must watch!

Now you see them

Now you don’t.

And they’d pop back up eventually.

I had one eat-the-sand moment myself, and every one of us had at least one bucket full of sand in our swim suits when we changed out!

It was the least busy of the beaches we’d visited, but still had maybe 100 people on it. See the homes up the hill?

We headed back to the house where I fed them something (sigh – I wish it hadn’t taken me so long to get to blogging…) and got to bed decently early.

Originally our plan was to have another quiet day on Monday and visit Disney again on Tuesday. We looked into it, and adding a fifth day at Disney was only $10 a person. So we decided to go to Disney Monday and decide during the day if we wanted to expand our tickets to Tuesday.

Disney’s California Adventure

June 17, 2018 | Stacy

I can’t even express how much I had looked forward to this day. Disney’s California Adventure opened in 2001, and it was the one US Disney Park I had never been too. In 2012 they underwent a major renovation and built Cars Land and I have wanted to visit it since I first heard about it. Two years ago they changed the Tower of Terror into a Guardians of the Galaxy-themed attraction, and as a new Marvel fan, I was super eager to try it out.

It was finally time.

The park opened considerably later today, so we did not have to be up at the break of dawn. Despite that, my kids still treated me to goofball faces as we boarded the tram.

As we entered the park I purchased MaxPass again for the day. We knew we wanted to start and end the day at Disney’s California Adventure (DCA), but expected to visit Disneyland mid-day to ride Indiana Jones (which was closed last week) and see a show called Mickey and the Magical Map.

Entering the park a few minutes before opening, they had groups queue in different sections. These three group were more or less (1) those headed for Radiator Springs Racers, (2) those headed for Guardians of the Galaxy – Mission: Breakout, and (3) those headed for Soarin’ Over the World.

We were in group 1.

and I grabbed a MaxPass for Guardians (GOTG).

Once they drop the Rope Drop rope, we ~~ran~~ walked with great efficiency to Cars Land and the much sought after Radiator Springs Racers. I took a few photos as we weaved our way to the attraction.

SEE all the people headed to the ride?

As we waited in line I took some screen shots from the app for the times of some of the entertainment we wanted to enjoy.

We were on the ride in 10 minutes, and by the time we were off the standby wait time was an anticipated 60 minutes. It is a seriously popular ride.

We rode once in the morning and once again in the early afternoon. These are photos from both the trips. The ride is often likened to Test Track in EPCOT. While I love Test Track, this ride is somewhat superior. Its theme is far more enthusiastic and immersive, and the ride has more flair.

See how empty the streets are now? Everyone is in line for one of the aforementioned big attractions (more or less).

We rode the other two rides in Radiator Springs

Mater’s Junkyard Jamboree

And Luigi’s Rollickin’ Roadsters.

This one was pretty cool b/c it has an underground magnetic track and the vehicles perform a “dance” over the ground.

We went over to the Monster’s Inc. ride to see if we could get onto that before our Guardian’s MaxPass slot was over, but the ride was shut down and we had to skip that for now.

We stopped off in the Avenger’s zone where characters would meet later in the day. We did not meet a few that we would have really liked to, but we met others.

It was finally time to help the Guardian’s break out. I’ve never been a fan of Hollywood Tower of Terror, but I wanted to give this a go because I like the intellectual property.

Nan took Katriel to the bathroom and for a snack as the rest of us headed into the ride.

We had MaxPasses for each of our rides, which is awesome, BUT it did keep us from experiencing a lot of the details that they load the line area with.

We enjoyed the details we did see.

I will joyfully report that I not only enjoyed this ride, but I loved it so much I rode it a total of 5 times in our two days there.

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Frankly – I would still be on that ride if I had the option.

You may see that John and Johanna only rode it once.

After the ride we hung around to watch the Dance Off. We didn’t get to meet Groot, but we watched him a while.

Who doesn’t like a cotton candy bigger than your head?

We met Loki.

And I confess that I didn’t have a strong touring plan for this place.

I made the mistake of settling us all in for FROZEN! Live at the Hyperion! not realizing it was a 60 minute show. We watched 20 minutes of it but then left to do other rides.

We quickly met Thor who was very much in character.

