Disneyland
A long time ago, like before we knew we were moving to Boston, we found out that the conference Greg went to in Vancouver last year was going to be in Anaheim this year! Pretty much as soon as we found out when the conference was, we booked our hotel for that week and planned on doing 2 days in Disneyland while we were there! Time went on and Greg got accepted to grad school and it turned out he wasn't going to be presenting at this conference so he decided to blow off the conference and we'd do 3 days in Disneyland! We bought our tickets not long after that and the countdown began. It felt like we had to wait forever for it to finally get here. The day finally came and we were on the road! We stopped in Las Vegas for lunch at a Spanish restaurant called Firefly. Greg served his mission in Spain and often gets homesick for Spain. I thought this would be the perfect place to go! He LOVED the place. They had painting by Spanish artists on the walls, the ambiance was great and the food was amazing! This place had entrees but it's mostly a tapas bar. I love tapas style! You get to share lots of little bites and try lots of different things. We got mostly unhealthy tapas but everything was delicious! We got ham and cheese croquettes (basically breaded and fried rolls of cheese and ham, so good!), apple and manchego salad (Manchego is like Spain's version of Parmesan, it's delicious and perfectly paired with crisp and tart apples), we also got a shrimp dish with an Asian dipping sauce because why not?, Spanish tortilla (sort of like a big omelet with potatoes in it), and Manchego MAC AND CHEESE! That was both of our favourites I think. It was so creamy and gooey and warm and there was a roasted pepper relish on top that was soo delicious with all the cheese. They also served nice, crispy bread with a Marcona almond, butter, roasted red pepper spread that was so good. It was almost like pepper jelly but in butter form so an obvious win. It was incredibly hot in Vegas so as soon as we were done eating we got out of there fast!
Fast forward a couple of hours and we're in Anaheim! We see signs for Disneyland! The excitement level is high! And then we got to our hotel. We went to check in and... We found out the reservation was for the next week! And they didn't have any rooms available for this week! We panic a little at this point because as I am frantically trying to look up rooms available only the $200+ a night hotels have anything available it seems. Fortunately, hotels.com refunded our money, cancelled the other reservation and we were able to find a room available for about half of what the other rooms were going for! And this hotel was even closer to the park! After a little bit of a scare there, we were relieved to get checked in to the new hotel and settle in. Even though we had to pay quite a bit more for the hotel, we were glad that it was closer and still had free breakfast! After this trip we were particularly glad we used hotels.com because of all their help with this and at the end of the trip they were super helpful also, more on that later.
Wednesday morning we got up early and got ready for day 1 in the park! It really is so magical there. We were also very excited because we got Han and Leia shirts to wear and we were pretty crazy about them. We also got a ton of compliments on them.
We had a great first day in the park! We did a lot of the rides we anted to, the lines weren't too bad, it didn't get super hot, and we just had a blast! To try and keep it more affordable we packed sandwiches and lots of healthy/filling snacks so we would only have to eat one meal per day in the park. We got these awesome lunch boxes at Costco that were insulated and came with 2 little ice packs that you can just zip into the sides to keep everything cold so we could pack chicken sandwiches and apples, carrots, and even peppermint patties in there to eat. It was great! The lunch box ended up being a little heavier than we hoped though so we took a little break each day to go bring the lunch box back to the hotel and to get our ice packs back in the freezer (the freezer was pretty crappy and didn't really freeze them, but the more time in it, the better). It was actually kind of nice to take 15 minutes and sit in the AC and relax before going back for the rest of the night. We got to see World of Colour that first night and we loved it!
The second day in the park was great too! We went over to Tomorrowland and spent most of the morning there and got to go in and see the Star Wars characters. Greg has all those pictures on his phone so I will have to post them later, but we got to see Chewie and Kylo Ren. Greg was wearing his Rebel Alliance shirt and Kylo Ren freaked when he saw it! Started asking him where the map to Skywalker was and everything. He was so intimidating and awesome! When we came out from seeing the characters, there was a show going on. All the little padowan guys were watching some older Jedi train and Kylo Ren came out and they all got to use the Force to get rid of him. It was so cute! They all had light sabers and were in Jedi tunics and they freaked out when Kylo Ren came out and when they got rid of him. It was great! That night we watched the Paint the Night parade which is so fun. I love it! We decided we wanted to spend pretty much all day in the park for our last day so we called it a day after Paint the Night.
