Our Twice-Covid-Delayed trip...here now!

[Cindylieu]

Day One:
We are on our way to DISNEYLAND!! Let me introduce us...we are Cindy (mom), Ray (Dad) and Emma (lovely and talented daughter). After twice being delayed/cancelled after Disney shut down for COVID, we are finally on our way!


We flew from Boise, Idaho to LAX early on a Sunday morning, May 15th. This is our first vacation to Disney as a family of three adults. The trip was originally set for the summer in-between our daughter's Junior and Senior years of high school. It is finally taking place after her first year of college, at 19 years old.

(Why would Emma choose THIS book for in-flight reading?!?)



Sorry Jay, no go for you.


(I'll keep updating as we journey...)

 

[Cindylieu]

We've arrived on Disney property and are spending this first day just exploring the shopping area, Downtown Disney, and the hotels: Disneyland Hotel, Paradise Pier Hotel, and the Grand Californian. Tomorrow we will launch into park fun!



We looked around the lobbies of the three huge Disneyland hotels. One has a 15 story glass elevator with a great birdseye view of one of the parks. There was also this great big model of the Millennium Falcon.....entirely made out of CAKE! We rested in the lobby of the Grand Californian and listened to a lady play the piano beautifully. We pin traded wherever we could

and here are my pins so far...

Now we are in our hotel, the Anaheim Desert Inn, and are crashed! We MIGHT go up to the viewing deck for the 9:30pm fireworks....or we might not. Having been up since 0300 and running on very little sleep makes the thought of staying up for fireworks less appealing. We shall see....

Nope! We crashed and skipped watching the fireworks. Sleep called and we all answered.

 

[Cindylieu]

Whoops! Forgot to post the view from the glass elevator. Here is our first peek into the park! I believe this is the Pixar Pier area of Disney California Adventure park.

 

[FeistyDisneyMom]

I love the play-by-play style and the pictures in your report! So glad you finally got to go Can't wait for the next update!

 

[deejdigsdis]

Enjoying your report! Hoping you are having a great time!

 

[Cindylieu]

Day Two

We decided that our first park day should (of course!) be Disneyland. Our strategy is much like so many of yours; rope drop, rope drop, rope drop!



We headed straight to Batuu when the announcement released us, but we skipped Rise of the Resistance (for now) in favor of Smugglers Run. I LOVED Batuu and all the details! Smugglers was a blast!

We worked out way around the Rivers of America for the rest of the morning and into afternoon doing first standby and transitioning to Lightening Lane.

We rode everything twice except for Rise (surprise ILL from Mom at 10:15) and Indy. Pin trading when we had spare minutes in the afternoon was fun!

Snacks of Bao buns and a mint julep helped us through the morning. We ate lunch at Hungry Bear at 3pm. We lounged on the deck near the exit (so much quieter!) and awaited our mobile order while we looked over our pin trading books.


Afternoon brought us to the right side of the park to use most of the remaining fast passes (missed Space Mountain and Autopia). Evening was Momma's nostalgic favorite, the Main Street Electrical Parade.

We are now sleeping it off and will be in California Adventure tomorrow, sore feet, headache, and all!

 

[Cindylieu]

DCA today!

We are in DCA and ready for rope drop. Hooray
!

 

[Cindylieu]

While stuck in line in Radiator Springs, I will post about our day so far. Of course we were at ROPE DROP for DCA! We did Radiator Springs Racers, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Web slingers all before 9:30! We headed back to Radiator Springs for another Single Rider chance, but are sitting in the line while the ride is down. We may oray not stick it out, but here are our adventures so far.

 

[Cindylieu]

What a fun day! The weather is gorgeous. The park is busy, but I have to say I am a fan of the Lightening Lanes and Single Rider lines. So far we have not really waited in any significant lines. We rode Grizzly River Run twice and one of those was a Standby line. The posted time was just about dead on (35min) and with the shade and entertainment we barely had time to get tired of standing. We enjoyed Radiator Springs, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Web Slingers all without LL and all before 9:30am. Then we started repeating things and doing activities that don't have LL. We ate at Pyms Test Kitchen and did enjoy the giant pretzel! We have spent the afternoon over on Pixar Pier and are currently savoring the shade and the breeze while we wait our turn on the ferris wheel. We plan to stay for the World of Color tonight. Today has been really relaxed compared to yesterday, so I think we can stay late for the show.

 

[Cindylieu]

So our night slowly ends with us awaiting the World of Color light show. Our feet gave out long ago and we rode our last ride about 40 minutes ago. We now sit on the ground and wait for the show to begin.

