"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Disneyland proudly presents: my spectacular trip report

[OhioStateBuckeye]

Hello!!

If you didn't know, my trip report title is the beginning of this little gem:

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Disneyland proudly presents our spectacular festival pageant of nighttime magic and imagination. In thousands of sparkling lights, and electro-synthe-magnetic musical sounds: the Main Street Electrical Parade!"

I love love love the Electrical Parade. I'm sorry that it is not at DL anymore, but I have been able to watch it at WDW so I'm still happy.

I think I love the parade so much because it has most of my favorite things: Disney, nighttime, lights and music that sounds like it belongs on an old school Nintendo video game.

All right, lets get down to details.

I'm going to post a picture from WDW, but I want to open with this picture because I think it will give you, the reader, an adequate warning of what your about to get into.



We are the two in the back.

All right, everyone has been sufficiently warned.

If your still here, did you skip over the picture? Just kidding. Anyway, I am Rachel and the guy with me is my long suffering boyfriend Brian. We have been to WDW a lot of times, more than I'll admit, and we've been to DL I believe 3 times now (with this trip being our 4th).

Even though I could stay at DL for an entire vacation, Brian likes to get out and explore California. After seeing some of the places we've traveled, I have to agree with him. So far our trips to DL have included Hollywood, San Diego, Joshua Tree, Anza Borrego, a drive up the coast to San Francisco, Yosemite and many more! They are all in my old trip reports that I have linked to my signature.

Here's the plan for this trip:

January 11 Sunday- Wednesday 21.

The reason behind the whole trip was to run the inaugural Star Wars Half Marathon! I am a huge Star Wars nerd, and we had both ran the WDW Tower of Terror 10 mile race for 3 years, so it only made sense that this would be our first half marathon. We plan on getting the coast to coast medal if we are able to sign up for WDW's Wine and Dine half for November of this year.

Originally we were going to arrive on Tuesday, but DL decided to shut down half it's rides on Monday (I'm really not kidding) so we tacked on a few extra days. Brian's mom and sister would be joining us on Tuesday night.

This was my itinerary:

Sunday 11: arrive early morning and go to the parks until they closed, then drive a few hours towards our next destination

Monday 12: complete our drive to Death Valley! Then spend the day hiking and exploring

Tuesday 13: Death Valley, leaving late at night to meet up with Brian's family at DL

Wednesday 14: park day

Thursday 15: the Star Wars expo and parks all day

Friday 16: parks day

Saturday 17: day off to rest up for the half

Sunday 18: SW half very early in the morning, rest of the day off

Monday 19: day off from parks

Tuesday 20: parks day

Wednesday 21: sleep in and head back home

You might have noticed that we had a lot of down days. We really couldn't afford DL APs, so we were stuck with the 5 day tickets Brian's mom and sister (Stephanie) got the premier passes since they'd be coming back to DL to run the Tinkerbell half and would be traveling to the WDW Wine and Dine, so they got to go every day. I was pretty jealous.

Anyway, I know this opening has been picture light, I am working on getting Day 1 uploaded to photobucket so there will be plenty of pics to come.

Let me leave you with these Disney inspired running quotes so we can all get in the mood for my half marathon:


One jump ahead of the hoofbeats (Vandal!)
One hop ahead of the hump (Streetrat!)
One trick ahead of disaster (Scandal!)
They're quick, but I'm much faster (Take that!)
Here goes, better throw my hand in
Wish me happy landin'
All I gotta do is jump

-Aladdin, that street rat knows a thing or 2 about out running the law

I am on my way - I can go the distance!
I don't care how far - Somehow I'll be strong
I know every mile will be worth my while
I would go most anywhere to find where I belong

-Herc, he really knows how to go from zero to hero so I try to listen to his advice

Well here I come, and I'm so not scared
Got my pedal to the metal, got my hands in the air
Look out, you take your blinders off
Everybody's lookin' for a way to get real gone
Real gone
Real gone
Real gone
Real gone

-Lightning McQueen knows how to chew up the pavement (haha, get it? in car racing and in tearing up the road)


Anyone know any other Disney running songs/quotes?