We got up early and got in to the park before opening so we could hopefully get on all the rides we wanted to early before the park got too busy. It was overcast and pretty cool so it felt great! As soon as the park opened we went for the story rides. We did Peter Pan, Alice, Pinocchio, Snow White, and Greg went on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride twice with me. I don't know what it is about the story rides but I love them! They are some of my favourites. We did EVERYTHING that third day. We went on all the rides we wanted to and even got to see Frozen at the hottest part of the day. It's air conditioned in the theater so even though we are kind of meh about Frozen, the AC sounded pretty good. And then the show was amazing! It was super well done. After Frozen we did the last stuff we wanted to do in California Adventure before going to the hotel for a late lunch. We came back around 3 or 4 and spent the rest of the night until close in Disneyland! On our way back to the park someone gave Greg a fast pass for Hyperspace Mountain which was great because the line for that one was always crazy and it's one I don't ride. And since he got it from them we were both able to get a fast pass for Star Tours. That one makes me a little sick too but it's so cool I had to do it again! We had a perfect day! We avoided the worst heat, didn't have to wait long for anything all day, did everything, saw the fireworks, saw the Disneyland parade, watched Paint the Night for the last time, and were so exhausted at the end of it. By the time we got back to our hotel that night we had done about 100,000 steps in 3 days. We were so tired we decided to skip the beach on Saturday and just drive home. We had already paid for Saturday night so we called hotels.com again to see if they would refund us if we checked out early. They called the hotel for us and worked everything out with them so we could check out and the refunded us right then for it. They were awesome! We slept in a little and then headed out. It was the best trip.
We got home and had some post Disneyland blues of course, but we didn't have much time to be sad. We had 2 1/2 weeks left before the move when we got home. Now we're down to 9 days and I can't believe it. I'm so glad we got such an amazing trip before we become super poor grad students living in one of the most expensive cities in the country. This month has been a blur and I'm sure life will stay that way until October. Here's to the next month and a half of craziness!
Fast forward a couple of hours and we're in Anaheim! We see signs for Disneyland! The excitement level is high! And then we got to our hotel. We went to check in and... We found out the reservation was for the next week! And they didn't have any rooms available for this week! We panic a little at this point because as I am frantically trying to look up rooms available only the $200+ a night hotels have anything available it seems. Fortunately, hotels.com refunded our money, cancelled the other reservation and we were able to find a room available for about half of what the other rooms were going for! And this hotel was even closer to the park! After a little bit of a scare there, we were relieved to get checked in to the new hotel and settle in. Even though we had to pay quite a bit more for the hotel, we were glad that it was closer and still had free breakfast! After this trip we were particularly glad we used hotels.com because of all their help with this and at the end of the trip they were super helpful also, more on that later.
Wednesday morning we got up early and got ready for day 1 in the park! It really is so magical there. We were also very excited because we got Han and Leia shirts to wear and we were pretty crazy about them. We also got a ton of compliments on them.
The second day in the park was great too! We went over to Tomorrowland and spent most of the morning there and got to go in and see the Star Wars characters. Greg has all those pictures on his phone so I will have to post them later, but we got to see Chewie and Kylo Ren. Greg was wearing his Rebel Alliance shirt and Kylo Ren freaked when he saw it! Started asking him where the map to Skywalker was and everything. He was so intimidating and awesome! When we came out from seeing the characters, there was a show going on. All the little padowan guys were watching some older Jedi train and Kylo Ren came out and they all got to use the Force to get rid of him. It was so cute! They all had light sabers and were in Jedi tunics and they freaked out when Kylo Ren came out and when they got rid of him. It was great! That night we watched the Paint the Night parade which is so fun. I love it! We decided we wanted to spend pretty much all day in the park for our last day so we called it a day after Paint the Night.
We got up early and got in to the park before opening so we could hopefully get on all the rides we wanted to early before the park got too busy. It was overcast and pretty cool so it felt great! As soon as the park opened we went for the story rides. We did Peter Pan, Alice, Pinocchio, Snow White, and Greg went on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride twice with me. I don't know what it is about the story rides but I love them! They are some of my favourites. We did EVERYTHING that third day. We went on all the rides we wanted to and even got to see Frozen at the hottest part of the day. It's air conditioned in the theater so even though we are kind of meh about Frozen, the AC sounded pretty good. And then the show was amazing! It was super well done. After Frozen we did the last stuff we wanted to do in California Adventure before going to the hotel for a late lunch. We came back around 3 or 4 and spent the rest of the night until close in Disneyland! On our way back to the park someone gave Greg a fast pass for Hyperspace Mountain which was great because the line for that one was always crazy and it's one I don't ride. And since he got it from them we were both able to get a fast pass for Star Tours. That one makes me a little sick too but it's so cool I had to do it again! We had a perfect day! We avoided the worst heat, didn't have to wait long for anything all day, did everything, saw the fireworks, saw the Disneyland parade, watched Paint the Night for the last time, and were so exhausted at the end of it. By the time we got back to our hotel that night we had done about 100,000 steps in 3 days. We were so tired we decided to skip the beach on Saturday and just drive home. We had already paid for Saturday night so we called hotels.com again to see if they would refund us if we checked out early. They called the hotel for us and worked everything out with them so we could check out and the refunded us right then for it. They were awesome! We slept in a little and then headed out. It was the best trip.
We got home and had some post Disneyland blues of course, but we didn't have much time to be sad. We had 2 1/2 weeks left before the move when we got home. Now we're down to 9 days and I can't believe it. I'm so glad we got such an amazing trip before we become super poor grad students living in one of the most expensive cities in the country. This month has been a blur and I'm sure life will stay that way until October. Here's to the next month and a half of craziness!
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