Then we headed over to Soarin’ which I had not ridden since 2011 because in 2016 it was closed for refurb when we were in EPCOT. It has been updated for the world, as opposed to just California. We all loved it.

We had lunch at Flo’s V8 Cafe, deciding to eat indoors because it was so chilly. We had to break into smaller tables.

We went and found where Judy and Nick would be meeting, and queued up to meet them. Then we went to ride the Little Mermaid ride.

I am sad that my camera was on “Stewart” manual setting and not “Mommy” automatic, so our fancy camera only took blurry shots.

I love Zootopia, so this is lame.

I don’t know where the boys were… they split up from us a bit more today.

We regrouped and headed over to DL for the Mickey and the Magical Map show. Our timing was hideous as we had to fight (and I mean FIGHT) the parade crowds to get where we needed to be. It was more than worth it as the show was spectacular. One thing that I loved about it was that a lot of the focus is on Pixar right now as it is currently Pixar Fest. This show was all about classic Disney and princesses. It was a mixed media presentation that was sometimes digital projection and sometimes live acted, and occasionally you would be so drawn into it you weren’t paying attention to which mode it was at that moment!

The older kids then went to ride Indiana Jones as Nan and I took the little girls to Toontown to see what we could see. We ended up meeting Goofy and Max.

I honestly don’t know all that we did for the next bit of time. I know it was chilly and we enjoyed another run on the most excellent Big Thunder Mountain Railroad.

We got the girls some ice cream despite the chill in the air.

We headed back to DCA and rode Guardians

and had major family member communication meltdown that resulted in us –
Not eating dinner before the night time entertainment
Not getting our preferred location for night time entertainment
Not leaving as early as we had hoped to

But I digress.

We passed our our Dollar Tree head gear for the Paint the Night Parade.

Katriel is her own person.

And this parade so seriously rocked. While I was getting a wee bit tired of Pixar during this Pixar Fest summer promotion, it was a really fun parade.

and not all Pixar…

The theme song, “When Can We Do This Again,” is actually sung by a Christian band, Owl City. Fun fact!

After the parade we scooted over to SmokeJumpers Barbeque for dinner. It was delicious – and very spicy. Not everyone could finish their meals.

And we did another run on Soarin’ because I had grabbed some MaxPasses at some point.

I did not take as many photos as I wish I would have, but I think that was because we were doing so much.

I’m sad that it has taken me so long to blog (I am not over a month behind) and some details are lost to history.

We headed home to bed, much later than we should have left if we had hoped to keep our Father’s Day plans. But it was a fun, full day that made dreams come true.

Hollywood Boulevard and Santa Monica Pier

June 16, 2018 | Stacy

To say we moved SLOWLY this morning would be an epic understatement. Laundry, dishes, and mid-vacation inertia made us very late to get out the door…

This may not have been as big a deal were we not entering into some of the worst traffic in the country.

We made it to Hollywood Boulevard and headed to the lot more or less under TCL Chinese Theater (once Mann’s).

We did not venture out to the Hollywood sign, but were satisfied to see it from a distance.

How apropos that the first star we saw was Mickey Mouse’s.

We walked for blocks in multiple directions, trying in vain to use phone-accessed websites for directions to the stars we most wanted to see. For the most part, only Nigel was on a quest to find some of his favorite stars from decades gone by.

Robin Williams

Harrison Ford

Sylvester Stallone

Tim Conway

Chris Pratt

Winnie the Pooh

Ron Howard

Rod Serling

Poor Gamora…

Samuel L. Jackson (do you see the Marvel theme???)

CHUCK NORRIS!

Stan Lee… NOW you see the Marvel theme. (The little girls know him from Big Hero 6.)

ELVIS!

Don Knotts.

Marie?

Snoopy

Someone named Nancy Kelly – so it was just funny.

Scarlett Johansson.

We could not locate Andy Griffith – Nigel’s favorite. By the time we had a command of the website we were using, we realized we had gotten extremely close at the far end of our walk, but turned back east before we’d hit it. Sad smile

We found a playground for lunch.

And headed to the Santa Monica Pier.

The Pier itself was a little dicey… but not super sketchy. Finding this sign was my main goal.