 

[Woodskeeper]

I always quite enjoy starting a run to "Make a Man Out of You". Who doesn't want to start to "Let's get down to business..."?

Also, "Almost There" from Princess and the Frog.

Two years ago, when I did the princess 5k I trained to the Frozen soundtrack. Over the next year, I became quite sick of it. Sure enough, this year for the Frozen 5K they played a nonstop Let it Go on the speakers.... in every language possible!

 

[PHXscuba]

Hurrah! A trip report! Interested to hear what you thought of Death Valley. I haven't been since I was a super-surly teenager, so I hope it was much better than I remember.

PHXscuba

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

I always quite enjoy starting a run to "Make a Man Out of You". Who doesn't want to start to "Let's get down to business..."?

Also, "Almost There" from Princess and the Frog.

Two years ago, when I did the princess 5k I trained to the Frozen soundtrack. Over the next year, I became quite sick of it. Sure enough, this year for the Frozen 5K they played a nonstop Let it Go on the speakers.... in every language possible!

Oh my gosh! I cannot believe that I forgot
'make a man out of you'.

That was my theme song for my second tower of terror 10 mile race. I blasted that baby for at least the first 4 miles hahaha.

Aww, I would have thought the 'let it go' during the race would be more like a coming full circle thing for you. You trained to it and you (eventually) finished to it.

Hurrah! A trip report! Interested to hear what you thought of Death Valley. I haven't been since I was a super-surly teenager, so I hope it was much better than I remember.

PHXscuba

Hi! Oh I have sooo many pictures. And there is only one day of DL before we get to it, so you don't have long to wait.



Ugh, I have not had time to get started on this (obviously), my new job wants me working 9 hour days with an unpaid half hour lunch break so with that and all my working out/training for the Wine and Dine in November, I have not had a lot of free time. I really hope to have an update to this by tomorrow.

 

[OhioStateBuckeye]

So what is something fun to do 2 weeks before you completely pick up and move your whole life 20 hours across the country?!

Run a half marathon at Disneyland!!

To be perfectly honest, it didn't take much urging to take some time off work and away from packing to go to the happiest place on earth.

I have no idea how, but Saturday night I managed to be packed and in bed by 11 pm. And I actually fell asleep at 11:30!! This never happens, I'm usually like that little kid on the old Disney commercial, the one who is too adorably excited to sleep.

Me before a Disney trip:




We had our alarm set for 5 for a 7:33 am flight. Ended up waking up at 4 anyway. Refer to the above picture, hyper awake and hyper asleep.

After packing up a few extra items and locking up the house we were on the road at 5:45. The drive is less than 10 minutes, especially on the post-apocalyptic looking empty highways that occur before 6 am on a Sunday.

It was really not warm out at all, so we were pleased to be leaving Ohio.

We parked Roary (my car) and took the shuttle to the airport. We were there way early. We are usually pretty loyal Southwest customers, but this trip we had booked with Delta because they had much cheaper flights. Boo Southwest. We only had carry on bags and were able to get our boarding passes online, which was an amazing thing because the line to check bags was looooong. We're talking Toy Story Midway Mania at Christmas long. I'm not even sure if we'd have made our flight if we had to wait in that. I don't think the counter had even opened yet, or maybe it just had.

We smugly strolled by all the waiting people and had a short 5 minute wait to get through security.

Once into the Delta terminal we were excited to see all the Ohio State fans waiting for flights. We were super jealous of the ones who were going to the National Championship game, though it seemed whether you were traveling to the championship or not everyone was representing.

