Day 14 - Thursday, June 25 - Disneyland - Part 1
Wow, our last full day in California. Hard to believe that the adventure was almost finished! Our goal for the day was to use our early entry option for Disneyland, which opened at 7:00am. This was also our first solo day in the parks, so we didn't waste any time getting there early.
What did the others do? Well, Dave and Angie had originally planned to only visit DL park just the one day, and tour LA the other days... But they enjoyed their DL day so much, that they decided to visit California Adventure on this last day. (We didn't know it at the time.) Nanny and Grandpa continued with their original plans to do some LA site seeing (I don't remember exactly where they went.)
So yeah, since we were slow poke free, we decided to walk from the Candy Cane Inn and arrive about an hour before the gates opened.
Interesting... we made it to bag check before the attendants did. Hahaha! We ended up waiting here for about 15 or 20 minutes. The bag checkers were pretty cheeky and had fun pestering people in line and picking on each other. Made the wait interesting...
So yeah, Buddy was determined to be first in line for DL. Not only first in line for his turnstile, but first for the entire park!!!
We did it! We made it before any one else. We sort of headed over to the right side, since it would be closer to the tunnel going under the tracks. In hindsight, I wish we had went to the very middle, because I wonder if they would have picked us as the family to "open the park". No worries, we were happy with our accomplishment anyway
Within 10 or 15 minutes, that vast empty space looked like this:
Yikes!!!
Maybe 5 or 10 minutes before they started letting people in, they opened the outer gates. Buddy still happy!
OK. So they open the park, and everyone is doing the "walk don't run"... but still walk as fast as you can rigamarole. We wanted to start off with a bang and head to Space Mountain, so we booked it!!!!
Funny, about a third of the way down Mains Street, a large man (who looked like Santa) flew past me in his
scooter... I was like, "Wow, He's making good time.... I wonder what ride he's cruising for?"
And then I had a good laugh....
The gif above turned out terrible, but he zipped past and took a hard right... to be first in line for.... (drumroll, please)..... Starbucks!
Yeah, getting up early. Waiting in line. Weaving in and out past people like a race car driver... just to be first in line for Starbucks. LOL. Hahahah!!! Go Santa!
Anyway, we kept up our pace and made it to Space Mountain ahead of the main pack.... Only to find it was closed. Maybe Santa had the last laugh after all.... Ho ho ho!
The kids wanted to ride the Astro Orbiter, so we did that next.
We ended up riding it twice in a row, as there was no line and the kids were having fun. After the second time, it was about 7:25 and Space Mountain was up and running. Let's go!!!
Funny! I blinked for the flash. Dork!
All, right next up, let's go hit some of the Fantasyland rides that we missed yesterday. Pickle really wanted to ride Dumbo, but Princess and Buddy didn't. So they just waited for us.
Pickle and her magic feather!
Yahoo! I'll never get tired of Dumbo!!! As much as the "Twin Dumbos" at WDW is cool, I love that this one is now old school!
Next up? How about Casey Jr. Circus Train?!?!! Everyone was up for it, as it's a fun ride around the Storybook Land area with lots of cool stuff to look at.
We ended up in the Monkeys car. When the cast member came to lock our gate, she looked at Pickle and Buddy and said something along they lines of, "Hey, you Monkeys... No flinging poo in there!". Hahaha!!! We gave her a few good "ooh-ooh...aagh-aagh's" after that!
It was now about 8:30. Still making pretty good time. Next up was Pinocchio.
At that point, the kids were getting hungry as we left too early for the continental breakfast at the hotel. We decided to split up. The bigger kids and I headed back to Tomorrowland to order food for everyone, while Pickle and Stephanie squeezed in a quick ride around the carousel.
And of course, an attempt at retrieving Excalibur!
By the time our food was ready at the Galactic Grill (Tomorrowland Terrace), Stephanie and Pickle had caught up to us.
We all had pretty much the same thing.... Eggs, bacon, and potatoes. And of course, some extra bacon for the kids. For some reason, they are infatuated with Disney bacon. Doesn't matter the location, they just love Disney bacon....
The breakfast didn't really look all that appetizing, but it was actually very tasty. I'd be happy to eat there again in the future.
After eating and relaxing for a few minutes, we decided to head over and ride It's a Small World After All. Stay tuned...