Some of the kids expressed their dislike for the idea of donning swimwear and going to the beach. The beach WAS fairly packed. The little girls and Tab were all over the idea, so Mama pushed it just a bit but donning her own suit.

Soon the others reluctantly put theirs on…

And no one regretted it.

We had such a nice time. As I mentioned, the beach was pretty crowded, but that didn’t make it unpleasant. Nan mostly stayed sand-side and the little girls made friends with some kids next to them. There was a lot of frolicking, and we stayed until after 4:30 P.M.

I made a terrible suggestion…. I thought it would be easy to just wear our suits back. It was only about 40 miles back to our house, where we could have changed properly…

Except – TRAFFIC.
No sooner did we start driving did my map app share the bad news.

When the driving gets tough, the tough get pizza.

We stopped at a neighborhood pool club and used their scummy bathrooms to change. Then we found a little neighborhood Pizza Hut in a tiny strip mall and the super nice employee, David, helped us find some great deals available when you order online, which I did from my phone.

We finally got back to our house around 7:30 PM.

Aquarium of the Pacific and Mother’s Beach

June 15, 2018February 3, 2019 | Stacy

As Thursday dawned we woke a lot less purposefully and took our time getting ready to go out. We did a little laundry, and then headed to Long Beach to the Aquarium of the Pacific.

It had a lot of renovations and an expansion going on, but it still offered us a lot to do.

The gentleman at the admissions window worked with John and I and his phone and computer to negotiate us the best possible rate and one that was significantly less than sticker price.

The kids touched rays and jellyfish and star fish and other things whose names elude me.

I would love to fill this blog page with lots of photos of our day there, but unfortunately, we took gobs and gobs of video and only a few photos! I have no idea how I will make a photo book, either!

We ate our lunch outside the aquarium and in view of the Long Beach cruise terminal.

We then headed about 10 miles away to Mother’s Beach, which is called that for it’s gently lapping water and fabulous playground.

With lifeguards on duty and no appreciable waves this beach on the inside coast of a tiny peninsula made for a great swim experience. Yes, it was a wee bit chilly. But the day was gloriously hot and sunny.

We headed back to the house, experiencing some of that unpleasant Southern California traffic, and enjoyed tacos at the house. We headed to Downtown Disney for a little shopping.

Disneyland–Day two

June 14, 2018 | Stacy

Sometimes you have so much fun, you don’t stop for photos.

We had a second day of getting up and out of the house early. Disneyland opened at 8AM, so we needed to get to the parking structure by 7:15AM.

Tab did her hair to look like Rey from Star Wars. She, John, and I also wore our Star Wars shirts.

The line to get in was already well formed by the time we got to the entrance (the plaza between the two parks is called the Esplande) and it wasn’t long before they admitted us and held us a little closer to the train overpass.

We did not buy MaxPass today. Even though we loved it Tuesday, we had decided prior to the trip that we would not use it our second day and compare our experiences. Also, most of the things we didn’t get to do Tuesday that we planned to do Wednesday weren’t FastPass ride.

We headed straight for Pirates of the Caribbean. We walked right on.
I do sort of wonder what they made their pirates look like BEFORE the movies.

Among all who have visited both parks, Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland comes in, hands-down, rated better than it’s companion ride at Disney World. This is because there are more drop (gentle ones) in the dark, and it has a longer story. I’m not much of a fan of Pirates, in general, but I did appreciate that this one had fun, unexpected drops.

John grabbed us FastPasses for the evening’s show of Fantasmic. Pulling a FastPass for an evening show does not affect your ability to pull fast passes for rides. They are considered “disconnected” from the rest of the system.

We headed over to Fantasyland and did Dumbo.

And then headed over to Tomorrowland Speedway.

Crowds were lighter than yesterday, so we rerode some of the favorites in Fantasyland.

Since we had again eaten breakfast super early, and it worked in our favor to have an early lunch yesterday, we did just that same thing again today.

We went to French Market in New Orleans Square.

Overall we felt that menus in DLR were exceptional. This venue especially had a lot to chose from.

We’d messed up our times to meet characters yesterday, so we headed over to Critter Country right after lunch to make sure we met Pooh and his Friends. We were the last family to get in to see them before they took a little break.

