WARNING: picture overload
Back in June my sister Brittney and I went to Disneyland. Throughout the week she referred to this trip as our "sistermoon". That was because this trip was originally meant to be her honeymoon. A few months before the wedding she decided to call it off. The guy was great, just not great for her. Well, my dad had already booked and paid for this trip, and he couldn't get his money back. But he could change the name on the reservation. So lucky me, I got to go to Disneyland for free.
We had park hopper passes, which was so awesome. We could jump between the two parks whenever we wanted. The first day we went to the actual Disneyland park. The only thing I told Brittney that we absolutely had to do was go on Space Mountain. You see, I went to Disneyworld my senior year of high school with a friend and her family, but Brittney had never been before. So I had to show her the ropes. :) I also got to use my exceptional organizing and planning skills to plan out our days so that we could do EVERYTHING (once again, Brittney had never been, so she needed to have the complete experience) in the three days we had. We rode EVERY ride at least once and saw everything there was to see. We also went to the grocery store and bought some breakfast and lunch items so we wouldn't have to spend any money on food at the park. It's ridiculous how much they charge!!
So back to Space Mountain. We got to the park, and we headed straight for Tomorrowland. On the way we met Geppetto. Brittney felt bad for him because no one was waiting in line to see him, so she got a picture.
We rode in this awesome sparkly purple-ish colored car in Autopia, and we so good they gave us driver's licenses to come back. (Sorry no picture of the licenses...)
Brittney was a good driver - expect for the times she ran into the walls...
Then we went on Finding Nemo's submarine adventure. This a seriously cool ride. I loved it! We actually climbed down into a submarine and took a ride around the "ocean". So great!
Next we went to retrieve our lanyards and Cars pins that our park hopper passes came with. We were styling.
We stopped by Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters, and Brittney handedly beat me...twice...on two different day.
I'm obviously thrilled at my meager score.
We also swung by Star Wars Star Tours later on that night (with a fast pass). This another awesome ride. Luckily I had taken some Dramamine that morning or I would have thrown up everywhere. It's a flight motion simulator in 3-D. Very cool.Here are Space Mountain pictures:
I felt like my hair kept flying back and smacking the girl behind me in the face. I tried to hold onto it, but I'm pretty sure that didn't do a very decent job. I mean...look at her face. She seems super annoyed.
Brittney was a little freaked out after Space Mountain, because I neglected to tell her what kind of ride it was - roller coaster in the dark - oops. But she got brave and went back with me later.
Next, we went to Pixie Hollow, which was a long line and hot wait to see Tinkerbell, and I didn't even get a picture! But here's Silvermist.
Next, we made our way to Frontierland but passed through Fantasyland where we took a tour of Sleeping Beauty's castle and tried desperately to pull the sword out of the stone.
Needless to say, we're no King Arthur.
That day we also took a ride on a pirate ship and went canoeing.
Here we are waiting in line for Star Tours:
Before we left for the day we swung by Mickey's Toontown and waited in line for at least an hour and a half to go on Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin. The sign outside said the wait was only 45 minutes, so we thought we could handle that. 45 minutes passed, then an hour, but we were so far into the line waiting that we couldn't turn back. It was a long hot wait for a disappointing ride...
The next day we decided to hit up the California Adventure park. It was much smaller than the Disneyland park, and I knew if we kept to my meticulous schedule we would have it all done in one day. Unfortunately, we were there a few weeks before Cars Land and Beuna Vista Street opened. There was tons of construction everywhere. We stumbled across this area of construction that had lots of Alice in Wonderland decor out, so we helped ourselves to some pictures with it.
Then we found our way into a building that just happened to have a ride in it. Lucky us. Monsters Inc. Mike and Sully to the Rescue.
We saw that Hollywood Land was in the distance ahead of us after we got out of the Monster's Inc. ride so away we went to the Tower of Terror. The first time I went to Disney I didn't have a chance to go on the ride, so I was excited and Brittney was too. It was SO FUN! They do a great job of convincing you you're not as high up as you really are, and then all of sudden you're at the top looking out of the windows at the tiny park below you. Right before you can process exactly how high up that actually is they drop you 13 stories. Then they do it all again. We loved this ride!
Next stop: A Bug's Land. We first rode in Flik's Flyers, mainly so we could get a bird's eye view of the whole park and see how it was laid out compared to our map.
We also went to Tuck and Roll's Drive 'em Buggies, which were the SLOWEST bumper cars I've ever been on in my life. I guess this whole park of the park was for preschoolers, but still. Don't be fooled by our awesome poses that make us appear to be hauling. We seriously passed the camera back and forth while we were driving.
Francis' Ladybug Boogie was just the spinning teacups (if you've ever been to Disney), except the cars were made to look like ladybugs. Very cute. We spun fast.
