Chumla, lee lock a loo!
As you all know, I got back Disneyland Sunday night, and ditched school on Monday to sleep and do homework.
We arrived at our hotel, the Grand Californian, at about 7:30 California time after getting 100 miles off course, lost in the crazy freeway system of Los Angeles. We met there with my Aunt Anne, Uncle Paul, Sonja, Rhonda, and her two kids, Rachel, and Luke, who are 5 and 2 years old respectavely.
This was the lobby of our hotel, I thought it was pretty sweet. Especially because it was so close and we had our own entrance into California Adventure. Our hotel room was on top of the big Disney store in Downtown Disney, and the balcony looked out onto it.
The first day we had an hour early entry, and we rode Space Mountain first. It was really cool, just as good as the original, but faster and with better special effects. The rest of the day was strictly ride-oriented.
Since it was "Holiday Time" everything was all done up for Christmas. This was the Haunted Mansion with Nightmare Before Christmas stuff all over it, which was really cool. I was really excited because I love Nightmare Before Christmas. They changed a lot of the ride, and gave it a new soundtrack and narration just for this. It was like a completely different ride, which was awesome.
The second day, we spent the morning at Disneyland, having a character breakfast since we were with young kids. After we grabbed a couple fastpasses there, we spent the afternoon at California Adventure until it closed, then went back to Disneyland. While at California Adventure, we rode the Tower of Terror, which, I must say, was a really great ride.
This is my Uncle Paul, and Sonja, his girlfriend, who has pretty much become an adopted part of the family. In her sweater is the really cute stuffed Ewok I bought from the Star Wars store, which we named Chumla, from the cheesy song the ewoks sang that used to be at the end of the sixth movie, but was cut out of the DVD version (and replaced with something worse.
Saturday was more low-key, with rides involved, but also with naps and jacuzzi rests in between. That morning, a few of us ran all around Disneyland getting as many fastpasses as we could (with our tickets we had unlimited fastpasses), and by the time we got to Indiana Jones, the fastpass computer had crashed, and our response was, "Oh shit, we crashed the computer!" Since they said the fastpasses in California Adventure still worked, we went over there and hit them up.
These are all of the fastpasses that we gathered that morning. We didn't use all of them, so we gave the ones we had left to some random people because the lines were really long. Disneyland was so packed Saturday night that when we went back into it around 7:30, Main Street was so packed with people wanting to go in and people wanting to leave that everyone was at a standstill with barely any breathing room. They eventually had to get people with lights in there to direct traffic and get everyone on the right side. It was really freaky.
We also watched the fireworks, but from the Tom Sawyer Island area, not from the castle like you're supposed to because it was so busy we couldn't make it over there. There were still some cool special effects there, too, though. But the fireworks were amazing. They'll kick our Fourth of July Firework's ass anyday. Plus, they had lasers, and 50 foot flames shooting upwards by the castle, and this light that seriously turned the entire sky green. I was seriously in awe. They were also supposed to have projections on the castle too, but obviously I didn't know for sure since I wasn't there. And then afterwards, they had fake snow fall around us for Christmas.
Sunday morning we packed up, and then went to a Gospel Brunch at the House of Blues,
black woman with crazy hat yelling "Hallelujah!" and all! (sorry the pic's really blurry) It was pretty fun, by the end everyone was standing and dancing to Jesus songs. Afterwards, we went shopping a little, and then left for the drive home.
This was a really fun trip, and I'd definitely do it again, but, I must say that 3 or 4 days at Disneyland is certainly the maximum.