Every Butler kid has had a deep love for all things Pooh at one point or another. They are a special part of childhood in our house. More so than Mickey and Friends. We’ve met Pooh many times at WDW and enjoyed every opportunity. The set up here is so much nicer. I’d love to see this recreated at WDW.

Tigger had them all bouncing.

See Tigger in the background? He left just after he saw us.

I wish I had caught Katriel running to Pooh as she came around the corner and saw him.

Winnie the Pooh is Marie’s most favorite character. She had some alone pictures.

We spent a little time shopping before we went on Splash Mountain again. We had grabbed some paper fast passes earlier, I think.

We then sucked-it-up and got in line for Peter Pan. For reasons no one can explain, Peter Pan is a favorite at both parks. It is the main ride at DLR that people RUN to at rope drop and lines grow to a 30 minute wait within second of park opening. They climb to well over an hour at times, and rarely drop to under 30 minutes for the remainder of the day. I could skip it entirely. It isn’t a particularly special ride and I haven’t bothered with it on more than one occasion when we go to WDW. I could have eliminated it from our list entirely, except for the fact that Peter Pan is one of Katriel’s favorite movies (no other Butler claims this) and she is the five year old in the party and a sweet-heart, at that. We were glad to see it was only a 30-minute wait when we arrived and we were on the ride a few minutes before the 30-minute mark. And two-minutes later it was over.

We headed to Main Street for a bit.

We met Chip and Dale.

We turned around and saw a line forming across the way and…

And lo and behold, right behind us was Aurora.
While I do like the organization of character meets at WDW, I confess it is a lot of fun to randomly run into friends like this.

We took the train back over through Frontierland, and over to ToonTown so we could meet Mickey and Minnie.

We did visit Mickey’s house,

and got to meet him.

But Minnie’s line was oppressive and we left that for another day.

We split up a bit.

John, Nan, the little girls and I tried to see a show. I say tried because we queued, were seated, the introduction started, AND then the show was cancelled for technical difficulties. Phooey.

We enjoyed dinner at the same French Market we’d had lunch. I, personally, really like to try new places, but I was outvoted by the rest of the gang, who wanted to try some menu items they hadn’t tried at lunch.

We at least ate at a different spot. Smile

I really can’t tell you what we did the rest of the evening as we waited for Fantasmic to begin.

Around an hour before the show we went to the riverboat queue. The riverboat wasn’t there… that’s were the FastPass return line begins. About 30 minutes before the show, they ushered us in to the FastPass viewing area. We were instructed to sit down on the gently sloping walkway facing Tom Sawyer’s Island in the Rivers of America. (Only days later did I come to understand that we actually had gotten “upgraded” a bit to the spot that is reserved for people who purchase dining packages. They must not have sold out dining packages that day and as a result we had some of the best seats.)

The show started at 9, and it was then that I was utterly horrified that I had almost gone on a cruise this year instead of this amazing trip. Hand down this was THE best nighttime entertainment I had ever, ever, ever, ever seen. It surpassed the Disney Hollywood Studios version for so many reasons. Firstly, you are SO much closer; every piece of the projections on the water can be acutely discerned, and you feel like you are right there with Mickey as he battles his dreams. Secondly, it incorporates two boats, one of which is the Pirate ship and the actors aboard that ship steal the show. Thirdly, being THAT close, you can actually see the characters on the riverboat as they engage with the crowd. And LASTLY – THAT DRAGON! She is crazy good.

AND SO CLOSE! Pictures do not do it justice.
We got up FAST as it ended and hurried toward Main Street. If we had wanted to see the Together Forever fireworks again, we could have, but instead we hurried out to Esplande. They use exits behind the store fronts to divert traffic off main street. They do that at Magic Kingdom, as well.

It was another very full, and decidedly amazing day.

DISNEYLAND!!! day one

June 13, 2018 | Stacy

Oooooo – somewhere in the back of my mind I hoped to take my kids to Disneyland (in California) “someday.”

But it is more than twice as far from home as Disney WORLD (in Florida).

But I had looked into that drive more than once in the last dozen years or so, and when we decided to shelve our MSC cruise scheduled for June, the dream was kindled, “Could we drive to California THIS year?”

And that is how we ended up here.