I guess maybe I should pause and explain. Usually college football teams are not really a huge deal to their respective cities, but Columbus doesn't have a professional football team. The only pro teams Columbus has are hockey and soccer, and I believe neither of those franchises is more than 15 years old. So everyone in Columbus and the surrounding area adopted the OSU football team as Their team. The games are so popular and draw so many people and police to the campus area that if I were to ever rob a bank, I'd do it downtown during an OSU game. That is just how deserted everything else is.

Well that was a huge sidetrack.

Anyway, we found some breakfast sandwiches at a coffee shop and we soon boarded our plane. Someone on our flight had a cat in one of those little soft carriers. That cat wanted nothing to do with the plane. He was shouting up a storm. I thought it was pretty funny, though it looked like other passengers were annoyed. There is just something about the ridiculous cat sounds that cats make when they are yelling that I can't stop laughing about.

I had the window seat, as usual, and we both listened to music and slept a little bit on the flight (after the angry cat yelled himself to sleep).

Very pretty sun rise when we took off:



Goodbye snow!!



Because of the time change, we arrived at LAX at 9:20 am, which was 20 minutes early, woohoo!!

Except...it was raining. Apparently people from LA have a hard time dealing with rain? So we got to sit on the tarmac for an extra 40 minutes while the city collapsed and chaos reigned.



That is pretty much what the city looked like. Just add in a few sprinkles of rain.



I like the look of the new American Airlines planes. Very snazzy.



Finally we were able to get off the plane, we listened to another few minutes of the angry, yowling cat before we took off in the other direction to get our car. We had places to go and mice to see.

We got to the rental counter and quickly got our car, except it had a dead battery. So we picked out a second car and were on our way!

Brian was driving so I was able to rubberneck and take some pictures of all the wrecks, of which there were plenty. And it was barely raining. Poor Californians.




Soon enough we saw this lovely site!



We got to have our first experience with the Mickey and Friends parking garage. That thing is so big that you could fit the cars of every person I've ever spoken to inside.





There is our rental car!

We bought our tickets and entered the park. It was still raining so I put my DISboards knowledge into high gear.





Our first stop was the Lincoln show's lobby, where sure enough, all the characters were inside sheltering from the rain.




Belle's cold weather gear!! Embarrassingly enough, I kind of had a mini break down when we saw Belle. I guess I kind of need to be eased into the parks upon arrival, and seeing a princess first thing is just too much happy for this nerd.



Next up was Aladdin. You can call him Al, or maybe just din.



We wandered around the lobby a bit, looking at all the cool stuff:



Next we decided to be idiots and run around the park in the rain not really knowing what to do. We got a FP for Space and double checked with a CM about Hiro and Baymax. The internet was proven correct, we had just missed meeting them by a few days

We eventually ended up at one of our old favorites, POTC! After just 5 minutes we were yo ho hoing and having a good time with the pirates.

 

[cptmemo]

Can't wait to hear about the rest of your trip!

 

[PHXscuba]

What part of the country did you move to? 20 hours in any direction from Ohio can put you a lot of places! (and hopefully closer to one Disney park or the other ... unless you moved to Maine)

I understand the OSU thing ... I worked with some rabid fans when I worked in Cleveland. You couldn't even talk to them if Michigan won.

And yes, Californians (and Arizonans) freak out a bit at rain. It happens so rarely ... my nephew never got to drive in rain the whole time he had his permit because it only rained once in that six months last year!

Looking forward to hearing more; it's getting me excited to go this summer.

PHXscuba

 

[luulu1999]

Following along!! So excited to hear about your trip!!

 

[DisneytheKid]

Great TR so far!

 

[Jaina]

Following along! I really want to do a day or two in the rain sometime! (When I went to WDW it poured on us of course, but since it was still like 85º that totally doesn't count...)

 

[Nhebron]

Hello there...did you abandon this report? I am so looking forward to hearing about your SW Marathon experience. DH and I are headed there next year for our first trip to Disneyland and to do the SW 5k.