 

[Cindylieu]

Good morning on Day 3!


Today is our second and last day in Disneyland (tomorrow is DCA) and we are off and running!



Rope drop was Peter Pan (I know, I know but I just can't help myself!) Then on to Matterhorn three times in a row with no wait at all. Pro tip for you tall dudes...get the front seat for the most leg room. Wedging your long legs into the side slots in the back two seats was painful for my tall honey, but the front was just fine.
Now we are in the line (25min posted time and moving along nicely) for Hyperspace Mountain. We also have a LL for 9:30 so we will do this one twice in a row. I've never been on this one with the StarWars overlay. Should be good!

 

[Cindylieu]

Last stop before descending into Space Mountain!

 

[FeistyDisneyMom]

Space is my favorite and I also haven't been with the Hyperspace overlays/theme! Can't wait to hear what you think!

Big rope drop crowd!

 

[Kerr84]

Matterhorn 3 times in a row?!?! My back could never!

 

[evilmommie]

Beautiful day at DLand today! I breezed in around 8:40am and checked off several rides before 12. Glad y'all are having fun. Super pics!

 

[Cindylieu]

Lines seem to be my favorite place to write these reviews! Right now we're standing in the jungle cruise line waiting for what they said would be a 40 minute wait but what seems to be turning into about a 25-minute wait so that's great! Let me try to go back in time a little bit today to tell you about the morning.

After we rope dropped and went to Matterhorn three times we then jetted over to Space Mountain and rode that as a walk on and only a 20-minute wait. We turned right around and went back through it using a fast pass at 9:30. We absolutely loved it! What a blast! The rest of the day is a bit of a blur but I can tell you that we travelled through Tomorrowland and did all of the important things there, things like the Astro blasters and Star tours. I absolutely love star tours! I would have gone on it a few more times but my group by that point was feeling pretty nauseated. So we all took a dose of Dramamine and headed to Fantasyland. In Fantasyland we had already ridden Peter Pan at ROPE drop, so we rode Snow White for the first time since the upgrade. That was a lot of fun! My husband couldn't remember ever having been on this ride, and so for him it was a novel experience. We decided as Fantasyland was getting very crowded and that we would go ahead and bail on that and head back over to the left side and Star wars land, but first we each tasted our very first corn dogs from the Little Red Wagon. Impressive! We also took a ride up and down main street in a horse-drawn street car! The horse's name is Bill. It was a great way to just slow down.
We spent the rest of the afternoon on the left side. We have all decided that we are "left-siders";we can take or leave Tomorrowland and Fantasyland but we don't feel like we've been at Disney until we've been on the left side.
We spent time just hanging out in Batuu. We saw so many characters just cruising around. A highlight for me was seeing Ren dash through and seemingly disappear into thin air! At the place where they make the lightsabers the lady wouldn't tell me what they were doing because there were storm troopers nearby. She just claimed to be a scrap metal dealer until they moved on. We saw R2D2, what a treat!

 

[Cindylieu]

Em asked "what is the drink I see everyone drinking?" and so we were introduced to Blue Milk. Lovely! I could drink it all day!
We hit all the major rides on the left side once or twice more: Splash Mountain (3x), Thunder Mountain (2x), Indy (1x), Jungle Cruise (1x). We also rode the Columbia around the Rivers of America, a ride we missed on day 1. We even went back to the Tiki room again and this time we pre-ordered our Dole Whip soft serves so we could savor them during the show.
Lunch was at Cafe Orleans and we did like what we had there. The serve yummy food!
My honey wanted to make it an early night and I tried, really I did! But it was still after 9pm before we left and it is 10pm as I type a bit more to finish this day up. They are both in bed and he is drifting off. So...another early morning for our final park day at DCA.

Hope I can still hobble in the morning! Night y'all!

 

[Cindylieu]

Beautiful day at DLand today! I breezed in around 8:40am and checked off several rides before 12. Glad y'all are having fun. Super pics!

Gorgeous day but it got pretty crowded with Grad Night kids. I'm grateful for Genie+

 

[Cindylieu]

Matterhorn 3 times in a row?!?! My back could never!

My back is crying some now ...

 

[Cindylieu]

Space is my favorite and I also haven't been with the Hyperspace overlays/theme! Can't wait to hear what you think!

Big rope drop crowd!

We loved Hyperspace Mountain! Big crowds all day. Genie+ was our friend.