I’ve been a message board participant since I first started using the internet and one of the sites that I have been consistently active with on and off is one dedicated to all things Disney. I tend to use these boards only when planning a trip, but sometimes will pop in to see what is new or try to answer another poster’s question. I started visiting the “Disneyland” section of DISboards in early February and was offered so much kind assistance in wrapping my head around all the things that make DisneyLAND different from DisneyWORLD.

One of the first things I learned was that Disneyland Resort (DLR) has a smaller tourist base than Walt Disney World (WDW) and a much, much larger local audience. There are thousands of people with annual passes who visit the parks with great regularity. So this means there isn’t so much good and bad times of the year to visit as much as there are better days and busier days.

Another thing that was important for us to grasp was the two parks that make up DLR, Disneyland (DL) and Disney’s California Adventure (DCA) are together about the same size as EPCOT in California, and they are literally right across a walkway from one another. With a Park-Hopper ticket you can enter and exit the two parks far more easily than you can hop from one WDW park to another. It takes just a few minutes.

Lastly, one thing that is different is that DLR only has three of its own hotels, and the park is set in a “neighborhood” surrounded by hotels and motels that are in walking distance to the gates.

Before our trip we purchased four day, park-hopper passes that included one Magic Morning. Magic Morning meant we could enter DL one morning one hour before it’s main gain opening. It is strongly advised to do that as early in your trip as possible and we did that on our first day.

Right here and now I am going to share that if I was given the choice tomorrow to take an all expenses trip to Disneyland or Walt Disney World for our family I would pick Disneyland without hesitation. There are a number of reasons for my preference that will likely come out as the blog days unfold, and I will summarize that at the end of the report.

I will start with one of the things I did NOT like about DLR.

In Florida, WDW is situation upon a bazillion acres of swampland. In California, DLR is wedged between blocks of city. Parking there takes place in a giant garage, and they are currently building a second giant garage. The garage only opens about 45 minutes before the park opens. That means no matter how early you wake up your family and get them out the door, you still have to wait for the garage to open, park, get through security and ride a tram before you can get to the turnstiles to queue up for the park’s opening. At WDW we are very often the FIRST people in line for the park.

This bothered me SO MUCH at first. SO much. I was flustered and stressed out by it.

It took me til our third day there to suddenly realize it hadn’t made the slightest bit of difference in what we were able to accomplish each day.

I’ve decided it doesn’t really bother me anymore.

This is a photo of the entrance to DCA. We were in line to enter DL.

SO – Day One of DLR.

Based on the message board advice, we planned on visit DL on Tuesday, June 12 and we arrived in time for the 7AM opening.

We didn’t get through the turnstiles until 7:12 A.M., and we headed directly back to Fantasyland.

Isn’t Sleeping Beauty’s castle adorable? It’s tiny, but seems more authentic than Cinderella’s castle in Magic Kingdom.

Kid wanted to go to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride first.

Fantasyland has a lot more rides in DL than in MK. The whole section has a far older feel than MK. Not in a dated and run down way. It just seems less glossy and bright. More rich and less vibrant. Like a cheesecake over a parfait. Not better, just different.

Next up was Pinocchio’s Daring Journey. As big Figaro fans, we enjoyed seeing him on the ride cars.

DLR has FastPasses that work like FP used to work at WDW. You take your tickets to the distribution center for the ride you would like a FP for. You get a slip of paper reminding you what your return time is for the ride. You can get a new FP after 2 hours have passed, OR when the ride time come up, which ever is shorter.

Earlier this year DLR launched MaxPass. MaxPass is essentially FastPass on the phone. It costs $10 per person per day and includes PhotoPass. MaxPass users are allowed to get new MaxPasses after 90 minutes have passed OR when the ride time comes up. You do not have to walk all the way to the ride’s distribution center. This is EXTREMELY helpful if you have park hopper tickets. You can pull a FastPass for the other park while you are touring in the first one.

We purchased MaxPass three of our four days at DLR. In total I spent $270 on this perk and it was wholeheartedly worth it.

At about 7:30 A.M. I pulled our first MaxPass for an 8:20AM ride on the Matterhorn.

We excitedly rode our way around Fantasyland, including Alice in Wonderland’s ride which pleased my Alice-loving crowd.

