Did I mention that our hotel had a free breakfast buffet?
It was very convenient. And FREE.
It was Day#3 of park touring and everyone was still in one piece and healthy.
Crazy. I know.
Although, I think everyone was tired.
Mikey spaced out just a tad at breakfast.
We brought Katie mini-chocolate gluten free muffins to eat for breakfast.
She is NOT a breakfast eater.
She barely got through one muffin each day.
I could've eaten them all in one setting.
When we got back home, we actually used the muffins to make "brownie muffin sundaes".
They were that good.
With no specific plans for this day, besides a dinner at Café Orleans, we put our park hopper to use.
We hit Disneyland first.
The people in charge finally realized the sheer amount of people at the parks and had lengthened park hours. It was going to be loooooong day.
Pirates of the Caribbean.
Huzbend's favorite.
Notice the semi-smile.
DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES
Mikey recently started reading Pirates of the Caribbean books and had watched some of the movies.
He was very excited to see Jack Sparrow.
ARRRRRRRRRRRRR.
A pirates life for Mikey.
A quick stop for an early morning Dole Whip float.
Disneyland does 'em right with a drink umbrella and a cherry.
The kids got the float-less version.
I was nice and let Huzbend taste a bit of mine.
Just a bit though.
Fastpass - Star Tours!
Yes.
My family is the one that puts on their 3D glasses before even entering the ride.
NERD ALERT!
None of us has ever been the Rebel spy.
We bounced it over to California Adventure for another ride on Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission BREAKOUT.
Before we got in line, we watched a show with Starlord, Gamora and Groot.
Everyone danced.
It was fun.
Katie fell in love with Astro-Doggie, Cosmo.
He wags his tail.
Went in a different direction this time and ended up seeing the old Abominable Snow Man/Yeti they took out of the Matterhorn.
He's there on the left.
Mikey was super mad that the ladies in front put their hands up and you couldn't see him in the picture.
Like, Rocket mad.
No, we did not ride Grizzly River Run again.
I just love this giant grizzly bear.
His sweater lights up at night and this year, they put a hat on him.
I caught Katie mid-sneeze in this picture.
Today was chillier and breezier than the past couple of days.
It was quite cloudy, as you can see. We missed the Cali sun.
We did ride California Screamin' one more time.
The next time we come back to Disneyland, this ride with have a completely different theme.
The kids were happy to learn that the ride would stay exactly the same.
We stopped back in at the Redwood Creek Challenge trail.
The kids ran around for, like, an hour while I went and got myself some bread pudding and a juiced-up egg nog to share with Huzbend.
That egg nog was POTENT!
We ate some lunch (some not-to-spectacular burgers) and then rode Soarin'.
While over in that area, we spotted one of the elusive Disneyland Cats.
You can look them up.
Disneyland allows feral cats to roam the parks.
They keep the rodent problems down.
Say hi to Francisco, one of the more famous cats.
Stopped in at the Disney Animation building.
This was no surprise....
The kids made their own animations.
Jungle Cruise had almost no line when we headed back over to Disneyland at about 4pm.
We had some time before our Fastpass return for Indiana Jones, so Huzbend parked it at a table and I went with the kids up Tarzan's Treehouse.
The Indiana Jones line took longer than expected and we were almost late for dinner.
Again.
Here's Mikey running to catch up to Huzbend exiting out of Indiana Jones after the ride.
Café Orleans is known for three things:
- pommes frites
- a giant monte cristo sandwich
and
- Mickey Mouse shaped beignets
I ate all three.
So proud of myself.
Huzbend was feeling like he was coming down with something.
His throat hurt.
So, we took it easy and decided to take a train ride.
Good thing we did, it rained a bit while we were on the train.
Because of the rain, the chilly temps and the fact that the fireworks were cancelled due to high altitude winds (this happens frequently), when we got off the train it seemed that most people had left the park.
It wasn't a ghost town, but you could definitely tell a lot of people had left.
We ended up doing a lot of rides a second time (Jungle Cruise, Pirates, Big Thunder, Haunted Mansion, etc.) and took some time at the 'ole shooting arcade.
We also were able to check off one more thing on the To-Do list....
It's a Small World at night.
Beautiful, isn't it?
Every 15 minutes, during the holiday season, It's a Small World has a cute 5 minute projection show on the façade of the ride.
Hugs keep you warm while you wait for projection shows.
See? Empty.
Okay, so it was chilly and it was about 10pm at night.....but still.
We had been shoulder to shoulder with people pretty much the whole trip.
It was weird how a little drizzle cleared them all out.
We headed over to the Buzz Lightyear ride, where Huzbend handily kicked the crap out of me.
He always wins Buzz Lightyear.
I could not for the life of me get a decent picture of the kids in front of the castle.
And, I was not going to stand in the HUGE line for the Photopass people.
This is the best I could do.
It was a lot easier to take a picture sans kids.
Here's the front, looking up from the drawbridge....
...and here's the back.
We had one more thing on our To-Do list.
A ride that I don't think my kids have ever ridden because the line is always insanely long.
Peter Pan's Flight.
Although it was 10:30pm in a lightly populated park, it was STILL a 40 minute wait.
We got on it right before 11pm.
Our last ride of the night and the last ride of our trip.
When we exited the ride, the park was officially closed.
Everyone was making their way towards the front gates.
We played around with Excalibur a bit before we turned to go.
Mikey was determined to take the sword home with him.
Didn't happen.
Katie humored me with a try at the sword as well.
I wanted to stop and get a sweatshirt or something before we left.
Huzbend and Katie decided to wait outside on a bench.
We found them huddling for warmth.
Mikey was ready and raring to go, but the park was closed.
Bummer.
Katie and Huzbend were ready to go.
Time to go back to the hotel.
We shut Disneyland down!
The next day was check out day.
Boo-hoo.
We let the kids swim it up as we had some time before we had to head to the airport.
It doesn't look it from the pictures, but it was really breezy.
Eventually, we had to pull them out.
Now it's easy to tell that they're cold.
We said goodbye to Disneyland and headed back north.
The flight was unexceptional and soon we were back home.
Some friends who were "x-mas tree" sitting our house left this nice surprise for us.
Another great trip in the books.
Although I'm always up for Disneyland, it felt good to be home.
