Our first Disney Day

Our first day of Disney was long, but great.

We were up at 3am so that we could dress and get to the airport in plenty of time for our 6:30am flight. There was a lot of turbulence during the flight, which didn't seem to phase the kids but made me feel a little green around the gills.

We arrived LAX just before 9am and quickly got the baggage and bus to the rental car. We drive away by 9:45am, jump on the freeway and immediately get pulled over by a cop. We crossed into the carpool lane, crossing the double yellow lines to get into it. We'd never seen double yellow lines and thought they were just the divider between standard and carpool lanes. Unfortunately, that wasn't true. The good news is that the kind officer let us off without giving us the ticket (which was a $350 fine by the way ... OUCH!).

We made it to Disneyland with no further difficulties but giving Brian a hard time the whole way. We had lunch at McDonalds outside the park and were inside Disneyland by 12:30pm.

Right inside the park we saw our first charachter, Brer Bear, and got our first autograph.

Then we headed for our first ride of Disneyland, Pirates of the Caribbean. I forgot that the boat dips and falls, so Brian and, who were sitting in front, got wet. But it was fun.

Afterwards we hit Thunder Mountain Railroad ... but halfway up the first climb the ride stopped. We sat there for 10 minutes until they came and unloaded us and we had to walk out of the ride. Bummer.

Next we headed to use our Fastpass for Splash Mountain, but since we had a few minutes until time we ended up going on The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. Not our favorite ride, but not too bad either.

Then we headed for Splash Mountain ... the most fun ride to date. The kids really enjoyed it, as did us adults. Brian's mom wasn't so sure about the ride though and kept yelling "Oh, shit!". Not exactly the best phrase for the happiest place on eather! LOL Chase was in the front of our log and got SOAKED!!! When we got off the ride we told Chase that he was very wet, to which he would say "Why, thank you!". They wanted to go on this again and again, but the line was long and we decided we'd hit it again another day.

We walked through Fantasyland and did a bit of shopping on Main Street before heading to our character meal at Goofy's kitchen. The kids had a blast! The food was pretty good, considering that it was a buffet. They enjoyed seeing Goofy, Snow White, Aurora, Pluto, Chip & Dale. Carissa spent most of the dinner holding her autograph book and waiting for the characters to come visit our table. She wore her Cinderella dress and loved the attention of getting fawned over by the other princesses. The girl was absolutely in heaven.

After dinner we took the monorail to Tomorrowland, where we rode Star Tours (another green at the gills ride for me ... ugh!) and got Fast Passes for Buzz Lightyear. We headed over to watch Fantasmic, which was pretty good.

We couldn't see the fireworks well from the Fantasmic spot, so decided to head over to use our Buzz Lightyear fastpasses. That was our last ride of the day, as it was 1opm and we had been up for 19 hours.

We walked back to the hotel and the kids were asleep within minutes of lying down. They were up bright and early this morning at 7am, ready to go again!

I'll leave you with a photo ... what could be a better place than to have your photo taken in front of the castle at Disneyland.