As much as I would love to offer a ride-by-ride breakdown of the whole morning, the truth is I can not remember. Using my cameras to recreate is hindered by the fact that the digital camera was set on EST…

At 8:20 AM Stewart and I both got alerts on our phones that we had a notification. It seems that Matterhorn Bobsleds was not running properly and our MaxPass converted to an “anytime/any ride” fast pass good for Disneyland (not DCA) for the rest of that operating day.

We were actually standing NEAR the Matterhorn at that moment and I looked up. Men were out standing on the tracks and looking around. I hedged a guess that they weren’t going to be running any time soon so I grabbed another MaxPass. (Yes – this one also turned into an anytime/any ride MaxPass as well. I did pull a third and this one stayed a pass for Matterhorn and was the one we used later in the day.)

I won’t try to explain my day step by step, but will try to explain a few things here and there. I did not take photos of EVERYTHING we did…

Storybook Land Canal Boats is another unique-to-DL attraction.

We were in the second boat of the day and the girls were invited to sit on the bow.
(We would have been the first boat of the day, but the first boat loaded with special needs guests who required a private vessel.)

This is not the best photo of Katriel, but it was the only shot inside Nemo’s Submarie Ride that I took. It was in the retro-fitted 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride and a lot of fun.

We went on It’s a Small World which is a Walt Disney original. He created this for the World’s Fair. It is so different that WDW. It incorporates many Disney characters in the scenes.

We headed into Toontown which was a lot of fun. We never explored every nook and cranny.

We rode the two rides in there, one about Roger Rabbit and one called Inspector’s Go Coaster.

We explored Donald’s Boat, Mickey’s house, Goofy’s house and bits of Minnie’s house. We never got to meet Minnie Mouse on this trip. I can’t believe it… it seems so wrong.

Pluto marked the first character we met on our trip.

Another thing that is different about DLR is there are far fewer places to Meet and Greet characters. BUT the characters walk freely around the park greeting people. They sometimes do stop and visit, but more often than not you have to walk along with them. Some will do autographs and some will not. Many do not even have character handlers. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different.

Some are unheard of in WDW…
I’ve never heard of anyone meeting the Evil Queen outside of Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party.

Mad Hatter’s Tea Party is open air, but still as nauseating… I stayed off.

This guy generated a crowd in a nano second!!!

We rode the Matternhorn and our group split up for a short bit while some rode Snow White’s Scary Adventure and some rode the Carrousel.

We had woke, and ate, so early that we decided to grab an early lunch. We ate a a burger and fries type place called Galactic Grill. The specialty burgers were delicious and I was tickled to have a choice between yogurt or fries.

We peeked around some stores and I think we may have done a Buzz Lightyear ride at this point seeing as I have this photo…. ??

We met Rey from Star Wars

And headed back toward the castle. Unlike Cinderella’s castle, this one has a large walk through exhibit. You start on the one side of the castle and walk up, over, and down through hallways and exit on the other side of the castle. There are windows/dioramas to peek into to see the story of Sleeping Beauty.

The group split up a little here.

We happened upon Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother.

She was very much in character and a hoot.

We had some time before the 3PM parade so we headed to Adventureland to ride the Jungle Cruise and Tarzan’s Treehouse.

We found spots for the parade across from the Matterhorn. They were in direct sunlight – and hot – but we also had no one viewing the parade directly across from us, so that meant the performers turned all their attention to our side.

We had some treats and I think we did a handful of other rides and attractions…

but I’m not so sure.

We used MaxPass throughout the day for Star Tours (twice) and our anytime/any ride ones for Space Mountain and Splash Mountain. We also rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, and had dinner at Hungry Bear.

Because of the winds and arid conditions in Southern California, fireworks can often be canceled. They were not cancelled at any time during our stay. But the conventional wisdom is to start scheduling time to watch the fireworks from your first day there. Don’t just keep them for your last night and then possibly lose the chance to see them.

We watched the fireworks from Main Street. Not only do they launch fireworks over the castle, but they also project images on the fronts of the buildings on main street.

We left when Fireworks were over, even though the park wasn’t closing. It was getting late and we were planning to come back in the morning.