California Vacation: Day 1

Remind me to fly next time. I don't care how much more it costs, I'm not driving any more than 2 hours with these people!

Okay. It's probably not healthy to start a post with that much emotional rage, but really, it was not fun. It actually wasn't too bad up until Vegas. Then, for some reason, the last few hours dragged on, and on, and on. And then, to put the cherry on top, it turned out that there are two streets with the same name in neighboring cities. And of course we got directions to the wrong one. So it took another hour to find our hotel. But we made it! The only thing that kept me from getting excited was the thought that we'd have to do that again in a week.

We stayed at ALO Hotel in Orange, not too far from Disneyland. We picked it because it gave us two free nights, free parking, and free daily breakfast. But I will probably never stay there again because the walls are paper thin and by morning, we received a not-so-nice phone call telling us there were multiple complaints over the noise my children were making. So that made for extra stress the entire rest of the vacation: keeping my three, young, rambunctious boys quiet.

Anyway, the next day after arriving was our first day at Disney! It actually was the perfect day. The weather was perfect, the lines weren't too long, and we had the food thing down. Dave's sister, Mary, lent us her awesome stroller that has a platform for the boys to stand on for when they get tired. This really reduced any and all complaints from the kids of being "too tired" to walk.

The first place they wanted to go was Tomorrowland. So we first rode the rockets. And, as I predicted, Miles screamed when the ride was over.

 

 I got some cool shots of the park from up in the rocket:

 After the rockets, the boys wanted to go on Star Tours, so I took Miles on the Buzz ride. After which, I bought him a $15 bubble gun that ended up being the best purchase I would make that entire week. It kept him from screaming after each ride and kept him occupied in line. However, we spent about $40 on bubbles by the end of our 3-day visit to the park.

Then, we went on the ride again with the rest of the fam!

 

Then I took Cruise & Jett on the Matterhorn while Dave took Miles on the teacups.

 Then we all went on the teacups.

 

Next was the Nemo submarine.

 

Then we all headed over to Frontierland where Dave and the older two went on Thunder Mountain Railroad and Miles and I just walked around and looked at the boats and ducks.

 Then we met up and went on Pirate of the Carribean.

Then to Critter Country where we went on the Winnie the Poor ride and took turns going on Splash Mountain with the older two.

 

While Dave was going on Splash Mountain, Miles wanted to meet the Pooh gang, and, of course, he didn't want anything to do with them once it was our turn for pictures.

 

Then we all got on the train and headed towards Toon Town, which I remembered, does not have a lot to do. So we didn't spend very long there.

The rest of the evening was spent eating dinner at The Pizza Port and using our stroller passes to re-ride the bigger rides again.

By about 6pm, the kids were exhausted. And Dave & I were equally exhausted.

 

And that was Day 1.