We swung over to Pacific Warf, which is a mini San Francisco, got some free samples at Ghirardelli (ok, a lot of free samples), and took a bakery tour, where we got free samples of delicious sour dough bread.
We then went across a big bridge to Paradise Pier and checked out all the neat rides there.
The Little Mermaid - Ariel's Undersea Adventure. Luckily this ride was completely covered, and we felt like we were in a cave it was so cool (as in temperature). Good thing too, because if you can't tell from our frizzed hair, it was a little hotter this day than the first day.
Silly Symphony Swings.
King Triton's Carousel.
I sure loved that little otter.
Mickey's Fun Wheel. A giant Ferris wheel with moving cars. This was slightly terrifying. Every time the Ferris wheel spun our car slid down from its current position and stopped by whacking into the slide of the wheel.
We rode California Screaming (the main roller coaster) several times. After some severe mechanical issues which stopped the ride completely we trusted Goofy's Sky School (a quick curvy coaster) to not kill us. We strapped ourselves onto a jellyfish and jumped 40 feet into the air and softly floated back down at the Jumpin Jellyfish ride. We then made our way over to Grizzly River Run to cool off. It's one of those river rapids rides, the kind where you sit in a big circular raft, water splashes everywhere, you go underneath waterfalls, and someone always gets more wet than every other person on the ride. Luckily neither Brittney nor myself got more wet than we wanted.
We waited in line for honestly about 2 hours at Toy Mania. I'd be lying if I said we weren't both miserable. But we found ways to entertain ourselves.
But we FINALLY made it in. It was awesome! Definitely not worth waiting in line for so long, but still very entertaining. It's a 4D ride where you're in a car, and you go along shooting targets with laser guns. Here's a picture I stole off their website and a picture of Brittney and me.
The next day we had to switch hotels, so we opted not to do to the park. We only had 3 day park passes, so this worked out perfectly. We needed a little rest before we hit it again. We spent the day at the pool reading, watching TV stations I didn't even know existed, and eating pizza. It was lovely.
Our last day at Disney began with a quick ride on Star Tours...again. With our awesome honeymoon tickets we were able to choose one day when we could go into the park an hour before it actually opened. Other people obviously had this same deal, so we by no means had the park to ourselves, but the lines were MUCH shorter. We walked into Star Tours, sat down, enjoyed the ride, and walked out.
We then swung on over to Adventureland, where we just HAD to ride Indiana Jones. Everyone else also just had to ride Indiana Jones as well, so the long was uber long. But luckily the cave/tunnel getting back into the actual ride was full of entertaining things.
We then made our way over to Frontierland and took a ride on the Mark Twain Riverboat. This day in Disney was the hottest we had experienced yet, so a nice breezy ride down the river was just what we needed.
While in Frontierland we also rode Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, a roller coaster through an old abandoned mine shaft. And we visited Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island.
We then made our way New Orleans Square where we rode Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean. We also stopped by Critter Country and visited The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and cashed in our Fast Pass to Splash Mountain.
Next stop: Fantasyland. If you've never been to Disney one thing you need to know about Fantasyland is that it's little kid heaven. The minimum height on all the rides is nonexistent, so anyone can ride them. This place is always a mad house. We first rode the Casey Jr. Circus Train, which was a real life version of the animal cracker boxes with the circus animals in train cars.
We choose to be the train conductors and not sit in the hot boxcars.
Dumbo the Flying Elephant.
Mad Tea Party.
We also rode Alice in Wonderland, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Peter Pan's Flight, Snow White's Scary Adventures, and Storybook Land Canal Boats. Oh, and of course, It's a Small World.
Last but not least, we made our way back to Mickey's Toontown hoping for a better experience than our first go round.
We played in the Chip 'n Dale Treehouse and Donald's Boat. We rode Gadget's Go Coaster. We toured Goofy's Playhouse and Minnie Mouse's House.
And finally, to top off our Disneyland experience, we met Mickey Mouse!
Lessons learned on this trip:
1. Disneyland is a bad place for a honeymoon. No offense to those of you who went there on your's. It's just not for the Barnwell girls. We prefer a beach somewhere relaxing instead of melting walking around in the hot sun.
2. Brittney and I need to go on more vacations together. Maybe one day when we both have money we can make this happen.
3. Sometimes being a control freak has it's advantages. We were able to ride every.single.ride in both the parks we visited thanks to my excellent planning skills. And we probably only spent about $60 the whole week on food for the both of us thanks to our quick trip to the grocery store at the beginning of the week.
4. I probably won't go to Disney again until I have children who are old enough to enjoy it. Waiting in 2 hour lines for 30 second rides just isn't my favorite thing. I know there are people who take an annual trip to Disney, but that just ain't me.
